Chapter 514
4:01 pm P MWW
Mated To My Mate’s Worst Enemy
Chapter 514
Chapter 514
ARIA
10
Finished
Kael was conscious. Jordan and Nina had gotten him into a sitting position against the far wall, away from the debris. He was shaking less than he had been, the compound’s forced shift settling, the body recalibrating. He was looking at the room with the expression of someone who was remembering in pieces
getting fragments of what had happened and putting them together in the wrong order.
“What happened,” he said. His voice was rough. “Ivory. Are you hurt-”
“I’m fine,” she said, automatically.
“She’s bleeding,” Killian said, fi someone who’d seen the inj
“I know I’m bleeding,” Iv
“Your hand.” Killian
“I’ll deal with it,
“Ivory.” Kael sa together spe
She loo
eside her. Not accusatory – stating a fact, the specific urgency of was noting that it required attention.
Ideal with it.”
e had the quality of someone who was still in pieces but was holding himself To say the name.
So
–
ugh her face the professional composure doing its work, the held-back tears relief that he was present and conscious and himself visible in the specific way relief been afraid for someone.
to him. Softer. “I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re fine.”
rted.
control,” she said. “It wasn’t you. It was what they did to the root.”
“he said.
she said. “We’re all here. Nobody is dead. The lab is-” she looked at the lab again, and ng moved through her face that she pulled back quickly, “-the lab can be rebuilt.”
Kael said.
ow,” she said.
sorry,” he said.
know, she said.
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Chapter 514-
#Finished
I was sitting on the floor. I’d come to be on the floor at some point during the aftermath without quite tracking when the specific decision of a body that has been through a lot and would like to be lower to the ground for a while. Jordan was beside me, having determined that the wall was adequate support and was leaning against it with the cuts on his face and the bruises already starting to show.
“Are you hurt,” he said to me.
“No.” I said.
He looked at me.
“Really,” I said. “Ivory pushed me out of the way before he got to me. And then-” I thought about what Ivory had thrown, what Nina had done with the glass, what Jordan had done with the baseball bat that was now in pieces on the clinic floor. “Where did you get a baseball bat,” I said.
“I’ve had it for two years.” Jordan said.
“Why,” I said.
“Because during the curse years,” Jordan said, “sometimes the wolf got past the door. And regular weapons either hurt people too much or not enough. A bat is-” he looked at the broken bat on the floor, “-was a middle option.”
“It didn’t work.” I said.
“It almost never works,” Jordan said. “But it made me feel better.”
I looked at the broken bat. At the pieces of Ivory’s worktable. At the window that was now gone. At Killian, who was sitting beside Ivory and was bleeding from the reopened injury and the new ones and hadn’t said anything about any of them because he was checking Ivory’s hand with the specific focused care of someone who was not going to stop checking until he knew the extent of it.
Ivory let him. That was the thing that struck me. She let him look at her hand and check the head injury and assess the damage without telling him she was fine or redirecting or using the clinical voice to create distance.
She was too tired for the distance.
“The root,” Nina said. She was standing in the middle of the destroyed lab doing her security chief assessment, cataloguing everything. “They’ve activated it once. They can activate it again. We need to figure out how they did it and cut off the mechanism.”
“Tomorrow,” Ivory said.
“Yes,” Nina said. “Tomorrow.” She looked at Kael. “Tonight you’re not moving. You, me, Jordan, and someone is staying in this clinic until the compound has fully cycled and we know the root has gone dormant again.”
“I’ll stay.” Jordan said.
We’ll all stay,” Nina said.
“The secondary clinic, Ivory said. “The main one is-” she looked at the lab again.
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Chapter 514-
Finished
“The secondary clinic has Killian’s setup,” Jordan said. “We can use the main treatment space. Not the lab. Just the treatment area.”
“The lab,” Ivory said, and she was doing it again – looking at it with the held-back tears pressing harder against the mechanism.
“We’ll fix it,” I said.
She looked at me.
“I know where everything goes,” I said. “I’ve been in here enough times. I know which shelves had which things. We’ll fix it.”
She looked at me for a long moment.
“You can’t know where everything goes,” she said. “Some of those compounds have very specific-”
“Then you’ll tell me where everything goes,” I said, “and I’ll put them there. Or you’ll direct the whole thing from a chair while your hand is being treated properly.” I held her gaze. “But you’re not cleaning up your own lab tonight with a head injury and a hand injury. You’re getting treated first.”
Ivory opened her mouth.
“She’s right,” Killian said.
“You don’t get a vote,” Ivory said.
“You’re bleeding on the floor of your own clinic,” Killian said, “which is ironic and also a medical concern.”
“I’m aware of the irony,” Ivory said.
‘Let someone treat you,” Kael said. His voice was steadier now. The shaking had mostly stopped, the compound’s effect settling. “Please. Let someone-”
–
“Fine,” Ivory said. The word came out with everything in it the exhaustion of someone who’d been holding things together at significant personal cost and had reached the end of what holding things together was going to accomplish tonight.
Fine,” she said again, quieter. “Fine.”
She let Killian help her up from the floor.
She let Nina guide her toward the treatment area.
She let herself be treated instead of treating.
I sat on the floor of the destroyed lab with Jordan beside me and Kael across the room, and the full moon was outside the window that no longer existed, and somewhere out there the people who’d done this were watching to see if their plan had worked.
It hadn’t worked.
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Chapter 514-
Barely. It had barely not worked.
But we were all still here
#Finished
Silver, in my head, was warm and present and not saying anything because some moments didn’t need
commentary.
The lab could be rebuilt.
We were still here.
That was what mattered tonight.
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Mated To My Metc’s Worst Enemy
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.