Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 375

KAEL

"And I—" I stopped. Started again with the honesty the moment required. "I dealt with it. In my own way. Which involved telling her something that was not true but that I calculated would destroy the specific weapon she'd brought."

The stillness continued.

"What did you tell her?" he asked. And his voice was the careful version — not the dangerous careful, not the contained fury careful, but the version that meant he was genuinely asking and wanted the genuine answer.

I looked at the conference table for a moment. At the grain of the wood, which was unremarkable and steadying in its unremarkableness.

"I told her," I said, "that Ivory had kissed me. And that in that moment I'd realized I was always meant to be in a poly. And that this was why the information she was producing about you and Ivory being close wasn't a weapon, because I was aware of and participating in and enjoying the situation she was describing." I looked up. "And that the reason I wasn't in the clinic with both of you was because she was in my office annoying me by existing."

The silence in the conference room lasted approximately four seconds.

Kael sat down.

Not with the controlled deliberateness of someone choosing to sit. With the quality of someone whose legs had made a unilateral decision.

"You told Sera Quinn," he said slowly, "that you and Ivory—"

"Were in a relationship," I said. "With you. All three of us. Yes."

"And that Ivory had kissed you."

"Yes."

"And that this was why you weren't threatened by the information about—"

"Yes," I said. "All of that. In that order. With Celine present."

Kael looked at me with an expression I hadn't seen before on his face. It was trying to be several things simultaneously and not succeeding at any of them with full coherence — the components visible as components rather than as a unified expression, the assembly in progress rather than complete.

"Celine," he said.

"Who told Margo," I said.

"Who told Nina," he said, with the specific resignation of someone who'd just identified the precise mechanism by which information had traveled at the speed it had traveled.

"And Martha was in the corridor," I said.

He pressed both hands over his face. The gesture of a man applying significant pressure to a situation through the medium of his own palms. It lasted several seconds.

Then he lowered his hands.

"Why," he said, and the word came out genuinely asking rather than accusing. "What was the calculation."

I thought about how to explain this in a way that was honest about the reasoning without making it sound more considered than it had been, because the truth was that the reasoning had happened quickly and partly on instinct and the instinct had been Shadowmere-flavored in ways I was still getting used to.

"She came in with a specific weapon," I said. "The weapon was: Ivory and Kael are in each other's arms in the clinic and you should care about that. The weapon's effectiveness depended on me receiving that information as a threat. On it producing jealousy, or insecurity, or conflict." I held his gaze. "If I was in a poly, the information produced none of those things. The weapon became useless because the premise it relied on — that I'd be threatened by you and Ivory being close — didn't apply."

Kael was quiet.

"It also," I said, "protected Ivory. The information Sera was trying to use against you and Ivory — the clinic, the closeness, whatever she'd seen — I took it and made it into something she couldn't deploy. Because if I was there too, in whatever version Sera had constructed, she couldn't use it as evidence of betrayal."

He looked at me for a long moment. The expression had finished assembling itself into something I could read now — not one thing, several things, but organized rather than scattered.

"You protected Ivory," he said.

"I protected the situation," I said. "Ivory was part of the situation."

"By telling Sera Quinn you were in a relationship with both of us."

"Yes."

"Which is now circulating through the entire pack."

"At remarkable speed," I agreed. "I did not fully anticipate the speed."

"Margo," he said, with the tone of someone who absolutely should have anticipated the speed and was being gracious about not saying so.

"And Martha," I said.

He sat back in his chair. Looked at the ceiling with the expression of a man conducting a private conversation with whatever higher power he'd decided was responsible for his circumstances.

I waited.

The thing I was braced for was anger. Or at minimum the controlled version of it — the measured response of someone who'd found out that his Luna had told a visiting enemy Alpha's mate that they were all in a poly together, without his knowledge or consent, and that this information was now the primary topic of conversation in every corridor, kitchen, and balcony in Shadowmere.

The anger would be understandable. I was prepared for it.

What happened instead was that Kael made a sound.

It started somewhere in his chest and worked its way out with the quality of something that had been held under significant pressure and had found a gap. It lasted approximately three seconds and emerged as — not quite a laugh. Not the full thing, not the open version. More like the sound a laugh made when it was getting out despite significant structural resistance.

I stared at him.

He pressed his lips together. His jaw was doing the thing where it went tight because whatever was happening inside was pushing against the outside.

"Celine," he said again, and this time the word came out with more of the thing he was containing, the pressure audible in the single syllable.

"She held it for Sixteen hours," I said. "Apparently that was her limit."

The jaw tightened further. His eyes were doing something.