Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 507

Chapter 507

IVORY

"Ivory," he said.

"You've put him through a wall and watched me punch him and been in the same room for eleven minutes," I said. "The clinical space requires a specific atmosphere for optimal treatment outcomes. You're not producing that atmosphere."

"I'm being very calm," Kael said.

"You're being controlled," I said. "There's a difference. Controlled requires an object to be controlled about. Calm doesn't." I held his gaze. "Go. I'll brief you when the treatment is complete."

He looked at Killian.

He looked at me.

"Margo," he said.

"Margo," I confirmed.

He left. Nina followed, because Nina was going to go where the Alpha went until the situation was stable. Jordan left with the pocket mustache, which was still slightly visible and which I was choosing not to comment on because there was only so much any reasonable clinical environment could be expected to absorb in a single session. Elite left with the quiet efficiency of someone who'd gathered what she'd come for.

Aria was the last to go. She paused at the door and looked at me — not with the checking expression that Kael had, not the assessment. Just present.

I nodded, once.

She left.

The secondary clinic was quiet.

Killian was on the treatment table, the fourth compound doing its work, looking at the ceiling with the expression of a man who'd gotten further than he'd expected and was processing what further meant.

"She's good," he said. About Aria. The observation delivered with the flat certainty of someone who'd been watching.

"Yes," I said.

"You arranged her," he said. "I know you did. I found out eventually."

"Yes," I said.

"That was a significant thing to do," he said.

"Yes," I said.

I applied the closure compound. The final step. The treatment was technically complete. Forty-eight hours of monitoring and the injury would resolve without complication, assuming the monitoring protocols were followed.

I was going to be the one monitoring.

Because Margo was efficient and capable and I trusted her completely and also she was not the person who'd been in the room with the decisions that had brought us here, and some things required the person who understood the full picture.

And because despite everything — despite the wall and the eleven years and the debt I'd called and the forty-five seconds and all of it — Killian was here because he'd had nowhere else to go.

I understood that specific situation better than most people.

"The monitoring protocol," I said, in the professional voice. "Every six hours. The compound I'll leave with the secondary kit is specific to this injury type. The instructions are clear."

"Are you going to monitor," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Why," he said.

I didn't answer immediately. I was putting away the treatment materials, restoring the secondary clinic to the order I maintained in all clinical spaces, doing the systematic closing-up that marked the end of a treatment session.

"Good," I said. "Because it's not a simple thing and I'm not in a position to deal with it right now."

"I know," he said.

"And possibly not for a long time," I said.

"I know," he said.

"And possibly," I said, "not in any direction you're hoping for."

"I know that too," he said, with the specific quality of someone who'd made peace with something difficult and was carrying the peace rather than the difficulty.

I didn't say anything else.

I went out into the corridor where the three guards were waiting and told them the treatment was complete and that Margo would be arriving for the first monitoring check in six hours and that nobody was to allow entry except Margo and myself and the senior leadership unless the situation changed.

Then I went to find Kael.

Not to brief him on the clinical situation — I'd do that, but that wasn't the immediate thing.

The immediate thing was that my inner circle had been in that room and had seen me lose the professional composure for forty-five seconds, which was forty-five seconds more than they'd ever seen from me, and I was going to have to have the version of the conversation where I acknowledged that it had happened and wasn't going to pretend otherwise.

It was the kind of conversation I'd been trying to learn how to have.

One conversation at a time.

The corridor was quiet.

I walked through it toward the main building and made myself go toward the thing I'd ordinarily walk around.