by Riley Storm
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.
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.
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 hear 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.
“And don’t give me that shit about needing guidance,” Parre snapped with a sudden burst of strength. “You don’t need that. You’re stronger and wiser than you give yourself credit for. You think I know everything just because of the fact that I’m old and about to pass on? Ha! I’m over here about to shit my pants, if I had anything left in me, at how scared I am for what happens next.”
Next to him Elanna stirred, moving a hand to rest on his chest. Parre grabbed at it and missed, his strength fading swiftly again. Aaric watched as Francis leaned in and connected their hands, both the elder dragons seeming to draw peace from the touch of the other.
“You can do this, Aaric,” Elanna said. “We have faith in you. You will figure it out.”
“Thank you,” he mumbled, bowing his head, overcome with emotion.
“Believe in yourself,” the elder dragon added, her voice frail. “We do.”
Aaric nodded. He sensed something changing, but by the time he looked up it was too late. They were gone.
“Together,” Francis said with a sigh. “Now there’s true love.”
Not trusting his voice, Aaric just nodded again, looking on, watching as the two bodies hardened into stone. Seconds earlier, they had been his friends. His mentors. Now they were gone. Dead.
“What do we do now?” Francis asked.
“Did they have any wishes?” he asked, his voice hanging together by the barest thread.
“Just to be together until the end. After that, well…”
Aaric knew. They weren’t the first dragons he’d watched die, though they were the ones he’d been closest to, besides his parents. His father had died in the war with the mages, and without him, his mother had simply been human and had perished soon after. Leaving Aaric alone.
That was when Parre had picked him up, a dragon in only his fourth decade on the planet, desperately in need of guidance and a firm hand. They had been close ever since. To Aaric, it was like having his parents die all over again.
“Take the remains down to the caverns,” Aaric ordered. “Scatter them in their favorite sleeping area.”
“Of course,” Francis said, bowing his head.
A moment later, they watched as first Elanna’s, and then Parre’s stone bodies cracked and crumbled into dust in front of them, as happened with all dragons. Nobody understood why, but they did.
“Thank you, my friend,” Aaric said softly. “For everything.”
Then he got up from the edge of the bed and moved aside. From the door behind him, he heard a gasp. Whirling, he saw a figure silhouetted in the doorway.
Hand over her mouth, Olivia was staring at the bed where the bodies had just disappeared.
“What the hell just happened?”
24
Olivia couldn’t believe her eyes.
It was impossible of course, what she’d just seen. Therefore, they had to be lying to her. It was a trick, a magic trick.
“Olivia?” Aaric was suddenly there, blocking her view. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Aaric, what was that?” she asked, barely recognizing her own strangled voice. “What happened in there?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit
,” she hissed. “You were in there. Talking to two people on the bed. Then they stopped talking, and you two acted like they had died. But then they just crumbled into nothing, Aaric. Into nothing. That doesn’t happen!”
She was getting hysterical, but that was okay, wasn’t it? After what she’d just seen.
“You need to go,” Aaric ground out. “You don’t belong here.”
“Where is here?” she asked, looking around wildly. “Where am I anyway? What sort of place is this? Who calls their house a Keep? Who are you, Aaric?”
“Leave!” Aaric bellowed, his voice and body language changing abruptly.
Olivia backpedaled swiftly as Aaric strode forward, filling the open doorway.
All at once, he wasn’t the kind, protective person she’d come to know. He was a huge threat, a scary visage, anger mixed with pain in his features as he stared at her, tears forming in the corners of his eyes.
“Just go,” he said, the energy abruptly leaving him. “Please. Leave me alone now. You weren’t meant to see any of this.”
“Maybe I wasn’t,” she argued, her temper flaring at the dismissal. “But I did, Aaric. I saw it, I saw them just disappear. What did you do to them? What is going on?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Aaric shouted at her. “I should have, but I spent all my time with you, can’t you see that?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me? I didn’t force you to spend time with me. You asked me to dinner. You asked me to lunch. You kept in touch with me. Yes, I came here tonight, but only because I needed your help, and you were already involved. I didn’t force you to be with me. So, you can take your attitude and fuck right off with it, mister.”
Aaric sagged. To Olivia’s surprise, another person appeared. Smaller, more normal-sized, he looked at Olivia with compassion. “You should come back. If he won’t explain everything later, I will. But right now, he needs some time alone. To grieve.”
“I’m fine,” Aaric protested. “I’m strong. I don’t need to go run off somewhere to cry. There’s business to take care of.”
