Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 649

Chapter 649

KAEL

Khris had been talking since the safe house.

Not the integrated version — the warmth of the wolf that had been building for months, the two-things-becoming-one-thing quality that the bond work and the book club and the honest conversations had been producing. That version was present but it was underneath something older and louder, the specific voice that had existed for three years when the curse had separated us into two entities sharing one body.

Khris was not calm.

*Find her,* Khris said.

*We're working on it,* I said.

*Find her now,* Khris said. *Not later. Not when the plan is ready. Now.*

*The plan is what finds her,* I said. *The plan is how we get to her.*

*I don't want the plan,* Khris said. *I want Ivory.*

*I know,* I said.

*She's somewhere in Cassium's territory,* Khris said. *Right now. While we're in this room with maps and documents and—*

*I know,* I said.

*FIND HER,* Khris said, at the specific volume he used when he'd passed the point of measured communication.

*I am finding her,* I said. *This is what finding her looks like. Maps and documents and plans. Because going in without them gets her killed instead of getting her back.*

Khris went quiet.

Not calm — quiet. The specific quiet of something that was still very loud internally and had made the calculation that the loudness wasn't currently productive and was containing it.

He was still containing it.

I was managing the containment while simultaneously being present in the war room, where Solander's people and Jordan and Nina were building the operational picture that was going to get us where we needed to go. The multitasking required was significant and I was doing it with the specific discipline of someone who'd spent three years managing a wolf that was trying to kill everyone and had developed the relevant muscle.

The muscle was getting a workout.

"The east wall panel," Jordan was saying, to Solander's intelligence lead — a woman named Reka who had the specific quality of someone who'd been doing this for a long time and had stopped finding it remarkable. "Second from the left. Pressure point on the lower-right corner. Three-second hold."

"That's a standard Cassium mechanism," Reka said. "He uses the same configuration in three other properties we've documented. It's consistent with the intelligence we've had on his security preferences."

"Which means it's probably not a decoy," Jordan said.

"Probably," Reka said.

"The werewitches," Jordan said. "In the office specifically."

"Reduced staffing during the meeting period," Reka said. "Based on the deployment patterns we've observed, approximately eight remain on the office level when Cassium is in formal meeting sessions."

"Eight is significantly better than fifty," Jordan said.

"Eight werewitches is still eight werewitches," Nina said, from the map.

"Yes," Jordan said. "But manageable eight rather than unsurvivable fifty."

"I'd argue with unsurvivable," Nina said. "But I take the point."

*She's been in there for hours,* Khris said.

*I know,* I said.

*With Hale,* Khris said.

*I know,* I said.

*Hale has been trying to kill her for four years,* Khris said. *He has her now. Alone. Without any of us.*

*She's not fragile,* I said. *She's survived sixty-nine—*

*Seventy,* Khris said. *The attack on the car makes seventy.*

*She's survived seventy incidents,* I said. *She has the ghost council's protection. The golden shield. She has—*

*She has a mission she's decided is worth dying for,* Khris said.

I stopped.

*Khris,* I said.

*The root removal,* he said. *The cost she told Aria wasn't the full cost. Aria knows it. Killian knows it. Something in the analysis that Ivory has decided is acceptable and we don't know what it is.*

*We don't know—*

*We don't know,* Khris said. *But she let them take her. She planned to be taken. She's been planning endings since the first year of the curse and we have been not-seeing it because seeing it required asking the question and the question was—*

*I know what the question was,* I said.

*You know now,* Khris said. *You didn't ask it then.*

I sat with this.

At the table.

In the war room.

With the maps on the walls and the documents and Reka's specific intelligence on Cassium's estate and Jordan and Nina doing what Jordan and Nina did, which was build the comprehensive picture from the available pieces.

The comprehensive picture.

I hadn't built a comprehensive picture of Ivory.

I had looked at Ivory the way you looked at things that had always been there — with the specific non-seeing of someone who assumed the thing was permanent and therefore didn't examine it for signs of impermanence. I had looked at the things Ivory did and not the things Ivory was carrying. I had looked at her four years of research and her compound documentation and her botanical perimeter and not looked at what she'd been preparing those things for.

I had looked at Ivory and seen Ivory.

I had not looked at Ivory and seen someone who'd been planning to die.

*She didn't want you to see it,* Khris said, with the specific quality he had when he was being fair about something that was difficult to be fair about. *She went to significant lengths to make sure you didn't see it. That's not your failure. That's her choice.*

*She shouldn't have had to make that choice alone,* I said.

*No,* Khris said. *She shouldn't.*

*If I'd asked—*

*She would have managed you,* Khris said. *She's very good at managing you. She's had twelve years of practice.*

*That's not—*

*It's accurate,* Khris said. *You know it's accurate. She has always known exactly which version of the information to give you to produce the response she needed. This is not a criticism of her. It's a fact about how you work together.*

I looked at the table.

At the operational documents.

At the pin board where Cassium's estate layout was being built in real time from Clara's information and Reka's existing intelligence and Jordan's file.

*We find her,* I said. *Before any of this. Before the document, before the estate, before the Convention challenge. We find Ivory.*

*Yes,* Khris said, with the specific relief of something that had been waiting for that sentence.

*But finding her safely requires the plan,* I said. *So the plan happens simultaneously. Both things at once.*

*Both things,* Khris said.

*Both things.*

"Alpha Kael."

I looked up.

Solander was looking at me from across the table with the specific expression he used when he'd clocked something he wasn't going to comment on directly but was acknowledging indirectly.

"The estate infiltration timeline," he said. "Given that the document is now locatable rather than requiring a full search—"

"Forty minutes becomes twenty," I said.

He nodded.

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