Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 608

Chapter 608

ARIA

The Marcus situation had taken forty minutes to resolve and left the meeting room smelling like tension and wolfsbane.

Marcus — twenty-three, broad-shouldered, one of the pack members who'd discovered that the strength restoration was significantly more than he'd calibrated for — had accidentally dismantled the door to the secondary storage room while trying to open it. The door was solid oak. It was no longer solid anything. He'd come to the meeting room to report this with the specific expression of someone who'd hoped to address the situation quietly and had found instead that the Alpha, the Luna, the security chief, the intelligence lead, and the healer were all in the same room and all now aware of the door situation.

Kael had looked at the door situation with the expression of someone who was deciding how many of the available responses were appropriate.

Ivory had assessed the structural damage with the efficiency of someone who'd been assessing Shadowmere's structural damage for years and had a filing system for it.

Nina had made a note.

Jordan had asked three clarifying questions about the exact sequence of events, which I suspected was less about the door and more about Jordan's relationship with comprehensive documentation.

Elite had said nothing and made a note in their own file.

The resolution had involved reassigning Marcus to tasks that were not door-adjacent until the strength calibration was complete, adding structural assessment to the running pack-wide list of restoration complications, and Kael telling Marcus, with the specific tone of someone who'd been managing crisis for years and had found the register that was simultaneously serious and not, that the door was going to be replaced and Marcus was going to help replace it because that was how pack membership worked.

Marcus had left with the specific expression of someone who'd been let off lighter than they'd expected and knew it.

"Can we continue," Kael said, when the door — or the space where the door had been — was clear.

"We can continue," Jordan said.

Jason came in.

He appeared in the doorway with the specific quality he had when he was carrying something he'd assessed and had determined required immediate delivery rather than the normal channels. His wolf was visible in the link the way everyone's wolf was visible now — a warm thread of Shadowmere presence, identifiable and specific — and the thread had the quality of something that was braced.

"Letter," he said. "Messenger from Storm Ridge. Western territories."

He held it out.

Kael reached for it.

Nina was already on her feet.

She crossed the room in the time it took Kael to register that she was moving, took the letter from Jason with the specific efficiency of someone who'd made a decision faster than they'd articulated it, and looked at the seal.

I watched her look at the seal.

Nina's face did not change often. She'd built a specific relationship with her expression over years of being Shadowmere's security chief, which required the kind of composure that made information available only when you chose to make it available. I'd been learning to read the small variations in it over nine months — the specific micro-expressions that existed below the managed layer.

She looked at the seal and her jaw did something.

"Nina," Kael said.

She opened it.

Read it.

The room watched her read it with the attention of people who'd learned that Nina's reactions, however small, were reliable indicators of what the situation actually was.

She put the letter on the table.

She sat down.

"What," Kael said.

"Read it," she said.

He read it.

The room was very quiet.

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