Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 623

Chapter 623

ARIA

"She tried to give you cat ears," Jordan said.

"She was testing a compound," Kael said. "That happened to have an unexpected side effect in early trials. She happened to be curious whether the side effect was reproducible in a controlled subject."

"And you were the controlled subject," Jordan said.

"I was the convenient subject," Kael said.

"Did you get cat ears," Killian said.

Everyone looked at Killian.

He had the specific expression of someone who'd asked a question and was standing by it.

"I did not get cat ears," Kael said, with the dignity of someone who had thought about this. "I had approximately six hours of heightened sensitivity to sound and an unusual relationship with elevated surfaces."

"You climbed things," Jordan said.

"I assessed the structural soundness of several elevated surfaces," Kael said.

"He climbed the library shelving," Nina said. "I saw it."

"I was checking the upper inventory," Kael said.

"From the top shelf," Nina said.

"The upper inventory," Kael said. "Which is at the top."

"He sat up there for forty minutes," Nina said, to me and Killian. "With his coffee. He kept saying he was working but he was just sitting there."

"The elevation was useful for thinking," Kael said.

"He purred," Jordan said.

"I did not—"

"There was a sound," Jordan said.

"There was a—I had heightened sensitivity to—the sound was not—"

"It was a purr," Nina said.

"The sound was adjacent to—" Kael stopped. "The point is that Ivory has a long memory and a creative approach to expressing displeasure and you should not eat anything she gives you for the next three days."

"Noted," I said.

"This goes for everyone," Kael said, looking around the table. "Not just Aria. We all had a hand in blocking her today."

"She's going to be specifically angry at Killian," Jordan said.

Killian looked at Jordan.

"You said I think we should wait," Jordan said. "While looking at her directly. In her meeting. About her timeline."

"Yes," Killian said.

"That," Jordan said, "was either very brave or very—"

"Brave," Nina said.

"I was going to say unwise," Jordan said.

"Brave," Nina said again.

"Both can be true," Jordan said.

Killian looked at the door Ivory had left through.

"She's allowed to be angry," he said. "I'd rather she be angry and here with us."

The room went quiet.

Not the processing quiet. The specific quiet that arrived when something had been said that was true in a way that couldn't be managed or deflected or worked around.

Kael looked at Killian with the expression that had the twelve layers and also the thing underneath them.

"Yes," he said. "Same."

Jordan looked at the door.

"She's not fine," he said.

"Obviously," Nina said.

"She said she was fine," Jordan said. "She said it in the specific tone of someone who is categorically not fine and is performing fine with the specific intensity of someone who wants you to know exactly how not fine they are."

"She broke the clipboard," Nina said.

"Yes," Jordan said. "With the very controlled physical expression of someone who is managing something significant and the clipboard was the available outlet."

"Why is she so set against waiting," Nina said. Her voice had the specific quality it got when she was doing the accounting and the numbers weren't adding up. "Yes, the root is dangerous. Yes, the Convention timeline is real. But she's been in urgent situations before and she manages them with patience." She paused. "This doesn't feel like impatience. It feels like—"

"A deadline she hasn't told us about," Jordan said.

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