Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 476

Chapter 476

Chapter 476

Chapter 476

ARIA

“If I’d gone to the bunker,” I said.

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“It would have hurt you,” he said. “The defenses would have recognized the bloodline signature as a threat and engaged.” He paused. “She didn’t design it that way to hurt you. She designed it that way because at the time she was building it, anyone with that signature was a threat. She didn’t know you yet.”

I sat with this. The specific layering of it- Ivory building defenses against a threat and that same threat turning out to be the person who held the northern border. The way intentions and outcomes didn’t always align. The way the protection that had been built for one version of the situation had gaps in it for the version the situation actually became.

I looked at the hedge opposite us.

“Ivory arranged you coming here,” he said. “You know that now. She found your bloodline, she wrote the letter, she made the conditions that brought you to Shadowmere. And she did it because she was watching me disappear and she needed a solution, and you were the solution. Not the person – the bloodline. The mechanism.” He paused. “And then everyone in my inner circle – all the people who should have been making your arrival easier – made it harder instead. Because we were protecting something and protecting something meant not fully trusting the new thing.”

“I know why,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter why,” he said. “The why doesn’t make the cost smaller. You paid a cost that you didn’t agree to pay, for reasons that had nothing to do with you, in service of a situation you didn’t create.” He was quiet for a moment. “I had things about fated bonds. You know that.”

“Yes,” I said.

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“The specific things I had,” he said, “came from watching my mother. Watching what the fated bond didn’t do for her. Watching my father make choices that the bond was supposed to prevent and didn’t. And I decided that fated bonds were a promise that didn’t hold.” He looked at me. “And then Ivory arranged mine. Without telling me that’s what she’d done. Without giving me the chance to – to prepare for what it would require of me. To know that the person arriving was the person the bond was going to be for.”

“She couldn’t tell you,” I said. “You would have-”

“Refused,” he said. “Yes. I know. I know she was right that I would have refused. And I know the curse would have continued and the timeline would have-” he stopped. “I know all of that. She was right. She made the correct decision for the correct reasons.” He held my gaze steadily.

“It still put me in a situation where I walked into a bond with you carrying all of my specific history about what bonds mean and didn’t do the work of separating my history from the actual person in front of me. So I was cruel. Not deliberately not with the intention of cruelty. But in the way that people are cruel when they’re protecting themselves from something and they take it out on whatever is closest.”

Silver was very still in my head.

“You were cruel,” I said. Because he’d named it and it deserved to be acknowledged.

“Yes,” he said. “I was. The pack was. Ivory was, in her specific ways. All of us, to varying degrees, made you an object in a situation

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before we made you a person in it. And I’m taking acknowledgment for that.” He paused. “I know you’re here partly because you don’t have anywhere else to go. I know the bond can’t be broken without cost to both of us. I know those are reasons that wouldn’t satisfy me if the situations were reversed, and I’m not offering them as the reason you should accept what’s happened.”

“About the bond,” I said.

“About the bond,” he said. “About what it means. About fated bonds and what I’ve built around the concept of them and whether building that was-” he stopped again. “My father and my mother were fated mates. The strongest possible connection, people said. And it ended the way it ended. He made choices regardless of what that bond was supposed to guarantee. She died from what those choices cost her.” He looked at the old hedge planting. “I decided that fated bonds were a lie. Or at minimum that they weren’t sufficient. That the only bond worth having was the one you actively chose every day, regardless of what the magic said.”

“And then you got a fated mate,” I said.

“And then I got you,” he said. “Under circumstances that didn’t leave room for choice. The bond formed because the curse needed it to form, not because either of us made a decision.” He looked at me. “And I knew you were fated. Ivory’s research – she didn’t tell me everything, but the shape of what she was looking for, what kind of bloodline she needed, told me enough. I understood what the bond was when it formed.”

“And you didn’t tell me,” I said.

“And I didn’t tell you,” he said. “Because telling you would have meant having the conversation about what I thought about fated bonds and whether I trusted this one and what it meant that I’d gotten exactly the thing I’d decided to not believe in. And I wasn’t ready for that conversation.” He paused. “So I was faithful to you and I didn’t have the conversation and I kept working on the wolf’s integration and I told myself that was enough. That choosing you in action every day was equivalent to choosing you in understanding.” He looked at his hands. “It wasn’t equivalent.”

“No,” I said.

“I became my father,” he said. “In a different way. He made choices while pretending the fated bond was sufficient to justify them. I made choices while pretending the absence of a real conversation was sufficient to justify them. Different directions. Same pattern.” He held my gaze. “I know you’re here because breaking the bond isn’t possible without significant damage to both of us. I know the pack has been – complicated in the welcome. I know you didn’t have the full information from the beginning and that everybody involved handled that in ways that cost you.” A pause. “For my part in it – for all of it – I’m sorry.”

I sat with what he’d said.

Silver, inside, was very still. Not the quiet of absence – the quiet of something that was listening completely.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

He looked at me.

“All of it,” I said, “What you’ve said. What I know about the history now. I’ve been trying to understand it rather than just react to it for months, I need to keep doing that before I know what I think about the rest.”

“That’s-” he started.

“I’ve been regulating,” I said. “I know I used to not. I used to react first and understand later and the understanding was always shaped by the reaction. I’ve been trying to do it the other way. Understand first.” I looked at my hands the runes, present in the morning light. “There’s a lot to understand. The history of this pack. Your history. Ivory’s choices. Mine.” I paused. “I’m making progress.”

“It doesn’t change anything between us,” he said. “You don’t have to forgive me.”

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“I have to understand it first,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

“That’s better,” he said.

Silver made a sound that was warm and quiet and present.

Then from the northern section, the sound of Jordan’s voice.

“What,” Jordan said, “is this plant doing.”

Ivory’s voice, from the bench: “Which plant.”

“The one near the secondary oak marker,” Jordan said. “The one you told me was for-”

“That’s the companion planting,” Ivory said. “For the trap mechanism. It stabilizes the root base when the trigger activates. It’s not going to-”

“It’s going under my shirt,” Jordan said.

A pause.

“That’s a variation,” Ivory said, in the clinical tone.

“A variation,” Jordan said.

“Of the companion behavior,” Ivory said. “Normally it only engages with root systems in the immediate area. I’ve never seen it engage with-” she stopped. “Hm.”

“Hm,” Jordan said. “That’s what you have for me.”

“It finds you warm,” Ivory said, and the clinical tone was doing a great deal of work. “The root system orientation is toward heat sources. Your body temperature-”

“Ivory,” Jordan said.

“-is slightly higher than ambient,” Ivory said. “Which the plant is interpreting as”

“Ivory,” Jordan said.

“You’re receiving an affectionate response from a companion plant,” Ivory said. “Which is, botanically speaking, quite-”

A sound from Nina that she wasn’t managing at all.

“It’s going further under my shirt,” Jordan said, and his voice had the specific quality of someone maintaining dignity under circumstances that were making dignity very difficult.

“It likes you,” Ivory said.

“It LIKES me,” Jordan said.

“Companion plants respond to-”

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“IVORY.”

“I can’t control what the plants do,” Ivory said.

“You made these plants,” Jordan said.

“I cultivated them,” Ivory said. “I didn’t specify the-”

“Ivory what is the USE of this plant,” Jordan said.

“The use,” Ivory said, “is root stabilization for the adjacent trap mechanism.” A pause. “The other behavior is apparently emergent.”

“Emergent,” Jordan said.

“It emerged,” Ivory said.

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