Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 431

ARIA

The pressure changed.

Not gone. But different — less the sustained force of something fighting the containment and more the weight of something that was very heavy and was considering whether to put it down.

"The wolf goes first when there's threat," I said. "I understand that. I understand why. But the threat right now isn't something the wolf can handle. The threat right now needs you. Needs the man who read the folder and organized the list and held her hand for three hours waiting for her to wake up." I kept my voice steady. "Come back. I'm here. We're here. Come back."

Silence from inside.

Then footsteps. Moving away from the door. The specific sound of someone going to a different part of the room.

Then a voice. Rough — the quality that happened after the wolf had been close to the surface — but the man's voice. "I'm alright."

"Okay," I said.

"I'm alright," he said again. Like he was telling himself as much as me.

"Okay," I said. "Take the time you need."

Nina's hand found my arm briefly. Not a squeeze — just contact. The specific brief acknowledgment of someone who didn't do expansive gestures but was making an exception.

Jordan exhaled.

"How did you know," he said quietly, to me. "What to say."

"I didn't," I said. "I said what was true."

"The part about knowing where she is," he said.

"We're going to know where she is," I said. "Elite has two hours. That's true."

"In the meantime," Nina said.

"In the meantime," I agreed.

We sat back down. On the floor, the three of us, outside the bolted door. Not because the floor was comfortable or because it was the appropriate place for a security chief and a senior intelligence officer and a Luna to be, but because it was where we were and we were staying.

"The mindlink," I said. "When it's restored — when the integration is complete — it comes back."

"We don't know," Nina said. "Nobody has done this before. Broken it and then waited for the conditions that would allow it to restore. We don't know what complete integration looks like or what comes back when it happens."

"But it could," I said.

"It could," Jordan said.

"Ivory would know," I said.

They both looked at me.

"She's been researching the curse's origin for four years," I said. "She knows how it was built. She knows what it tore apart. She knows more about how it works than anyone. When we get her back—" I held both their gazes steadily, "—when we get her back, she'll know whether the mindlink can be restored. What it would take."

"When we get her back," Nina said.

"When we get her back," I confirmed.

From inside the office, quiet. Not the quiet of something contained under pressure — the quieter quiet of something that had found a little more room.

The amber lighting of the corridor was warm around us. The pack grounds beyond were still doing their evening things, unaware of the floor-sitting outside the Alpha's office, unaware of the empty clinic bed.

Two hours for Elite.

However long it took for the anchor to receive something from Ivory.

However long it took for Kael to be fully himself again.

All of it happening simultaneously in a pack that had been surviving impossible things since before I'd arrived and had gotten very good at the surviving, even when the surviving was done sitting on a corridor floor.

"I would have voted for you," Jordan said, out of nowhere.

I looked at him.

"If there'd been a vote," he said. "For Luna. In the beginning. I would have voted for you."

"You didn't say that in the beginning," I said.

"I didn't know it in the beginning," he said. "I know it now."

Nina was looking at the door. "I would have abstained," she said. "In the beginning. I wasn't sure."

"And now," I said.

She looked at me.

"Now I'm sitting on a corridor floor with the Luna," she said, "and I'm not wishing she was someone else."

It was the most Nina thing she'd ever said to me. Entirely truthful and entirely not a compliment and somehow better for being both.

"Thank you," I said.

From inside the office, Kael's voice. Quieter than before. More settled. "Nina."

"Here," she said.

"How long until Elite has something."

"Hour and a half," Nina said.

A pause. "Alright." Another pause. "Don't sit on the floor. You'll hurt your back."

Nina looked at the door for a moment.

"My back is fine," she said.

"You said that two years ago and you were wrong," he said.

"I was right," she said.

"You were wrong," he said.

"I was—"

"Jordan," Kael said through the door.

"She was wrong," Jordan said.

"Thank you," Kael said.

"JORDAN," Nina said.

The corridor was quiet for a moment.

Then Jordan's shoulders started moving. The quiet version of laughter — the kind that arrived when everything was terrible and something was still funny, the specific variety of it that I'd been learning to recognize as Shadowmere's most reliable coping mechanism.

Then Nina. Briefer, less visible, but present.

Then, from inside the office, the sound of Kael breathing.

Just breathing. Slowly. The man back in charge, the wolf quieter, the space between the door and us a little less pressurized than it had been.

We sat on the floor.

An hour and a half until Elite had something. We could wait an hour and a half. We'd been waiting longer than that for harder things.

a/n : you guys... I have a lot to say but not now, awwn,Jordan and Nina is so cute,