Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 606

Chapter 606

ARIA

"I was hoping you'd stop thinking about it," back-right Marcus said.

"I never stopped thinking about it," Kael said.

"I can see that now," back-right Marcus said.

"You said it wasn't you," Kael said.

"I know," the back-right Marcus said.

"At the autumn gathering, you were standing right there, and you said—"

"I know what I said," the Marcus said.

"Why," Kael said.

The Marcus looked at him with the expression of someone doing an honest accounting.

"You were ten," he said. "I was twelve. You called my wolf slow."

A pause.

"My wolf," the driver Marcus said, "is not slow."

"I was ten," Kael said.

"Well it wasn't any better," the driver Marcus said.

"That doesn't—" Kael started.

"And you called him slow in front of everyone in the eastern training yard," the Marcus said. "In front of the whole cohort. And he was not slow. He was learning."

Kael was quiet.

"He's not slow now," Kael said.

"No," the Marcus said. "he's not."

"You could have told me it was you," Kael said.

"You could have apologized for calling him slow," the Marcus said.

A specific kind of silence.

Ivory, who had been managing her not-composure with significant effort since approximately Marcus number five, made a sound.

It escaped.

Small, quickly muffled, but present — the specific escaped sound of someone who'd been holding something and had lost hold of it at the precise wrong moment.

She looked at the ceiling.

Kael looked at her.

"Don't," he said.

"I didn't say anything," she said.

"You made a sound," he said.

"The sound was involuntary," she said.

"It was a specific kind of involuntary," he said.

"I can't control my involuntary sounds," she said.

"You've been controlling them for twenty minutes," he said.

"I've been trying," she said. "I've been trying very hard. But he said his wolf was learning—"

"Ivory," Kael said.

"And he was," Ivory said. "He was learning, and you—" she stopped. "You were ten."

"Yes," Kael said. "I was ten."

"Children say things," Ivory said.

"Yes," Kael said.

"And sometimes the things get punched," Ivory said.

"IVORY," Kael said.

She looked at the ceiling again.

Elite, in the corner of the room, had not broken.

Elite had been watching the entire sequence of events that happened in the past twenty minutes and she had not broken.

Elite broke when the younger child — the four-year-old, the one being held by the older child's hand — looked at the driver Marcus and said, with the complete sincerity of a small person asking a genuine question:

"Did it hurt? When you punched him?"

"Yes," the Marcus said, looking at his hand with the distant expression of memory. "My hand, not—"

"Did it hurt him?" the child clarified.

"Also yes," the driver Marcus said.

"Good," the child said, with the specific satisfaction of someone who'd received complete information.

Elite made a sound.

The room stopped.

Everyone looked at Elite.

Elite, who had not made an uncontrolled sound in any professional context in the entire time I'd been at Shadowmere — Elite, who had composed through things that had broken everyone else, who had maintained professional register through the border battle and the elder council crisis and the book club and the pond — was laughing.

"I'm the one you needed," he said.

"You were here the whole time," Kael said.

"Yes," he said.

"From the beginning," Kael said.

"Yes," he said.

"While all of—" Kael indicated the room, "—this was happening."

"Yes," border-watch Marcus said, with the composure of someone who'd been at a border post for three weeks and found the office situation only moderately more chaotic than the average.

The room began to empty.

Twenty-nine Marcuses departed with varying expressions — relief, amusement, residual confusion from the tourists, the ladle still in the chef's hand, the four-year-old being carried out by a pack member who'd identified that the child was not going home under his own power and had resolved the situation.

The child, being carried out, looked at me.

*This was very good,* he said through the link, at the specific child-volume that still hadn't been modulated.

*I'm glad you enjoyed it,* I said.

*Do Alphas have meetings like this a lot,* he said.

*This is the first one like this,* I said.

*I hope there are more,* he said.

He was carried through the door.

The office was left with: Kael, the border-watch Marcus, me, Nina, Jordan, Ivory, Elite (still on the floor, now sitting cross-legged with the specific peace of someone who'd decided this was where they were and was integrating it), and Killian.

The ladle had been left on the side table.

I looked at it.

*Luna,* said Marcus-who-brought-me, through the private thread, already gone from the room.

*Yes,* I said.

*For what it's worth,* he said, *this was the best meeting I've attended in twenty-five years of pack membership.*

*I'll pass that on,* I said.

*Also,* he said, *when I brought you here. You asked me if Shadowmere was a good pack.*

I remembered. The fear, , the specific terror of traveling toward something I hadn't chosen, trying to make conversation with the escort because the silence was worse than the conversation.

*I told you yes,* he said.

*You did,* I said.

*I was right,* he said.