Hade's Rose

Chapter 23: The Fates

I had to admit that a lot of the pain and sickness I had endured lately had come from my own volition. It was something I had allowed to happen to me and therefore I tried never to begrudge or complain; I did not have the right. Yet, when I woke-up, I felt an indomitable fury as my neck felt like a dog's bedraggled chew toy. This pain was not my fault. This pain was not from my own choosing. This pain I most certainly begrudged.

I sat up swiftly, pushing away the suffocating covers of the bedclothes and looked around me. It was the same bedroom as always, a room I felt sick of seeing. I swung myself out of bed, getting up rather wobblily and shifted my way over to the door.

"Luna?" a middle-aged nurse startled in surprise as I leant heavily on the door, swinging it forcefully open. She was sat comfortably in a chair opposite, knitting some kind of pattern to seemingly fill her time to the end of her shift, but now her needles and wool clacked to the floor in her surprise. "You should be in bed."

"No. No, I should not." I seethed, facing the woman face on as my head movement was encumbered by a thick bandage around what felt like a still gaping wound in my lower neck. "Where is he?"

The nurse, to her credit, didn't ask me who I meant. "In his office, but - "

"Thank-you," I asserted, before marching towards the King's private study. I am not capable of a rapid and dramatic exit however, and the nurse followed me closely.

"What are you doing?" I turned on her exasperatedly when the nurse laid her hand on my arm as if to guide me.

This nurse, a wolfwoman with a tall and bonny frame, went red in the face with embarrassment, "I'm – I'm just assisting you My Lady down the hall."

"Well, stop it." I snapped, feeling like I was five again and back in school where my parents had to come in to defend to my teachers that I didn't need chaperoning during breaktime.

"That will be all Margaret, thank-you." Hades gravelly voice made both of us jump, as he opened the door from within his study. Thick butterscotch drowned the air around me, making me feel woozy with pheromones. Hades stood at his office door, back to his imposing self, frightening 'Margaret' into meek compliance as she shuffled away bleating "Yes, your Majesty."

I almost forgot my fury. To say the King wasn't intimidating, even for me, would be a lie. It wasn't just his large frame, although that definitely helped, but it was something in his countenance that seemed to make my knees shake. The flatness of his facial expression and the confidence in his posture: this man rarely doubted himself. It was probably also the knowledge that he could turn into a giant wolf at any given moment and rip someone's head off... but I tried not to think about that right now.

"Come in Rose," Hades spoke calmly, whatever vulnerability I saw in him earlier seemed gone; it brought back my fury afresh.

He moved out of the way of the door and sat down in his chair. A smaller but still comfortable looking armchair had been moved into the room since I'd last been in here, placed on the other side of the thick, mahogany desk. This disturbed me, as it looked as if he had been expecting me and was therefore better prepared than me for this encounter.

I sat down, but sitting as far forward as I could go, not wanting to relax my body by even an inch in his presence. Before my anger could be tamed by our mating bond, I lashed out: "You bit me."

"Yes," Hades spoke, leaning his elbows on the table and staring at me so intently I flushed, "I had to."

"You had to bite me?" disbelief and anger coloured my tone.

My infuriating mate replied in his most unyielding manner, "Yes."

"And pray tell me why you needed to bite me?" I think the only thing preventing my blood pressure from hitting the roof was the extensive smell of butterscotch in this small room, which just about kept a lid on my anger enough to prevent me from throwing things. I can't remember ever feeling this furious in my life, enflamed by how my wound pulsed aggressively in my neck.