Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 441

Chapter 441

Chapter 441

Chapter 441

IVORY

Thirty minutes later, the door opened.

Killian walked in.

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I closed my eyes for exactly one second. The one second of processing something you’d half-expected and still found infuriating when it actually arrived.

Then I opened my eyes and looked at him.

He was a year younger than Kael. They had the same build – the Alpha bloodline that ran through the family line producing similar height, similar presence – but different coloring. Where Kael was dark, Killian was lighter, and where Kael had the specific quality of someone who’d been carrying responsibility since before he was ready for it, Killian had the quality of someone who’d been waiting for something that never arrived.

I hated him. Specifically. With the precision that came from knowing exactly what he’d done and what it had cost.

“You can save yourself,” he said, crouching down to my level. “Stop fighting them. I can get you out.”

“How can you work with them,” I said.

“They came to me with an offer,” he said.

“An offer to betray Kael,” I said.

“He disowned me,” Killian said.

“He found out you were his half-brother,” I said. “Born a year after his parents bonded. And you’d known. You’d grown up knowing. Your mother knew and you knew and neither of you said anything, and when Kael’s mother found out and got sick from the grief of it, you and your mother moved into the main Alpha house.” I kept my voice level. “He watched his mother die. And the whole time, you were there, acting like his friend, calling him your brother when you knew the truth about why that word meant what it did.”

“I didn’t tell our father to cheat,” Killian said.

“No,” I said. “You just benefited from it quietly for years. And when everything came out and Kael couldn’t look at you anymore, you acted like the exile was the injustice.” I looked at him steadily. “You’re working with people who want to curse him. Again. And leave him as something that can be controlled and used. Your brother.”

“He stopped being my brother when he threw me out,” Killian said.

“He was never your brother,” I said. “That’s the part you’ve been pretending about the longest.”

Something moved in his face. The specific movement of someone who’d been hit somewhere they hadn’t prepared for.

“You love him,” Killian said, and his voice had changed. Quieter. Something underneath it that was the actual conversation, past the argument.

“I do,” I said. “Whatever form that takes and whatever it costs me, yes.”

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Chapter 441

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“And it hasn’t gotten you anything,” he said. “He bonded with someone else. He’s moving toward someone else. And you arranged all of it yourself.”

“I know what I did and I know what it cost,” I said. “I’d do it again.”

“You’d do it again,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment. Looking at me with the expression that made me deeply, specifically uncomfortable – the expression I’d been ignoring since the first time I’d seen it at sixteen and decided I was seeing something that wasn’t there.

“I’ve known since I turned eighteen,” he said. “That you were my fated mate.”

I stared at him.

Then I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The laugh came out with the specific quality of someone who’d been having a very bad day and had found the one piece of information that was genuinely, completely absurd.

“You’re my fated mate,” he said.

I stared at him.

“I know,” he said. “I’ve known for a while. The bond recognition doesn’t require the mindlink – it’s older than that. I felt it when i came in. I felt it when you snuck into the alpha house through Kael window, with a burned birthday ceke, I had no idea how you could burn a cake, but you did.

I looked at him with the honest clinical eye.

“What is this? Nostalgia? I don’t want it. I want you to understand that clearly. The bond existing and me wanting to pursue it are separate questions and my answer to the second one is no. Fated Mates is not a good enough reason to be bound to someone in Shadowmere, Your whole existence facilitated that ban, ironic isn’t it. The pack bans a whole Fated Bond Mate because you exist”

“If you’d just-”

“So,” I said, when I’d gotten the laugh under control, “what? You bite me, we’re bound, and you go off and sleep with whoever you want just like your father did? Because that’s the pattern, isn’t it? That’s what fated mate meant in your family.”

Killian grabbed my neck.

Not hard enough to stop breathing. Hard enough to communicate something.

“You have no right,” he said.

“You better kill me,” I said, “or let go. Because if you don’t, and I get out of these chains, I will hunt you down so specifically and so thoroughly that you’ll wish you’d let Vela’s people deal with me instead.”

I held his gaze.

“I’ve survived sixty-nine attempts on my life,” I said. “I’ve been tortured, poisoned, waterboarded, burned, chased by people with powers that outstrip mine by significant margins. I’ve had ribs broken and an arm that doesn’t work right and a wolf that’s gone quiet. And I’m still here. Killing you would be easy.”

He let go.

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10:57 am

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