Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 416

ARIA

Something happened in his expression. Brief and real and then composing itself back into the circumstances.

"Three holes," he said. "And one impression."

"Four wall events," I said. "Total."

"Four," he said.

Jordan came back with the rope. The same rope from the clinic. I had a moment of wondering whether the rope was going to have further adventures before the day was done or whether this was its final deployment, and concluded that in Shadowmere the answer was probably not its final deployment.

While Jordan secured Alric Vesper with the efficiency of someone who'd been securing things for years and had found the morning's practice relevant, Kael stood in the corridor and Nina wrote in her notebook and I stood with the specific feeling of someone who'd done something they hadn't planned on doing and was finding that they didn't regret it.

He'd been escaping.

The minimum necessary had seemed clear.

"She's going to hear about this today," Nina said, still writing. "Margo will tell her within the hour."

"Margo will tell her within twenty minutes," Jordan said, from near the floor, tying the last knot.

"The healer will try to stop her from reacting physically," Nina said. "The shoulder."

"The shoulder won't stop her from having opinions," Jordan said.

"Nothing stops Ivory from having opinions," Kael said.

"She's going to want the full account," Nina said. She looked at me. "You should be there when she hears it. She'll want to hear it from you directly rather than through Margo's version, which will be accurate but will lack the technical detail she'll be looking for."

"The technical detail of the blast," I said.

"She'll want to know the anchor status, the modulation, the intent framing," Nina said. "Healer documentation. She considers your development a medical case file."

"She considers—"

"She considers it a medical case file," Nina confirmed. "She's been taking notes."

I looked at the corridor. At Alric Vesper, secured, unconscious, breathing. At the three people around him who were going to get everything he knew before the day was done, who were going to add it to the folder and the list and the proper channels that Nina had been building all morning.

At the mark on the wall where the blast had landed.

"I'll go to the clinic," I said. "When you're done with him."

"When we're done with him," Kael said, and his voice had the flat certainty again. The operational version. "You should be there before then. He's going to take some time and Ivory's going to hear about this before we're finished. She should have someone in the room when she does."

"Someone who can physically prevent her from getting off the table," Jordan said.

"The rope is here," I said.

"The rope is here," Jordan agreed. "But Elite already went to a meeting."

"I'll go," I said.

"Take the rope," Nina said.

I looked at her.

"For her," she said, with the serenity of someone who'd had a full day and was building contingencies regardless. "She's going to want to come here when she finds out he walked up to the gate. She's going to want to see him herself. Take the rope."

I took the rope.

It was becoming, I thought, something of an ongoing feature of Shadowmere leadership. The rope in the cabinet. The rope available. The rope as recurring element in a day that had started with one concrete wall and had accumulated several additional events since.

I walked back through the main building and out into the grounds that were still doing their ordinary midday things, past pack members who were going about their business entirely unaware that the day had included plants dragging a person to the gate and a depowered Luna blast and a man with three badly healed fingers currently secured in a corridor.

Ordinary midday, by Shadowmere standards.

I thought about what Jordan had said.

*Oh, we've corrupted her.*

I thought about the curtsey notice on my office door. About the five months. About the poly bluff. About the minimal necessary blast that had stopped a man from escaping.

Shadowmere was, I reflected, a very particular kind of education.

I walked toward the clinic with the rope in my hand and the pearl warm in my pocket and the anchor settled in my chest.

The afternoon was not, as it turned out, going to be quiet.

But that was alright.

I was getting better at not-quiet.

A/N: First and foremost, if this chapters didn't make you laugh, I am definitely suspicious.

Two, you guys kept asking for more chapters and some are almost getting anxiety, like come on guys, its been three days. It is too early for a withdrawal episode.

Thirdly; the comments are truly something, and I have come to a conclusion, you people do not just like ivory.

Like there was this particular comment that kept being said, when Aria does something like seeing her ex, she gets in trouble, but ivory does it, and nobody bats an eye. Okay first and foremost, in as much those two seemed similar, there were two different perspectives.

One, Ivory has never actually let any of her enemies harm them, let me explain. Aria has a obsessive ex, we know that. That man came to a mating ceremony, filled with children and other pack members and attacked, ivory contained that damage first by sending them to a decoy, and even when they did attack, the casualties were small, but people got hurt, people were sent to the clinic, people hated Aria for bringing her problems here, I did not specifically go into that then because it was Aria POV, and it was focused on Aria, and not the NPCs. Ivory got attacked outside a pack, even with Aria there, Aria had more injuries from her training, rather than an attack from an enemy, the enemy did not even register her or try to hurt Aria. Now I am not drawing lines and saying oh ivory is better, no these two have flaws.everyone in this show have flaws, you all know Aria flaw;insecurity. Ivory; too confident/ perfectionist, she has to be best at everything, I will explain further. Readers were angry that Ivory was teaching Aria, okay, based on everything we have seen, who else was supposed to teach Aria. Ivory researched in this bloodline for 3 years on Kael curse, read through the books, the books were even incomplete and rare, this bloodline is almost extinct, you can't walk to a library and take it, most packs have no idea this existed, not just that, she is the only person in that pack that have seen more than one child of the moon, hell others have tried to kill her because she was breaking a curse they inflicted on Kael, and she went through hell. I do not know if you have noticed this, but I will state it, in as much as Aria is suffering, she only had to deal with Damon keeping Sera over her and her not being liked, ivory had to deal with a lot, that she kept glossing over, this woman have been sexually harassed over and over, like full on 'grape' I tried not to make it a thing due to I do not want to trigger my readers and because ivory is not someone who wants that kind of attention on her, but we have seen instances with Dan, not just Dan, people who have either been killed by kael, or ivory stopping them, these are the few her family knows of, nobody knew this woman was out there getting tortured, for days, years, hunted down, branded with hot metals and whatnot, and still not giving up until she found a cure, and even knowing she was still being hunted, she made sure nobody else would get hurt, I know you guys are trying to say, oh I am just making this up, no I am not, this her plants have been spoken of, before the Ghost council came, they had been deployed around the pack and she gave a vague reason for that, even before all this, ivory has never done anything that would hurt someone, she rather experiment on herself first, alone and far away, only letting other knows about it, if she survives the ordeal, you guys might not see it but she is suicidal, she doesn't care if she survives as long as everyone else does. Another thing, you people are saying oh how can she be all this when she is a healer. She is not a healer intially, she is a research scientist, she has been experimenting, she only did this healing things because what she made, to help others worked like faster than ordinary medicines, treating bones fractures, claw wounds, and bullet wounds in hours, all this made her get the title of healer, but we do have actual healers in that pack, literally. And people are like oh ivory is not supposed to be in charge of security or what not, that one she is not in charge of it, it is Nina, but ivory innovations there have made her indispensable, this is someone who can actively keep up with Kael in terms of speed, agility, reflexes, she had to learn the hard way,

And let me clarify something, Ivory did not like Aria during her amnesia, she lost her memories, have no context clues and had to learn from others that she was still with Kael as far as they were concerned only to find Kael mating a strange woman and breaking his curse, she felt used, she felt like a prostitute, she felt like a mistress, that was why even Kael did not do anything when she was lashing out, even during that, she did not cause issues for Aria, she helped, she chose Aria repeatedly over in the hunt, she went toe to toe with Dan when Dan tried to make Aria feel less as usual and had taught Aria what she knows, helping her, bringing her up, changing her. Yes she is always going to be in love with Kael, yes she will be an important ficture in Kael life, but if you are still going to hate ivory not knowing how complex of a character she is, then I do not know what to say. Everyone have opinions, but I won't talk on this again, I do not like wasting chapter WC to do a backstory or justify something, some people like ivory even during her amnesia and I am grateful to those readers. I am also thankful to all, that have been reading to this point. I do not know if you noticed but Aria insecurity is becoming lesser day by day, hell she has changed considerably and now is in their circle, and people are like oh Kael is bad than Damon. Kael has his own flaw as well; he doesn't like privileges. He doesn't believe people should be granted things just like that, he prefers it handed through hardwork. , Amber, Margo, ivory and basically Shadowmere in particular were able to get away with things that were not allowed because Kael backed them up, Amber poured dirty water on Sera, Margo brought up a non existent protocol and kael came up and backed them up without blinking an eye, they made it right on the spot, and it became a law, ivory dragged out Dan, Dan wanted to retaliate and report, Kael came out and defended Aria and ivory by making what Ivory said to him, a public diplomatic matter, he is petty, yes this is a flaw, that made Aria suffer a bit, but him using his authority to defend Aria would have made things worse for Aria, Aria had to get the pack on her side by changing their mind about her and she did it.