Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 538

Chapter 538

KILLIAN

I was red. This was not something I could control — the specific reaction of someone who'd been caught in a very specific state of absorption and had thrown the evidence of that absorption across the room was not something that could be managed in the two seconds available between the sound of my name and the processing of who'd said it.

"I was reading," I said.

Kael looked at the book on the floor. At the distance it had traveled from the table. At me.

"I was reading," I said again, which was not improving the situation.

"I can see that," Kael said.

"It was—" I started.

"Where did you get it," he said.

"Someone left it," I said.

"On the table," he said.

"On the table," I confirmed.

"You don't know who," he said, and his voice had the specific flatness of someone who had a very good idea who and was asking the question for procedural reasons rather than genuine uncertainty.

"I have suspicions," I said.

"Ivory," he said.

"That was my first suspicion," I said.

"It's usually the right one," he said. He looked at the book again. "Which chapter."

"Seventeen," I said.

Something moved through his expression.

"The hall scene," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Specifically," he said.

"Yes," I said.

He looked at the ceiling. Not the frustrated ceiling-look — a different one. The look of someone who was doing something with feelings they'd decided weren't going to be addressed right now.

"She left it deliberately," I said.

"Obviously," he said.

"With the intention that—" I started.

"Obviously," he said.

"And she knew you were going to come here," I said. "Because she knew you wanted to check on the room."

He was quiet.

"She wanted you to find me in the middle of chapter seventeen," I said.

More quiet.

"She timed it," he said.

"Ivory," I said, "appears to have significant organizational skills when she's motivated."

He looked at the book on the floor.

I looked at the book on the floor.

It was lying with the spine up, the pages splayed open in a way that made the general chapter location visible to anyone who wanted to look.

Neither of us went to pick it up.

"The room," I said, because the room felt like safer territory than the book.

"The room," he confirmed.

"It's in the main quarters wing," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"The wing with the sealed wall," I said.

He was still.

"I saw it," I said. "When they brought me through the corridor." I paused. "I wasn't going to say anything about it."

"But you are," he said.

"I'm saying thank you," I said. "For sealing it. And for the new room. Not the old one." I held his gaze. "Both things are—" I stopped, because *thank you* was the most accurate thing and adding to it was going to make it less accurate rather than more. "Thank you."

Kael nodded his head, as he turned to leave before stopping as he turned back and stayed, he seemed like he wanted to say something but lacked the words.

"Kael," I said.

"What," he said.

"Why are you here," I said. "At nine in the evening. In my room."

He looked at me.

Then he looked at the door. At the room. At the sealed wall at the far end where the door had been, the one that had once connected the two sections of the wing. The plaster over it was smooth, continuous with the rest of the wall, the kind of closure that only happened when someone had made a very deliberate decision.

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