Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 438

Chapter 438

Chapter 438

Chapter 438

KAEL

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Elite looked up from her maps. The specific look she produced when something had been added to her internal accounting.

Then she looked back down.

“Twenty kilometers,” she said. “To the approach point.”

“I know,” I said.

“The plan from the approach point,” she said. “Jordan takes the eastern access. I take the western. Nina and two guards go through the maintenance approach Vesper described. You-”

“Front,” I said.

“Anticipated,” she said. “I’ve accounted for it in the approach timing.”

“How much did you account for,” I said.

“The full version,” she said. “All of it. You going first and the wolf’s response to finding Ivory and the specific quality of the response to finding whoever did this to her and the amount of time we’ll need to manage the operational aftermath of that response.” She turned a page in the tactical maps. “I’ve built it into the timeline.”

“You built the wolf response into the timeline,” I said.

“Twelve to fifteen minutes,” she said. “For the initial response. Followed by the recovery period where the man comes back to the foreground. Then the extraction.”

“Twelve to fifteen minutes,” I said.

“Elite,” Nina said. “That’s-”

“Accurate,” Elite said. “Operationally, it’s accurate. Pretending it’s less than twelve to fifteen minutes is aspirational. Building the actual number into the plan is efficient.”

Jordan made a sound.

“It’s efficient,” I said.

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Chapter 438

“It is.” Elite said.

…

“Fine,” I said. “Twelve to fifteen minutes.”

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“Thirteen if she’s conscious when we find her,” Elite said. “You’ll have more to process.”

“Elite,” Jordan said.

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“I’m building the plan around reality,” Elite said. “The plan built around reality works better than the plan built around what we wish reality was. Operational principle.”

“She’s right,” Nina said. “Unfortunately.”

“I know she’s right,” I said. “That doesn’t make it—”

“Less,” Jordan said.

“Less,” I agreed.

We drove in silence for a while. The approach point was visible on the map, getting closer with each minute. The specific preparations that happened in the quiet before an operation – the settling of attention, the centering of focus, the putting away of everything that wasn’t relevant to what was about to happen.

I put away the conversation about Jordan being closer. About the wolf moving first. About the mellowing, which I was still not accepting as an accurate characterization even though three out of four people in the car believed it was.

I put away Aria in the east courtyard with the anchor open.

I put away Killian, which was easier, because Killian had been put away for years and was practiced.

I put away the things that were not the facility, not the next ninety minutes, not Ivory in a room with wolfsbane chains and people who’d made decisions about their own continued existence that I was about to assist them in revising.

“She called me a good boy,” I said.

Nobody asked what I meant. They all knew.

“In the clinic,” I said. “The wolf. She called him a good boy and said she’d missed him.”

“She has missed him,” Nina said. “Specifically. She told me once that the wolf was casier than the man in some ways because the wolf was straightforward. It wanted what it wanted. It didn’t

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manage things.”

“The wolf doesn’t manage anything,” I said.

“She liked that,” Nina said. “About the wolf. She said it was restful.”

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I thought about that for a moment. About Ivory finding the wolf restful. About the wolf finding her— consistent. The one consistent thing during three years of everything else being inconsistent.

“We’re going to get her back,” I said. Not to the car. Not to Nina or Jordan or Elite. Just stating it. For the record. The way certain things needed to be said out loud to become more real.

–

“Yes,” Nina said. “We are.”

“And then she’s going to spend approximately thirty seconds being relieved before she starts telling us everything we did wrong,” Jordan said.

“Twenty seconds,” Nina said.

“Fifteen,” Elite said.

“Ten,” I said. “If we did anything she would have done differently. Which we did.”

“The arms,” Jordan said.

“The arms,” I confirmed.

“She’s going to have opinions,” Jordan said.

“She always has opinions,” I said.

The approach point appeared on the map. I slowed the car and moved toward the stopping point. The facility was ahead. The operation was the next thing.

“Check your equipment,” Elite said, moving into the operational register with the clean efficiency of someone flipping a switch.

We checked.

The car was quiet again.

Different quiet this time. The before-quiet. The kind that meant everyone had put the conversation where it needed to go and was now in the place that came before doing what

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needed to be done.

I got out of the car into the night air.

Thirteen minutes, according to Elite’s timeline.

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