Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 434

ARIA

We were in the corridor outside the holding room, reorganizing around the information Vesper had provided and what it meant for Elite's five location list — the third location now significantly elevated in priority, from twenty-three percent to something much more actionable — when it happened.

The anchor, which had been quietly present throughout the evening as it always was, did something it hadn't done before.

Not the sending direction. Not the reaching-toward-Kael quality that I'd used on the lower slope. The receiving direction. The one I'd spent thirty minutes in the east courtyard trying to open and finding nothing through.

Something came through it.

Not words. Not even a picture — not the visual transmission I'd sent to Kael. Something more immediate and less organized than that. More like — physical. Like being in the same room as something that was happening to someone else and feeling the impact of it through the shared space rather than the sensation itself.

Chains. The specific quality of something that constrained movement absolutely — not the rope from the cabinet, not the securing of a cooperative person. The cold heavy weight of wolfsbane chains, which I knew from the texts and from training discussions and which produced a specific effect on anyone with wolf blood, numbing the connection between person and power and wolf simultaneously.

And pain.

The pain was the part that arrived last and was the loudest. Not my pain — I knew what my pain felt like, knew the scratch from Ivory's training blade and the bruise from the shield gap and the various accumulated minor damage of the past several weeks. This was different. This had a different quality and a different origin and it was coming from outside me, through the anchor, through the bloodline connection that Ivory knew how to use from four years of studying it and had apparently decided to use now.

She was sending.

Not words. Not the deliberate organized transmission of someone choosing what to communicate — this felt involuntary. Like something that was happening to her was leaking through the connection without being controlled, the strength of the experience overcoming whatever caution had been keeping the channel closed.

I screamed.

I didn't mean to. The sound came out of me the same way the lunar blast had come out in the corridor — faster than the decision, the body responding to something the mind was still catching up to. The echo of Ivory's pain hit me and came back out as sound before I could stop it and then I understood the danger of being connected to someone who was being hurt and I shut the channel down hard, the way you shut a door against a wind, both hands on it, all of my weight.

The silence after was very loud.

Kael was in front of me.

I didn't know when he'd gotten there — he'd been several feet away and then he wasn't. His hands were on my arms, steadying, and his eyes were doing the checking thing, the rapid assessment of someone looking for visible damage.

"What happened," he said.

"She sent," I said. My voice was not entirely steady. "Ivory. She sent something through the anchor. Not deliberately — it came through because whatever they're doing to her—" I stopped. Breathed. "Wolfsbane chains. She's conscious. She's fighting whatever they're doing. And she's—" I stopped again.

"Tell me," he said.

"Being shot at," I said. "At range. Not the teleportation kind — the physical kind. They're testing something. Or punishing something. Or both." I met his eyes. "She's in pain. Real pain. The shield might still be active — Aryada's gift — but even with the shield at that level of sustained—"

"How long," he said. "How long has it been since they took her."

"Two hours," Jordan said, from behind him.

"Two hours," Kael said. "Two hours of—"

"We have the location," Nina said. The operational voice. The one that moved things forward because backward was not a useful direction. "Elite has confirmation now, based on the anchor transmission aligning with the third location's parameters. We have the access point information from Vesper." She looked at Kael. "We can move."

"We move," he said.

"The team," Jordan said. "Who goes."

"Nina, Jordan, Elite," Kael said. "Myself. Two additional from the defense rotation that Elite selects." He looked at me. "Not you."

I opened my mouth.

"Not you," he said again, with the specific quality that was not the Alpha voice — was something more direct than that, more personal. "I know what you're going to say. I know your powers are relevant. I know you can fight. But Ivory has been sending me the same message for four years by not telling me what she was doing, and I've been furious at her for it, and I am not going to do the same thing to you and pretend it's different because the reasoning sounds better."

"Then tell me the real reason," I said.

"The real reason," he said, "is that I cannot split my attention between finding Ivory and keeping you safe and do either of them with what they need. Not tonight. Not with the wolf where it is. Not with Damon potentially in that location and whatever this network has access to." He held my gaze with the steadiness of someone saying something he'd decided rather than something he was performing. "I need to know you're here. Safe. Here. If I know that—" he stopped. "If I know that, I can focus on what we're going in there to do."

"She's being hurt," I said.

"I know," he said.

"Every minute—"

"I know," he said. "Which is why we're leaving now. And why I need you to be here so I'm not spending half my attention on another direction."

I looked at him. At the specific weight of what he was asking — not dismissal, not the old version of inadequate Luna who wasn't capable enough to be included. The actual version. The one that acknowledged what I was and what I could do and asked me not to do it anyway because the specific equation of this specific situation worked better if I wasn't in it.

It was the hardest version to argue with.

"Communication," I said. "If anything comes through the anchor — if she sends again — I'm the one who receives it. I need to be able to tell you."

"Jordan," Kael said.

"Continuous," Jordan said. "Every fifteen minutes. More if anything comes through."

"And if I get a location from her directly," I said. "A picture, something specific, something that changes the plan—"

"Immediately," Kael said. "Immediate contact, whatever you have."

I looked at the floor for a moment. At the corridor that had the scorch mark on the ceiling from whatever had happened during the curse years that nobody had gotten around to fully repairing. At the door to the holding room where Vesper was having a very bad night.

"Alright," I said.

"Alright," he said.

"Go get her," I said. "Bring her back."

Something moved in his expression that was past what I had words for at this stage of the evening. He held my gaze for a moment that lasted exactly the right amount of time.

Then he turned to Jordan and Nina and Elite and the three of them moved into the operational phase with the efficiency of people who'd been pointing toward this moment for two hours and were ready to execute.

I stood in the corridor and felt the anchor warm in my chest and the channel that I'd shut down hard still shut, still holding the door closed against the weight of whatever was on the other side of it.

Ivory was conscious. She was fighting. She was in pain in ways that had come through involuntarily.

She was alive.

They were going to bring her back.

I was going to be here when they did.

a/n: guys I just found out I have two exams this week, Thursday and Friday, and it's subjects I'm terrible at, bear with me till this month ending and then surplus chapters daily. I might not update today after this, I need to read.

I swear to God, I'll reply all this comments cause some people are hating on Kael, like what?!! It's not fair, it's not fair 😭😭