Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 642

Chapter 642

KILLIAN

"She said—"

"JORDAN," Kael said.

"I WAS LEARNING," Jordan said, in a recreation of Ivory's declaration, at approximately the correct volume.

Kael made the sound again.

Ivory hit Jordan.

"OW," Jordan said, which was somewhat theatrical because Jordan's pain tolerance was—

"I will put something in your snacks," Ivory said.

"You wouldn't—"

"I have access to compounds," she said. "I have access to compounds and I have access to your snacks and I have the specific motivation of—"

Jordan's phone buzzed.

Then Ivory's phone buzzed.

Not the pack mobile — I recognized the pack mobile's specific notification sound, had been learning all the sounds of Shadowmere's various communication channels over the weeks. This was different. A different phone, a different sound, and Ivory's response to the sound was immediate and complete.

The laughter context disappeared from her face.

She was reading the screen.

The car's atmosphere changed.

Not dramatically — it was the specific change that happened when one person in a contained space shifted registers entirely and the other people in the space registered the shift before they understood it.

I watched Ivory read.

The messages were coming in fast — I could see the screen updating in her hands, multiple messages from what looked like multiple contacts, all arriving in rapid sequence.

Her expression was doing nothing.

That was the specific tell. When Ivory's expression was doing nothing — completely, entirely, not a microexpression in sight — that was the sign that the information being received was significant enough that all available processing was going to the information rather than to the management of what the information was producing.

"Ivory," I said, quietly.

She didn't look up.

More messages.

She read.

She typed back.

Kael had finally recovered enough to breathe normally and was leaning against the window with the specific exhaustion of someone who'd laughed too hard for too long and was now in the recovery phase. He looked at Ivory.

"What," he said.

"Nothing," she said.

"Ivory," he said.

"Drive, Nina," she said.

"I'm driving," Nina said.

"Good," Ivory said.

She was still reading.

Another message came in.

The specific way she read this one — the very slight tightening around her eyes, the specific quality that I'd learned to associate with information she hadn't wanted to receive — told me something before anything else did.

She looked up.

She looked out the window.

At the road and the trees on either side and the specific geography of where we were — two hours from Shadowmere, two hours from Cassium's territory, the specific in-between of a journey that hadn't arrived anywhere yet.

The phone buzzed again.

She read.

Her jaw did something.

"Ivory," I said.

She looked at me then back at the screen.

Then one that I could partially read from my angle and which contained the words *ABORT* and *DISCOVERED* and *INCOMING.*

"Ivory," I said, louder.

"Nina," Ivory said. "Speed up."

"What—" Nina started.

"Speed up," Ivory said. "Now. Don't slow down."

Nina sped up without further question because Nina was Nina and when Ivory said *now* in that register, Nina moved.

"What is it," Kael said, beside her, his voice entirely different from the laughing-Kael of three minutes ago.

"The mission is—" Ivory started.

The car hit something.

No.

Something hit the car.

The impact came from the left side with the force of something moving at a speed that shouldn't have been possible — not another vehicle, not a collision, something that had appeared from the treeline and hit the car with the specific force of something that wasn't subject to the usual limitations on how fast a thing could move.

Nightwalker.

I knew the impact quality because I'd been told about nightwalker strikes and this was what they described.

The car left the road.

Not gradually. Not in the incremental way of a vehicle losing traction. It left the road the way things left roads when something had hit them hard enough to change their relationship with the ground entirely, and then the ground was in a different place than it should have been, and then the ground was above us.

The car was upside down.

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