Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 489

ARIA

He looked at me.

"The two of us," he said.

"Kael-resistant and moon-sensitive," I said. "Both standing outside in an emergency while thirty wolves and everyone else disappears underground."

"Nina knows where it is," he said.

"Nina definitely knows where it is," I said. "Nina built the security installation."

"Jordan knows," he said.

"Jordan helped with the documentation," I said.

"Elite knows," he said.

"Elite knows everything," I said.

He looked at the walkie-talkie.

"I'm not asking them," he said.

"Why not," I said.

"Because," he said, "if I ask them where the bunker is, they're going to know that I don't know where the bunker is, and that information is going to go into the intelligence files."

"It's already in the intelligence files," I said. "Jordan documents everything."

"It's in there as a gap in the Alpha's knowledge base," he said. "If I ask, it becomes an active gap. With a timestamp."

I looked at him.

"You'd rather not know," I said, "than have it documented that you asked."

"I'd rather," he said carefully, "that there be no documentation of the specific meeting where the Alpha asked where the emergency shelter was because he genuinely didn't know."

"That meeting is going to happen eventually," I said.

"Not today," he said.

"What if there's an emergency today," I said.

"There hasn't been an emergency in five and a half days," he said. "Nina said. The longest stretch in months."

"And if one happens today," I said.

"Then we're outside together," he said. "Both of us. Looking very competent."

I pressed my lips together.

The specific image of the two of us standing in an empty pack grounds while everyone else disappeared into a bunker we couldn't access, looking very competent at each other, presented itself fully formed.

Silver, who'd been containing it with diminishing success since the realization had arrived, stopped containing it.

The laugh came out.

Not the quiet version — the real one, the full version, the kind that had surprised me in the east courtyard when Ivory had been reading the note and again beside the pond when Kael had splashed me. The kind that bypassed everything and arrived as itself.

Kael looked at me.

His expression did the controlled thing for approximately two more seconds. Then it didn't do the controlled thing. The laugh that came out of him had the quality of the one from the pond — the genuine article, the version that changed his face, the one that arrived when something had gotten through all the managed surfaces and produced a response from the actual person underneath.

We sat in his office laughing at the specific absurdity of the two most powerful people in Shadowmere being the only two members of the pack who couldn't access the pack's emergency shelter for entirely different but equally complete reasons.

"We're the baits," he said, through it.

"Both of us," I said.

"Me because the bunker was built to resist me," he said.

"Me because the bunker was built to hurt me," I said.

"So in an emergency," he said.

"We stay outside," I said.

"Together," he said.

"Looking very competent," I said.

He looked at the walkie-talkie.

"I'm still not asking," he said.

"I know," I said.

"Elite would document it," he said.

"Elite has already documented it," I said. "The gap has been in the files since approximately day three of my residency."

He looked at me.

"Elite told you," he said.

"Elite didn't need to tell me," I said. "Silver worked it out from the pattern of things nobody mentioned."

He looked at the ceiling. At the window. At the book that was still on the floor where he'd thrown it when I'd knocked.

Then he reached down and picked it up.

He looked at the cover.

He looked at me.

"Do you want to know what happens with the window situation," he said.

I looked at the book. At Kael, who'd spent three years as a wolf listening to Ivory read these stories aloud and had apparently arrived at genuine investment in the narrative outcomes.

"Yes," I said.

He looked surprised.

"I'm bored," I said. "And you were going to tell me anyway. The window is clearly an important plot point."

He looked at the book.

He looked at me.

"Everest's wife," he said, "has very specifically timed arrivals. That's the first thing you need to understand about her as a character. She's not catching him by accident. She knows the household schedule completely and she uses it." He turned to the relevant page. "The window in the east bedroom has been established in three previous chapters as a detail that Everest thinks is unimportant. Ivory would say this is foreshadowing. I'm inclined to agree."

I settled into the chair.

Silver was warm and present and very amused.

The pack grounds were quiet outside the window. The break was continuing. The elder council was somewhere in the building, miserable in the specific way of people who'd made a decision and were discovering that the decision had not produced the outcome they'd expected.

And in the Alpha's office, on day five of a break that had given us both the first genuine pause in months, Kael read me the window section of Ivory's novel with the comfortable ease of someone sharing something he'd already decided was worth sharing.

It was, genuinely, very good foreshadowing.

A/N: The sickness took me out longer than I expected, sorry guys. Enjoy.