Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 361

ARIA

The notes weren't helping.

I'd been sitting at my desk for the better part of an hour, working through the documentation I'd accumulated over the past week — Luna duties, inspection follow-ups, the authorization paperwork for various pack matters that required my signature — and none of it was receiving my full attention because my full attention was still in the corridor outside Ivory's clinic, listening to something I hadn't meant to hear.

I'd tried several approaches to processing it. The practical approach, which involved focusing on the facts: Ivory had made a decision, the decision had saved Kael's life, the decision had involved me as a mechanism rather than a person. The emotional approach, which had lasted approximately four minutes before becoming too large to sit inside productively. The pragmatic approach, which Jordan had helped with — the reminder that what I'd done since arriving wasn't in anyone's letter, that the mechanism being arranged didn't arrange who I'd chosen to be inside it.

None of it was fully landing yet. It was all hovering in the space just above where understanding actually lived, waiting for something to click it into place.

So I'd come to my office and opened the notes and was doing the work while the processing continued in the background, which was the most functional arrangement I'd been able to manage.

The knock on the door was a relief, actually. Something external to attend to.

"Come in," I said.

Celine opened the door with the specific quality she had when she was about to tell me something she wasn't sure how I'd receive. My maid had been with me since my arrival in Shadowmere — assigned initially by the pack's domestic coordination, retained because she was efficient and perceptive and had developed a particular skill for anticipating what I needed before I'd identified it myself. She was young, mid-twenties, with the kind of face that communicated everything she was feeling regardless of her best efforts at professional neutrality.

Right now her face was doing something complicated.

"Luna Aria," she said. "Luna Sera is here to see you."

I set down my pen. Looked at Celine for a moment — at the specific quality of her expression, which contained both her professional composure and something underneath it that was working very hard not to be visible.

"Send her in," I said. "And Celine — stay. I'd like you present for the meeting."

Something moved through Celine's expression that she immediately controlled. "Of course, Luna."

She disappeared. I straightened the papers on my desk, moved a few things into better positions, and took a breath that I used for everything it was worth.

Then I looked at the door.

When Celine returned with Sera behind her, the first thing I registered was that Sera had managed to restore most of her presentation from yesterday's bucket incident. Her clothes were fresh, her hair was composed, the deliberate put-together quality was back in place. But the composure was different from the one she'd had at the gate — thinner, working harder, the product of someone who'd spent the night reconsidering her options and had arrived at the conclusion that the only remaining one required her to do something she found genuinely loathsome.

She looked, to be specific, like a woman who would rather have done almost anything else with her morning.

Good, said some small petty part of me that Shadowmere had been steadily cultivating since my arrival. Good.

"Stop there," I said, before she'd crossed the threshold fully.

Sera stopped. Her expression registered the instruction with the specific quality of someone deciding whether to comply or challenge.

I let the silence sit for a moment. Then I gestured, almost lazily, toward the door frame itself. "There's a notice," I said. "On the door."

Sera looked at the door frame.

Cellotaped to it, at approximately eye level, on a plain white piece of A4 paper, in a font that was clear and legible — because Shadowmere apparently cared deeply about font legibility in official documentation, a principle that had been established earlier in the week and had apparently propagated through the pack's administrative culture with remarkable speed — was the following:

*All visitors from enemy packs must bow and curtsy to the Luna, greeting her and beseeching an audience before entry is granted.*

The silence that followed the reading of this notice had a very specific quality.

I sat behind my desk with my hands folded and my expression arranged into the neutral patience of someone who had all the time in the world and was not currently recording this moment on a small device in her desk drawer that she had activated approximately thirty seconds before Celine had appeared. Shadowmere had been a terrible influence on me. I was going to review this recording later and laugh until I couldn't breathe.

Celine had turned to look out the window. Her whole composure was doing something that could most charitably be described as a structural integrity crisis.

Sera looked at the notice. Looked at me. Looked at the notice again.

I raised one eyebrow. Just slightly. Just enough.

The war that crossed Sera's face lasted several seconds. It involved several distinct phases — disbelief, outrage, calculation, the recognition that calculation kept arriving at the same conclusion, more outrage, and finally the specific grimness of someone who had decided that the available options were limited and the least bad one was still quite bad.

She curtseyed.

It was not an enthusiastic curtsey. It contained the minimum possible physical commitment that could technically be categorized as a curtsey. But it was a curtsey, accompanied by a slight incline of the head that was presumably the bow component interpreted generously.

"Luna Aria," she said, through teeth that were doing significant work. "I request an audience."

I looked at her for a moment, maintaining the expression of someone genuinely considering this request rather than someone who had already decided and was simply enjoying the sustained quality of the moment.

"Sit down," I said.