Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 439

Chapter 439

IVORY

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Two hours.

That was how long I’d been chained to the floor of this room, which was underground based on the lack of windows and the specific smell of places that hadn’t seen sunlight in a long time. Stone floor, stone walls, a single light source in the ceiling that buzzed slightly and gave everything a flat yellow quality that was unflattering to everyone present.

Including me, which was annoying. If I was going to be captured I would have preferred lighting that was less clinical.

The chains were the problem.

Not just because they were chains – I’d dealt with worse physical constraints, technically, though I was trying not to rank my worst experiences at the moment because that was a depressing exercise. The problem was what the chains were made of. Wolfsbane. Woven into the metal somehow, the compound embedded in the links themselves so that every point of contact between the chairt and my skin was a slow continuous dose.

My wrists were blistering. I could feel it happening – the specific progression of wolfsbane exposure, which I knew from clinical documentation and was now experiencing from the other side of the patient relationship. The blistering would spread. The compound would keep absorbing. And eventually, if I stayed here long enough, the accumulation would become significant regardless of how much less wolf I was than a standard pack member.

That was the thing about the Shadowmere pack’s modified relationship with their wolf nature. When Kael’s mindlink had gone wrong during the second curse year – when the wolf’s deteriorating consciousness had started broadcasting violence and chaos through the connection that linked every pack member – we’d had to make a choice. Sever the connection. Cut everyone off from the mindlink and from the easy shifting that the mindlink supported.

It had been the right choice. It had kept the children safe. It had kept everyone safe from something that wasn’t Kael’s fault but was still happening.

The side effect was that I was less wolf than I would otherwise be. Which meant the wolfsbane was working more slowly on me than it would on a full-functioning wolf.

More slowly was not the same as not working.

I had, I estimated, somewhere between four and six hours before the accumulation reached a level that would significantly impair my physical function. My healing was already slowed – the shoulder from last night was worse than it should have been at this stage of recovery, the new injuries from the capture adding to the existing damage.

I was not, if I was being honest with the accounting, in a good position.

So. Options.

Option one: the knife.

I had a knife tucked in the binding at my inner thigh – a small one, barely longer than my hand, but tipped with a wolfsbane compound that was considerably more concentrated than what was in the chains. I’d put it there three days ago, when the tracking had been getting closer and I’d started preparing for the possibility that close contact was going to become actual contact.

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10:57 am

Chapter 439

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The knife was still there. They hadn’t found it, which meant either their search hadn’t been thorough or they’d assumed a healer wouldn’t carry weapons. Both assumptions were wrong, but I wasn’t going to correct them.

If I could get one hand free from the chains, I could reach the knife.

If I had the knife, I could take down two people. Maybe three if the third one was slow to react. The wolfsbane tip would incapacitate without killing, which was its own problem – I didn’t actually want them conscious after I stabbed them – but I could work with incapacitated.

Option two: the shield.

Aryada’s gift had been protecting me since the trial ceremony. A layer of power that activated on impact, absorbing blast energy before it reached me. It had worked on the clinic blast – had worked well enough that I’d survived, which was the relevant outcome even if surviving had involved losing consciousness and being transported here against my will.

I didn’t know how much the shield had left. Aryada had never specified whether the gift had limits. It had been holding for months. The clinic blast had been significant. The testing they’d been doing since I’d arrived here had been adding to the accumulated strain

At some point the shield would fail. I didn’t know when. I was hoping not soon.

Option three: my wolf.

This one was complicated.

I could still shift. The broken mindlink hadn’t removed the ability – it had made it harder, required more energy, and produced a wolf that operated without the communication network that made pack wolves functional rather than feral. My wolf, accessed without the mindlink support, would be a wild thing. It would attack everyone in the room without distinction.

The problem was the last time I’d shifted, three months ago, the wolf had taken a significant injury protecting some children at the border from rogues. I’d been shielding them with my body in wolf form, absorbing damage rather than letting it reach them, and when I’d shifted back the wolf’s voice had stopped.

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