Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 539

Chapter 539

KILLIAN

We sat with the silence.

"You weren't the only casualty," he said. "Of what they did. My parents. Our father's choice. Your mother's—" he stopped. "You grew up without the acknowledgment you should have had. I understand that now. I didn't understand it at seventeen. I was too—"

"You were seventeen," I said. "And your mother had just died."

"Yes," he said.

"And I'd known and said nothing," I said.

"Yes," he said. "And you'd known and said nothing." He looked at his hands. "Those two things can both be true."

"Yes," I said. "They can."

"I'm angry," he said.

"I know," I said.

"Not at you specifically," he said. "At—" he stopped. "The whole configuration. What it produced. What both of us lost because of what our father did." He looked at the sealed wall. "I sealed that because I couldn't—I couldn't walk past a door that led to where your mother had been. Every time I walked through this wing I'd see it and—"

"I know," I said.

"I didn't want the reminder," he said.

"The reminder is still there," I said. "Sealed or open."

"Yes," he said. "It is."

We sat in the room that he'd sealed and opened for me at the same time, which was its own kind of statement about where we were.

"The wolf," he said.

"What about the wolf," I said.

"Mine says you've suffered long enough," he said. "He said it on Thursday and I'd been hearing it for days before that."

"I know you have a complicated relationship with your wolf's opinions," I said.

"He's usually right," Kael said. "I just take a long time to agree with him."

"Yes," I said.

"Your wolf protected Ivory," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Without the mindlink," he said. "In full wolf form. Against mine."

"I wasn't going to let—" I stopped.

"You weren't going to let the cursed version of my wolf—" he started.

"Hurt her," I said. "No."

He was quiet.

"Why," he said.

"Because she'd told me she owed me one," I said. "And because—" I stopped. "She'd been fair. In the clinic, when she was treating me, when she had every reason to be something else. She was fair." I paused. "I wasn't going to let—"

"Yes," he said.

" It's not—"

"You don't have to explain it," he said.

"I know," I said. "I'm explaining it anyway."

He looked at me.

"She's been through a lot," he said, and the quality of his voice when he said it communicated the specific depth of what twelve years of knowing someone produced.

"I know," I said. "I've seen some of it."

"More than some," he said.

"More than some," I agreed.

"She's in a complicated position," he said.

"Everyone here is in a complicated position," I said. "I don't expect uncomplicated."

He looked at me for a moment with the expression that had several layers — the Alpha and the half-brother and the person who'd been carrying the history of both for a long time.

"The book," he said.

"What about it," I said.

"Was it effective," he said. "Chapter seventeen. Narratively."

"We established that," I said.

"The character dynamic," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"The younger character—" he said.

"Kael," I said.

"What," he said.

"Are you trying to tell me something using the characters as cover," I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

"No," he said.

"Are you sure," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"Because if you have something to say," I said.

"I don't," he said.

"The sealed wall," I said.

"Is a sealed wall," he said.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify