Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 457

Chapter 457

Chapter 457

Chapter 457

KAEL

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“I know,” she said. “I know it’s a lot to process and tonight is not the night for the full conversation. But I wanted to say it before the medical kit arrived and everything became about my wrist.” She held my gaze. “He weakened the chains. He left before you arrived. I owe him one, which is something I intend to regret at length.”

“He helped you,” I said.

“He helped me,” she said. “Against his allies. Because-” she stopped. “There’s a longer conversation. Tomorrow, when I’m not on a stone floor and you’re not running on whatever the emotional state of the last four hours has produced.” She paused. “He’s complicated.”

“He’s always been complicated,” I said.

“More than we knew,” she said. “And different than we understood.”

―

The sound from elsewhere in the building had quieted into the aftermath quality of an operation concluding the specific silence of spaces that had been loud recently and were settling. Nina’s voice from the corridor, handling the waking witch. Jordan’s quiet assessment

way Elite’s of the contained people. The two defense rotation members being thorough in the people were always thorough.

Elite came back with the kit.

“I’m going to look at your wrist,” Elite said to Ivory.

“The wrist is-” Ivory started.

“Fine, yes, I know,” Elite said. “I’m looking at it anyway.”

“You’re not a healer,” Ivory said.

“I’m the person who has the kit,” Elite said. “Which makes me the functional healer for the next twelve minutes while we get you out of this building.” She crouched down and opened the kit with the familiar efficiency of someone who’d been trained on its contents. “You can supervise. You’ll do it anyway.”

“That compound goes before the wound closure,” Ivory said.

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“I know,” Elite said. “It’s in the instructions.”

:

“The instructions are my instructions,” Ivory said. “I wrote them.”

“I know,” Elite said. “So I’m following your own instructions. Stop arguing.”

“The second compound-”

“Also in the instructions,” Elite said.

“The order of application is—”

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“Ivory,” Elite said. “I’ve seen you do this. I’ve watched you work for eight years. I know the order. Let me do it.”

Ivory subsided. Barely. She watched Elite work with the expression of a patient who trusted the practitioner not quite enough to stop watching.

“You’re going to have to be carried out,” I said.

“I can walk,” Ivory said.

“The wolfsbane accumulation in your system combined with the blast impact residue combined with the-”

“I can walk,” she said.

“You can walk ten feet,” I said, “and then your legs are going to tell you they’ve had enough of this day.”

“I’ll walk as far as I need to walk,” she said.

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

“You’re going to carry me anyway,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m going to complain about it,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

“At length,” she said.

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“I know,” I said. “I’m still going to do it.”

:

She looked at the ceiling. “This is very undignified.”

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“You were chained to the floor of a basement,” I said. “The dignity bar for tonight has already

been set.”

“That’s a fair point,” she said.

From somewhere in the building, a sound that resolved into Jordan’s voice and a response from Nina, the specific cadence of people concluding an operation and beginning the extraction phase.

“The pack,” Ivory said. “Shadowmere. Damon had a plan—”

ago

“I know,” I said. “We know about the plan. I had a walkie-talkie signal from Jason forty minutes

that things were active on the northern border.” I’d gotten the signal during the approach to the facility, had made the decision to continue rather than turn back because turning back would have meant leaving Ivory in the facility and the pack had the resources we’d left it with. “We don’t have a full update yet.”

Ivory’s expression did the thing it did when she was processing information she found alarming and was refusing to show she found alarming.

“Aria,” she said.

“Is at the pack,” I said. “With the wolves and Jason and Santos and-”

“She’s going to try to use the link,” Ivory said, and her voice had the focused quality of a healer identifying something clinically relevant. “The temporary mindlink. If she understands what she can do-”

“She’s been spending weeks training with you,” I said.

“She understands some of what she can do,” Ivory said. “The question is whether she understands how much.” She looked at me with the expression that had the full picture in it. “Kael. She has abilities that I don’t have documentation for. What she did in our training session on the lower slope, the six seconds – that’s not the ceiling. That might not even be the halfway point.”

“She’ll be alright,” I said.

“I know she’ll be alright,” Ivory said, with a certainty that arrived faster than I’d expected.

We looked at each other.

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“She used it to protect me,” Ivory said. “In the clinic. The poly-”

“I know,” I said.

G

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“She could have let Sera use the information,” Ivory said. “It would have been less complicated for her. The simpler play was to let Sera have the weapon and not involve me.”

“I know,” I said.

“She involved me specifically,” Ivory said. “To close both angles simultaneously.”

“I know,” I said.

“You know a lot,” she said.

“I’ve had several conversations about it,” I said. “Mostly in cars.”

“In cars,” she said.

“Nina has opinions about where significant conversations happen,” I said.

Ivory’s expression did the complicated thing. Then she said: “When we get back. When this is over and I’ve been through Margo’s versions of my own treatment protocols and everyone has had enough time to breathe – I have things to say.”

“To me,” I said.

“To you,” she said. “And possibly to Aria. If she survived tonight in whatever form surviving tonight takes.”

“She’ll have survived,” I said.

“I know,” Ivory said. The same certainty. “She’ll have survived and she’ll have done it in ways that nobody anticipated, because that’s apparently who she is and I’ve been updating my understanding of that for months.”

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