Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 598

Chapter 598

ARIA

"JORDAN," Kael said.

Jordan appeared at my elbow. He looked at the situation. Looked at Ivory's expression. Looked at Kael's expression.

"No," Jordan said.

"NINA," Kael said.

Nina appeared on my other side. She looked at Ivory. She looked at Kael. Her expression did the small thing that was the precursor to the larger thing.

"Also no," Nina said.

"You're supposed to—" Kael started.

"You had this coming," Nina said. "Literally for years."

"Years," Jordan confirmed.

"I hurt her accidentally," Kael said. "The wolf was not in—"

"Yes," Ivory said. "Accidentally."

She was using her voice. The specific quiet register that was somehow louder than her loud voice, the one that indicated she'd thought carefully about what she was going to say and was saying it with precision.

"Accidentally," she said again. "I know." She took another step. "This is also going to be an accident."

"It's not going to be an accident," Kael said. "You're planning it. You just cracked your knuckles twice."

"The knuckle cracking is unrelated," she said.

"IVORY—"

She moved.

The thing about Ivory, which I had been building documentation on for nine months, was that she was not slow. She was smaller than most of the wolves she'd spent years adjacent to and she was frequently described in terms that implied fragility — the healer, the botanist, the weakest member of the inner circle — and none of those terms came with adequate warning about what Ivory was actually like when she decided to move.

She was fast.

She got to Kael in the time it took me to process that she'd started moving, and what happened in the next three seconds was a sequence I wasn't entirely able to follow in real time. The outcome was Kael on the ground and Ivory standing over him with the expression of someone who'd made a point and was satisfied with the making of it.

The pack — two hundred and fourteen wolves, all in the link, all watching — went absolutely silent.

Then erupted.

The link was a wall of sound, the specific sound of people who'd been waiting for something and had just received it and had very strong feelings about what they'd received.

Kael, on the ground, looked up at Ivory.

"That," he said, "was not—"

"An accident," she agreed. "No. That one wasn't." She offered him a hand. "The next one will be."

He looked at the hand.

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