by Riley Storm
“Boys,” Aaric said, stepping toward them. “I heard you were looking for me.”
“Who the hell are you?” one of them wanted to know, his hand hovering near his waistband, obviously ready to grab for a gun.
Aaric would have to prevent that from happening. Plymouth Falls was a peaceful town. Gunshots were not common and would immediately bring a police presence.
“I’m the guy,” he said, arms wide, big grin on his face as he sauntered toward the two thugs.
“The guy? What guy? We don’t know no guy.”
The broken English grated on Aaric’s nerves. If he could learn the language in six months, then there was no excuse for these punks.
“The guy you wanted to see. The reason you’re here,” he said, gesturing at the office.
“How do you know why we’re here?” the secondary grunt asked, seemingly clueless.
Enough of this.
Aaric paused to look around, ensuring nobody was in sight. It was clear.
“Sorry you came all this way for nothing,” he rumbled, then darted forward.
The lead thug-for-hire had little time to react before Aaric was on him. His hand found the pistol and with a flash of dragon muscles, he crushed the barrel. A “light” tap on the man’s groin had him writhing on the ground, where an accidental foot to the jaw as Aaric pivoted knocked him out cold.
“Night night,” he whispered as his other fist blew past the second man’s upraised arms and cracked him right above his nose.
Aaric watched the eyes rolled up, and then he caught the man before he fell back onto his head. Casually, he opened the door to the SUV and tossed him in. The first victim followed a second later, his face landing in number two’s crotch.
Suppressing a giggle, Aaric walked up to the office and opened the door.
“I’m here,” he called out. “You wanted to see me?”
There was a shuffling of feet, and then four men appeared out of the door on his left. Aaric frowned as they came out and arrayed themselves against him. There was something off about them. Something he couldn’t quite place.
“Have we met before?” he asked, thinking furiously.
There was no response. Aaric blinked several times. Then he stepped twice over to the right. Almost as one, the faces moved to watch him.
What the hell is going on here? He was creeped out by the way they were acting. Still none of them had spoken.
“What do you want?” One of them spoke now. His voice was…strained? As if it was being forced out against his will.
Aaric took a moment, sizing up the four men inside the office. Unlike the two outside, these four did not have the look of hired muscle. They, in fact, looked like normal men. Dressed all the same, with the same hard, slightly blank look on their faces.
His senses were screaming at him that something was going on here. Were they from his world, instead of the humans? Was that why the other two had been left outside? Because they weren’t part of this group.
There was very little on the planet that could challenge a dragon shifter solo. Some of the Faery Lords. The Faery Queens. An elf warrior master, perhaps, though they never ventured forth from their realm. A few other creatures from the depths of the other realms. The list was short.
It grew quite a lot larger when the odds were four against one, however, and Aaric kept his guard up. He had no idea what he was facing, or who, and it bothered him.
“Go home,” Aaric said. “Leave this town, and never return. It’s under my protection, is that understood? You aren’t welcome here.”
The four heads tilted nearly simultaneously.
“Okay, that’s just creeping me out,” he said, pointing at them. “Go, now. Before you get hurt.”
“We’re not leaving without the property.”
“Why does everyone care about this damn property so much,” he growled. “It works perfectly for what I’m doing. I don’t feel like selling it, especially now you’re acting like this to try and get it. That’s reason enough for me to just not sell. I don’t know what you see in it, but too bad, so sad. You were too late. Now be a good loser and screw off.”
Before he got the last word out, the four were advancing. Aaric prepared himself for a fight, feeling the powers of his dragon flowing through him, though he didn’t draw upon them yet.
The nearest of the quartet reached him, his movements becoming surer of themselves as he dropped into a martial arts stance and flowed past, the four trying to split around him like a river around a stone, to come at him from four angles.
Frowning at the uniformity to their movements, Aaric tried once more to puzzle out what was going on. If he’d run across them on the streets, he’d have said they didn’t know one another. Their dress was different, their hairstyles, facial hair. Even the way they had held themselves before attacking spoke of different backgrounds.
Yet here they are, working as one to fight me. What’s going on?
Aaric ducked below two punches and then slipped between them with a burst of speed no human could match. A kick nearly caught him, however, and he brought an arm up to protect his head. The foot impacted upon it, and dragon-bone hardened skin popped to the surface.
The bone shattered. Aaric felt it explode under the impact. He knew it had happened. But the owner of the leg simply withdrew it and balanced himself on one leg. No wince, no cry out of pain. Absolutely no reaction whatsoever.
Aaric stared in shock, only barely recovering to block a punch aimed at his temple. He spun away from the follow-up blow, and then slammed his own fist forward. Knuckles met knuckles, and once more his armored skin shattered fragile human bone as he punched through the attacking fist.
Still there was no acknowledgment of the blow.
“Who are you people?” Aaric wondered out loud. They were no faster than a human, no stronger, but there was something abnormal about them.
He quickly finished off the other two with short, vicious jabs to the head that knocked them out cold. Then he did the same with One-Leg. That only left the man with one hand.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Aaric said coldly, standing up straight. “I’m going to take you and all of them and put them in a vehicle. You’re going to take that SUV and drive back to wherever you came from. And you are never going to return. Am I clear?”
There was a pause. Then the man nodded.
“We accept.”
Aaric looked at the unconscious men warily. Now this man was speaking for all of them? Weirder and weirder.
Motioning for the conscious man to precede him, Aaric casually grabbed two of the others by their ankles and hauled them outside.
With the SUV loaded up with all six of the men, Aaric motioned for the driver to get in. “Stay out of Plymouth Falls,” he snarled. “Or next time, you go home in body bags. Or not at all.”
The man did the same pause, head-tilt, then he nodded. “Of course.”
Aaric couldn’t stop a shiver from running down his spine at the eerie tone. Something was amiss here. He hated not knowing.
Going back into the office, he found Angela unharmed, sitting in a chair.
“You’re safe now,” he said. “You can go home. This is all over. It’s safe.”
“Where’s Olivia?” the woman asked, facing him with a stern look on her face.
Aaric smiled, appreciative of her protectiveness despite her own recent captivity. “Olivia is safe. I left her at my place, where she will remain unharmed. You may call her cell phone at any point. I’m sure she’s looking forward to hearing from you.”
“Right.” Angela looked around, frowning. “And you? Who are you?”
“My name is Aaric Drakon. Now please, gather your things and go home. I cannot stay.”
Aaric needed to get back to Drakon Keep. He needed to talk to Parre, to find out what he’d just been through today. Because he had a feeling this wasn’t over yet.
Not by a long shot.
Chapter 22
; Olivia stood in the hallway outside Aaric’s room.
“It certainly looks like a castle,” she muttered to herself, arms crossed below her chest in nervousness. “It’s a keep,” she said, mimicking Aaric’s deep voice as best she could.
Who gets defensive over insisting their thing is smaller? Like, this doesn’t fit to the title of castle? Weird.
It had a strange, haunting beauty to it, she had to admit. Olivia hadn’t wandered far. The complete foreignness of the building made her want to stay somewhere she knew. On top of that, all the doors looked the same, and she feared that she would get lost if she wandered.
The phone in her pocket buzzed abruptly. She yanked it out.
“Aaric?” she yelped. “Is everything okay?”
“Olivia?”
“Angela!” she cried out. “You’re okay? Is everything alright?”
“Everything’s fine,” her assistant assured her. “They didn’t touch me, and I’m home now. Your friend said I would be fine, that it was over, and that they won’t come back. He was very certain of that.”
Olivia nodded to herself. “Yeah, he’s kind of like that, isn’t he? Unbelievably confident, without being arrogant, and yet you believe him when he says it, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Angela said slowly. “Yeah I do believe him. But Olivia, where are the police? Why weren’t they called?”
“I…don’t have a good answer to that,” she admitted. “But everything worked out, you’re safe. The bad guys are gone.”
“Just be careful with this guy, Liv. He could be trouble.”
“I am,” she said tightly, not wanting to say more. If she revealed to Angela that she’d slept with Aaric, she might not ever hear the end of it.
“Good. Listen, I’m home now, and I need to go drink some wine. Call me in the morning, okay? Just to say you’re still fine.”
“Of course.”
She hung up, a smile blossoming on her face. He’d done it. Aaric had done it, though she didn’t understand how.
“Was that Angela?”
The voice out of thin air ripped a shriek from Olivia’s lungs. Turning, she saw Aaric stride up the hallway.
“Don’t do that!” she yelped, beating one fist against his chest as he swept her up into a hug.
“I’m sorry,” he rumbled. “I thought you heard me coming.”
“You move like a ghost sometimes,” she complained. “It’s not fair. No sneaking up on me.”
“Would you like me to hire a marching band to follow me around?”
“Not a whole band,” she said thoughtfully. “Maybe just a drummer.”
Aaric laughed, leaning down to kiss her forehead, arms still tight around her. Olivia snuggled in close, enjoying the feeling of being so intimate with him.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she whispered. “And that you’re okay.”
“I told you it would be okay.”
Olivia shrugged, the movement made awkward by their embrace. “I know, but that doesn’t mean I believed you. I don’t know who you are. What you’re capable of. I still don’t even know how you managed this? There were four of them!”
“Six, actually,” he corrected. “Two outside in the SUV’s as lookouts.”
“You took on six men, and won?” she asked, astonished.
“Yeah,” Aaric replied, his head twisting to look down the hallway.
“Everything okay?” she wanted to know, slipping from his grasp.
“Yeah. Yeah everything is good.”
Aaric might be a lot of things, she knew, but he was a terrible liar. It was obvious that he was distracted, his thoughts no longer on her, but on something else.
“What are you thinking about?” she wanted to know, staying close, resting one hand on his thick chest, feeling the muscles below his plain white t-shirt.
“It’s…complicated,” he muttered. “Listen, I, um, I’ll be right back.”
He tried to pull away, but she snagged his hand, holding it tight. “I want you to stay with me,” she said. “I don’t really want to be alone right now.”
Aaric looked down, meeting her worried gaze. Fingers found her chin and held it while he bent down to kiss her. “It’ll be okay,” he promised, after. “I’m not leaving the Keep.”
“Then where are you going? Why can’t I go with you? I want to see more of this place. It’s really magnificent.”
Aaric’s face looked pained. “This is something I had to do for myself,” he said.
“What are you doing?” she wanted to know, not understanding the secrecy between them all of a sudden.
“I need to talk with someone, okay?” Aaric looked very uncomfortable with that admission.
“Talk with someone,” Olivia repeated. “So, what you’re telling me, is that we aren’t alone in here? That there are others?”
“I never said we were alone?” Aaric replied.
“You kind of implied it when you stripped me naked in the elevator and we had sex!” she yelped. “Someone could have seen us! I was naked as we walked down the hallway. Your cum was all over my tits! Anyone could have come upon that.”
Aaric chuckled, then stopped abruptly as her glare turned icy. Realizing laughter was the wrong thing, he held up both hands in protest. “Nobody saw us. Nobody heard us. I promise you that.”
“How can you know?”
“Because I know,” he rumbled. “They’re…look. I can’t explain, okay? But you can trust me when I say we were all alone. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. I’m not that disrespectful.”
She had to admit he didn’t strike her as the type to do that if someone might have caught them, but then again, hormones and lust could make people do crazy things sometimes.
“Can I come with you?” she asked, changing the subject. What was done was done, there was no changing it, and she certainly hadn’t noticed or heard anyone herself.
“Not this time,” Aaric said. “There are some things about me you don’t know yet.”
“Should I be worried, Aaric? You’re acting really scary all of a sudden.”
The big man shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not really explaining it, but I can’t. You just have to trust me in that you aren’t in any danger. You’re safe.”
There it was again, that confident nature, and the feeling she could believe him. That she could trust him. Even if Olivia had no reason to understand why.
“Okay,” she said, making up her mind. “I’ll stay.”
“Thank you,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “Hopefully, I won’t be too long.”
He wrapped her up in a hug, and then, his mind already putting her aside, he walked down the hallway.
Olivia watched him go, biting her lip, trying to understand everything that was going on.
You aren’t going to get any answers here.
Chapter 23
His mind was so distracted he nearly walked right past Parre’s quarters.
Slowing, he knocked politely.
“Come in.”
Pushing open the door, he nodded at Francis, who was sitting on the couch in the common area, reading a book by lamplight.
“That’s horrible for your eyes,” Aaric muttered, the familiar banter between them helping him relax.
“Working with you on a regular basis is horrible for my mind,” Francis shot back. “What is it?”
“Is he awake?”
“At this hour? Most normal people are asleep,” Francis said, shooting Aaric a look that said he should know better.
“I need to talk with him.”
“He’s sleeping. They both are,” Francis nodded, the steward doing his best to protect the elder dragons.
“I know, but I need to talk with him. It’s urgent. Something came up.”
Francis frowned. “I don’t think that would be a good idea, but when have you ever listened to me?” he complained, picking his book back up. “Have at it.”
“Come with me,” Aaric said. “You need to h
ear this too. Maybe your insight will be helpful as well.”
That got Francis’ attention, as he realized that whatever it was, Aaric was serious about it. It wasn’t often that the stewards were invited into private dragon discussions. But Aaric needed to know what it was that was bothering him, and he didn’t care how he found out.
“Parre,” he called softly, entering the sleeping chambers. “Parre wake up.”
“I am awake,” a cranky voice called back in the dark. “You two yammering away out there like construction workers. No respect for the soon-to-be dead.”
“Be nice,” Elanna chastised tiredly.
Even with their life nearly run its course, the two were still a pair. Aaric envied that and hoped that one day, he too would find someone as important to him as Elanna was to Parre, and vice versa.
“Well, speak up,” Parre ordered.
“I had an encounter tonight,” he said, relaying everything that had happened with the thugs at Olivia’s office. “They were acting very weird. Very strange. Yet it almost felt familiar. Any ideas?”
Parre frowned, his face lined with weariness. “I don’t recognize that behavior. But you say they weren’t any stronger or otherwise unusual compared to a human?”
“Not that I could detect. But Parre, I broke multiple bones. Badly. They didn’t even wince. It was like they didn’t actually feel the pain. And then at the end, the one who could still talk kept using the word ‘we’, as if he wasn’t alone.”
“That’s unusual indeed,” Parre agreed, his voice weak.
Aaric hated seeing his friend like this. Knowing that the end was close, that the mated pair would soon be gone. In his prime, Parre had been a mighty earth dragon, but now he was bedridden, and on the last of his life.
And it’s because of me. He and Elanna used their energy to awaken me. Yet what have I done, besides nothing?
“I need your guidance, Parre,” he said quietly, crouching down next to the bed. “Please. What should I do? What does this mean?”
“I don’t know,” Parre said with a shake of his head. “I’m sorry Aaric. Like you said, it sounds familiar. Sounds like it should be something we know. But I can’t place it.”
Aaric bowed his head.
