Royal Changes

Chapter 16-The Confidence Meter Rises

Word Count-4815

Aaron stared in disbelief as he felt himself start to lose control. They were engaged. Conor was supposed to marry Cordelia. My Cordelia. My mate. He clenched and unclenched his hands. It would be so simple. I've seen those things do it with little effort before. All I would need is to be alone with Conor and either something sharp or something I could use to cut off his air supply. It would only take a minute or so at most. So simple.

Cordelia came back with a bright smile and placed a hand on Aaron's shoulder. "Hello Conor." She greeted.

Conor smirked and bowed his head slightly. "If you don't mind, I would be quite honored to have a dance Cordelia."

Blood filled Aaron's mouth as he clamped down on his tongue. Cordelia sent him an apologetic look. "Would you be fine if I-"

"Yeah. Go have some fun." Aaron dismissed with feigned sincerity in his smile. He focused his eyes on Conor for a split second, imaging the man with a knife slowly cutting down his chest.

Cordelia pressed a chaste kiss before Conor took her hand and pressed a kiss to it, only fueling Aaron's anger further. He watched with masked rage as the two strode to the dance floor. Aaron felt himself unconsciously looking for a knife, only stopping his train of thought when he realized what he was doing. One last look at them, swaying around the dance floor with a light conversation going on between them, Aaron snuck out of the ball room and into the gardens.

He pushed open the doors to the empty yard and let out a guttural sound as he tried to get rid of the unseen images from his head, steaming from Cordelia and Conor being intimate to Aaron violently murdering the threat. Aaron took a deep breath and ran a shaky hand through his hair. I have to stop that. What use is being pissed off when I can't do anything about it? What use is becoming like 'it'? So calm the heck down and remember she's your mate, the one person who is suppose to love and protect you no matter what. So quit being an ass and calm down Aaron.

"Are you okay?" Aaron snapped his head towards the pool where Cassia sat, her toes dipped into the water, giving him a concerned look.

"Yeah, just fine." So long as I don't end up like 'it', I should be pretty freaking good. "What are you doing out here?"

"I could ask you the same thing." She patted the spot next to her. Aaron walked over and brought his knees to his chest. "I was feeling a bit claustrophobic in there. I always come out here when that happens. How about you?"

Okay, I can either admit it and hopefully get some answers, or lie and protect myself from embarrassment and hatred if they think I'm a pathetic weakling for stressing over this. Fudge, I'm taking the risk.

"Have you ever felt as if you were hidden within yourself? As if you can't even be who you really are because you're scared people will reject you."

"Your species doesn't matter Arron."

"It goes a lot deeper than my species Cass."

She darted her eyes down. "Your past then?" She met his gaze. "Its not too hard to tell you had a difficult one."

"Difficult is an understatement for the Hell I lived in."

"Everyone has a past Arron. All of us." She started rubbing her hands. "We all have things we want to forget and things we wish would just disappear."

"Unfortunately it's not that easy. Sometimes you can never forget it, no matter how hard you try."

"That's why we have people to help us replace those bad memories with good ones."