Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 556

Chapter 556

ARIA

"The bruising on her throat," Kael said.

"Will heal," Eliza said. "Nothing is permanently damaged." She looked at him steadily. "She was held for long enough that it will be tender for a week, and she should not strain her voice for the first few days, but she's going to be fine."

Something in Kael's posture changed. Not relaxed — he didn't relax, exactly — but the specific locked quality around his jaw and his shoulders released a degree.

"Killian," Eliza said, "is stable. The wound is clean. He'll need to stay off his feet for a week and he should eat more than he's been eating — the surgery site will demand resources. If Ivory has the specific botanical compound she uses for accelerated healing, that would help."

"She has it," Nina said.

"She has everything," Jordan said.

"Yes," Eliza said, with the expression of someone who'd been watching Ivory build the clinic's resources for years and had developed specific opinions about the scope of the inventory. She looked at me on her way out and did a brief assessment that I recognized as the healer's involuntary cataloguing. "Your runes are active," she said.

"I know," I said.

She nodded, filed that too, and left.

---

Ivory woke up fighting.

Not immediately — there was the shallow return to consciousness first, the specific quality of someone coming up from somewhere deep, the slight movement of her fingers that was the first sign. Kael, whose hand hadn't moved from hers, noticed before anyone else.

Then her eyes opened and her hand went for the dagger in the same motion, the specific response of someone who'd woken in enough dangerous situations that the reach was below conscious thought, and the dagger was up and the hand holding it was moving before the rest of her was fully awake.

Kael caught her wrist.

"Ivory," he said.

She froze.

Looked at him. At the clinic. At Nina, Jordan, me, Killian on the other table with Jordan sitting beside him. The dagger in her hand, Kael's hand on her wrist, the bruises she could probably feel now in the specific way that injuries that had been running on adrenaline announced themselves when the adrenaline was gone.

She put the dagger down.

"Where is Vela," she said.

Her voice was rougher than usual. The throat.

"Vela is dead," Kael said.

"That's the last thing I remember," she said. "The dungeon." She looked at the ceiling, inventory-running. "And Alaric."

"Also dead," Kael said.

She was quiet for a moment.

"You're alright," he said. "You passed out in the corridor. Eliza checked you."

"What did she say," Ivory said.

"Rest," Kael said. "Voice rest specifically, for a few days."

Ivory looked at him with the expression of someone who had been told to rest and was doing the math on everything that currently required her attention and was finding the math not in favor of resting.

"The pack," she said.

"Is fine," Kael said.

"I brought a war," she said. "We need to tell them." She was already trying to sit up — Kael put a hand on her shoulder, not force, just presence, and she stopped. Not because of the hand. Because she'd registered her own body's position on the question of sitting up and the position was not enthusiastic.

"The war was coming regardless," Jordan said, from across the room. "It was there. You just accelerated the timeline and sent a message."

"The pack members will—" Ivory started.

"Understand," Nina said.

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