Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 604

Chapter 604

ARIA

They walked into the office.

They looked at the ten adults named Marcus.

They looked at Kael.

"You called," said the six-year-old.

The six-year-old Marcus was the one who broke Nina.

Not entirely — her composure didn't collapse, it didn't abandon its post without warning, it simply began to exhibit small structural failures along its edges. The corners of her expression. The specific quality of her eyes. The way she picked up her coffee cup and put it back down without drinking from it because drinking from it would have required a steadiness that was currently being redirected elsewhere.

Jordan lasted three more Marcuses.

The door opened and a man came in who was visibly still wet. Not dressed for a meeting — dressed for whatever he'd been doing before the link order arrived, which had been, apparently, a shower. He'd wrapped something around himself and come directly, because the link order was from the Alpha and the response was supposed to be immediate, and he had responded immediately and immediately had not allowed for full preparation.

Jordan, at the window, turned to look at the shower Marcus.

He turned back to the window.

His shoulders were doing something.

"Jordan," I said, quietly.

"I'm fine," he said, in the tone of someone who was not fine.

"You're—"

"I'm reviewing the territorial analysis," he said.

"Jordan," I said.

"THERE ARE TWELVE OF THEM," he said, to the window, at a volume that was louder than he'd intended.

"Thirteen," I said.

"Thirteen," he said, to the window.

The chef arrived.

I heard him before I saw him — the specific sound of someone moving through the corridor with the purposeful energy of someone who'd been in the middle of something and had received an interruption and was handling the interruption efficiently so they could return to the something. The door opened and the chef walked in with a ladle in his hand, because he'd been in the middle of the afternoon kitchen preparation and the link order had arrived and he'd responded with the immediate compliance of a pack member and had apparently not registered that he was still holding the ladle until he was already in the office.

He looked at the ladle.

He looked at the room.

He looked at Kael.

"You called," he said.

"Yes," Kael said.

The chef looked at the ladle again. Something in his expression suggested he was conducting an internal review of the sequence of events that had led to him arriving at the Alpha's office meeting with a ladle.

Nina's composure made its final structural decision and released.

She didn't make a sound — Nina's loss of composure was not the loud kind, it was the silent kind, the specific shaking quality of someone whose whole body was expressing something that their professional standards were attempting to prevent from reaching audible frequency. She put her hand over her mouth. Her eyes were doing things.

Jordan, from the window, had turned around.

He was looking at the chef with the ladle.

He looked at Nina.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

We both looked at the ladle.

"This is—" Jordan started.

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