"but the males … It can drive them mad."

Azriel had needed to stay by the door the whole time because he couldn’t stand the sight of it, the scent of their mating bond, and needed to have the option of leaving if it became too much.

"It is their burden to fight through, but some believe they are entitled to the female"

Rhys’s face drained of color. “You believe you deserve to be her mate?”

"Sometimes they return to challenge the male she chooses for herself. Sometimes it ends in death. It is savage, and it is ugly,"

“I’ll defeat him with little effort.” Pure arrogance laced every word

There's so much talk about how Elain will be the character who rejects her mating bond because Feyre brought up the discussion with Rhys.

While I don't think this will be the case for Elain and Lucien, I find it interesting that the cautionary tale Rhys told Feyre seems to be happening with E/riel.

There's a few problems with that. Elain is not Az's mate. He can scent the bond between Elucien and both Elain and Lucien felt the tug of the bond. I know there's all sorts of mental gymnastics happening by E/riel's to prove they are true mates but I don't buy it.

So that leads to another problem. The reason the males in Rhys's story feel that way is because the bond is driving them to act irrationally and they are unable to get a grip on themselves. I think we can all agree that a mate who looks at his female as belonging to him, a male who is going crazy over an unaccepted bond, is a male with issues even though some of that is driven by instinct. The fact that Az feels these emotions without a bond is a huge problem. He is a male talking about killing another male when the female hasn't even verbalized what she wants to do about her bond (kissing Az does not automatically mean she's ready to reject the bond and have a serious relationship with him).

And say for arguments sake, money falls from the sky, we all start riding flying unicorns, and E/riel are magically mates.

The language Az uses around and about Elain is still problematic. He is literally the mating bond cautionary tale Rhys informed Feyre of.

I'm sure there would be some counter-argument about the fact that Lucien "couldn't stand" to be in the same room with Elain for more than 2 minutes. But the way it reads has nothing to do with their unaccepted bond and his inability to control himself and more to do with knowing he's in a place where he feels he's not wanted, that Elain isn't ready to be around him to and feels he doesn't belong considering his next sentence is "I can’t stand to be in this court and have your mate pay for the very clothes on my back.”.