Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 529

Chapter 529

KAEL

My wolf had been talking to me since Tuesday.

Not the way the wolf had talked to me before the curse — that had been seamless, the way your own thoughts were seamless, the internal dialogue of a person who was also an animal being fully both at the same time. Three years of the curse had broken that. The wolf and I had become two separate things sharing one body, and the integration that should have happened when the curse broke had been happening slowly, unevenly, with significant gaps.

Tuesday was the first time since the break that the wolf had said something clear enough to qualify as a statement.

The statement was: *Killian should not have been alone that long.*

I'd been in the corridor outside the secondary clinic when this arrived. Not standing there intentionally — I'd been passing through, redirecting from one part of the main building to another, and the secondary clinic's door had been in my path. I'd walked past it. My wolf had said what he said.

I'd stopped walking.

The specific thing about the wolf's opinions was that they weren't opinions in the way my opinions were opinions. I arrived at positions through reasoning — information gathered, weighed, assessed against other information, organized into conclusions. The wolf arrived at positions through something older and more direct, the way animals understood things before there was language for the understanding.

The wolf was telling me something about Killian.

I spent Wednesday ignoring this.

I spent Wednesday well. The elder council meeting had been productive in the specific way of meetings where everyone had been chastened by recent events and was choosing cooperation over posturing. Morrison had been thorough and professional, which was what Morrison was when he wasn't being territorial, and the formal protocols had been re-established without the drama of the previous session.

The root investigation was progressing. Ivory had the mechanism largely mapped by now — the full moon window, the specific casting structure the witches had used, the connection between Vela's remaining network capacity and the activation event. The modifications to the bunker's defensive systems were complete. The bond between me and Aria had been doing something since the Monday meeting that I hadn't quite identified but that the wolf was very much aware of.

I spent Thursday and Friday ignoring the wolf's statement about Killian.

On Saturday morning, the wolf stopped being subtle about it.

I was in the training yard, working through the drills that Elite had reestablished after the break, and the wolf's input was so consistent and so present that I finally stopped mid-sequence and stood in the middle of the yard and had a direct internal conversation with myself.

*Killian has been here for a week,* the wolf said.

*I know,* I said.

*He came when he was being hunted,* the wolf said.

*I know,* I said.

*He saved Ivory,* the wolf said.

*I know,* I said.

*He is your blood,* the wolf said.

*I know,* I said.

The wolf was quiet for a moment. Then: *You know all of it and you're still sulking.*

*I'm not sulking,* I said.

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