by Riley Storm
“Bang on,” she said. “That’s what I thought too.”
“Thought?” Aaric’s expression grew more intense. “What do you mean?”
“That was before several angry, threatening phone calls. And before four men I can only describe as hired thugs barged into my office after-hours and threatened both my life and the life of my assistant if I didn’t use every means at my disposal to get the property.”
Aaric’s eyes glowed gold as he shook. “Someone threatened you?” he rumbled dangerously. “Someone made a threat on your life?”
“And my assistant,” she said, guilt filling her. “And then I had to find you. Because they took my phone. Then I tailed you out here. I was hoping you could call the police. The FBI maybe, I don’t know. Someone to go in there and rescue Angela, and deal with this asshole.”
She was trembling now. Aaric reached out to her.
“I need you to answer one question, with complete and utter truth,” he said heavily.
“Anything,” she said. “Anything at all. No more lies. No more games. It’s all out there now, you know how badly I’ve fucked up.”
“This,” he said, gesturing back and forth between them. “Just now. What was that?”
“That was me being weak,” she said. “Giving into a temptation at the complete wrong time. That was me satisfying an urge, while my assistant is fearing for her life. That was me getting my brains fucked out while four men wait to snap her neck.” She glared at Aaric. “There? Are you happy now? Go ahead, judge me. I guarantee you, it’s no worse than I’m already judging myself. I don’t give a shit.”
“So, you didn’t sleep with me in an attempt to use your body to get what you wanted?”
She stared at him. “No. I just said that. I almost did the other day, at lunch. I had a moment of weakness. I acted like an idiot. But not now, not today. That was something else. Something lingering from the parking lot, I guess. I didn’t expect it.”
“Okay. I believe you.”
Olivia brightened in surprise. “You do? You believe me?”
“Yes. And I’ll help you.”
Her spirits soared. “You will? You mean, you’re going to sell me the property?”
Aaric shook her head and everything crashed back down.
“No, I’m not selling it to you. I need it. But there are other ways I can help.”
“Like what?” she challenged. “That’s the only option.”
“No,” Aaric said slowly. “There might be another.”
Chapter 20
Olivia was thoroughly confused.
“Another option?” she asked slowly. “Like what? You mean calling the authorities? The police. Maybe the CIA? NSA? Who should we call? They only gave me twenty-four hours, so we can’t take too long.”
Aaric frowned. “Twenty-four hours? As of when?”
She looked at her watch, one of the few things she was still wearing. “As of four hours ago.”
“Still twenty hours then,” Aaric said slowly. “Plenty of time.”
Olivia was growing more confused. “More time for what? What is it you’re planning?”
“I’m planning on getting your friend back,” he stated, speaking with a confidence that stunned her.
“These are hired criminals, Aaric. They probably have guns. Training. They’ll shoot you without thinking, I’m sure of it.”
To her surprise, Aaric pulled her close, uncaring of what was on her skin. He kissed the top of her forehead fiercely.
“There are things you don’t know about me either, Olivia. I can help them, trust me on that.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, secrets, eh? Is this where you drop your voice and say, ‘I am Batman’ or something ridiculous?”
“No,” Aaric said with a smile. “This is where I pick you up.”
Olivia yelped as he put action to word. “And then I take you to my room, and we shower. Because nothing is going to happen while either of us looks like this.”
“Are you sure this is the right time for that?” she asked as he padded out into a huge hallway, with high arched ceilings that practically faded into darkness, they were so tall.
“Positive,” he rumbled, the word pulsating through her body from the vibrations in his chest. “We’re both covered in ourselves and in each other. We need to get cleaned up.”
“Then will you tell me what’s going on?”
“Unlikely,” he said.
“I don’t like that,” she pouted, her arm around his neck.
Despite that, despite the secrecy, she felt a sense of calm descend over her. To her surprise, Olivia realized she trusted Aaric. That she believed him when he said he could handle this.
“This is crazy, you know that, right? You’re not some armored vigilante. Call the police.”
“After,” he agreed. “But nobody threatens you and gets away with it,” he growled, his eyes staring ahead, doing that strange thing where they seemed to glow even more golden than usual.
Olivia shivered. “What are you going to do to them?”
Aaric didn’t respond right away. When he did, there was a gravity to his voice she’d not heard before. “I’m going to ensure they know to stay far, far away from you, your assistant, and this town. They aren’t welcome here.”
“But what about the factory?” she moaned.
“If Plymouth Falls needs jobs,” he said. “Then I’ll bring them jobs. Me. Aaric Drakon. My family founded this town. We’ll look after it if it’s suffering.”
“Um. Okay,” she said, not sure what else to say to that. “Thank you?”
“It’s my responsibility, there’s no need to thank me.”
Olivia was starting to realize there was a lot more to Aaric than the arrogant exterior she’d thought at first, or the extreme good looks. There was a heart in there, someone who cared. Not just about her, though she was starting to get that impression, but also about the town.
What other layers did he possess?
“What do we do now?” she wanted to know. “I mean, after the shower.”
Aaric didn’t respond at first, walking them down hallways, most of them dimly lit. Doors passed on either side, the walls in between filled with portraits, paintings, statues and carvings.
“Does Drakon mean dragon?” she asked after the twentieth image of a dragon.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “It does. We…uh, we like them.”
“I can see that.” She laughed. “I have a friend who likes unicorns. Her place looks like yours. I mean, much smaller of course, and no dragons. But lots of unicorns. Lots. She’s a bit kooky. Should I be worried about you?”
What a question to ask while he’s got you naked, in his arms.
“Uh, no. I’m pretty sure I’ve got it all together,” he said. “But if you see anything, let me know.”
“Anything out of the ordinary?” she asked as they stopped in front of door that looked no different than all the others.
“Yes,” he said, pushing open the door to reveal a brightly lit room with other doors and openings branching off from it.
“Like, being all mysterious and saying you’re going to “handle” four tough bad guys all on your own? ‘Cause that’s not exactly ordinary. Most people call the police for that.”
“I’m not most people,” Aaric rumbled, bringing her into the bathroom.
“Yeah, I’m picking up on that,” she agreed, looking around at the brightly lit room and its gorgeous white tile marbled with black throughout. It looked expensive.
“Hopefully in a good way,” Aaric teased, walking them straight into the shower.
“This shower could fit ten people in it,” she said, taking a seat on a bench in one corner of the glass-walled enclosure in the middle of the room.
“I like space,” Aaric chuckled, punching some controls on the far wall.
Water sputtered and began falling from a third of the ceiling. She looked up, noting that if he wanted, over half the area of the shower could be a fa
lling rain-shower.
“This is amazing,” she said, walking under the perfectly warmed water, feeling it wash away more than just dirt and the evidence of their earlier activity. It also swept away her stress. She was safe here, she knew. With Aaric.
“What are we going to do after?” she wanted to know as he started to scrub her body down. She jerked in surprise at first, but then let him work. After all, he’d already seen everything. May as well let him clean what he’d gotten dirty.
“You’re going to stay here,” he said, giving her ass a playful smack. “I’ll handle it.”
“Here,” she said. “You want me to stay here, in your house. Your massive, empty, castle of a house.”
“A keep,” he corrected. “Castles are bigger.”
“Right,” she drawled. “’Cause that definitely makes it better.”
They shared a brief laugh, but Aaric sobered. “Yes. I want you to stay here. Where it’s safe.”
“I see.” Olivia bit her lip, but then nodded. “Okay, fine. I’ll stay.”
It was weird, she realized. For the first time she could remember, they weren’t actively going after one another, with jabs or insults, disdain or rudeness. They were talking, working together. As a team.
What does that mean, I wonder?
Chapter 21
“You’re really in it now,” he muttered, waving at the rear-view mirror as he pulled out of the underground parking garage.
He watched the image of Olivia, now clad in an oversized sweatshirt and matching pants, receding in the little rectangular mirror.
The road sloped upward and he lost himself in the drive, trying to ignore the mess he was busy creating.
You’re supposed to be out there looking for your mate. You need a mate, if you’re going to awaken any of the others. Parre isn’t long for this world, which means the fate of awakening all the dragons to face whatever is coming rests on my shoulders.
His shoulders. They were broad, but that was a lot of responsibility to put on a dragon who was, in human terms, in his late thirties at most.
As if to demonstrate how unready he was to be thrust into a position of authority, instead of doing his duty toward his House and finding his mate, Aaric was busy gallivanting around with an—admittedly gorgeous and fun—real estate agent.
“Not only that, you promised you’d build a factory here, bringing jobs. What are you thinking!” he moaned.
Going after the guys from some South American gangsters’ “company” who were threatening her and her assistant was one thing. Aaric hadn’t been joking around when he said those types weren’t welcome in Plymouth Falls. This was a job more suited to the wolves, but they weren’t aware of it, and they most certainly were not aware of him.
Not yet, at least. The other Houses would know the dragons had returned. None of them had recognized him at Leblanc the other night, the restaurant that catered heavily to shifter clientele, even though they didn’t know it.
Why would they know me? I’ve been asleep for a century. All the Canis and Ursa who I knew back then are dead.
Soon, though, that would change. He would present himself as a Lord of House Draconis at the coronation ceremony for the new Canis King in a few short days, and then the fun would truly begin. He cracked a smile at the imagined shock of the assembled personage of both House Ursa and Canis, all of whom would be in attendance.
Aaric loved a good surprise.
Until then, he had his own issues to deal with.
In the morning. Starting in the morning, I will find my mate. I can’t waste any more time.
Thinking of Olivia as a waste of time wasn’t polite, but it was true. He needed to find his mate, and soon. He couldn’t stay occupied with her thoroughly delightful self. Not anymore. His House demanded he put it before everything else.
First, though, he would ensure she was not only safe, but that she would continue to be safe. Which meant dealing with four armed men. Four humans were nothing for a dragon like Aaric. He could wipe the floor with them without breaking a sweat.
The issue would be the secretary. Assistant. Whatever. The second would be the office itself. Aaric was going to have to act like he was a human. Work at human speed. Human strength.
And preferably without demolishing the entire office building while he was at it.
I’m not that clumsy, he thought, remembering Olivia’s plea to please not destroy everything. As if she could know about the newspaper factory…
It had been one incident. One clumsy incident, a swipe of his tail without looking during a wild night out to celebrate the end of the war with the mages over a century before. Just before the dragons had gone to sleep, the danger to the world averted for a time.
Just like they had gone to sleep after the vampires had been killed, over sixteen hundred years earlier, though that had only last a hundred and fifty years before the war between the shifters and mages had gone “live”, so to speak.
“What a mess,” he muttered, remembering his history. Always, there was something.
First, it had been the vampires masquerading as the Roman Senate, ruling the Emperors from behind the scenes, expanding their empire across the world. At one point, their grip on the human and paranormal worlds had been absolute. None threatened them, not even the mighty faery Queens.
Then the shifters had arrived. Aaric hadn’t been there for that, of course. He’d been born much later. But they had appeared in the hundreds, then thousands, all within the span of a few years. Aaric knew little of their origins. He suspected even the leaders of the various shifter Houses didn’t know as much as he did. The dragons were different like that; with their massively elongated lifespans, far more knowledge was passed down.
He drifted his vehicle through a wide left-hand turn, out onto the two-laned highway that would take him back into Plymouth Falls. Rubber screeched, the engine roared, and then he took off, accelerating quickly. His mind returned to the past.
The shifters, he knew, had not been born. Not at first, at least, though they had been in subsequent generations. No, those first few years, the shifters had been created. That was all Aaric knew, but it was more than the wolves or bears, or their minor counterparts all remembered. They assumed they had just been born.
But they were wrong.
None of the records he knew of said who or what had created them, but they all agreed that it wasn’t natural.
So, the shifters had ended the vampires’ hold on the world, eliminating every last one of them. They’d thought the world saved, and so the dragons had retreated into their sleep. But a century and a half later, the human mages and the shifters had gone to war, both trying to step into the power void left by the absence of the vampires.
Once more, the dragons had been awakened and they had fought the mages for fifteen hundred years, until the early twentieth century. Then, at a place called Novarupta on the Iberian Peninsula, things had come to a head. Massive forces of shifters had battled the strongest of the mages.
The landscape had been torn up, fires everywhere. Bodies had lain strewn across the battlefield as the shifters pressed their attacks home. Aaric could still remember it now. Dodging the blasts of deadly blue magic that would kill anything they touched.
He and his other kin—those of the dragons like him—had soared over the battlefield, raining fire down upon all those below who defied them. Mages by the score had evaporated as the white fire touched them, instantly incinerating them.
To his left, Morath had been too slow to dodge, and a lance of blue magic impaled him, the mighty dragon falling from the sky.
Then the ground had shifted and hurled itself up at the dragons. The entire mountainside erupted in fire as the mages tried one last attempt to win. They had awoken the sleeping volcano, and now molten lava spit high into the air and flowed down the broken landscape.
It had nearly worked. Nearly. But the dragons, with their land-bound allies, had managed to escape the attack, and had eliminated
the last of the mages on the battlefield. The war was over. They could sleep once more.
Now I’m awake again. Something else threatens this world, threatens its stability, and I am needed.
Aaric’s mind had wandered far, but it returned now to the point that had spurred his trip down nostalgia lane. He feared what it was, but more so, he feared facing it alone. There were wiser, stronger dragons sleeping underneath Drakon Keep. Once they were awake, he wouldn’t have to be the one doing this alone.
He would have help. Just like tonight, he would help Olivia.
The miles passed under his tires at a frantic pace. At this time of night, he had nothing to fear from police, and so he raced across the ground as fast as he was comfortable, taking corners at speeds most humans would pale at.
Soon, the buildings of Plymouth Falls appeared and he slowed his breakneck pace slightly. There was little traffic, and he reached the lone building that housed Olivia’s office. The lights were still on, and two SUV’s were parked out front, along with a small white hatchback.
Aaric’s sportscar came to a stop, the red of his Lamborghini Huracan clashing intensely with the black of the intimidating SUV’s. He’d chosen this car because he felt the color matched his intentions for the night.
There would be blood.
He exited the gull-wing door, closing it behind him as he noted movement in both the vehicles. So, they did leave some sentries outside after all.
That upped the total to six men sent to intimidate Olivia. That was a lot of manpower to dedicate to a simple real-estate agent who had failed to secure a property. Who was this guy, and why did he want it so badly?
“Hey, you. Stop.”
Aaric arched an eyebrow at one of the men getting out of the vehicle. His brow was as thick as his arms, and probably his brain as well. This was one was a pure muscle hire, then. A quick glanced showed his compatriot to be of the same breed. Intimidation.
Well, two could play that game.
