Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 506

Chapter 506

IVORY

I had forgotten about the fake mustache. I had forgotten because the gate situation had bypassed the twenty minutes of preparatory quiet I usually needed to get between leaving one context and entering another, and I'd come straight from a morning that had included things that were significantly more restrained than fake mustaches.

Killian looked at the mustache. Then at Jordan. Then at the mustache again.

"When did you start wearing a beard," Killian said.

Jordan's hand went to his face.

His expression went through several stages. First the not-understanding, then the understanding, then the specific horror of a man who'd been conducting a serious operational situation while still wearing a fake mustache from the poker game and had not noticed until someone pointed it out.

"The—" he started.

He ripped it off.

The ripping produced a sound that was also not in any treatment protocol.

"That was—" Jordan said.

He held the fake mustache.

He looked at it.

He looked at Killian.

"Don't," Jordan said.

"You were wearing—" Killian started.

"I said don't," Jordan said.

"It was quite convincing," Killian said.

"Jordan," Nina said, with the tone of someone who'd been maintaining significant composure all day and was finding the fake mustache to be the specific thing that was testing it most severely, "please put the mustache somewhere that isn't your face or your hand. Both options are currently making me unable to conduct a professional interrogation."

Jordan put the mustache in his pocket.

It remained visible, slightly protruding from the pocket, like a small furry creature that had found refuge.

"Right," Nina said. "The interrogation."

Killian looked around the room. At Kael, who was still looking at him with the flat expression but had moved away from the checking-Ivory position to a position that was closer to the neutral-operational than the immediate-threat. At Nina, who had her notebook. At Jordan and the pocket mustache. At Elite, who'd come in at some point without my registering her arrival and was in the corner with the specific quality of someone who'd been briefed and was now conducting her own assessment. At Aria, who was near the door and had the expression of someone reading the room with genuine attention rather than social politeness.

And at me, still in the middle of the treatment space with my hands slightly unsteady from the adrenaline and the partial wolfsbane contact and the wall and the forty-five seconds of lost professionalism.

"Fine," Killian said. "Ask your questions."

"We'll start with the network hierarchy," Nina said. Her pen was ready. "Everything you know about who runs what and where."

"You know I was peripheral," he said.

"We know what Vela told us," Nina said. "And what Aleric told us. We know what the documentation from the facility suggests. We don't know what the person who was in the room with the decision-makers knows." She held his gaze. "You were in the room."

He was quiet for a moment.

I returned to the treatment protocol. The fourth compound. The final stage. He needed the full application regardless of the conversation, and I needed something to do with my hands that was going to produce an outcome I could be professionally satisfied with.

"The chains," I said, while I worked. "The weakening you did. I need to understand the mechanism. For the documentation."

"And then they hunted me," Killian agreed.

"And you came here," Kael said.

"And I came here," Killian said.

Another silence. The specific kind that had several things in it — the history and the present and all the complicated geography between them.

I finished the fourth compound and began the closure work. The injury was going to require monitoring over the next forty-eight hours, the specific window where the network's compound could resurge if not properly contained. I was going to have to arrange that monitoring, which meant arrangements with the clinic schedule and with Nina's security parameters and with Kael about what level of access Killian was going to be granted while the arrangements were being made.

This was going to be a significant administrative conversation.

I was going to have it after I finished the treatment, in the professional voice, with the clinical framing that kept everything manageable.

"The documentation," I said to Nina, without looking up from the closure work, "needs to note that the treatment is provisional pending forty-eight-hour monitoring. He can't be moved to a standard holding space during that window. The compound requires climate-controlled conditions and access to the third kit in the secondary storage."

"I'll arrange for the secondary clinic to remain in use," Nina said.

"And someone qualified to monitor," I said. "Not just a guard."

"Margo," Nina said.

"Margo," I agreed.

"I'll be right here," Kael said.

I stopped working. Looked at him.

"No you won't," I said.