Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 517

Chapter 517

ARIA

Several of the younger pack members were clearing debris. Older ones who'd seen the clinic before were identifying what had been where and where it needed to go back to. The woman who'd almost gone into early labor was, apparently, a botanist — she was in the lab section directing the compound collection with the careful attention of someone who knew which bottles couldn't be combined and which ones needed to be prioritized.

Margo had appeared from somewhere with replacement supplies. Margo always appeared from somewhere with replacement supplies, and I had stopped trying to understand the mechanism by which this happened and had simply accepted it as a feature of living in a place where Margo existed.

Kael was standing in the doorway being spoken to.

Not one person — several, in sequence, because the queue had formed with the natural organization of people who had something to say and were going to say it, and the something they had to say was specifically for Kael.

An older woman who I recognized from the clinic's regular patients: "You hurt Ivory's clinic. This is not something we will be forgetting quickly."

Kael: "I know. I'm—"

"We are not finished," the woman said. "The clinic is ours. It belongs to all of us and to what she's given all of us. You understand?"

"I understand," Kael said.

She moved aside. The next person in what was genuinely becoming a queue:

A man from the training rotation: "Ivory set my brother's leg when the training yard accident happened three years ago. While the curse was happening. While you were— unavailable. She didn't stop. I'm going to need you to apologize to her specifically."

"I already—" Kael started.

"Again," the man said. "More thoroughly."

"Again," Kael agreed, with the specific quality of someone who was going to do this as many times as it took.

The man moved aside.

The next person. And the next. Not aggressive — the tone of people who loved someone and had seen that someone hurt and were expressing the specific category of feeling that came from that combination. Each one different. Each one requiring Kael to receive it, which he was doing — not defending himself, not explaining, just receiving it with the bowed head of someone who understood why the queue existed and was not going to make it harder than it already was.

"I did this," kael said.

"The witches did this," Amber said, from across the room. She said it without looking up from the shelving she was straightening. "By using you."

Kael was quiet.

"You didn't choose it," someone else said. One of the pack members helping sort the broken glass. "We know you didn't choose it."

"Still," Kael said.

"Kael," said an older man I recognized from the pack's domestic management — one of the people who kept track of the supply stores. He said it with the specific patience of someone who'd been in this pack for a long time and had seen a lot. "Ivory's going to be alright. The lab can be rebuilt. You've been apologizing since you came out of the clinic and you're going to keep apologizing and we're going to keep saying we know and you're going to keep feeling terrible about it." He paused. "That's how this goes."

"Yes," Kael said.

"So bow your head and let it happen," the man said, "and tomorrow we figure out how to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Kael bowed his head.

"Good," the man said, and went back to sorting compound bottles.

Nina, beside me, said very quietly: "He's going to owe them a lot."

"Yes," I said.

"And they're going to lord it over him," she said. "For years. Possibly for the rest of his life." She paused. "He knows."

"He knows," I agreed.

"Good," she said.

Jordan appeared on my other side.

"I've been thinking," he said.

"About the bat," I said.

He noted it privately. Visibly. In the small notebook he'd pulled from his pocket, with the pen he'd had since I'd met him, recording something with the dedicated focus of someone preserving an idea for future consideration.

I looked at the queue that was still working its way through Kael.

A woman I recognized from the residential wing: "My daughter woke up screaming. She's seven."

Kael closed his eyes briefly. "I know. I'm so sorry."

"She spent three years having nightmares about the wolf sound," the woman said. "She was four when the curse started. She's been doing better. Tonight—"

"I know," Kael said. "I'm sorry. I'm going to fix this."

"You had better," the woman said, and the words came out fierce and fierce things from people who loved him were somehow harder than the hostile kind.

She moved aside.

Edna was at the back of the queue. I watched her make her way through it with the patience of someone who had nowhere else to be and was going to take her turn when her turn came. When she reached the front she looked at Kael for a long moment.

"Well," she said.

"I know," Kael said.

"Do you," she said.

"I do," he said.

"Good," she said. Then: "You owe that woman a new lab."

"I know," he said.

"Everything in it," Edna said. "Exactly as it was. Every single thing."

"I know," he said.