Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 395

ARIA

"What does it mean," I said. "The root. Ivory talked about the curse having an origin, someone who created it. Is there a part of it that—"

"I don't know," he said. "I feel—" he stopped, seemed to be doing some internal check. "Normal. The way I've felt since the bond broke the curse. Nothing that suggests a progression or a degradation." He met my eyes. "But Ivory was tracking the origin for two years before she found you. Which means there's something about the origin that matters. Something she knows that I don't know yet."

"Because she hasn't told you," I said.

"Because she hasn't told me," he confirmed.

The eleven hours she'd negotiated. Not until tomorrow. We'd agreed — he'd agreed — to ten hours and she'd gotten eleven and the eleven hadn't quite run out yet.

"She's going to tell you everything tomorrow," I said.

"She's going to tell me most of it," he said. "And I'm going to have to work out what the rest is from the gaps."

"Is that how it usually works with her?"

"For the things she's really protecting someone from," he said. "Yes. She tells you seventy percent and you have to find the rest." He picked up the tin again, closed it, set it with the other supplies with the systematic tidiness of someone putting things away rather than leaving them scattered. "She's been doing this since before the curse. Since before I was Alpha. I used to be worse at finding the gaps."

"And now?"

"Now I know where to look," he said. "I've had practice."

I watched him put the supplies away. The methodical movement of it. The way his hands were steady in the task even with everything the evening had put into his expression.

"Your wolf," I said.

He looked up.

"I heard what Nina said," I said. "In the corridor. About the display, the teeth. I was going to mention it and then the evening had other things and—"

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."

"You don't need to—"

"He came within two seconds of attacking you," he said, and his voice was flat with the specific flatness of someone saying something they found unacceptable about themselves. "That's not something you need to apologize around. That's something I need to fix."

"Ivory said he doesn't know me yet," I said. "In that form. That the person knows me but the wolf has a separate process for it."

"That's accurate," he said. "And it's also not the whole explanation." He set the last of the supplies down. Looked at me directly. "The wolf and I — we're not always in full agreement. About things. About what we want. About who matters in which way." He paused. "He has attachments that are—older, in some cases, than what the bond has given him. And he's stubborn. And when he's in threat response he leads with the older things."

I understood what he was telling me without him saying the specific words.

"He went to Ivory," I said. "Before he came to me."

"Yes," he said.

"Even though I called you," I said. "Through the bond."

"The call reached me," he said. "It was what got us moving. But the wolf—" he stopped. "The wolf follows the pull that's oldest in him. Even when the man knows where he's supposed to be going."

I sat with this.

It was honest. More honest than it needed to be, delivered with the specific discomfort of someone who was telling you a true thing they'd rather not have to tell you. There were easier ways to explain a wolf not recognizing a mate. He hadn't taken any of them.

"Okay," I said.

He looked at me.

"I'm not going to pretend that doesn't mean something," I said. "It means something. I know it means something." I held his gaze. "But I'm also not going to pretend that you being honest about it means more of the bad thing and less of the good thing. It's the other direction."

He was quiet for a moment.

"We're working on it," he said, which was what he'd told Nina, but this version was different. Not the closed version. The one that had space in it for two people to be working on something rather than one.

"Eleven hours," I said. "Then you get Ivory's explanations."

"Ten and a half now," he said, and his expression had shifted back into something that wasn't heavy. "She negotiated for eleven and half of that is already spent."

"She'll have used the time to construct the most efficient version of what she's willing to share," I said.

"She will," he agreed. "And I'll find the gaps."

"Will you tell me what the gaps are," I said. "What the attacker meant. The root. The origin. What Ivory was following for two years."

He looked at me for a moment.

"I'll tell you what I find," he said. "When I find it."

Not a promise. But real. The kind of statement that had weight because it wasn't dressed up in more than it was.

"Thank you," I said.

"For what."

"For coming tonight," I said. "I didn't know if the bond would carry it. I'd never reached through it before. I wasn't sure if it would work or if it would just be — me sending something into a distance and nothing receiving it."

He looked at me with the particular expression he had when something landed differently than expected. "I felt it," he said. "The picture. Ivory's shoulder. The tree line." A pause. "And underneath the picture—" he stopped.

"What," I said.

"Fear," he said. "Real fear. Not performed, not — the genuine version. And underneath the fear, still present—" he looked at the window for a moment. "Holding."

I thought about what I'd been feeling when I'd reached through the bond. The anchor solid in my chest, the lunar power present, the shield up around Ivory and me while the attacker moved in the trees. The fear had been there. Real, as he'd said. And underneath it—

"The anchor," I said.

"Whatever it was," he said. "It reached."