Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 618

Chapter 618

ARIA

Silver said: *She's wrong.*

*About which part,* I said.

*About all of it,* Silver said. *She's wrong that the pack functions the same without her. She's wrong that Kael doesn't have to choose — he'll be making that choice for the rest of his life if she does this, just retroactively. She's wrong that the Convention case resolves cleanly.* A pause. *And she might be wrong about the analysis.*

*Killian said—*

*She's been the only person who analyzed it,* Silver said. *Four years of research done alone by someone who loves Kael and would accept any outcome that saved him. That's not objective analysis. That's a conclusion being worked backward from.*

I looked at the file in Killian's hands.

"Has anyone else seen this," I said.

"Jordan suspects," Killian said. "He knows something else is there — he said as much in the sitting room. He didn't push because the timing wasn't right but he knows."

"And Ivory knows he knows," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"So the window is closing," I said. "She's finished the documentation. Jordan is getting closer to the real question. The Convention timeline is fourteen days. She's going to move before any of that converges." I stood up. "How many people know about the failsafe."

"You and me," he said. "As of now."

"Nina and Jordan can't know yet," I said.

He looked at me.

"If Nina finds out," I said, "she'll go to Kael immediately. And if Kael finds out from Nina before we have something to bring him — before we have an alternative, a counter-analysis, anything — he will do what Kael does, which is refuse the outcome and try to find another way, and the trying will take time we might not have and Ivory will move before—"

"Before he can stop her," Killian said.

"Yes," I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

"You want to check the analysis first," he said.

"She told you she might be wrong," I said. "She said it to Ivy. You told me about it in the path conversation — she said *I could be wrong.* She's the most rigorous person I've ever encountered and she admitted the possibility." I held his gaze. "I'm the moon child. The power that breaks the root runs through me. Whatever the failsafe is, it activates through me — through my power applied to the root's severance." I paused. "I have a specific connection to the curse's architecture that nobody else has. Silver has been feeling it since the border battle. If anyone can see something in the analysis that Ivory missed—"

"You could," he said.

"I don't know if I can," I said. "I'm being honest. I don't know enough about curse architecture to be certain. But I have a connection to it that Ivory doesn't have, that Jordan doesn't have, that even Kael doesn't have in the same way." I looked at the file. "And Silver has been telling me to watch for weeks. She knew something was wrong before I could name it. She might know something about the mechanism that isn't in the written analysis."

Silver said: *Yes.*

*You know something,* I said.

*I know what the root feels like,* Silver said. *I've been feeling it since I came online. The connection between the root and the bond — I can feel the architecture of it. Not the full picture. But something.* A pause. *There's something in the way the root and the bond connect that doesn't feel like what the failsafe description implies.*

*What does it feel like,* I said.

*It feels like something that could be — redirected,* Silver said. *Not cut. Redirected. The root is attached to the bond's original anchor. What if the anchor could be changed.*

I looked at the nightbloom.

*What if,* Silver said. *What if the failsafe isn't tied to Ivory dying. What if it's tied to the anchor being released. And the anchor being released doesn't have to mean Ivory dying — it means the original connection dissolving. The attachment point changing.*

*That sounds like the same thing,* I said.

*Maybe,* Silver said. *Or maybe there's a way to release the anchor without the cost being Ivory's life. A way to dissolve the original attachment point and replace it. The failsafe is about the anchor breaking — but breaking and transferring might be different.*

*You don't know this,* I said.

*No,* Silver said. *But neither does Ivory. Because Ivory analyzed it as a binary — anchor exists, or anchor breaks and the breaking kills her. She didn't analyze whether the anchor could be moved rather than broken.*

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