Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 637

Chapter 637

ARIA

He appeared with it from somewhere near the front, having apparently assessed the situation and made a logical decision about carrying capacity. He was standing in the central aisle with the basket and the expression of someone who'd decided that the basket was the Alpha's contribution to the situation and was ready to deploy it.

Ivory appeared from the far end of the aisle.

She looked at Kael.

She looked at the shelf above her.

She picked up a bag of something — chips, I thought, from the size and shape — and threw it.

Over the shelf.

In a high arc.

Kael caught it without looking up.

"Ivory," he said.

"Yes," she said.

"There's an aisle," he said.

"I know," she said.

She picked up another item and threw it.

He caught it.

"You could walk around," he said.

"I could," she said.

She threw another one.

He caught it.

"Is this the system," he said.

"It's a good system," she said.

"It's not a system," he said. "It's you being—"

Something came over the shelf that was not chips. It was a drink — the specific plastic bottle kind, which was significantly heavier than chips — and he caught it with the reflex of someone who'd been doing this for long enough that the reflex was below conscious thought.

"Ivory," he said.

"Elite likes that one," she said. "The lemon kind."

"You could have given it to me at the end of the aisle," he said.

"Kael," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"Catch," she said.

He caught the next three items before he'd finished deciding whether to protest.

I watched this from the central aisle with Silver very warm and very amused in my chest, and understood something about the twelve years — the specific texture of two people who'd built a vocabulary together that existed below the articulate, that operated in throwing things over shelves and catching them without looking and the specific negotiation of who was going to protest what and when.

Nina appeared beside me.

"She knows what everyone likes," Nina said, watching Ivory continue to throw things over the shelf at Kael, who was continuing to catch them with the resigned efficiency of someone who'd made peace with being the catcher. "She's been doing this since we were seventeen. She memorizes it without trying to memorize it."

"Elite likes the lemon drink," I said.

"Elite has liked the lemon drink since they were nineteen," Nina said. "Ivory brought it to the training yard during a session where Elite had been out in the heat for six hours and Elite said 'this is acceptable' and that was that. Ivory has remembered it for seven years."

"She remembers everything people like," I said.

"She remembers everything about people she cares about," Nina said. "Full stop. What they like and what they don't like and what they were doing on a specific day years ago that made them seem off and whether they've resolved whatever it was." She paused. "It's how she's always expressed it. Not in words."

I looked at the shelf where Ivory was throwing things.

At Kael catching them.

At the specific ordinary intimacy of two people who'd been doing this specific thing for long enough that it was just how they existed in a shared space.

Something landed in the basket that was clearly for Kael specifically — I could tell because of the quality of Kael's expression when he caught it, the small recognition of someone receiving something they liked without having said they wanted it.

"She knows what you like too," Nina said, to me.

I looked at her.

"She's been watching you for nine months," Nina said. "She knows. She just hasn't—" she paused. "She's careful about how she shows it. When it comes to you specifically."

"Why specifically," I said.

"Because you're Kael's mate," Nina said. "And she's trying to navigate that correctly. Whatever that means for Ivory." She looked at the aisle. "She's figuring it out."

Something came over the shelf and landed in Nina's hands — she'd apparently been in Ivory's line of sight, or Ivory had anticipated her location, and the bag of sour candies that Nina received were the specific kind that I'd seen Nina eat in the common room twice.

"She's been watching me too," I said.

"She watches everyone," Nina said.

"No," I said. "She's been watching what I like. In the common room. At dinner." I looked at the shelf. "She threw that for Nina. She's going to throw something for me."

"Probably," Nina said.

"What will she throw," I said.

"You tell me," Nina said. "What do you like."

I thought about it.

The honest answer — not the safe one, not the thing I'd reach for because it seemed like the right choice or because I'd seen other people reach for it. The thing I actually wanted when I was tired and had been in a car for four hours and the road was long.

Something came over the shelf.

It landed in my hands before I'd decided to catch it — the reflex had arrived before the decision, Silver moving my hands with the wolf's faster-than-thought response.

I looked at what I was holding.

A specific kind of sweet — not the obvious choice, not the thing most people would have grabbed. The kind that I'd bought once in a market in the territory before I'd come to Shadowmere, that I hadn't seen since, that had been in my memory as a small specific pleasure that existed before everything.

I looked at the shelf.

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