Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 509

Chapter 509

ARIA

"My protection," I said. "He helped Ivory. Ivory called the debt. That happened in this pack's territory and it makes him a protected party for the immediate period." I looked at the group. "I know you're angry. I know there's history. I know that all of you have reasons that go back years and that he represents things that were genuinely terrible. I'm not saying ignore the history. I'm saying you can't gang up on a person in a clinic bed because you have feelings about that history."

"She's not wrong," Elite said.

"She's not wrong," Jordan agreed, with the specific tone of someone acknowledging an argument they found annoying because of its correctness.

"Aria," Nina said, with the tone of someone who was about to say something they genuinely believed, "I understand that you feel we're being—"

"You're being assholes," I said.

A pause.

"Yes," Nina said, and something in her voice shifted with the specific quality of someone deciding to be honest about it. "We are assholes. That's fair."

The others looked at her.

"What," she said. "Aren't we assholes?"

A beat.

"Oh yes we are," Jordan said.

"Completely," Elite said.

"Profoundly," Kael said.

"Competent assholes," Jordan said, with the decisive clarity of someone who'd made a distinction they considered load-bearing. "We are competent assholes. There's a meaningful difference."

"The rest of us," Ivory said.

"We're competent assholes," Elite said, without inflection.

"Absolutely," Jordan said.

"Obviously," Nina said.

"The distinction matters," Ivory said. "It separates us from the other kind."

I looked at them. At the five people who'd been building something together for fifteen years and had gotten so good at it that the building happened automatically, who were now standing in a corridor agreeing that they were assholes with the specific pride of people who'd decided that was the accurate assessment and were comfortable with it.

"How about," I said, "we ask the pack what they think. About what should happen with Killian."

Elite said: "Stoning."

It came out immediately, with the flat certainty of someone who'd run the calculation and arrived at an answer.

"Elite," I said.

"You asked," Elite said.

"The pack wouldn't actually—" I started.

"The pack," Jordan said, "is very loyal to Kael. And to Ivory. And the history of what Killian's existence did to Kael's family is not unknown to the pack. There are pack members who remember the previous Alpha and Luna. Who remember what the circumstances were." He paused. "The pack's response would be thorough."

"Martha," I said, because she'd been in my head since Jordan had named the pack's sentiment and she was a specific data point. "Should we be worried about his meals."

"Should we," Kael said, with the tone of someone who wasn't necessarily asking because they were worried, "tell Martha not to—"

"Yes," I said. "Someone should tell Martha."

"Martha," Nina said, "is going to be personally offended that we think she would."

"It shaped how I approached everything," Kael said. "The whole way I thought about it. And when the bond formed — when it was real and it was there and it was fated — I didn't know how to—" he stopped again.

"You didn't have a framework," Jordan said, with the gentleness that came out occasionally from Jordan when he was saying something he'd thought about for a while. "The policy you built was about protection from what fated bonds do when they fail. But it didn't give you anything for what to do when they're real."

"No," Kael said.

"Can I say," Kael said, after a moment, "that Killian is also technically the reason I was cursed."

"I thought we already had people to blame for the curse," Ivory said.

"We do," Kael said. "We have a very specific list. But Killian's existence was the precedent that made me decide love over fate, and deciding love over fate was the decision I was making when I saved those kids, and saving those kids was when the witch cursed me—"

"That's an extremely long chain of causation," Jordan said.

"I'm in a creative phase," Kael said.

"The witch cursed you," Ivory said, "because you stopped a child sacrifice. The child sacrifice and the witch's motivations are not Killian's fault."

"He was working with them," Kael said. "The network. The same people. Aha. That's a crime."

"We know it's a crime," Nina said. "Which is why we're going to interrogate him properly and add his information to the investigation and process the situation through appropriate channels."

"After I get one more swing," Kael said.

"No," I said.

"I said count me in earlier," Kael said.

"I know what you said," I said. "The answer is still no."

"He was working with the people who had Ivory in a basement," Kael said.