Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 596

Chapter 596

ARIA

"Yes," Kael said. "It is alarming. It's also real. And you've been—" he looked between them, "—fighting over a girl you were both reaching toward because you couldn't feel what was actually there. Because the link was suppressed and the bond was suppressed and you were both trying to find the thing you could feel when the thing you were supposed to feel was blocked."

Silence.

"That's," Luca said.

"A reasonable interpretation," Theo said.

"It's the correct interpretation," Ivory said, from the crowd's edge, in the tone of someone doing a clinical assessment. "The reaching-toward behavior is well documented in suppressed bond cases. The brain finds the nearest available analog to the fated connection and orients toward it. The girl at the market is an analog. She's not the source."

"That's—" Luca started.

"Better or worse, depending on how you look at it," Ivory said. "From her perspective, probably better. From yours—" she paused. "It explains the intensity of the argument. You were both fighting for something that wasn't actually what you thought it was."

"Okay," Kael said, moving along, "so the question—"

"We're not in the room," Jordan said.

"For science," Kael said.

"Not for science," Jordan said.

"For a bunch of interested parties," Ivory suggested.

"Also no," Jordan said.

"Edna would want to know," Kael said.

As if summoned, Edna's voice arrived in the link with the specific elderly authority of someone who'd been listening and had decided to contribute: *I would want to know.*

"EDNA," Jordan said.

*What,* Edna said. *I'm old, not dead. And it's a legitimate question about how fated bonds function in same-sex pairings. The documentation on this is thin.*

"It's thin," Ivory confirmed.

"For a reason," Jordan said.

"Privacy concerns," Ivory said. "Which are valid. But also result in significant gaps in the research base."

"I'd be willing," Kael said, "to provide supplementary information. For the research base. I would personally be willing to—"

"For science," Ivory said.

"For science," Kael confirmed.

"You could bottom," Jordan said, in the tone of a man who'd been backed into a corner and was locating the corner's exact dimensions.

Everyone looked at him.

"I mean—" Jordan started.

"GO ON," Nina said, with the enthusiasm of someone who'd been waiting for this specific sentence and was very glad it had arrived.

"I wasn't—that came out wrong," Jordan said.

"Did it," Nina said.

"I was being—"

"Forthcoming," Ivory suggested.

"No," Jordan said.

"Candid," Kael suggested.

"Absolutely not," Jordan said.

"Data-driven," Ivory said.

"IVORY," Jordan said.

"What," she said. "You brought up bottoming."

"I was making a point," he said.

"What point," Nina said.

"About the—" he stopped. Looked around the circle of faces. "Why are you all looking at me like that."

"You said the thing," Kael said. "Now you have to follow through with the thing."

"I don't have to—"

"A certain time ago," Ivory said, in the specific tone of someone opening a case file, "I had hopes that you and Kael would provide the data for me."

Jordan looked at her.

"Sleep with Kael," he said.

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