Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 368

KAEL

"Quiet as in settled," Jordan said. "Not quiet as in giving up."

"No," I said. "Not giving up. He doesn't give up. It's one of the things we have in common."

Jordan was quiet for a moment, considering. "When the curse broke," he said carefully, "when the bond formed — I've always wondered something. Whether the integration came back fully. After."

I looked at him. "No," I said. "Not fully."

He absorbed this. "Does Aria know?"

"No," I said. "Nobody knows. It's not—" I stopped, organized the next part. "It doesn't affect my functioning. It doesn't affect the bond's validity or Aria's safety or anything practical. It's internal. A disagreement that I'm managing."

"A disagreement that's been going on for eight months," Jordan said.

"Yes."

"And the other side of the disagreement is waiting for something," Jordan said. "Specifically."

I didn't answer, because the answer was obvious and saying it felt like giving it more reality than it already had.

Jordan didn't push. "Is there a path to the integration coming back fully?" he asked instead. "Is that even possible, after the curse?"

"I don't know," I said honestly. "The integration wasn't supposed to fracture in the first place. The curse did something that shouldn't have been possible. Whether the reversal is possible—" I shook my head. "I haven't found anything in the texts that addresses it directly. It's too specific a situation."

"Ivory would know," Jordan said. And then immediately: "Sorry. That wasn't helpful."

"It was accurate," I said. "She would know. She probably knows more about what the curse did to me medically than I do, because she spent three years observing it from the outside and documenting it in ways I wasn't capable of from the inside." I pressed my fingers against the desk. "That's a conversation for another time."

"Is there anything that helps?" Jordan asked. "The integration. Are there moments when it's closer?"

I thought about this honestly. About the moments when the friction was less, when the two sides of me were less at odds. Training helped — the physical exertion of it produced a state where the distinction between human and wolf mattered less because both were operating in the same mode. Running in wolf form helped, for different reasons. Being in spaces that felt fully mine — the pack grounds at night, the borders, places where the Alpha and the animal were the same thing — helped.

And Ivory, said the honest part of me. Being near Ivory helped, in the specific way of the one fixed point from the curse years still functioning as a fixed point. The friction went quiet. Not because the disagreement was resolved but because the disagreement was temporarily beside the point, because both sides of me were in agreement about her presence being the right presence, and agreement — even temporary, even confined to one specific context — was the closest thing to integration I'd experienced since the curse broke.

I didn't say this to Jordan because saying it felt like a direction I wasn't ready to travel.

"Moments," I said instead. "There are moments."

Jordan nodded. He was doing the thing where he'd received the information he'd come for and was filing it. "What are you going to do?" he asked. "About the wolf. About the situation."

"Keep choosing," I said. "What I've been doing. Honor the commitment I made. Be honest with myself about what the internal situation is without letting it make my decisions for me." I paused. "And figure out, eventually, whether there's a way to bring him into genuine agreement rather than just managed compliance. Because managed compliance isn't—" I stopped.

"Sustainable?" Jordan suggested.

"Sufficient," I said. "It's sustainable. I can manage it indefinitely if I have to. But it's not sufficient. It's not what I want for either of us."

The word *either* landed in the sentence and sat there doing work I hadn't entirely intended.

Jordan looked at me for a moment. "You and the wolf," he said carefully. "Or you and the wolf and someone else."

I looked at him. Held his gaze for a moment that lasted slightly longer than was strictly comfortable.

"I'm going to go check the perimeter reports," I said.

"Of course," Jordan said, with the equanimity of a man who'd gotten his answer without it being given.

I stood. Gathered what I needed to function for the rest of the evening. Put the Alpha on in the way I did when the interior was complicated and the exterior needed to be functional regardless.

My wolf, who'd been still since the clinic, stirred slightly. Not the restless pacing. Just attention — the lifted-head quality of an animal that had heard something and was checking the direction.

*You said either*, he noted.

I walked out of my office without answering him.

He was patient. He'd been patient for eight months. He could be patient a while longer.

That was what I told myself.

I was less and less certain he was going to agree with how much longer constituted a while.