Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 335

KAEL

"I'm already working through it," Nina said, quietly.

"Ivory."

"I know," Ivory said, and her voice was careful in a way that cost her something to make it that way. She was being required to honor a policy she'd built, toward a person she had every reason to want as far from Shadowmere as possible, because the policy existed to help people and policies that had exceptions weren't policies. I could see what that was costing her in the set of her jaw. "I know."

The gate was open. It had been open all morning — open gates were Shadowmere's default, because a pack that lived behind closed gates was a pack that had already conceded something about what it was afraid of.

Sera Quinn stood at it, waiting, with her convoy behind her and the coalition witnesses she'd arranged somewhere in the background of this moment, doing their work.

"You'll be seen," Ivory said, stepping forward in the way she always stepped forward when something was required that nobody else could do. Her healer's voice, her professional composure, the face she put on that was separate from what was underneath it and better for the job. "The open door policy holds. You'll be seen." A pause that contained everything she wasn't saying. "But you'll also be watched. Every moment you're in this territory. Everything you say and do and ask for and give. Watched completely."

Sera inclined her head with the graciousness of someone accepting what they'd come for. "I wouldn't expect anything less."

"Good," Ivory said. "Then we understand each other."

She walked through the gate and into Shadowmere, and Ivory stepped aside to let her pass, and I stood at my own entrance watching it happen with the specific controlled fury of a man who was doing the right thing and finding it genuinely terrible.

"Elite," I said quietly.

"Already signaling additional coverage," Elite said, at the same volume.

"Jordan."

"On it," Jordan said. "Full documentation. Every contact. Every conversation."

I looked at Nina.

"I'll run the coalition," she said. "Find out who she notified and exactly what she told them. And I'll start working on grounds to revoke the visit before she can establish anything useful." A pause. "We won't make her comfortable."

"No," I agreed. "We won't."

Sera had moved further into the grounds now, following the escort that had materialized — pack members who understood without being told that a visitor under these circumstances required the specific form of hospitality that was indistinguishable from monitoring. She was being given everything the open door policy guaranteed and nothing beyond it.

I stood at the gate and breathed through the remainder of what I'd been containing.

"The word you are looking for," Ivory said, from beside me, "is audacious."

"That's not the word I'm looking for," I said.

"It's the printable one," Ivory said.

Jordan made a sound that was almost a laugh and then wasn't.

I turned away from the gate and looked at my pack grounds. At the territory I was responsible for, that now contained Sera Quinn, that was going to require every piece of careful attention I had to navigate without making decisions I'd have to explain to a coalition full of Alphas who were already watching for signs of instability.

The morning had been good. Aria with the moon magic, the wall-watchers slowly updating their assessments, Ivory talking to her with the specific honesty she brought to things that mattered even when she didn't want them to.

Then Sera Quinn at the gate with a pre-arranged coalition notification and a policy I couldn't violate without consequences.

"Jordan," I said.

"Still on it," Jordan said.

"Find out how long she's planning to stay."

"Already sent the request."

"And find out," I said, "exactly what she told Damon. About this visit. About where she was going and when." I turned toward the main building where approximately seventeen problems were waiting for my attention. "Because she didn't come here to see Ivory."

"No," Nina agreed. "She didn't."

"She came here to see what's here," I said. "What we have. What state things are in. She came to look."

The implication sat among us, clear and unpleasant and requiring no additional explanation.

Sera Quinn had come to look. And somewhere that I couldn't see and couldn't reach, Damon Blackwood was waiting for her to come back and tell him what she'd found.

We let her in because the policy held and the coalition was watching and there was no clean alternative.

But we were going to watch her every breath while she was here, and when she left she was going to carry back nothing that we hadn't chosen to let her see.

I walked back into my territory and started making decisions.

It was what I did. What I'd always done.

Even when the morning had started so much better than this.