Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 610

Chapter 610

ARIA

"What else do you have," Jordan said, and his voice had the specific quality it got when he'd recognized that the intelligence operation was about to become significantly more comprehensive. "On the Council members."

Ivory looked at him.

"You said you have information on the rest of the Council," Jordan said. "Not just Cassium."

"Yes," Ivory said.

Jordan made a sound that was quiet and short and had the quality of someone who'd been working in intelligence for years and had just discovered a resource that had been sitting beside them the whole time.

"How much information," he said.

"Enough," Ivory said.

"On all of them," he said.

"Most of them," she said.

"Ivory," Jordan said.

"Yes," she said.

"You've been building a file on the Supreme Council of Lycans," he said.

"I've been building files on anyone who represented a potential threat to Shadowmere's stability," she said. "The Council has significant authority over pack law and territory. They represented a potential threat."

"Since when," he said.

"The first year of the curse," she said.

"You built an intelligence network on the Supreme Council," Jordan said, "during the first year of the curse, while managing the pack's medical needs, building the botanical perimeter, and—"

"It was mostly correspondence and favors," she said. "Healers talk. The healing network across territories has connections that the political and intelligence networks don't. Healers owe each other debts. They know things about the people they serve that nobody else knows." She paused. "I used the network."

"The healing network," Jordan said.

"Yes," she said.

"To build an intelligence file on the Supreme Council," he said.

"And others," she said.

Jordan looked at Nina.

Nina looked at Jordan.

"Jordan," I said.

He looked at me.

"Are you going to be okay," I said.

"I'm—" he started. "I'm discovering that Ivory has been running a parallel intelligence operation for four years without telling me and I need a moment."

"Take the moment," Ivory said.

"I'm taking it," he said.

He took it.

Then: "YES," he said. "This is—we have everything. If we have information on the Council members then the formal challenge falls apart. Cassium can't invoke the Convention if he's in violation of it himself. And if the Council members are compromised—"

"They can't formally judge Ivory without exposing themselves," Killian said.

"Yes," Ivory said.

"You've been holding a hand for four years," Jordan said.

"I was hoping not to play it," she said.

"But you built it anyway," he said.

"I build contingencies," she said. "It's what I do."

"We play the hand," Kael said.

"It's not simple," Ivory said. "Using this publicly has consequences. Cassium's daughter — the woman being held — she becomes part of the public record. Her situation becomes visible. That has consequences for her regardless of what we do with the information about Cassium."

"We get her out first," Nina said.

Everyone looked at her.

"Before we use the information publicly," Nina said, with the specific efficiency of someone who'd assessed the problem and arrived at the solution. "We locate her. We get her out of Cassium's territory and into a safe location. Then we make the information public."

"That's—" Jordan started.

"Doable," Elite said.

"The western territories," Jordan said, already in the operational register. "Cassium's lands — I have contacts in the region. The property Ivory has documented—"

"I'll give you the location," Ivory said. "I have the property records."

"How quickly," Kael said.

"Depending on who we use," Jordan said. "Seven days, if the contacts are available and the extraction is clean."

"We have fourteen," Kael said.

"Comfortable margin," Jordan said. "If nothing goes wrong."

"When does something not go wrong," Nina said.

"It rarely doesn't," Jordan confirmed. "But we plan for it."

"The Council members," Kael said, to Ivory. "What do we have on them specifically. Not Cassium — the others."

Ivory looked at the table.

Then she reached into the bag she'd brought to the meeting — the one that was always with her, the one that contained the notes and the documentation and the compound information — and she produced a file.

Not thin.

Jordan made the sound again.

"This is—" he started.

"Organized by member," Ivory said. "Cross-referenced. The relevant violations are flagged." She slid it across the table to Jordan. "Some of it is circumstantial. Some of it is solid. The solid cases are marked in red."

Jordan opened the file.

He turned two pages.

"Ivory," he said.

"Yes," she said.

"Councilor Dremach," he said.

"Yes," she said.

"The territory dispute that was resolved in his favor six years ago," he said.

"Yes," she said.

"He bribed the assessors," Jordan said.

"Three of them," she said.

"You have the payment records," he said.

"Yes," she said.

"How," he said.

"The assessors used a healer in the eastern region after the proceedings," she said. "Payment for services. The healer noted the source of the payment in her records. She owed me a debt."

"The healers," Jordan said, in the tone of someone arriving at an understanding of a system they hadn't previously fully mapped.

"The healing network is very extensive," Ivory said. "And healers keep detailed records. It's professional practice."

"You've been building this for years," Jordan said.

"Yes," she said.

"Through the healing network," he said.

"Primarily," she said.

"And you didn't tell me," he said.

"You have your intelligence network," she said. "I have mine. They complement each other."

Jordan looked at her with the expression of a man who'd been in intelligence for fifteen years and was having a specific feeling about the discovery that his pack's healer had been running a parallel operation that might be more comprehensive than his own.

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