Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 416

Chapter 416

Chapter 416

A/N: author notes…

Chapter 416

ARIA

Something happened in his expression. Brief and real and then composing itself back into the circumstances.

“Three holes,” he said. “And one impression.”

“Four wall events,” I said. “Total.”

“Four,” he said.

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Jordan came back with the rope. The same rope from the clinic. I had a moment of wondering whether the rope was going to have further adventures before the day was done or whether this was its final deployment, and concluded that in Shadowmere the – answer was probably not its final deployment.

While Jordan secured Alric Vesper with the efficiency of someone who’d been securing things for years and had found the morning’s practice relevant, Kael stood in the corridor and Nina wrote in her notebook and I stood with the specific feeling of someone who’d done something they hadn’t planned on doing and was finding that they didn’t regret it.

He’d been escaping.

The minimum necessary had seemed clear.

“She’s going to hear about this today,” Nina said, still writing. “Margo will tell her within the hour.”

“Margo will tell her within twenty minutes,” Jordan said, from near the floor, tying the last knot.

“The healer will try to stop her from reacting physically,” Nina said. “The shoulder.”

“The shoulder won’t stop her from having opinions,” Jordan said.

“Nothing stops Ivory from having opinions,” Kael said.

“She’s going to want the full account,” Nina said. She looked at me. “You should be there when she hears it. She’ll want to hear it from you directly rather than through Margo’s version, which will be accurate but will lack the technical detail she’ll be looking for

“The technical detail of the blast,” I said.

“She’ll want to know the anchor status, the modulation, the intent framing,” Nina said. “Healer documentation She considers your development a medical case file.”

“She considers-”

“She considers it a medical case file,” Nina confirmed. “She’s been taking notes.”

I looked at the corridor. At Alric Vesper, secured, unconscious, breathing. At the three people around him who were going to get everything he knew before the day was done, who were going to add it to the folder and the list and the proper channels that Nina had been building all morning.

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1:47 pm Ppp.

Chapter 416

At the mark on the wall where the blast had landed.

“I’ll go to the clinic,” I said. “When you’re done with him.”

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“When we’re done with him,” Kael said, and his voice had the flat certainty again. The operational version. “You should be there before then. He’s going to take some time and Ivory’s going to hear about this before we’re finished. She should have someone in the room when she does.”

“Someone who can physically prevent her from getting off the table,” Jordan said.

“The rope is here,” I said.

“The rope is here,” Jordan agreed. “But Elite already went to a meeting.”

“I’ll go,” I said.

“Take the rope,” Nina said.

I looked at her.

“For her,” she said, with the serenity of someone who’d had a full day and was building contingencies regardless. “She’s going to want to come here when she finds out he walked up to the gate. She’s going to want to see him herself. Take the rope.”

I took the rope.

It was becoming, I thought, something of an ongoing feature of Shadowmere leadership. The rope in the cabinet. The rope available. The rope as recurring element in a day that had started with one concrete wall and had accumulated several additional events since.

I walked back through the main building and out into the grounds that were still doing their ordinary midday things, past pack members who were going about their business entirely unaware that the day had included plants dragging a person to the gate and a depowered Luna blast and a man with three badly healed fingers currently secured in a corridor..

Ordinary midday, by Shadowmere standards.

thought about what Jordan had said.

‘Oh, we’ve corrupted her.”

I thought about the curtsey notice on my office door. About the five months. About the poly bluff. About the minimal necessary blast that had stopped a man from escaping.

Shadowmere was, I reflected, a very particular kind of education.

I walked toward the clinic with the rope in my hand and the pearl warm in my pocket and the anchor settled in my chest,

The afternoon was not, as it turned out, going to be quiet.

But that was alright.

I was getting better at not-quiet.

A/N: First and foremost, if this chapters didn’t make you laugh, I am definitely suspicious.

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