Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 603

Chapter 603

ARIA

The meeting had been called for three in the afternoon.

I knew this because Kael had said so at lunch, in the specific tone of someone who had a precise thing to accomplish and had allocated appropriate time for it. A border monitoring update. One of the specific Marcus's he'd assigned to the northeast post three weeks ago had information that needed delivering in person rather than through the walkie system or the written report format. Standard operational meeting. Thirty minutes maximum.

This was not how it went.

I was in the office when Kael sent the order through the link.

The link was — it was still new, was the thing. Two days of full pack activation and the pack was still learning its parameters, still discovering what the connection could do and what it shouldn't do and where the edges were between a directed thought and a broadcast. These were things you learned through the mindlink by doing them, which meant you also learned them by doing them wrong first and then adjusting.

Kael sent: *Marcus. My office. Now.*

He sent it the way you'd say a name in a room — clearly, with intention, not thinking about the fact that the room now contained two hundred and fourteen people and the name Marcus was not as specific an identifier as he'd assumed.

I was sitting at the side table going through Jordan's intelligence briefing on the network's current capacity. I felt the order go through the link. I felt it land.

In multiple places.

I counted, briefly, before I understood what was happening. The order touched — one, two, four, seven — it kept landing, the specific quality of a message finding every recipient with the relevant identifier and delivering itself to all of them simultaneously.

"Kael," I said.

"One moment," he said, not looking up from the territorial map he was reviewing with Elite.

"How many people in this pack are named Marcus," I said.

He looked up.

His expression went through a journey.

"I—" he started.

The door opened.

The first Marcus walked in. Dark hair, mid-thirties, the specific bearing of a border watch operative — upright, alert, the eyes doing the assessment sweep of a room that was his training. He looked at Kael.

"You called," he said.

"Yes," Kael said. "Wait a moment—"

The door opened again.

The second Marcus walked in. Older, stockier, from the western residential section — I'd seen him around the pack grounds, he lived near the communal gardens. He looked at the first Marcus. He looked at Kael.

"You called," he said.

"Yes," Kael said. "Both of you, one moment—"

"Both of us," said the first Marcus, looking at the second.

"I'm Marcus," said the second.

"I'm also Marcus," said the first.

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