Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 636

CHapter 636

ARIA

Everyone looked at Kael.

Kael looked at the road ahead.

"Responsible," Jordan said.

"We were," Kael said.

"Kael," Jordan said.

"We were responsible," Kael said.

"There are thirty-seven entries in this section," Jordan said.

"That's—" Kael started.

"In fourteen months," Jordan said.

"We were responsible each time," Kael said.

"Responsible," Jordan said again.

"Responsible—" Kael started.

"ISH," Nina said.

Everyone said it simultaneously.

*Responsible-ish.*

The car erupted.

Jordan was making a sound that was not quite professional. Nina had her hand over her face with the specific quality of someone trying to contain something and failing completely. Elite, who did not often produce visible amusement, was doing something in the back that was the closest I'd seen to Elite laughing. Killian had the expression of someone who'd been in this car for twenty minutes and had already received more information than they'd expected.

Ivory reached forward and turned the radio on.

She turned it up.

The song came through the speakers with the specific quality of something that had been waiting for exactly this moment — the upbeat rhythm, the specific melody that I recognized from the playlist that had been playing in the common room for the past two weeks and had lodged itself in the pack's collective ear.

Ivory started singing.

Not performing — actually singing, the real version, the one that existed when she'd decided the moment required it. Her voice was—

I hadn't known.

I hadn't known that Ivory sang.

She sang the way she did everything that she was genuinely good at — with complete competence and zero performance, the specific quality of someone who was doing the thing rather than demonstrating the thing.

Nina came in immediately.

*You hit like a drunk cigarette,* Nina sang. *The feelin' amplified—*

Jordan from his section: *By sayin' things we never meant, oh, yeah—*

Ivory: *You leave me filled with regret—*

They knew all the words.

They knew all the words in the specific way of people who'd been singing together for long enough that the songs had become part of the shared language, the specific vocabulary of a group of people who'd built something together and had the songs as part of the evidence.

Ivory: *Do you got plans for life? 'Cause I don't wanna just romance tonight—*

Killian came in on his verse.

I turned to look at him.

He was singing.

Killian was singing in the back seat of Kael's car with the photographs in the door pocket and the journal in Jordan's hands, and his voice had the quality of someone who hadn't done this in twelve years and was discovering that the ability was still there, waiting, the same way some things waited.

*With rhythm, there is rhyme,* Killian sang. *With you, there always can be I—*

The chorus came and everyone who had been in this car before came in together and the together had the specific weight of people who'd sung this before, in this car, in a version of things that had been and was now something else but still, underneath, had the same bones.

*I don't wanna talk down on your lover—*

*I don't wanna be a homewrecker—*

*I just know I can be better, be better, be better—*

Kael was silent.

He was driving with both hands on the wheel and the expression of someone who was receiving something they'd been not-receiving for three years and was letting it arrive.

"Come on," Nina said.

"I'm the Alpha," Kael said. "I don't do childish—"

"KAEL," everyone said.

The song moved to the bridge and Killian came in again and Elite came in from the back with the specific unexpected quality of Elite doing something no one had expected, and the chorus built back up and this time—

*I wanna kiss you on the bed and on the floor—*

Kael said:

*When I'm poor, when I'm bored—*

He said it quietly.

Then less quietly.

*I am yours, I am yours, I am yours—*

The car sang.

All of them — Ivory and Nina and Jordan and Elite and Killian and Kael — the full inner circle in the specific cramped joyful chaos of Kael's private car that had been sitting in a garage for three years, singing a song about wanting to be better for the person you loved, at full volume, on the way to do something dangerous and important and necessary.

Silver said: *This is what they are.*

*I know,* I said.

*Not just the briefings and the plans and the battles,* Silver said. *This too.*

*Yes,* I said.

*Both things,* Silver said.

*Both things,* I confirmed.

I was in the back seat between Killian and Elite with the quilts and the photographs and the moon bullets in the boot and the journal with thirty-seven entries in Jordan's lap, and outside the window Shadowmere's territory was becoming the wider world, the roads opening up, the trees changing into the specific landscape of somewhere else.

And the car was singing.

I came in on the chorus.

*I don't wanna be a homewrecker—*

Nina's head turned.

She looked at me.

I looked back.

*I just know I can be better, be better, be better—*

She smiled.

The real one.

And I sang, in Kael's car, with the inner circle of Shadowmere, on the way to something dangerous and important, and Silver was warm in my chest and the link was warm behind us and the photographs were in the door pocket and Killian was on my right and Kael was at the wheel and Ivory was in the seat with her name on it.

Killian got out beside me.

Killian stretched with the expression of someone who'd been in a confined space with the inner circle for four hours and was updating his understanding of what confined space with the inner circle meant. He was fine. He'd been fine. But there was a specific quality to someone who'd been in close quarters with people who had a great deal of shared history and had spent the time observing how that history expressed itself in small spaces.

"How are you," I said.

"I learned things," he said.

"About the journal," I said.

"About many things," he said.

"Responsible-ish," I said.

"That's going to be a long time getting out of my head," he said.

Nina was already heading toward the door.

"Aria," she said, over her shoulder. "Get what you like. Not what you think we want or what seems safe. What you actually like."

"What if I like something strange," I said.

"Then it's yours and nobody else's," she said. "That's the rule. Nobody shares. If you hate what you picked, that is your specific burden."

"Same for Killian," Jordan said.

"I know what I like," Killian said.

"Good," Jordan said. "Because I'm not sharing my—" he looked at the station's facade, "—whatever they have. I'm not sharing it."

"Nobody asked you to share," Nina said.

"Preemptive statement," Jordan said. "Based on historical precedent."

"What precedent," Ivory said.

"The time you ate my snacks in the second year of the—" Jordan started.

"Those were communal snacks," Ivory said.

"They were my snacks," Jordan said.

"They were on the communal shelf," Ivory said.

"Because I put them on the communal shelf," Jordan said. "For storage. Not for communal—"

"The communal shelf is communal, Jordan," Ivory said.

"I'm calling it now," Jordan said. "Whatever I get in there is mine. Not communal. Mine specifically."

"Noted," Ivory said.

"Ivory," Jordan said.

"I heard you," she said.

"Ivory," he said again.

"I'm not going to eat your snacks," she said.

"That's exactly what someone who was going to eat my snacks would say," he said.

They went through the door.

I followed, and the gas station received us with the specific indifference of a space that existed to be useful and had no opinion about who was being useful in it.

---

The interior was one long aisle running parallel to a refrigerated section on the back wall, with a secondary aisle branching off toward the hot food counter that was producing a specific smell that was coffee and something fried and the specific combination of both.

Kael had a basket.