Chapter 192: A Mess

Azura’s POV

Rhydor remained perfectly still by the entrance of the room, his broad back pressed flat against the dark wood of the door, his intense amber eyes completely pinned to my face.

Slowly, his gaze dropped down to the stone floor beneath us.

He stared at the white sheets of paper I had ruthlessly shoved off his workspace, tracking the mess all the way over to the far corner where the feathered ink quill lay ruined on the woven rug.

He looked at the disaster I had caused in less than a single minute.

Then, his eyes dragged back up to meet mine.

"Is there something you want from me, Azura?" he asked, his voice completely calm, devoid of any anger.

I pulled my brows together into a sharp, defensive frown.

"What?" I snapped, my posture locking up as I felt a sudden rush of heat hit my face.

"Am I not allowed to simply be in this room? Must I always want some specific thing from you just to stand in your presence?"

"Is it a rule now that every single time you see me in front of you, you automatically assume I have a hidden agenda?"

I crossed my arms tightly over my chest, squeezing my elbows as I shifted my weight on the hardwood.

"Can I not just sit wherever I want in this house?" I added, my voice dropping into a quieter, biting register.

He looked back down at the scattered papers on the floor, then lifted his eyes to mine once more.

His handsome face was empty of emotion.

There was nothing at all written on his features that I could read, and that emptiness scared me more than a shout would have.

I honestly didn’t understand the strange thing that had just taken place outside between him and Isadora by the carriage steps.

But as I sat on his desk, one heavy truth settled deep into my chest.

Even if he was truly trying his best to break off their old connection for good, a small, stubborn part of his soul still cared about her deeply.

I could feel the invisible weight of it hanging in the room.

Or maybe, I was just completely imagining things because my own mind was spinning out of control.

"Fine," he said, his voice entirely flat and even.

"If you wish to stay in this room, then stay."

He walked slowly over to the side of the massive desk, dropping down into a low crouch on the floor.

Without another word, his large hands began gathering the white papers scattered across the stone.

I sat perfectly still, watching the slow, methodical way his fingers moved over the sheets.

A toxic part of me desperately wanted him to snap.

I wanted him to raise his voice, to shout at me, to slam his hand on the wood, anything would be better than this suffocating quiet.

The dead silence between us felt a thousand times worse than a screaming match.

What exactly had he and Isadora discussed out there in the corridor?

What words had she whispered to him that had left him looking so utterly hollow and quiet?

"Let me guess," I said, the words cutting through the quiet like a sharp knife.

"Things didn’t exactly work out the way you wanted between you and your precious woman outside. That is the real reason why you are standing there frowning at the floor."

His movements stopped instantly.

His large, scarred hands froze directly over a neat stack of pack documents.

"Nothing happened between me and Isadora, Azura," he said, his voice incredibly quiet and steady.

"We had a conversation. That is all it was."

He lowered his head and went right back to gathering the loose sheets of paper from the rug.

"Then why do you look so incredibly sad right now?" I pushed harder, leaning my torso forward as I watched him closely.

"Why do you look like a man who deeply regrets the exact choice he just made out there?"

Rhydor stopped moving for the second time.

A long, heavy exhale rattled through his chest.

He abruptly dropped the small stack of papers he had just gathered back onto the corner of the workspace, gripping the edge of the timber as he stood up to his full height.

He was standing right beside the desk now, towering over me, while I remained perched right in the very middle of the wood.

The physical space separating our bodies was dangerously small.

He looked straight into my eyes, the mask finally slipping from his face.

"Why can you not just believe the words coming out of my mouth for once?" he asked, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling frequency.

"Nothing is happening between Isadora and me. We have settled our past. We have drawn the line."

He paused, the muscle in his jaw tightening until a hard line formed along his cheek.

"We are just..." he started, but the words caught in his throat.

He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

"Friends?" I finished for him, my voice dripping with bitter sarcasm as I tilted my head to the side.

"Is that the silly little lie you keep repeating to yourself every day?" I asked slowly, the anger in my chest twisting into a sharp, sudden ache.

"Despite every single thing you claim you are trying to build between the two of us... you know deep down in your soul that you still love her. You know you want to be with her."

A sudden crack broke through my voice, destroying my confident facade.

"So why on earth are you making me feel this horrible way, Rhydor?" I whispered, the words barely audible in the empty study.

Rhydor stared at me, a look of profound confusion crossing his amber eyes.

"Since when did you actually start feeling anything toward me, Azura?" he asked quietly.

"I was under the impression that you hated my guts."

I quickly looked away from his intense gaze, staring hard at the dark bookshelves across the room as my face burned.

"The stupid mate bond woke up," I muttered, my fingers twisting the fabric of my clothes.

"Everything inside my head is completely confusing now. The way I feel, the way I think, it is all tangled up. I cannot even control my own actions anymore."

"That is exactly how it feels," Rhydor murmured, taking half a step closer until his shadow completely covered my lap.

"That is the exact storm I have been dealing with every single day since you arrived."

He stepped even closer, his large frame completely locking me in place.

"I do not know if I can control the bond either," he said, his voice dropping into a rough whisper that vibrated straight through my skin.

"But the one thing I know for certain... is that my heart beats for you. It beats only for you, Azura, and I intend to keep it that way for the rest of my life."

He paused, his eyes scanning my face with an intense, raw vulnerability.

"But if your choice is to keep making things incredibly hard between us... then I have no choice but to wait."

"I will stand here and wait until you are fully ready to accept me as your mate."

His voice dropped an octave lower, turning dark and heavy with a sudden warning.

"But until that day comes... I need you to stop messing me up with these chaotic feelings of yours."

"I need you to let me know exactly where you stand. Because right now, my mind is a complete and total disaster."

"And the conflicting emotions I am constantly receiving through your bond... are confusing. They are messing with my head."

I sat in absolute silence, listening to the heavy echo of his words against the stone walls.

The bitter truth was that he was entirely right.

I had no idea how to handle the wild, roaring magic of my own bond.

I didn’t know how to control the messy feelings swirling inside my chest, and I had no clue how to pull them back once they started sliding toward him.

Every single time a heavy emotion hit my soul, whether it was burning anger, biting jealousy, or a sudden, desperate longing, the feeling traveled straight through the invisible thread between us, hitting him with the force of a tidal wave.

I couldn’t block it out.

And right now, at this very second, I was completely furious.

I was angry that he had been talking so softly to Isadora in the corridor.

I was angry that she was walking through our pack house, and I was angry that he hadn’t immediately shoved her away when she clung to his arm.

But as I looked at the tight lines of his face, a sudden realization hit me.

He was the one who was truly suffering more in this silence.

Rhydor had already mastered his abilities; he knew exactly how to control his side of the bond, completely blocking his own dark thoughts from ever reaching my mind.

But because I was entirely untrained, every single ounce of jealousy I felt doubled up with his own internal chaos, creating a nightmare inside his head.

"Then teach me how to control it," I said quietly, looking up at him through my eyelashes.

"Teach me how to hold back my feelings from reaching your mind. I hate being messed up like this."

Rhydor didn’t give me an answer.

He just stood there in front of me, his amber eyes searching my face with a quiet, stubborn look.

And in that long, silent look, I understood his silent answer perfectly. He didn’t want me to learn how to control the bond.

He didn’t want me to learn how to build a wall and block him out of my head.

Because he knew that the moment I learned how to pull my chaotic feelings back, I would pull everything away from him.

I would shut the door, and he would never be able to feel a single drop of my soul ever again.

He wanted to feel me.

He wanted to experience every single piece of my existence, the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly.

He wanted the entire mess.

A sudden, hot spark of pure anger flared up in my stomach at his stubbornness.

With a sharp swipe of my hand, I intentionally struck the neat stack of papers he had just painstakingly gathered from the floor.

The white sheets slid off the polished wood again, scattering wildly across the stone rug like giant snowflakes.

Rhydor let out a sharp, low hiss through his clenched teeth.

"Stop it, Azura."

He immediately bent his tall frame down again, his jaw ticking as he picked up the papers one by one.

He stacked them together with sharp, forceful snaps of his fingers, placing the pile neatly back onto the center of the desk right beside my hip.

I didn’t wait a single second.

I reached out and shoved the pile right off the edge again, watching the pages flutter through the air.

I stared straight into his amber eyes the entire time, my gaze locked onto his as an open, dangerous challenge.

"If you push those pack documents off this desk one more time..." Rhydor said, his voice turning ice-cold, a dark promise hidden beneath the quiet words, "...I swear you will be the one on your knees picking up every single sheet yourself."

I let out a sharp huff, blowing a stray strand of black hair out of my face.

The lock of hair lifted into the air for a brief second before falling right back into my eyes.

He crouched down, gathered the papers for the third time, and kept his sharp eyes pinned directly to mine as he stood up.

He slammed the neat stack down onto the timber, his breathing turning slightly heavier.

I didn’t blink.

I didn’t look away from him for even a fraction of a second.

Lifting my right leg, I used the heel of my leather boot to ruthlessly kick the entire stack of documents right off the workspace, sending them flying into the dark corner of the room.

Before I could even drop my leg back down, his hand shot out like a lightning bolt.

His thick, scarred fingers wrapped firmly around my ankle in an iron-tight grip.

With a sudden, forceful yank, he pulled my leg toward him.

My body slid rapidly across the smooth, polished surface of the desk.

The sudden movement made my breath hitch in my throat as my legs were dragged completely off the wood, dangling uselessly over the air while my rear end remained pinned to the desktop.

I was completely trapped, my body locked in place beneath his shadow.

Rhydor stepped directly into the small space between my dangling knees, his massive frame completely towering over me.

He leaned forward, slamming both of his large palms flat onto the wood on either side of my hips, effectively caging me inside the circle of his arms.

"You really want to test me right now, Azura?" he asked, his voice incredibly low, dark, and dangerous against my lips.

He leaned down even closer, until I could feel the scorching heat radiating from his skin, the intoxicating scent of smoke filling my lungs.

"My mind is fucked up right now because of you," he whispered, his amber eyes burning into mine with a fierce, wild hunger that made my entire body go completely stiff.

"And trust me... you do not want to find out exactly what I do when I am fucked up."

His sharp gaze locked onto mine, a heavy, suffocating tension filling the small space between our lips.

I swallowed hard, my heart hammering so violently against my ribs I was certain he could hear it.