Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 424

Chapter 424

Chapter 424

Chapter 424

ARIA

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“Possibly,” he said. “We don’t know yet. Nina is working on the connections.” He set the wrapped plant in the basket. “What I know is that Ivory spent years getting progressively closer to something that those people didn’t want found, and they escalated as she got closer.” He looked at me. “The most recent three red tabs are from the last three months.”

“Since she got her memories back,” I said.

“Since she got her memories back,” he confirmed. “Since she had the full picture again and resumed the research with complete information rather than the partial version she’d been working from during the amnesia.” He picked up the basket. “She’s been getting closer. Whatever she was looking for when she wrote the letter, tracked your bloodline, followed the origin – she’s been getting closer to the actual source of it. And the source’s protectors have been responding.”

“Last night,” I said.

“Last night was one of the three recent red tabs,” he said.

“And the other two,” I said.

“Are in Nina’s proper channels,” he said. “Being mapped.”

We walked back through the secondary gate toward the main garden with the basket and the guide and the compound materials. The evening had properly arrived, the light now the deep blue of late dusk, the pack grounds visible beyond the garden walls with their warm amber lighting.

I thought about the annotation with my name. About Ivory having paid attention from the beginning of the sessions and having written it in the margin three weeks ago and said nothing about it.

I thought about what Kael had said in the clinic room. About Ivory being right about the pattern and being right to not tell him and him still wishing she’d told him. Both things true simultaneously.

“She’s not going to stop,” I said.

“No,” he said. “She’s not.”

–

“The origin of the curse,” I said. “Whatever she’s been following toward she’s going to keep following it. Even from a recovery bed. Even with thirty-five hours of prescribed rest. She’s going to keep working on it.”

“I know,” he said.

“Because whatever the attacker said last night-“I stopped. “The root. If it’s still there, if it can be activated, if the person who created the curse still has access to it-”

“Then the problem isn’t finished,” he said. “Yes.” He looked at the basket. “She’s known this since the memory restoration. Since she had the full picture back. She’s been working on the root problem this whole time.”

“While also running the clinic,” I said.

“While also running everything,” he said.

1/3

1:49 pm Ppp.

Chapter 424

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We came out of the garden through the main gate into the pack grounds proper, where the evening was fully underway and pack. members were moving through the post-dinner rhythm of their days. The clinic building was visible from here, its windows lit, specific rooms more lit than others.

“I need to tell you something,” I said.

He looked at me.

“What I told Sera,” I said. “About Ivory. About the poly.” I met his gaze. “I said it to destroy the weapon she’d brought in. But I also – when I said it, the part that made it work wasn’t just the logic of it. It was that it was easy to say. The implication didn’t feel – wrong to say. It felt like something that could be real rather than something that was clearly fictional, and that’s why it landed.”

He was looking at me with the full attention he brought to things he was taking seriously.

“I’m not telling you this to make anything more complicated,” I said. “Everything is already as complicated as it is and I understand that completely. I’m telling you because I’ve been trying to stop hiding things from you and this is a thing I’d have hidden a month ago.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“I know,” he said. And this version of those two words was different from all the previous versions – not the weighted heavy kind, not the checking kind, not the kind that was containing something. The kind that was receiving something directly.

“Is that alright,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. Simply.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” he said.

We walked back toward the clinic in the evening. The basket of herbs for Ivory, who was going to be extremely pleased about the guide being dry and considerably less pleased about the state of our clothes, which were not fully dry and were going to require explanation.

I was going to explain it as a brief encounter with the pond edge and a mossy stone.

Kael was going to look at the ceiling.

Jordan was going to somehow already know.

Nina was going to make a note.

And Ivory was going to check the herbs first, because that was Ivory, and then she was going to say something that had three layers and a margin annotation to it about the voice resonance section and the names she’d listed three weeks ago.

The pack grounds were warm around us. The evening was fully here.

We were both wet.

The guide was dry.

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