Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 548

Chapter 548

ARIA

"You're implying," Kael said, "that the corridor situation was chapter seventeen."

"We're noting structural similarities," Jordan said.

"Which implies—" Kael started.

"Nothing explicit," Ivory said. "Just that the configuration produced feelings in the participants that aren't dissimilar to the feelings described in chapter seventeen's opening."

"There were no feelings," Kael said.

"Killian was red," Jordan said.

"Killian had just read chapter fourteen," Kael said.

"Which produced feelings," Jordan said.

"About the chapter," Kael said. "Not about—"

"About the themes of the chapter," Jordan said.

"Which connect to," Ivory said.

"Stop," Kael said.

They stopped.

He looked at Killian.

Killian looked at the book.

"Chapter seventeen," Killian said carefully, "is the chapter where the older brother realizes he's been managing the younger brother's presence in the house from a distance, and the distance has been serving a specific function, and the corridor collision forces him to confront that function." He paused. "Which is not about the specific content of chapter fourteen or any implication about what the corridor situation means. It's about the fact that the management of distance has been a choice and the collision made the choice visible."

The table was very quiet.

Kael looked at Killian with the expression of someone who'd been handed an accurate analysis of their own behavior and was deciding how to receive it.

"That," Jordan said, "is a very clean read of chapter seventeen."

"Ivory's annotations helped," Killian said.

"You read the annotations," Ivory said.

"You left them in the book," Killian said. "The copy with the separate page between fourteen and fifteen."

"I left you the annotated copy," Ivory said.

"Was that intentional," Killian said.

"Everything I do is intentional," Ivory said.

The table processed this.

Silver, in my head, said: *She's really something.*

*She really is,* I said.

"My window," Kael said.

Everyone looked at him.

He had the expression of someone who'd arrived at a decision and was in the moment of going through.

"Is the bond," he said. "Specifically the parts of it I've been managing rather than having. The wolf knows things I've been organizing my response to rather than letting inform the response." He looked at me. "That's the window. The distance between what the wolf knows and what the person has said out loud."

He was looking at me with the full directness he used when he'd decided to be direct rather than managed.

I held the look.

"The wolf," I said, "has been getting warmer through the bond for weeks."

"Yes," he said.

"That's not accidental," I said.

"No," he said.

"It's integration," I said.

"It's the beginning of it," he said. "The wolf has been—" he stopped, and the stopping had the quality of going through rather than managing. "The wolf has been telling me to stop pretending the obvious thing isn't obvious. For weeks."

Silver, in my head, made a sound that was the warmest thing I'd heard from her.

"Good," I said.

The book club continued.

It was loud. It was opinionated. At one point Jordan and Ivory were having three simultaneous arguments about three different chapters and Nina was mediating one of them while contributing to a fourth on the side. Killian had opinions about chapter nine that surprised everyone, including himself. Kael had opinions about Everest's choices that were significantly more personal than the fictional framing technically required but which he delivered with the specific willingness of someone who'd gone through the window and was on the other side of it.

I had opinions about the female lead that produced a twenty-minute discussion about whether the female lead was the hero of the story or the person the story was happening around, and the discussion had no conclusion because both positions had merit and everyone in the room was invested in being right.

At one point Kael and Killian were agreeing about something, which caused everyone else to pause and take note.

At another point Nina and Ivory had an exchange so fast and dense with references to specific chapters and annotations that Jordan looked at me and said, quietly: "They've been doing this internally for years. We're only hearing the outside of it."

"How long," I said.

"The curse years," he said. "They processed the whole thing through the books. It was the language they had available."

I looked at Nina and Ivory, at the specific shorthand between them, and understood something about how this inner circle had survived what it had survived. They'd found ways to say the things that needed saying even when saying them directly was too much. The books had been one of those ways.

The book club was not, ultimately, about the books.

It was about all of them having found a way, finally, to be in the same room talking about the things they'd been carrying.

Silver said: *This is what pack is.*

*Yes,* I said.

*Not the formal version,* she said. *This. Six people and bad opinions about chapter seventeen and someone going through a window.*

*Yes,* I said.

The book club lasted four hours.

Nobody got any work done.

It was the best meeting I'd attended in nine months.

a/n: i cannot believe i had a book club discussing about them, but them seeing it as a fictional book, where i used this method for them to have the conversation that they are supposed to have but never the right timing because this is the first time all of them have been in the room together, on the same page, and are talking about the real thing under impressions. My initial draft wasn't like this; i wanted killian to remain the bad guy, to get shut out and i knew doing that was going to be cruel and horrible and make my readers see killian as a victim like aria so i decided to bring him comfort, like this to show he had a place and then i will take it away from him and destroy it, hahahahahahaha.

This whole break they had is basically me having a break because i can't for once figure out which way the plot should go, but i finally have a destination i have chosen and now things are going to get real messy, bloody, people dying, and i can't wait to get there. I was also thinking, do i end this book and then start the continuation on a new name because incase you guys haven't noticed, we are past the chapter 530 mark. i honestly thought this book would flop after 150 because i decided to not write it the way people expected and i know that i had done some fillers, but i also tried my best to write some interesting things, and well you guys are still here. But this will be a discussion for later. i have focused on this book for a while now. Time to switch to the rest. So no updates till Tuesday/Wednesday. A new semester starts this monday and i have to get my life in order. i might still sneak in updates so just be checking. Remember comments will be responded to, individually, so comment as many times as you want. i love reading it.