"Don't touch me. You've been lying to me Alex." She gives me a quick smile before she walks off leaving Alex to trail of after her like a lost little puppy. Turning my head back towards the door I try to meet Maxon's eyes but he looks to be in a deep silent conversation with his mate. Uncertainly I take a step forward and push the door open and slowly walk in to the room. Inside I see that some of the furniture has been upturned and there is broken glass on the ground. Ryder is sat on the balcony in front of the table that that's been knocked to its side. He's lent against one of the glass panelled French doors with one leg pulled up, his arm resting on his knee. He's twisting something between his fingers but all I can see of it is the glint that the sunlight gives off. Moving slowly across the room I pull the flows of my skirt into my hand. Lowering myself down I sit in his lap resting my back against his bent leg and lifting the arm that's against his chest to run it through the curls of his hair beneath his ear. I don't know what provoked me to get this close to him but I can feel the distress that's rolling off him from whatever happened in the meeting that he left for early this morning. He doesn't respond too much to me getting this close to him but eventually his free hand comes up to play with the strap of my top. Surprisingly his fingers running over my collar bone delicately doesn't make me uncomfortable, eventually with a sigh his fingers pass over his mark and I try not to react to it in the desirable way that I want to. "The Council agree with my father." His voice is dead flat. Void of any emotion. "Agree with him in what." "They want to move your coronation up to the end of the week. You will official be announced as Queen and all my mother's duties will fall to you. That night they want us fully mated and you carrying my pup. They think that this will remove any chance of us being blindsided in an attack." His hand pulls my ponytail over my shoulder almost hiding his mark from view. Biting my lip I try to relax the rapid beating of my heart. Ryder notices it and his hand comes down to rest over the area on my chest warming the slight goose bumps that have risen over my skin. "I'm not letting them do that to us Lottie. Only when you're ready will I mate you, I may not be able to control you getting pregnant but I will make sure that you won't get hurt and that you'll never have to deal with anything by yourself." My heart slows with his words and the warm touch that he gives. Like always I feel the electric shocks that I always feel from his touch and already I can feel the fluttering burn in my lower stomach. "Ellie was telling me about heat." I say ignoring the feeling that he gives me as I play with the little locks of his hair at the base of his neck that he doesn't seem to be able to get into his hairstyle. "She told me that when it begun that all I would want was you and that if we mated and I got pregnant I wouldn't regret it." "It's a maternal instinct both you and your body recognize that it's finally got what it's wanted. I think that you're ready for it, you're just scared." "Ryder..." he cuts me off by a quick peck to my lips. "I'm going to take you away for your birthday ok, that's two months away. Take a deep breath and until then erase all of it from your mind." His hand is holding my face into his and it makes it easier to do as he says. "Don't think about it." I don't know how he ended up with them but he has the velvet roll containing the fertility injections. "That's not a very good way to make me forget about it." "They hurt you," his fingers hook into the high waist of the skirt and slowly pull it down tickling at my skin ignoring what I had said before. I can feel my muscles trembling at his touch and I know he's just trying to distract me. With one hand he has my skirt out of the way and his fingers move up to dance over the defined bones of my hips, he leans in capturing my lips. It's a second later that I feel the painful pinch of the first needle entering my stomach as he squeezes the plunger down with his other hand a majority of the pain is filtered out by the sensual feeling of his touch but by the time he's injected the third one his hands can no longer distract me. Ryder's hands message the skin there once he's pulled back away from me. "I don't think this is the best room to eat in now." Looking throughout the room I can tell that it needs a serious clean up and it's all because he let his anger take over him. He helps me stand back up and readjust my skirt continuing to play with the material of it. "This is nice," he whispers his hand sliding down the side of my thigh. It's when he goes to lean in and kiss me again that someone knocks on the door side tracking his actions. His hands had slid back up to are rest on my hips and when he hears the knocking noise his fingers tighten their hold into my skin and he lets out a quiet but noticeable growl for whoever is on the other side of that door. "Come on, you need to eat something." "Why do you always say that?" I joke even as the guards walk into the room. "He's your mate, he never stops worrying about you and he never shuts up." Ryder growls again at Reynolds words.