Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 374

ARIA

I followed Kael into the east corridor with the specific energy of someone who had approximately fourteen things happening in their chest simultaneously and hadn't yet determined which one was going to win.

The red had not fully left my face. I was aware of this. The red had arrived when Ivory had said what she'd said and had shown no signs of resolving itself into anything more composed, which was inconvenient given that I was now walking through pack corridors where people could see me and were very clearly looking.

Not subtle about looking, either. Shadowmere had many qualities that I'd come to appreciate and occasional subtlety was not among them. Pack members we passed had the expressions of people who'd already heard something and were now being given the opportunity to observe the relevant parties in real time, which they were taking full advantage of.

One man actually nodded at Kael. A slow, appreciative nod. The nod of someone communicating respect for an achievement they hadn't previously been aware of.

Kael looked at the wall.

I looked at the floor.

We turned into a corridor that was less populated and then into a smaller passage that led to one of the conference rooms used for private pack business — a room I'd been in twice before for administrative meetings, a room with a door that closed properly and walls that were solid and no windows overlooking the central grounds where thirty people had just cheered.

Kael closed the door behind us.

The quiet that settled was the specific quiet of a room that had been closed off from the noise outside and was now containing two people who needed to have a conversation they hadn't planned on having.

I sat down at the conference table without being invited because my legs had been working hard for the past several minutes and appreciated the development.

Kael didn't sit. He stood near the door with the expression of a man assembling something — thought, approach, the right starting point for a conversation that had multiple possible openings and required choosing the correct one.

"I need to explain what's happening," he said.

"You mentioned," I said.

"Sera," he said. "Whatever is circulating through the pack right now — the thing that produced what just happened — I believe Sera is responsible for it. She came here with weapons and this is one of them. She said something, or circulated something, that got into the pack's information network and now it's—" he gestured vaguely, encompassing the central grounds and the cheering and Ivory's contribution and all of it, "—this."

I looked at him across the conference table.

I thought about what I knew that he didn't know. About the recording device in my desk drawer. About Celine's composure crisis and Margo and Martha and the kitchen information network that Nina had described to me this morning with the serenity of someone explaining something that was already fully in motion.

I thought about the moment in my office when I'd told Sera, with complete confidence and absolutely no basis in fact, that Ivory had kissed me and that I'd realized I was always meant to be in a poly.

I thought about Kael, who believed Sera had planted this. Who had spent the past however many hours watching his pack respond to information he didn't understand and had assembled the pieces into the explanation that made the most sense from where he was standing, which was the explanation that placed Sera at the origin point.

He didn't know.

Nobody had told him. Celine had told Margo. Margo had told Nina. Nina had told Ivory. Jordan had presumably been told by someone. Elite knew things through whatever mechanism Elite used. But nobody, apparently, in the chain of information that had traveled from my office through the pack's entire communication ecosystem, had thought to tell the Alpha that his Luna was the origin point of the poly rumor currently consuming Shadowmere.

I sat with this for a moment.

The honest thing — the thing I'd been working toward, the thing that Ivory's sacrifice and Kael's patience and the whole complicated architecture of what I was trying to be in this pack was pointing toward — was to tell him immediately. To say: it wasn't Sera. It was me. I said it in my office to destroy the weapon she'd brought in, and I said it as a bluff, and I did not anticipate that it would travel at quite this speed or produce quite this outcome in the central grounds.

The honest thing was clearly the right thing.

I looked at Kael, who was still standing near the door with the expression of someone preparing to explain something carefully.

"She came here specifically to create fracture points," he said. "Between you and me, between me and Ivory, between all of us. Whatever she said — whatever's circulating — the goal was to introduce conflict. To make us suspicious of each other, to make us have the kinds of conversations that damage trust rather than build it." He held my gaze with the directness that was his particular quality when he meant something fully. "I don't want to have those conversations. I want you to know that before we go any further. Whatever Sera planted, I don't want it to be the thing that determines how we interact for the next month."

I took a breath.

"It wasn't Sera," I said.

He looked at me.

"The thing that's circulating," I said. "It didn't come from Sera. She came to my office to request the treatment authorization. She said what she said — about you and Ivory, about the letter, about me being a piece that was moved. She produced the information she'd been saving as a weapon."

Kael was very still. Listening with the quality he had when he was taking something in fully.