Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 438

KAEL

Elite looked up from her maps. The specific look she produced when something had been added to her internal accounting.

Then she looked back down.

"Twenty kilometers," she said. "To the approach point."

"I know," I said.

"The plan from the approach point," she said. "Jordan takes the eastern access. I take the western. Nina and two guards go through the maintenance approach Vesper described. You—"

"Front," I said.

"Anticipated," she said. "I've accounted for it in the approach timing."

"How much did you account for," I said.

"The full version," she said. "All of it. You going first and the wolf's response to finding Ivory and the specific quality of the response to finding whoever did this to her and the amount of time we'll need to manage the operational aftermath of that response." She turned a page in the tactical maps. "I've built it into the timeline."

"You built the wolf response into the timeline," I said.

"Twelve to fifteen minutes," she said. "For the initial response. Followed by the recovery period where the man comes back to the foreground. Then the extraction."

"Twelve to fifteen minutes," I said.

"Elite," Nina said. "That's—"

"Accurate," Elite said. "Operationally, it's accurate. Pretending it's less than twelve to fifteen minutes is aspirational. Building the actual number into the plan is efficient."

Jordan made a sound.

"It's efficient," I said.

"It is," Elite said.

"Fine," I said. "Twelve to fifteen minutes."

"Thirteen if she's conscious when we find her," Elite said. "You'll have more to process."

"Elite," Jordan said.

"I'm building the plan around reality," Elite said. "The plan built around reality works better than the plan built around what we wish reality was. Operational principle."

"She's right," Nina said. "Unfortunately."

"I know she's right," I said. "That doesn't make it—"

"Less," Jordan said.

"Less," I agreed.

We drove in silence for a while. The approach point was visible on the map, getting closer with each minute. The specific preparations that happened in the quiet before an operation — the settling of attention, the centering of focus, the putting away of everything that wasn't relevant to what was about to happen.

I put away the conversation about Jordan being closer. About the wolf moving first. About the mellowing, which I was still not accepting as an accurate characterization even though three out of four people in the car believed it was.

I put away Aria in the east courtyard with the anchor open.

I put away Killian, which was easier, because Killian had been put away for years and was practiced.

I put away the things that were not the facility, not the next ninety minutes, not Ivory in a room with wolfsbane chains and people who'd made decisions about their own continued existence that I was about to assist them in revising.

"She called me a good boy," I said.

Nobody asked what I meant. They all knew.

"In the clinic," I said. "The wolf. She called him a good boy and said she'd missed him."

"She has missed him," Nina said. "Specifically. She told me once that the wolf was easier than the man in some ways because the wolf was straightforward. It wanted what it wanted. It didn't manage things."

"The wolf doesn't manage anything," I said.

"She liked that," Nina said. "About the wolf. She said it was restful."

I thought about that for a moment. About Ivory finding the wolf restful. About the wolf finding her — consistent. The one consistent thing during three years of everything else being inconsistent.

"We're going to get her back," I said. Not to the car. Not to Nina or Jordan or Elite. Just — stating it. For the record. The way certain things needed to be said out loud to become more real.

"Yes," Nina said. "We are."

"And then she's going to spend approximately thirty seconds being relieved before she starts telling us everything we did wrong," Jordan said.

"Twenty seconds," Nina said.

"Fifteen," Elite said.

"Ten," I said. "If we did anything she would have done differently. Which we did."

"The arms," Jordan said.

"The arms," I confirmed.

"She's going to have opinions," Jordan said.

"She always has opinions," I said.

The approach point appeared on the map. I slowed the car and moved toward the stopping point. The facility was ahead. The operation was the next thing.

"Check your equipment," Elite said, moving into the operational register with the clean efficiency of someone flipping a switch.

We checked.

The car was quiet again.

Different quiet this time. The before-quiet. The kind that meant everyone had put the conversation where it needed to go and was now in the place that came before doing what needed to be done.

I got out of the car into the night air.

Thirteen minutes, according to Elite's timeline.

When she was conscious.

I was going to find her conscious.

The wolf agreed, for the first time in a long time, with something the man had decided.

I took that as a good sign.

A/n: okay I don't know why I spent precious hours writing this on THURSDAY, when I have exams in 6 hours, but then again, my fingers have been itching. First I would like to apologize, it came to my notice that I made a huge error, Ivory did not lose her memory on the night of the bonding ceremony. The thing is, she was supposed to lose it, I had the setting for it, Damon hitting her hard, her hitting the wall, the head injury, these were perfect setting, I messed up there, and then I corrected it, using that rogue attack, but my brain forgot that tiny detail so I was like, oh it was the night of the mating ceremony, forgive me. Two; people are out here hating on Kael! Like what, sure I understand, I did not make Kael a simp over Aria and made him a bit biased, but he is a flawed character, and we can see he is not even accepting the fact that he might care for Aria just because she is Aria, because he can't forgive what his dad did and he doesn't believe in that bond, which is a whole lot of messy, but there is progress. You guys are like Aria should leave Kael, hate me please, not Kael cause I swear to God, I am the one making Aria suffer, the new person might be worse 🤣🤣, but anyways, progress. Don't worry, we will get into Aria arc and Kael arc, we still have interesting side characters to deal with.

Also you guys are reminding me about things I have not forgotten; Aria necklace, her bloodline, everything, do not worry, it is jotted down, we will deal with all this.

I would also like to note that considering the relationships in this book; none are decided. But if Aria and Kael end up together, it will be worth it, Aria wont feel like a second choice, and I know you guys want to kick out ivory, maybe I can convince you guys to change your mind cause I genuinely like ivory and Kael interactions and the way they behave to each other.

Also people are asking me, if Aria is actually the FL. I will be honest. Building up this story, I had it to be Ivory, I based the story on someone giving up her love just to save the person life and having to watch on the sidelines, I was playing with myrubik cube and as I was flipping it, I got an idea about flipping the story upside down, and decided to write it from Aria POV, aka the girl ivory gave up her love to, so people are like, why is it ivory based? I apologize but ivory is the catalyst, but hopefully we can all come together and love ivory...hopefully😁.

To the readers who had genuinely not hated Ivory just because, thank you so much, we are so few here, I sympathize with Aria I do truly, but I am the only;y person that knows the whole scope of the story and what everyone suffered, even with me not writing it down, so I do not feel too sympathetic to Aria cause to me, in terms of trauma she has the least, I am not trying to downplay it, I am just saying there is a whole bucket list and she Aria is supposed to be the one with the less trauma, hence the looping over her innocencer being taken by Shadowmere and everyone else just joking around with their trauma as a coping mechanism and we have sweet Aria whose only biggest thing was her insecurity, I am not defending Kael, ivory, or Nina, you guys have the right to remain mad at them, this is the core of being a complex character. So please keep reading, please flooding my comment section, i would like to thank Nikki for that, I can't find that 24 comment thread anymore, I do not know why, and everyone else. Let me not list names, also if you see your username being used as a character name, don't be mad, you guys have complained a lot about the abuse of the name Marcus and me calling a child Luna, I am sure we can all collectively agree that I am hopeless on that front.

Also let me state it here, the timeline is mostly inconsistent, I cant tell days apart, or weeks,sorry about that, I will work on it, most chapters were written with huge gaps among them so what I said in chapter A might be different in chapter B, two I do not know the actual ages of my characters, it was you guys that even told me Aria was 18, because she just got her wolf and I am like, well Kael must be in his early twenties, I personally do not like a child being with a man of more than 3-6 age gap, I was 18 once, and I still saw myself asa child, and not mature enough, so it feels pedophilic to me, so I will settle down and write the ages in the upcoming chapters, know this, Nina and Jordan are older than Kael and Ivory, Jordan is the oldest, then Nina, then Kael, then Ivory then Elite then Aria.

I hope I was able to satisfy the curiosity about why Shadowmere pack was not acting like normal wolves and the mindlink issues and other things.

And I will say this because people are saying oh Kael wolf met Aria first.

NO!

Think of it as DID, Kael wolf and kael are two different people, human consciousness of Kael was in the wolf form when Aria met Kael, hence why he was actual capable of words, with Aria who was still in human form, the wolf often shows up, but his own words are murder, die,.die, die, die, kill, blood, blood, blood, Aria met Kael actual wolf for the first time on that slope when she realized this wolf was different and more violent than the wolf she met before, that is the wolf that has refused to accept the bonding, that is the wolf that is fighting with Kael and that is the wolf that everyone had been telling Kael to try and integrate with it, this has been hinted since that day Kael wanted to take Aria wolf hunting and then changed his mind, I'll End here, running out of wordcount. Pray for me guys.