Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 418

ARIA

I looked at Ivory. She was looking at me with the specific attention she brought to case files and development notes — healer mode, switched on.

"He was moving for the gap," I said. "Jordan and Nina were with Kael. He calculated the window. I raised my hand and—" I paused, looking for the accurate description. "Minimum necessary. It was more reflex than decision."

"The anchor," she said.

"Present," I said. "It's always present now. The blast came from it without me having to — reach for it."

"Automatic integration," she said. "That's—" she stopped. "The modulation. How did you calibrate the force."

"I thought minimum necessary," I said. "Instinct said what minimum necessary was. He hit the wall and stayed there."

"He's alive," Jordan confirmed. "Conscious currently, which is more than can be said for the arm."

"The wall?" Ivory said.

"Mark on it," I said. "Not structural damage."

"The mark will be there for a while," she said. "Lunar blast impact leaves a trace on stone. It's a tracking property — historically used to identify locations where significant power was exercised. Useful for territorial documentation."

"So I've added documentation to the corridor," I said.

"You've added documentation to the corridor," she confirmed.

She sat with this for a moment, and her expression was the one I'd been learning to read — the healer processing a development against her existing picture, updating the picture, noting what the update implied.

"Jordan," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"When she fired," she said. "Describe what you saw."

Jordan thought about this with the precision of his intelligence background. "Controlled. The anchor was visible — the glow was present before the blast rather than a product of the blast. She'd contained it before she used it." He paused. "The blast was directional. It went where she pointed. No scatter, no secondary effect on the surrounding space."

Ivory looked at me.

"You weren't trying to do any of that," she said. "Were you. You weren't thinking about containment or directionality."

"I was thinking about him escaping," I said.

"The technique was automatic," she said. "The containment was automatic. The directionality was—"

"Automatic," I said.

She closed her eyes for one moment. Not distress — the opposite. The specific expression of someone whose projection had been exceeded and was revising their timeline.

"Six weeks," she said. "I projected six weeks to full automatic integration. We're at three."

"Is that—" I started.

"It's significant," she said. "It means the bloodline's convergence with the bond has accelerated the integration faster than standard development allows for." She opened her eyes. "The bond. Having an active, functional bond — it's creating a feedback loop with the bloodline. Each time you use the bond, it strengthens the bloodline's integration. Each time the bloodline develops, it deepens the bond's functionality."

"Is that good or bad," I said.

"Unprecedented," she said, which was her version of the answer. "I need to document this."

"You need to rest," the healer said.

"I can document while—"

"You can document after thirty-five hours," I said.

She looked at me.

"I have the rope," I said.

"You are not going to—"

"I don't know," I said. "I've had a formative day. I've been somewhat corrupted, apparently."

Something shifted in her expression. The specific thing that happened when something landed in a way she hadn't expected.

"Jordan said that," I said. "In the corridor. After the blast. He said — oh, we've corrupted her."

Jordan was grinning. Not the controlled version. The actual one.

"He also said," I said, "that you'd be furious you missed it."

"I am furious I missed it," Ivory said, immediately and without any of the deflection she usually applied to things she felt directly. "I've been tracking that development for three weeks. I wanted to see the first operational—" she stopped. "The wall mark. I want to see the wall mark."

"After thirty-five hours," I said.

"It'll still be there," Jordan said. "Luna blast marks on stone are—"

"Permanent," Ivory said.

"Permanent," Jordan confirmed.

"I can wait," she said, with the tone of someone who was making a significant concession. "I can wait until thirty-five hours. But I want to see it."

"You'll see it," I said.

The door opened.

Kael came in with the specific quality of a man who'd come from somewhere that had involved considerable output of energy and was carrying the aftermath of it. His expression was the post-amber version — controlled, functional, but with the slightly hollowed quality of someone who'd been in a room with Alric Vesper and had been pulled away from what his wolf wanted to do.

He looked at Ivory.

"You," he said.

"Me," she agreed.

"You could have told me," he said.

"We had this conversation this morning," she said.

"We're having it again," he said. "Alric Vesper walked up to the gate carrying the specific knowledge that you wouldn't have told anyone about him. He counted on your silence. He was going to walk into the open door policy as a legitimate patient and access you directly under the cover of—"

"I know what he was planning," she said.

"He told you about the fingers," Kael said. "He was going to claim the fingers. Use them as the access justification. Walk right in."

"I know," she said.

"He was counting on you," Kael said, and the words had a specific weight to them. "On the specific way you deal with things. On you not having told anyone about him or about what he was doing. He built his entire plan on the certainty that you would have handled everything alone and left him the gap."

Ivory was quiet.

"His plan failed," she said. "The plants caught him."

"Your plants caught him," Kael said. "Your plants that you built and didn't tell anyone about. Your trap system on the lower slope that you set up without telling anyone. Your own backup plans that you constructed and deployed without telling anyone." He sat down in the chair — Jordan's chair, the other side of the bed. "At what point does it occur to you to tell someone."