Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 427

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Chapter 427

ARIA

“She left a trail,” I said.

Everyone looked at me.

“The woman from the lower slope escaped from the training traps using teleportation,” I said. “The energy signature is specific. It’s here in this room – I can feel it, the same way I felt it on the lower slope.” I looked at Nina. “She’s been tracking Ivory for eighteen months. She knows Shadowmere’s territory. She came to the clinic and she took Ivory and she left.”

“Using the same teleportation,” Nina said.

“The same signature,” I said. “Which means if she’s used it before – in other places, other situations, if there’s any record of it being used elsewhere-”

“I can map it,” Elite said, from the doorway.

I hadn’t heard her arrive. She was standing there with the composed efficiency of someone who’d been briefed on the way in and had already begun the calculations.

“The power signature of teleportation leaves traces in specific types of stone and specific types of magical record,” she said. “If she’s used this method to arrive at and depart from multiple locations over eighteen months of hunting, there will be a pattern. A series of locations that connect to a network.” She looked at Nina. “I need the intelligence files on everything we have about her since last night’s incident.”

“Kael’s documentation folder,” Nina said. “Cross-referenced with the facility files.”

“I need three hours,” Elite said.

“You have two,” Kael said. His voice was the operational one. The flat Alpha version that had moved past processing and into doing.

“Two,” Elite agreed. She looked at Kael. “She’s alive. They needed her alive. If they wanted her dead they would have done it in the clinic. They took her because she knows something or because she is something to them – leverage or information or access. Dead she’s useless for those purposes.”

“She’s alive,” Kael said. Not the emotional acknowledgment – the tactical acceptance of information that was being used.

“She’s alive,” Elite confirmed.

“Two hours,” he said. “Then we have a location.”

Elite left.

Jordan was already on his communication device, pulling the intelligence files that Elite would need, moving with the focused efficiency of the post-decision phase when the feeling had been set aside and the work was what mattered.

Nina looked at Kael.

“The wolf,” she said.

“I know,” he said.

“If you shift before we have a location-”

“I know,” he said. “I’ll hold it.” He looked at the security footage, still running, still showing the empty room. “I’ll hold it until we have somewhere to direct it.”

“Jordan will stay with you,” Nina said. “Aria-” she looked at me.

I was already thinking about the bond. About the reaching I’d done on the lower slope. About what Ivory had told me about using it

not the mindlink, the bond. You’re his mate. He can sense you.*

“I can try to find her,” I said.

Nina looked at me.

“The bond carried a picture to Kael on the lower slope,” I said. “I sent him a visual, a location, a sense of what was happening. If that direction works if the bond can send-” I stopped. “Can it receive?”

Nina looked at Kael.

Kael looked at me.

“I don’t know,” he said. “The bond has been-“he paused, “-strained. For months. What you reached me with on the lower slope worked because you pushed it hard and I was already moving in that direction.” He met my eyes. “But if you could send – and she’s conscious-”