Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 492

Chapter 492

KAEL

I closed the door.

I stood looking at it for a moment.

"That wasn't as bad as you thought it was going to be," Aria said.

"It was exactly as bad as I thought it was going to be," I said. "In the specific way where it was entirely manageable and I'd built it into something larger in my head than it actually was."

"Yes," she said.

"That's what I said," I said.

"I'm agreeing with you," she said.

I looked at the window. At the door. At the break that was now officially ending on Monday.

"I need to tell the others," I said.

"They know," she said.

"How—"

"Jordan has seventeen timestamps and a running total," she said. "He knew you'd accept it today."

I picked up the walkie-talkie.

"The break ends Monday," I said into it.

The pause that followed was the specific pause of four people on a communication channel who'd been expecting this and were processing the specific quality of when.

"Monday," Nina said.

"Monday," I confirmed.

"That's tomorrow," Jordan said.

"Yes," I said.

"So we have today," Elite said.

"Yes," I said.

"Understood," Elite said. "I'll prepare the updated defense rotation briefing. Jordan, the intelligence files—"

"Already current," Jordan said. "I've been updating them recreationally."

"Why recreationally," Nina said.

"I find it satisfying," Jordan said. "The organization. The clear categories. The timestamps."

"The timestamps are concerning," Nina said.

"The timestamps are accurate," Jordan said.

"That doesn't make them less concerning," Nina said.

I put the walkie-talkie in my pocket.

---

They were in Nina's office.

I hadn't known they'd be in Nina's office when I decided to go find them, but in retrospect it made sense — the break had settled all of them somewhere they were comfortable, and Nina's office was where a significant portion of the past nine months had been spent in one form or another, and comfort in this pack had a way of finding its locations and staying in them.

Aria came with me, which I'd registered somewhere in the corridor and hadn't objected to. The break had produced this, among other things — a quality of adjacent-ness that was different from the formal paired-Alpha-and-Luna of official occasions. We walked through the pack grounds side by side with the ease of two people who'd sat in an office reading a novel together for two hours on day five of a break and had discovered that was a thing they could do.

Silver had things to say about this, apparently, based on the quality of the link between them — I'd felt it intermittently over the past days, the wolf's awareness of that channel warming in small ways that I'd been noting without acting on. Progress, as Aria had said in the garden. Small, real progress.

Nina's office door was closed.

The sounds coming through it were the specific sounds of something being played, the soft concentrated quality of — I stopped in the corridor.

"The break ends Monday," I said.

"You said," Jordan said, into his hand.

"I wanted to say it in person," I said.

"Very formal," Jordan said. "Appreciated."

I looked at the cards. At the sweet-wrapper chips. At Jordan's tally notebook.

"How long," I said.

"Day two," Nina said.

"Day two of the break," I said. "You started on day two."

"Day one we slept," Jordan said. "Day two was the first day we had time to set this up properly."

"What is the current score," I said.

"I'm ahead," Ivory said.

"That's not the score," Jordan said. "That's Nina's characterization of the score."

"It's an accurate characterization," Nina said.

"The score," Jordan said, "is three to four in games won, which is Nina by one. But the point total within games is—"

"I'm ahead," Ivory said again.

"The point total is more nuanced," Jordan said.

"I'm ahead now," Nina said.

Elite was in the chair against the wall — the corner position she habitually took in rooms, the one that gave her sightline to all exits and all other occupants. She had cards in her hand and was looking at them with the expression she brought to everything.

"Elite," I said. "Who's actually winning."