Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 308

KAEL

"I'll talk to her," I confirmed, and the words cost something even just as a statement of intention. "Before the celebration. Get whatever conversation needs to happen done early enough that we can present something that at least approximates a functioning front."

"And Ivory?"

The question sat between us for a moment.

My wolf stopped pacing. Just briefly — just for a beat, the way animals sometimes froze when they heard something familiar and significant. Then the pacing resumed, but differently. Slower. Less frantic.

"Ivory needs time," I said. "Told me so herself. Sent me to my mate." I heard the roughness in my own voice and didn't try to smooth it. "I'm going to respect that. Even when my wolf doesn't want to. Even when part of me wants to go sit beside her and make sure she's eating and make sure she knows that the memories she got back are real, that they matter, that three years of partnership wasn't a story she made up in her head."

"That would send the message you said you weren't ready to send."

"Yes," I said. "It would." I stood again, restlessness pulling me back to my feet even though there were no more bags to destroy and the room was already a disaster. "So I'll hold back. Give her the space she asked for. Deal with my own side of this mess before I add to hers."

Jordan stood with me. He picked up one of the broken bag fragments from the floor, turned it in his hands for a moment, set it back down. "For what it's worth," he said, "I don't think you're less of an alpha for how you've handled this. I think you're a different kind than you used to be. Harder in some ways. More controlled. Slower to break things you might need later."

"The other alphas don't see it that way," I said.

"The other alphas aren't running your pack," Jordan said. "You are. And your pack—" he gestured vaguely, the gesture encompassing the whole of Shadowmere, the people and the territory and the complicated, loyal, infuriating pack that had stood behind me through a curse and a thousand difficult decisions, "—your pack hasn't gone anywhere. Still here. Still behind you. Even the ones who are being spiteful to Aria are doing it because they love this place and they want it led right. That's not a soft pack. That's not evidence of an alpha who's lost his edge."

I thought about Amber at the textile workshop, cancelling a positive evaluation right in front of Aria's face. About the delegation who'd come to Ivory's quarters in the early weeks of the bonding to offer their support for a challenge. About the twelve pack members who'd sat outside the healing bay all night the day Ivory had been brought in, keeping vigil in silence because they didn't know what else to do and couldn't stand to do nothing.

That was Shadowmere. That was the pack I'd built and inherited and led through years that would have broken a different kind of pack. That loyalty wasn't weakness. It wasn't evidence that we'd gone soft.

It was evidence that we were the kind of place that was worth fighting for. Worth leading. Worth making difficult choices to protect.

And somewhere in the middle of that thought, the anger — the specific burning quality of it that had driven me through ten punching bags — shifted into something different. Not calmer, exactly. But more directed. Less consuming.

The visiting alphas wanted to see whether Shadowmere's alpha was still worth fearing. Whether the killer wolf was still inside the man who'd learned to use his teeth more deliberately.

I wasn't going to give them the performance they were looking for. Wasn't going to shift back to old patterns just to prove I hadn't lost them. The alpha I'd become was more effective than the one who'd acted on pure rage, regardless of how other people read that evolution.

But I wasn't going to let them leave the celebration with the impression that I was manageable either. That particular lesson could be delivered in ways that didn't require destroying diplomatic relationships or proving their concerns right through disproportionate reaction.

They'd come looking for something to assess. I'd give them something worth assessing.

Just not today. Today I still had sand on my hands and a training room that looked like a disaster and a conversation I'd been putting off that had been building pressure for long enough that it couldn't wait much more.

"Get someone to clean this up," I said to Jordan, gesturing at the ruined training room with the particular casual authority of someone who'd decided that practical matters required practical delegation. "And tell them I'll need fresh bags by tomorrow morning."

Jordan looked at the destroyed room and then at me. "Eleven bags minimum," he said. "Given current trajectory."

"Twelve," I said. "In case I'm still feeling something."

The corner of his mouth pulled up. "That's growth, actually. You're making contingency plans for your emotional state rather than just discovering the damage afterward."

"Don't push it," I told him, and left the training room before he could find anything else to accurately say about my feelings.