Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 445

Chapter 445

Chapter 445

Chapter 445

ARIA

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They moved to Santos, who looked them over with the rapid assessment of someone adding new variables to a plan and finding the variables acceptable.

The hall now had thirty-six combatants.

“Andrew,” I said. “If the wolves who are coming could shift freely and you had the mindlink – honest assessment. Do we win?”

Andrew didn’t hesitate. “Yes. Easily. We know this territory in the dark, we have the traps, we have the botanical defenses even if they’ve got counter-measures for some of it. Against one hundred fifty who don’t know the ground, with coordination-” he stopped. “But we can’t shift with coordination. That’s been the entire problem for three years.”

“We go feral without the link,” Louis said. “We’d end up attacking each other. I’ve seen it happen on the border twice. Two wolves shift without mindlink support, they can’t tell friend from enemy in full wolf mode. You need the communication infrastructure or the whole thing falls apart.”

“What if I provided the communication infrastructure,” I said.

The hall looked at me.

–

Not the polite waiting look. The real look the one where people were trying to determine whether what they’d just heard was a genuine proposal or something else.

“The anchor,” Santos said slowly.

“The anchor,” I confirmed. “The bloodline connection. I’ve been training with Ivory for weeks on using it reaching external power signatures, holding connections open, receiving and sending through the bond. The bond and the mindlink use the same mechanism. The same kind of connection.” I looked at Andrew. “I want to try to form a temporary mindlink between the shifting wolves and myself. Use the anchor as the hub. You communicate through me, to each other.”

Silence.

“That’s insane,” Louis said.

“Yes,” I said,

“You’ve never done it,” Andrew said.

“No,” I said.

“If it doesn’t work,” Santos said carefully, “and thirty wolves shift without mindlink support, we have thirty feral wolves in the pack grounds ten minutes before a hostile force hits our border.”

“I’ll contain the feral wolves,” I said. “The shield can create a bubble. I’ve done it in training.”

“In training,” Andrew said.

“In training,” I confirmed.

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11:24 am P

Chapter 445

“And if the shield fails,” Sam said.

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“Then we have thirty feral wolves and a significant problem,” I said. “But we also currently have thirty human fighters going up against one hundred fifty wolves and six witches, and the odds on that are not good. I’m choosing the plan with the better upside.”

More silence.

Then Priya, from her position near Santos, said: “I’ve seen worse plans.”

“When,” said the woman beside her.

Priya considered. “I’ll think of one.”

“The witch problem,” Andrew said, and his voice had shifted – the specific shift of someone who’d moved from evaluating whether to engage with a plan to evaluating how the plan would be executed. “Even with the shift and the mindlink, the witches can target us from a distance. We need a counter for that.”

“The traps are still active for anything that makes it through the tree line,” I said. “The modified vines on the eastern perimeter will engage anything that crosses the boundary markers. The wolfsbane crossbow triggers are set at three points along the northern approach.” I looked at Andrew. “The wolves who come through first are going to hit the traps. That creates chaos in their formation.

That’s when we move.”

“And the witches,” Andrew said again.

“The witches need line of sight for targeted work,” I said, pulling from everything Ivory had described about magical combat in our training sessions, every conversation I’d half-listened to in the clinic while she was documenting incident files. “Disruption of line of sight disrupts the casting. Thirty wolves in a dark tree line moving fast and coordinated – they can’t track all of them.”

Andrew looked at Louis.

Louis looked at Sam.

Sam looked at Santos.

Santos looked at me with the expression of someone who’d run out of objections and was accepting the mathematics of the situation.

“Alright,” Andrew said. “We try it with one wolf first. If the link holds, we extend it. If it doesn’t-”

“If it doesn’t, we fight human and we fight mean,” I said. “Agreed?”

“We fight mean,” Louis said, with a quality to his voice that suggested mean was not going to be a problem.

“We were going to fight mean anyway,” Sam said. “Damon has been a problem for months.”

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