Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 429

Chapter 429

ARIA

“Sit down,” she said again, and this version was the older one – the one that existed before the security chief, the one that had been developed in the same house as Ivory, the one that brooked exactly as much argument as it chose to brook, which was none.

I sat down on the floor across from them.

“Shadowmere,” Nina said, “is one of the strongest packs in this region. You know that. Other packs know that. People don’t challenge us directly because the cost of challenging us directly has historically been too high.” She paused. “What people don’t know is where that strength comes from. They assume it’s straightforward – good numbers, good fighters, good Alpha. They think our confidence is confidence.”

“It’s not,” I said.

“It’s not,” she confirmed. “It’s something we cultivated specifically. Being petty and being dramatic and being impossible to predict and thaking everything into a show-that’s not our personality. It’s strategy. If you’re going to be afraid, you perform not being afraid until the performance becomes a version of the truth.” She looked at the door. “We learned that during the curse years.”

I waited.

“Before the curse,” Jordan said, “we were different. Not worse – just different. Younger. We’d known we were going to be his inner circle since we were teenagers. Nina for security, me for politics and intelligence, Ivory for health and innovation, Elite for defense. Kael leading all of it.” He paused. “We grew up together. Got into trouble together. We knew each other’s worst versions and stayed anyway.”

“Things were good,” Nina said. “And then Kael’s mother died.”

“His parents were fated mates,” Jordan said.

I registered this. “Oh,” I said.

“Yeah,” Jordan said. “His father was fated to his mother. Great love story, everyone said. The strongest bond, people said. Unbreakable connection.” He paused. “His father had a younger half son. Killian.”

“A child from outside the bond,” I said.

“His father couldn’t stay faithful,” Jordan said. “The fated mate thing – it didn’t prevent him from wanting what he wanted outside of it. His mother found out. It broke her. She died when Kael was seventeen and she was cursing his father with her last breath. Not magically just in the way people do when they’ve been broken by someone they loved completely.”

“Kael hated his father,” Nina said. “And the woman his father had chosen outside the bond. And Killian. He disowned his half brother when his father got sick. Nobody knows where Killian went.” She looked at her hands. “What Kael took from it was that fated bonds were a lie. That if the strongest possible bond still ended in betrayal and heartbreak, he didn’t want it. He’d rather love someone who loved him equally by choice than be fated to someone and have that mean nothing.”

“It became almost a principle here,” Jordan said. “People who weren’t fated mates still got their endings. We had pack members who chose each other without the fated connection and we treated it the same. Amber. Mira. Several others.”

I thought about Amber. About her workshop. About the wink.

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