Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 615

Chapter 615

JORDAN

"Good," Nina said. She looked at Ivory. "He can file a competing claim under the Convention. Alpha with recognized standing, unmated, accepted by Shadowmere's pack — that meets every requirement for a counter-challenge. If Cassium's challenge goes to formal proceedings, Killian's counter-claim creates a competing interest that the Council has to adjudicate."

"No," Ivory said.

"Ivory," I said.

"I said no," she said. "We are not using Killian as a legal instrument in a Convention proceeding. We are not asking him to file a claim he has no basis for just because—"

"He has basis for it," Nina said.

Something in the room changed.

Not the temperature. Not the sound. But the specific quality of the air, the way it changed when something true was about to be said in a room that contained people it was true about.

Nina looked at Ivory with the expression of someone who'd made a decision about what needed to be said and had decided the timing was now.

"I know he's your fated mate," Nina said.

Ivory looked at Killian.

Killian looked at the wall.

The wall was very interesting to him suddenly.

"You told them," Ivory said. Her voice was very even. Too even. The specific evenness of someone who was managing something that had arrived unexpectedly and was keeping the management very tight.

"You told them," she said again, to Killian.

"Ivory," I said.

"How could you," she said, and the evenness cracked slightly, the specific crack in something that had been built carefully and received an unexpected impact.

"This isn't his fault," Nina said, before Killian could answer. "I figured it out. Jordan helped. The way you've been managing your link presence since he came, the whispered conversations, always him following you around but you pulling away up until the shift, the specific way you've been around him — Ivory, I've known you since we were children. I know what your management looks like and I know what you look like when you're managing something that matters." She held Ivory's gaze. "Killian confirmed it when I asked him directly. I wasn't going to stop pushing until someone told me the truth."

Ivory looked at Killian.

He met her gaze.

He did it steadily, without flinching, with the specific quality I'd been watching develop in him over the weeks of his presence here — the quality of someone who'd been living at an angle to the truth for a long time and had recently decided that was over.

"It came up," he said. "I wasn't going to lie to her."

"I specifically—" Ivory started.

"You asked me not to tell Kael," he said. "And I haven't. And I won't until you're ready." He held her gaze. "But Nina is not Kael. And Jordan is not Kael. And they needed to know."

Ivory looked at the wall.

It became my turn to find the wall interesting because the expression on Ivory's face was the one that existed when she'd received something she wasn't prepared for and I'd learned over years of being in her orbit that watching that expression was more useful than filling it.

"Sit down," I said, to the room.

Nobody sat down.

"Which means," I said, "that if this goes to formal proceedings and the file isn't sufficient to neutralize Cassium before that point, Kael's hands are effectively tied in terms of the specific legal mechanism that would protect you." I paused. "He will fight to kill if the execution order is formally approved. That's not in question. But fighting to kill and fighting through the Convention's legal structure are different things. He can do one. He can't do both without putting Aria at risk."

Ivory looked at the window.

"Kael would rip the world apart," she said. "I know that. That's why I need this resolved before it gets to the point where Kael has to make a choice between—"

"Between Aria and you," she added.

Ivory was quiet.

"He won't make that choice," Nina said. "You know he won't. He'll try to do both and something will break. And you've been trying to prevent that for—" she stopped. "That's why you didn't tell him, isn't it. Not just about the Convention risk. You didn't tell him about any of it because you've been trying to manage the situation before it ever reached the point where he'd have to choose."

"He has Aria," Ivory said. "He has the pack. The integration is happening and the bond is real and the future is—" she stopped. "The future is what it should be. I'm not going to be the thing that breaks it."

"You're not a thing," Nina said.

"Nina—"

"You are not a thing that gets sacrificed so the future runs smoothly," Nina said, and her voice had arrived back at the intensity level it had been at before, not the volume but the underneath of it, the specific quality of someone at the edge of their management. "You are my family. You are Killian's fated mate. You are this pack's healer and the person who kept us alive through three years of the worst and you do not get to just—" she stopped. "You do not get to just accept whatever outcome is most convenient for everyone else."

"This isn't about convenience," Ivory said.

"Then what is it about," Nina said.

The room was quiet.

Ivory looked at the window for a long time.