Chapter 45: Chapter Forty-Five

“This is absurd,” Shivani uttered, as she dropped the files she was holding on the desk with a hard thump directly in front of Ryder, spraying him with dust and turning away before he could utter a word of his displeasure at her childish act.

“You being petty is absurd,” Ryder muttered under his breath, waving his hands through the air to clear away the dust particles.

“I heard that!” she yelled from behind one of the shelves she had disappeared into.

“Yeah, you were supposed to!” he yelled back, shifting the files away from him as his lips turned down into a frown.

Ever since he had walked into the archive building this morning, Shivani had been finding little tricks to get a rise out of him. While she hadn’t fully rejected his bid to challenge his father to the Alpha Supreme duel, she hadn’t accepted it either.

These little acts of pettiness from her were just her way of displaying her displeasure without actually voicing it.

“And you being suicidal is stupid!”

“I am not suicidal!”

“Your plan says otherwise!”

“Shivani,” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off the anger that was fighting to explode out of him. He had to keep a level head where Shivani was concerned, otherwise he risked losing one of the few allies he had aligned himself with. “I don’t want to fight with you on this anymore, please.”

“Well, too bad for you,” she responded, her words dripping with venom. “We are going to fight about this.”

“Shivani,” he sighed again, rising from his seat and striding towards the shelves. “I have made my decision, old friend. There is no persuading me from it. All I ask is that you support me and nothing else. Is that too much to ask of you after everything we have been through?”

Gone was the Alpha wolf who maimed and killed those who had crossed him. And in his stead was a man in love, seeking help and support from his friend to keep his people safe and end the reign of a tyrant.

Shivani pursed her lips, her arms crossed over her chest, gaze set hard upon Ryder as he emerged into her space, but she didn’t utter a word to acknowledge or refute his statement.

“Every single minute that we waste and drag it out is a minute that my father enslaves or kills another human. I think the people have suffered enough, don’t you think?

“You are right,” she heaved a sigh, uncrossing her arms and hanging her head low, her loose curls falling down and creating a curtain around her face. “I just…” she blew out a breath, pulling her hair away from her face as she raised her head to look at him. “I can’t lose you too.”

Her lips wobbled as she stared up at him, tears brimming within her eyes. And it was then, as he saw the blatant display of emotions from her for the first time in years, that Ryder realized that he had screwed up, bad.

“Fuck!” he cursed as he closed the distance between them and gathered her into his arms, patting her back lightly as she released choked-up sobs that twisted his guts and made him feel more stupid than he already did.

Shivani’s rejection of his plan had nothing to do with Saffron, her status as a human, or the future he was seemingly throwing away for her. But it had everything to do with her mate, Max, who was killed during an Alpha challenge.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t think…” he trailed off, unsure of how to proceed. He had no idea how to console a crying woman, nor did he know what to do in cases such as this, especially when Shivani wasn’t one for expressing her emotions.

Losing Max had made her closed off and distant.

She pulled back after a beat, using the sleeve of her dress to wipe away the tears that had flowed down her cheeks.

“Don’t you dare die on me,” she warned, her words coming out scratchy and conveying unsaid emotions.

“I won’t,” he promised, pressing his forehead to hers as he closed his eyes. “I promise.”

The clattering of utensils against the linoleum floor had both Ryder and Shivani tensing, his eyes snapping wide open as he turned around slowly to assess what the disturbance was.

“Oh my God! I am so sorry! I didn’t mean to… I didn’t know that… I didn’t see…” Saffron stuttered, as she bent down to pick up the food she had dropped, her gaze fixed on the mess she had made.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, reaching her side in three long strides. He crouched before her and reached out a hand to help pull her up, but she shied away from his touch, refusing to make eye contact with him.

“No,” she shook her head as she rose to her feet, the tray she was holding acting like a shield as she kept it in front of her.

A shield? To protect her, from him? Why? Ryder’s hand still hung mid-air, as he sifted through his thoughts, trying to come up with an angle that best explained her change in behavior.

Had someone hurt her? Again?

Ryder curled his hand into a fist as he rose to his full height, his gaze steady on her.

“Is everything okay?” he asked slowly, noting the distance she had put between them, his brows pinching into a frown, his wolf pacing restlessly inside him, displaying its displeasure at the distance.

“Yeah,” she nodded distractedly before she pivoted and ran off like her pants were set on fire.

Ryder gave chase, forgetting about his situation with Shivani, his mind singularly focused on Saffron, and the cold shoulder she had given him.

“Hey,” he called out when he caught up to her, his hand wrapping around her arm like a vise, as he held her in place, feeling like she was going to run, if he didn’t. “Wait up, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she responded quickly, too quickly for it to be anything but a lie.

“Why are you lying to me?”

“I’m not lying. There’s nothing wrong.”

“Something is obviously wrong if you won’t even look at me and act like my hand has fucking STD.”

Saffron winced at the accusation, giving him another sign that something was indeed wrong.

“It’s just,” she blew out a breath as she raised her head up, keeping her gaze on his pectoral muscles. “I didn’t know you weren’t alone, and I obviously interrupted an…” she swallowed against the lump in her throat. “An intimate moment between... between you two.”

“Intimate moment?” he queried, confused for a second before he realized what she meant. “Oh.”

He belted out a laugh that had her head snapping up, a confused expression on her face before it morphed into anger.

“Are you serious right now? It’s not funny!”

“No, I agree. Of course, it’s not.”

Ryder tried to keep a straight face, but it was impossible to do, not when jealousy was the reason behind her ire and cold shoulder. And to think that he thought someone had hurt her.

“Then stop laughing!”

“I’m sorry,” he raised his hands up in surrender as he tried to fight off the smile that was threatening to overtake his entire face.

Saffron huffed and began to turn away, but he held her again, stopping her in her tracks.

“Are you jealous?” he teased, wiggling his eyebrows at her in a way that would make Shivani and Zayden think that he had finally lost his mind.

“No, of course not,” Saffron denied, rolling her eyes as she tried and failed miserably to make him believe that her little fit had nothing to do with jealousy.

“Green is a good color on you.”

“I am running late,” she uttered stiffly. “Now, if you will be so kind as to let me go…”

“No,” he cut her off, his tone turning serious, as he used his pointer finger to lift her chin up, so she was now gazing into his eyes. “There is nothing going on between Shivani and I, never has, and never will be. We are just friends, old friends.”

“I didn’t ask you that,” she muttered under her breath.

“You didn’t have to.”

Silence enveloped them then as they gazed into each other’s eyes, her eyes flashing gold for a second before it disappeared and returned to its normal brown color.

“What were you doing in the…” Ryder began to ask, but a new voice cut into his sentence, making them both turn as one towards the source of the voice.

“Quit whatever that is and come meet me inside now!” Zayden ordered, disappearing into the building before Ryder could say a word.

“I have to go,” he uttered as he turned his attention towards Saffron, dropping a kiss on her forehead on impulse before sauntering off, leaving her a blushing mess behind him.