Hade's Rose

Chapter 21: Order or Chaos?

"You cannot be serious?" I spoke more harshly than I meant to, but I couldn't help the horror that came upon me as the nurse rolled a wheelchair into my room.

"Quite serious," the nurse replied chirpily, her eyes twinkling with mirth.

"Hmmph," I grunted and scowled in response. This morning I had slept in after a restless and self-conscious night, waking every few hours aware of the Wolfman's presence across the room from me. With his enhanced senses, I was pretty sure he could detect whenever I stirred but he made no allusion to it. My only clue that he was awake was how still he held his body; the moonlight dimly outlining his large, yet unnaturally frozen figure.

Like most mornings, Hadrian was gone before I had woken up. But, by my bedside table lay a note, which had written on it in elegant scrawl: 'I will come take you to the gardens at eleven-thirty. Hades.'

That had been just over an hour ago. Since then I had waited in nervous anticipation, washing and dressing carefully. But, whilst I knew I was no picture of peak physicality, I did not need a wheelchair and had no intention on sitting down in it.

To make my point, I rose and walked across the room to the window seat, glaring pointedly. My ferocity was clearly underappreciated as the nurse just laughed, pricked up her ears to suggest she heard someone coming and made her retreat from the room. No guesses as to who was about to arrive.

King Hadrian came through the bedroom door, imposing as always yet slightly softened by a soft crinkling around the eyes as if the nurse and himself had shared a joke on his way in. Butterscotch seeped into the room, making me feel flushed and uncomfortable, but I refused to be side-tracked. "I do not need a wheelchair," I spoke as calmly as I could, hoping he could see the indignity of the situation.

My mate's eyes flicked between me and the high-backed, mahogany carved chair left in the middle of the room. "Would you prefer if I carried you?", Hades asked seriously, stepping towards me as if to carry this request out immediately, but paused again at the apparent shock on my face.

"No, I.. I prefer to walk by myself," I spoke, pushing the thought of being carried by him firmly out of my mind, but blushing nonetheless. I stood up, to evidence my claim, standing with my weight on my right side and back held straight with pride. For goodness sake, I used to carry cleaning equipment up his flights of stairs and scrub every inch of these apartments I thought with exasperation.

Hades stared at me for several long seconds, an intimidating and piercing stare that no doubt scared Alphas and councilmen; I would be lying if I didn't admit that it unnerved me too. I had no idea what he was thinking, but eventually he slowly nodded. "Alright," he stepped back and held the door open, "after you Rose."

I blinked in surprise. No drawn-out battle of wills? No overt display of protective instincts? Hades could see the confusion on my face and smiled wryly, but he didn't explain himself. That unnerved me even more than his stare. I stepped forward cautiously, then with faux confidence proceeded to walk past him and out into the corridor. My arm brushed up against his as I walked past, causing all the hairs to rise and for my insides to feel giddy; the mate-bond seemed to be growing rather than diminishing with our renewed proximity.

We walked side-by-side, out of his apartments, past the Delta guards (of which I noticed there were now two instead of one, but not any I recognised), and for the first time I went down the main staircase as opposed to the servants' stairs. I almost turned towards my old, familiar route before remembering what had changed. Hades said nothing but I felt his gaze on me as we made our way slowly down; I was not ashamed of using the banister for support, but I felt self-conscious of his gaze on me.

The silence between us had been unsettling and I felt forced into speaking when Hades made no sign of leading us to where we were going. A strategy to probably get me to talk I realised after I spoke. "Which gardens?" I asked, breaking the silence as we reached the ground floor.