Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 419

ARIA

"Telling people creates—"

"Ivory," he said.

She looked at him.

"He told me, by the way," Kael said. "While I was—" he stopped, recalibrated, "—while we were in the corridor. He thought it would help him. Told me you were a martyr. That you'd go to any length to protect the people you loved and never ask for anything in return. He thought that was a weakness." He held her gaze. "He said it like it was an insult."

Ivory was very still.

"It's not an insult," Kael said. "But he was right about the pattern. And people have been exploiting the pattern for four years. And I've been—" he stopped. "I've been the person the pattern exists to protect. Which makes it—" he stopped again.

"It's not funny," he said, which landed oddly until I realized he was addressing the beginning of a smile that was starting at Ivory's mouth.

"Some parts are funny," she said.

"Which parts," he said.

"The plants," she said. "The delivery was funny."

"He arrived—"

"Horizontal," she said. "You said that," she said to me, and the smile was winning.

"He was horizontal," I confirmed.

Kael looked at me. "It was mildly amusing," he conceded.

"The corridor," Ivory said. "The arm."

"That part was not—"

"Fight back," she said, and the smile broke open into something that was going to become the laugh again. "You told him to fight back."

"I was—"

"You were goading him," she said. "While he was already—" she couldn't finish the sentence because the laugh was arriving.

"I wanted him to engage," Kael said.

"He didn't have the arm for it," Jordan said, from near the door, with the tone of someone providing helpful context.

"That's not—" Kael started.

"Jordan," Ivory said, between the laughing. "Jordan. Where did Kael learn the fight back instruction."

Jordan looked at the ceiling with the expression of someone being asked a question they were going to enjoy answering. "He was present," Jordan said, "approximately six years ago, when you dealt with a visiting Alpha who'd put his hands on you during a trade negotiation. You dragged him by his hair across an entire reception room while saying—"

"Fight back," Ivory said, and the laugh had become the full version, the complete one, her working hand pressed over her mouth and her whole body expressing something that was beyond amusement and into the specific release of a person who'd been under significant pressure for a significant time and had found the valve.

"You dragged a visiting Alpha by his hair," I said.

"He grabbed me first," Ivory said, still laughing.

"You dragged him across a reception room," I said.

"The room wasn't that large," she said.

"It was a full-sized reception room," Jordan said.

"Medium sized," Ivory said.

"He left with a different understanding of the situation," Jordan said. "And Kael apparently took notes."

"Kael takes lessons," Ivory said, to the ceiling.

"I wasn't taking lessons," Kael said. "I was—"

"You were taking lessons," Jordan said.

"The lesson apparently includes the specific verbal encouragement," Ivory said. "Fight back. That's direct inheritance. That's you doing what I did."

"I was expressing frustration," Kael said.

"At a man with one arm," Jordan said.

"He still had—" Kael started.

"Not after the corridor he didn't," Jordan said.

Ivory made a sound that was technically not a laugh but occupied the same territory.

"Is there any chance," Ivory said, when she'd recovered enough to form a complete sentence, "that Aria can do that someday. The dragging thing. I want to see the dragging."

"Aria's innocence," Kael said, and his voice had the specific quality it got when he was maintaining a position against incoming pressure, "can still be preserved. She doesn't need to be—"

"She made Sera do the curtsey," Nina said, from the doorway.

Everyone looked at the doorway.

Nina had appeared with the specific timing she had for arriving at the exact moment her contribution was most useful. She came in with her notebook and her professional neutral and the additional quality of someone who had been holding something back for several hours and was now able to contribute it.

"The curtsey," Nina said. "The document. The ten minutes of silence followed by the no. The five months. The poly statement." She looked at Kael. "Luna Aria's innocence was a transitional phase. We're past it."

Kael looked at me.

I looked at the rope in my lap.

"The poly," Ivory said. She was still recovering from the laugh but her eyes were sharp. "Nina. Tell me about the poly."

"You know about the poly," Nina said.

"I know Aria told Sera she kissed me," Ivory said. "I want the full version."

"The full version is in Celine's account," Nina said. "Which Margo has."

"Margo," Ivory said.

Margo had been waiting for this with the patience of someone who'd already delivered one round of information and was ready for the second. She produced a small notebook — she kept notes, which I should have suspected but hadn't — and opened it.

"Luna Aria had the recording device active," Margo said. "I've listened to it once. Twice. The relevant section—"

"Play it," Ivory said.

"I don't have the device," Margo said. "It's in the office. I took notes."

"Read the notes," Ivory said.

Margo read the notes.

She read them with the specific quality of someone who had excellent recall and had written down more than the summary. The curtsey. The document and Sera reading it. The ten minutes that Ivory's expression traveled through as Margo described them. The no, and Sera's response, and Aria's explanation of feeling unsafe.

Then the poly section.

Ivory's expression during the poly section was something I was going to remember for a long time. It started with recognition — *she went for the weapon-removal angle* — and then developed into something more specific as Margo read the exact phrasing I'd used.

*The day Ivory kissed me, I knew I was always meant to be in a poly.*

Ivory looked at me.

I looked at the rope.

"Best of both worlds," Margo read.

"Oh," Ivory said.

"The reason she wasn't in the clinic," Margo read, "was because Sera was in the office annoying her by existing."

"Oh," Ivory said again, differently.