Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 557

Chapter 557

ARIA

He was quiet.

"You would never," she said.

"Ivory—" he started.

"You saved my life three weeks ago," she said. "And then your hands were used to try to end it. Those are separate events and they stay separate." She held his gaze with the steadiness that was entirely her own, the thing that existed below the clinical layer and the healer's precision and all the other things she used to manage the world. "We clear on that?"

He looked at her for a long moment.

"Clear," he said.

The room breathed.

---

"The mindlink," Ivory said, and her voice had found a different register — the planning one, the mode-shift that happened when she'd finished with the immediate accounting and was moving to the operational.

"Ivory," Kael said.

"The timeline moved," she said. "We knew the war was coming. I just—" she glanced at him, "—accelerated it. Which means the defensive architecture we had planned for the full moon window is now a two-week preparation rather than however long we had before." She looked at me. "Aria. The thirty wolves with the dormant channel. I wanted to wait for the right conditions, give us more time to prepare. We can't wait anymore."

"I know," I said.

"The full connection," she said. "Linking all of Shadowmere's wolves. That's the goal. The thirty you established are the foundation — the anchor channel already exists, we build from it." She looked at Nina. "The armoury."

Nina straightened.

It was very small, the specific shift in her posture, but I'd been watching Nina for nine months and I knew what it meant when she straightened like that.

"I have it ready," Nina said.

"Since when," Jordan said.

"Since the first year," Nina said.

Everyone looked at her.

"The first year of the curse," she said, with the composure of someone who'd been waiting a very long time to say something and had finally arrived at the moment. "When it became clear that we were going to have to operate without the mindlink indefinitely, I started preparing for the possibility that we might need to fight without the infrastructure we'd lost." She paused. "I've been maintaining the armoury since then. Cleaning, updating, cataloguing."

"You were cleaning weapons as a coping mechanism," Kael said.

"I was ensuring operational readiness," Nina said.

"Nina," Jordan said.

"I wanted a chance to use them," she said, and the composure had a very thin crack in it that was the closest thing to enthusiasm I'd ever heard from Nina on any non-Jordan-related topic. "With everyone fearing Kael the Deranged, and Ivory's botanical perimeter, and Jordan's intelligence network, and the archery teams — there was no opening. I've been maintaining an armoury for years and nobody has needed it."

"We need it now," Ivory said.

Nina's expression did the thing.

"Finally," she said.

Jordan looked at her with the expression of someone who'd been sharing a life with this person and had somehow not fully known this specific fact about them. "You've been waiting," he said. "For years. To use the armoury."

"I clean them very thoroughly," Nina said. "Every weapon in there is in perfect condition."

"Nina," Kael said.

"Yes," she said.

"Are you excited about the war," he said.

"I'm operationally prepared for the war," she said.

"You just said finally," he said.

"In reference to the armoury being relevant," she said.

"You want to use the armoury," he said.

"I've been maintaining the armoury for years," she said. "It would be satisfying to see the purpose justified."

"She wants to use the armoury," Jordan said, to the room.

"Operational justification," Nina said.

"She's excited," Jordan said.

"I'm focused," Nina said.

"Nina," Kael said.

"Yes," she said.

"It's okay to be excited," he said.

"I'm not excited," she said. "I'm prepared." A pause, very small. "And also potentially somewhat excited."

Ivory made a sound that was the rough version of the real laugh, and then winced because her throat, and Kael looked at her immediately and she waved him off.

"I'm fine," she said.

"You're on a treatment table," he said.

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