Chapter 47 Caught

Chapter 47 Caught

AZIZA
Vessa stood in the garden entrance with her mouth open.
I scrambled off Rhydian’s lap too fast. My dress was soaked through and tangled around my legs and my shoe slipped hard against the wet stone when I tried to stand. I caught myself on the bench before I could fall properly. My fingers dragged the twisted fabric straight again while my pulse hammered high in my throat.
Then I looked at Vessa.
Nobody spoke.
The fountain still poured quietly into the pool beside us. Water slid over stone somewhere deeper in the garden. The night air pressed cold against my wet skin.
Then Vessa screamed.
Not words at first. Just a horrible sound tearing out of her throat. Her hands flew to either side of her head and she screamed again, louder this time, the words breaking apart inside each other as they came spilling out.
“I knew it!” Her voice cracked sharply. “I knew it, I knew it, I have been saying it for months and nobody listened and I knew it from the first week she walked into this compound and I knew—”
Rhydian stood immediately. He stepped between us without speaking.
Vessa pointed at him with a shaking hand. “Don’t you dare stand in front of her.” Her voice went even higher. “Don’t you dare protect her from me, Rhydian, she is a slave! She is nothing, she is an absorbed omega from a pack that does not even exist and you are standing in front of her like she is— like she is worth—”
The sentence broke apart completely.
She pressed her fist against her mouth hard enough that I saw her shoulders shake with it. Then she lowered her hand and looked at me around Rhydian’s shoulder.
My stomach turned.
“You did something to him,” she said quietly. “Whatever you are, whatever you have been doing in this compound, you bewitched him. This is not him. Rhydian would never— he would never touch someone like you. You are a slave and he is the Crown Prince of this pack and this is not something he does. You did something to him.”
“Vessa.” Rhydian’s voice stayed low.
She ignored him completely.
Her eyes stayed fixed on me, wet and furious and shining in the garden light. “You evil little—” Her breath caught roughly. “You came in here with your lies and you have been working at him since the first week. I saw it. I watched you do it and everybody kept telling me I was imagining things and now—”
She bent down suddenly.
I saw her hand close around one of the loose edging stones from the flowerbeds. She straightened and threw it in the same motion.
Rhydian caught her wrist before the stone left her hand.
It dropped heavily onto the path between them.
Vessa screamed again and fought him properly then, wrenching against his grip hard enough that her hair started slipping loose from its pins. She hit his chest with her free hand once, twice, and he caught both her wrists while saying her name again.
Then all at once she collapsed against him.
“I lost the baby,” she sobbed into his shoulder, the words tearing apart halfway through. “I lost the baby and now I find you here with her and I have nothing, Rhydian, I have nothing—”
He held her while she cried.
I stood three feet away dripping water onto the garden stones with my hand pressed over my mouth so tightly my jaw hurt. The pool beside me reflected strips of broken moonlight across the surface and all I could think about was how thoroughly I had destroyed everything.
Two guards appeared beneath the archway.
Rhydian looked over Vessa’s head toward them. “Take Lady Vessa to her quarters. Stay with her until dawn. Do not leave her alone.”
Vessa pulled back from him slowly.
Mascara streaked beneath her eyes. Tears had ruined the careful composure she carried through this compound every single day. She looked at him first, then at me, then back at him again, and something in her expression shifted into something uglier than anger.
“Slave lover,” she said softly.
The words hit harder quiet.
“Backstabber. You are not the man I thought you were.”
Then she let the guards take her arms and walked out of the garden without looking back.
The archway swallowed her.
The garden fell silent again.
Rhydian stood with his back to me for a few seconds. Then he turned and crossed the stone path toward me and reached for my arms.
I pulled away from him before he could touch me properly.
I walked toward the pool instead and stopped near the edge with my arms wrapped tightly across my chest.
My face felt wet.
I lifted the back of my hand to my cheek and stared at the moisture there afterward. I pressed harder against my skin like that might stop it somehow.
It didn’t.
I had failed.
The thought sat huge and heavy in the middle of my chest.
Months inside this compound. Months memorising patrol routes and shift changes and corridors and doors. I had gotten close enough to the records room to touch the handle. And instead of finishing what I came here to do, I had spent my time tangled up with the Crown Prince of the pack that murdered my parents.
By morning the whole compound would know.
Whatever cover I still had left was gone now.
My mother used to sit at the edge of my bed and teach me the old words quietly until I could repeat them properly back to her. Then she would smooth my hair away from my forehead and tell me the same thing every time.
This is a last resort, Aziza. I pray you never need it.
She had prayed for the wrong thing.
Rhydian stopped in front of me.
He slid one hand beneath my chin and tipped my face upward. His eyes moved slowly over my cheeks for a moment before he bent and pressed his mouth gently against one side where tears still clung to my skin.
Then the other.
“Don’t cry over her,” he said quietly. “Vessa will be handled.”
“You cannot handle this, Rhydian.” My voice came out rough. “This is not a filing dispute. She is going to your father and the whole compound will know by morning and I—”
“I will deal with my father.”
“And then what?” I pulled my chin away from his hand. “Then what happens? She tells the Alpha and the Alpha starts asking questions and the questions lead back to me and everything I’ve— everything—”
The words caught painfully in my throat.
I pressed my hand hard against my sternum over the rings beneath my dress and tried to breathe properly again.
“I cannot fix this.”
His eyes stayed on my face.
“I will kill anyone who tries to harm you.”
I stared at him. “Don’t say that.”
“Ana—”
“I mean it, Rhydian.” I grabbed his wrist before I realised I was doing it. “Do not say things like that. Do not do anything reckless because of me. Whatever Vessa says tomorrow, whatever your father says, please just think before you act.”
His gaze dropped briefly to my hand around his wrist.
Then back to my face.
“I can protect you,” he said quietly. “Formally. Publicly.” He paused. “Marry me.”
My mouth opened before I could stop it.
“I am serious, Ana. I have known for weeks where this was going.”
“The Alpha would never agree,” I said immediately. “The council would never agree and a marriage between the Crown Prince and an absorbed omega with no pack name would destabilise everything you have spent four years trying to build.”
He said nothing.
“You know that,” I said more softly.
Moonlight shifted across the pool beside us. The garden looked darker now than it had a few minutes ago.
“Then you will be my concubine,” he said. “Formally declared. Pack law will protect you. Nobody in this compound will touch you without going through me first.” His eyes stayed fixed on mine. “And when I become Alpha, Ana, I will make you Luna. I do not care what the council says. I do not care what anyone says.”
I looked at him standing there in the wet garden with his shirt half open and his hair loose around his shoulders and his eyes fixed on my face like the rest of the compound had disappeared entirely.
My parents’ rings felt cold against my skin.
The records room sat two corridors away.
And Rhydian still did not know who I really was.
“Rhydian,” I said quietly.
“I mean it.”
Something in my chest twisted so hard it almost hurt to breathe.
“Then let us survive tomorrow first.”
His thumb brushed the last dampness from my jaw carefully.
Then he offered me his arm and walked me back inside.