“Dragon shifters?” Estelle asked quietly.
“You heard of them?”
“Yeah…in one of my classes on shifter history, they said there was a myth that they could control the weather. But that had never been proven…”
“That’s something the humans say to make themselves feel better. Safer against the shifter people. But truth is that we’re all very powerful in our own rights, and there are ancient magics that have been passed down through the ages. Only a really powerful shifter warlock can change the weather, but it’s not impossible. You just have to manage to piss them off just right…”
Estelle let out a deep breath, but before she could speak again, Blaine pulled into the driveway and turned to her.
“See you in the office at 8:00 tomorrow. And not a word about any of this to anyone, it’s not really their business. Don’t want to make either of us look bad.”
“I understand.”
Estelle got out of the car and headed toward the door and Blaine sighed, even more furious now than he was before. Because when she said she understood, she was the kind of girl who actually meant it. And for some reason, that scared the hell out of him.
10.
Estelle took a deep breath once she stepped inside the cabin and hid out of sight so she could privately watch Blaine before he left. He lingered in front of the cabin for a moment, his face pensive and dark, and then finally threw his car into drive and sped off down the mountain; a little bit faster than she was used to seeing him move.
Estelle let out a heavy sigh and slumped down into the small loveseat that had come furnished with the cabin. She was never going to be able to forgive herself for all the bullshit she put herself through. Hadn’t she known better than to succumb to the physical attraction? It was going to put her in hell, and she was already halfway there. In fact, it had been such a relief that Blaine had told her that it couldn’t happen again that she’d almost laughed out loud. She couldn’t imagine how torturous it would be to carry on an affair with an older man. Not only that, but he was her boss. And a shifter.
She knew from rumor that having relationships with men of the shifter species could be tricky for human women. The courtship rituals could be very different, and the cultures were always hard to adopt and get used to.
But there she was, thinking as if the night they had shared together might somehow mean more than it did; as if they would ever be compatible enough to actually form a meaningful relationship together. That was a laughable idea. They were just too different. Why get ahead of herself?
All that had happened, and all that would ever happen, was that he had caught her during a vulnerable time and they had somehow just given in to something animalistic and short-lived. It didn’t have any meanings, no strings attached. It had just been a horribly ill-advised way to let off steam after an adrenaline-inducing near-death experience. He had saved her life, and in some sick and twisted way, she had repaid him.
They were even now. And she would never have to deal with another issue like this for as long as she lived. That was perfectly fine by her.
Estelle cried out in fear and surprise when a shrill ringing filled the cabin.
“Estelle!”
“How did you get this number, ma?” Estelle growled into the phone as soon as she heard her mother’s voice. She had guarded her privacy with her life. Her family was toxic, and it was difficult for her to let them into her life in any capacity. Let alone casual phone conversations.
“That doesn’t matter, you know I have my ways. You know you’re my youngest child. My daughter. It’s a mother’s business to keep track of these things.”
“What do you want?” Estelle mumbled. Her mother had probably called around and harassed her friends until someone gave her the information she wanted. She had a way of being very persuasive.
“You need to come home. Your father is in the hospital.”
Estelle’s stomach dropped.
“I can’t, Ma. I’ve got an internship,” she said weakly. She didn’t want to know anything about her family. Her father was infamous for being a hypochondriac. He was probably just faking for attention again. still, something about the tone of her mother’s voice gave her a pause.
“He’s really sick. He might not make it. You need to come home now and see him before it gets any worse.”
“I don’t know. I have to talk to my boss about it,” Estelle sighed. Somehow, the idea of coming to Blaine with the information almost made her laugh out loud. He was so much different than her parents. He would probably find it difficult to understand.
“You do that then come home. It’s important. I wouldn’t call you if it wasn’t you know.”
“Sure. Bye.”
“Is that any way to talk to your mother? I raised you and -”
Estelle hung up the phone and sighed heavily. Somehow the day had gone from bad to worse. Leave it to her family. And now she had to think about whether she was willing to risk the final credit she needed to go see a man who had made her doubt her self-worth for her entire life. What a way to spend her only day off for the next two weeks.
***
“Blaine, can I talk to you?”
Blaine’s sharp eyes peered into hers and she hesitated at the threshold of the office.
“The hell do you want? We have work for you to do right now, and I know you can do it just fine.”
“It’s not about work,” Estelle said, nervous butterflies fluttering in her stomach.
“Then I don’t want to hear about it right now, kid,” Blaine said, his face darkening. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”
For some reason, irritation coursed through Estelle and she shut the office door behind her.
“Don’t be an asshole. I have to talk to you about something.”
“Shit, kid. Give me a break! I’m busy!”
“Well I need your input!”
They stared each other down until finally Blaine let out a deep, heavy sigh.
“Take a seat and make it quick for God’s sake.”
“I need to see my family,” Estelle said, sitting down in the chair across from Blaine’s desk.
“You don’t sound too sure about that,” Blaine said.
Why was it that it felt like that man could see right through her? It was unsettling, really. But at the same time, it was almost comforting to think that somebody was paying attention to her in a way that nobody else ever had.
“Well, I’m not really.”
“What have they done to you?” Blaine asked, looking squarely at her. “You don’t want to see them, and you look frickin’ miserable.”
“I don’t really feel like this is the place to talk about something like that,” Estelle said quietly, avoiding Blaine’s eye. The pensiveness of his stare made her extremely uncomfortable. She usually didn’t talk to anybody about what she had gone through with her home life.
“There’s nothing wrong with it in here,” Blaine argued. “You’re the one who wanted me to listen to your sob story so you could weasel your way out of the ridiculous workload we have now what with the shit storm the dragon shifters laid on us this week.”
Estelle stared at him blankly for a moment, but the no-nonsense look on Blaine’s face melted the walls she was holding up to protect herself from judgment about her family. He wouldn’t judge her any more than she would judge herself. Somehow, she just sensed that about him.
“Well, they aren’t the kindest bunch,” Estelle said with a heavy sigh. “My mom and dad are awful, and so are all my siblings. They needed a scapegoat to look down on and everything I do is just subject to ridicule. Or they use what they think of as faults as a way to draw attention to my weight.”
“What’s wrong with your weight?” Blaine asked, his face contorted in genuine confusion.
“Well…” Estelle was caught off-guard by his reaction. He himself wasn’t a little man. In fact, he had managed to make her feel just like she had always been afraid she would n
ever feel with a man; small, delicate, and beautiful. He was powerful, a force to truly be reckoned with. and she had to force herself not to let her mind wander too much back to the night they had shared together. It had been magical, sure, but it was something that could never happen again under any circumstances. He was her boss. He was a shifter. But worse than any of that, he was an ass!
“So, you’re basically just telling me that they make you feel like shit about yourself. But you feel like you’re supposed to be going out of your way for them when they tell you to?”
“It’s complicated,” Estelle said, sighing miserably and putting her head in her hands. “If he’s dying, he’s still my father…I don’t want to just abandon them even though they like to use me as a scapegoat.”
“I don’t want you to go. You’re needed here.”
Blaine’s gaze was steel, and even if he was just saying it to protect her, a deep defiant anger surged through Estelle’s body and prompted her to rise.
“I don’t really care what you want,” she said, horrified by herself as the words began to spill from her lips. She had spent too much time in her life taking crap from other people though, and now that she was an adult, she defended herself automatically. “I’m going to tend to my father.”
“You’ll lose the internship. You won’t graduate.”
The calm and reasonable tone of his voice made Estelle hesitate as she considered the source of her anger. She was defending her right to go see the people who had stopped at nothing to make her life a living hell. Maybe she just wanted to go back to show her father just how useless his insults had been. She had still managed to make something of herself. She was still confident and fabulous in her own right, and soon she would succeed in her chosen field. But not if she gave up her internship to go see him about it.
“Look,” Estelle said, taking a deep breath and steadying the angry wavering of her voice. “I don’t want to fight with you about this. I have the right to see my family. If I’m not back in a few days, then feel free to fire me. Tell everyone in the state that I’m a worthless employee for all I care. But I need to do this.”
For some reason, the conversation was starting to make her feel as if she and Blaine were an old married couple. She was fighting for something more than just the right to see her father. She was fighting for her independence.
“All right,” Blaine said, sighing heavily. “I’ll give you two days.”
“Two?!” Estelle exclaimed. “Come on, Blaine. That’s – “
“That’s more than fair,” Blaine interrupted, standing up to stare Estelle in the eye. “You don’t need to stay stuck in that shit for any longer than you have to be. You say what you must say and then get back home. You have a lot to lose.”
Estelle gaped at Blaine, unsure of how to respond.
“All right.”
“I wasn’t kidding. We need all the help we can get right now. Things are getting pretty extreme. I’m counting on you.”
Estelle pursed her lips, not sure what to say in response, and nodded simply. She couldn’t let him get to her. She had won. She had gotten the results she had gone in to get. It would be better for everybody if she didn’t let it make her unsure of herself. She would do what she had to do, even if that meant going back to face her own personal hell.
11.
“What the hell has been your problem the past few days, man?” Jack growled as Blaine pushed past him and into his office. “You haven’t acted this badly since -”
“Don’t you dare even say it,” Blaine growled, throwing open his filing cabinet and digging through it to find the folder that contained a copy of his grandfather’s will and the outline of the estate he had been promised.
“Well you know it’s true. What’s going on with you?”
Blaine glared at Jack, a man about a decade older than he was, who had been there and seen him through some of the most difficult transitions of his life. He was really the only man Blaine had ever trusted outside his own family, and if Jack was telling him he was being an asshole, he knew he was just saying that for Blaine’s own good. It wouldn’t help anybody if he was going to let his feelings get out of control.
“You have any fuckin’ idea how obnoxious it is to be debating these boundaries with the dragon shifters? They don’t have any respect for my authority. And those lawyers move slower than burned molasses.”
“That’s bureaucracy for you, man. You run a business. You know all about that.”
“Doesn’t make it any less infuriating,” Blaine grumbled, slamming the file open onto his desk and pulling the papers out. “I have half a mind to shove this damn will right in Geron’s face.”
“You don’t want to deal with the results of putting Geron in any tighter of a position.”
“You think his position is tight?!” Blaine exclaimed. “If we don’t find these portals by the next equinox, it may be too late.”
“We don’t know exactly how the magic works, Blaine. You can’t let yourself get discouraged. There will always be another chance.”
“We don’t belong here!” Blaine growled, surprised by the force of his own fury. “There’s no reason for us to stay and lose men over a pissing contest over a fuckin’ mountain when there’s an entire continent where people like us don’t have to live in hiding. What about that don’t you understand? We need to find the portals. Nobody knows what will happen if we don’t make it in time. I don’t want to be responsible for ruining our chances to get the bear shifters on Earth back home.”
“We don’t know anything about ‘home,’” Jack spat. “We don’t know if it’s better or worse there. What if we came to Earth for a reason? Huh? What then? What if we find the portals and they take us somewhere we don’t know how to survive? What happens then?”
“It’s worth the risk,” Blaine growled, his voice deepening as the bear inside of him came closer to losing control. “I’m not going to deal with you telling me that you don’t know what’s going to happen. None of us know. Part of that uncertainty is what makes this timing so crucial. We’ve been looking for years, but the ancients created the calendar the way they did for a reason. We have to respect that time is limited and that means that we could be running out of it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jack mumbled, turning away from Blaine. “You need to chill out a little bit though. You’re not going to get anything done by operating with just plain fury in your heart.”
“Nothing’s going to stop me from getting to those portals, Jack. Not a damn thing. You understand me?”
Jack just shook his head and stormed out through the office door.
But Blaine couldn’t let it bother him. Truth was that he already had his fill of shit on his plate. Ever since Estelle had left to go visit her family, he had been on edge in a way he never had been before. Knowing just what that poor kid might be going through had left him surly and short-tempered. It didn’t help matters at all that things between the dragon shifters had started to get a lot more malicious. Calculated attacks on several of the mines had occurred; leaving several of the men injured in landslides and freak storms. He was reaching the end of his patience.
Blaine sighed heavily and stared at the papers scattered on his desk. They wouldn’t make a difference to the dragon shifters. Not at all. The only thing they would respect were human laws. Paperwork. And none of those things were coming through for him yet.
He shoved the papers back into his folder and took off out of the office. Maybe things wouldn’t feel so hard if he wasn’t so damned worried about Estelle. She had been terrified on her way down the mountain. The car had passed by the office just as he was stepping up to the door and he had smelled the fear. Whether it was there due to the winding mountain roads or because of dealing with her family, Blaine couldn’t be sure. But what he did know was that fear was the last thing he wanted to sense upon parting with her.
But he couldn’t care about that. Not now, with everything falling apart around him. The dragon shi
fters were making it obvious that until they had proof from the courts, the mountain was up for dispute and they were going to do whatever it took to gain access. The Equinox was also important to them, presumably. The shifter cultures had a lot of shared wisdom amongst them, particularly to those we were attuned with the ancient magics.
“Never let them take you by surprise,” Blaine’s grandfather had told him. “Everybody is looking for something, and it seems like all the answers lie in this old mountain. That’s why it’s been in our family for so long. We must guard it with our lives. The secrets buried here could be the difference between life and death. We must protect our people.”
They were words that Blaine had always sworn to live by, and he didn’t have any intention of letting his family down.
He left the office in a hurry, deciding that it would be more productive for him to be out on the field. The freak tornado that had torn through the mountain the day before had done a lot of damage to the mines on the base of the mountain, but the dragon shifters had known nothing about the massive quartz deposit that indicated something of immense power somewhere near the mountain.
“What do you think, boys?” Blaine asked, forcing himself to sound a lot less uptight than he was feeling at the time. “Any closer to the source of that gold?”
“Hell yeah,” a tall, lanky man with shortly cropped black hair said. His eyes flashed excitedly. “We’re definitely on to something.”
Blaine nodded. That was what he liked to hear. He continued up the mountain and paused, a reluctant smile spreading across his face. Despite all the bullshit, his men had been hard at work the past few days, and it was starting to pay off. Men were busy, shouting excitedly to one another as another batch of pay dirt was discovered.
“We’re close now, man,” Ken said, sauntering up to Blaine. Blaine eyed the man, unsure of whether to just walk away. Ken wasn’t his favorite person. Still though, his curiosity about the progress of the mine was winning out. Blaine decided to bite the bullet.
BRICK (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 17) Page 25
