by Lola Gabriel
Amazingly, the dragons seemed to not hear him. That, or they were intentionally not listening to him.
“Hey!” Erik gave a high-pitched whistle, which was enough for most of the people involved in the fire-breathing competition to turn their attention to him. “Guys, guys, come on! If you’re going to do this, can you at least take it outside? We don’t need another smoke detector going off because of your crap!”
Michael opened his mouth to argue, but Daxton immediately transformed back into his regular human form.
“He started it!” he yelled.
“That’s a load of bull if I’ve ever heard one!” Michael replied, keeping his dragon head.
Erik let out his inner dragon just enough to release a huff of smoke on his next breath. Michael and Daxton noticed he had gone into Dragon Prince mode and rightfully took a step back.
“I don’t care who started it, I’m not having this demonstration of your fragile egos inside the fraternity!” Erik ordered. He usually tried not to use his royalty on his friends—though he had no problem using it when he needed to (or sometimes simply when he wanted to)—but he didn’t want there to be any issue that could get back to his father.
“Sorry, Erik,” both Michael and Daxton muttered, and Michael’s head morphed back into his human one. The two of them walked away, probably to either go continue their fire-breathing competition or go sulk. Erik didn’t particularly care which one it was.
“Damn, can you believe them?” he asked Aubrey, whose grip on his hand had tightened. “It’s like they’re little kids, I swear—”
He noticed, for the first time, how pale Aubrey had gone. Her skin looked almost translucent, and if Erik hadn’t known any better, he would’ve thought she was a vampire. Her hand on his was sweating, and she seemed to be shaking, like she was cold.
“Aubrey?” Erik was instantly worried, and he turned his body to fully face her. “Aubrey, are you okay?”
“Mh-hm,” Aubrey hummed with the smallest nod of her head. She wasn’t looking at Erik.
“Are you sure?” he demanded. “Do you—do you want a drink, something to eat—?”
“No, no,” Aubrey said, staring up at him. “I’m—I’m okay.”
Something about the way she spoke didn’t sit right with Erik. There was something bothering her, except she didn’t want to tell him what it was. She didn’t have to, of course, but Erik knew he could help her if she did.
Suddenly, a loud alarm started blaring throughout the entire building, except that it seemed to be coming from outside of the building, so Erik assumed it was the campus alarm going off and alerting every single magic being within a fifty-mile radius. A lot of the partygoers didn’t seem to notice it, but some of them did, and they stopped dancing and turned to look at each other in confusion.
“What’s that sound?” Aubrey asked, letting go of Erik’s hand to grip his arm. Not many magic places had alarms—they were mostly assigned to places where there was a big concentration of magic beings, such as universities and other educational institutions—but it was a bit of a surprise that Aubrey didn’t immediately know what it was. They were ingrained in most magic beings almost since their birth. As the Dragon Prince, Erik was no stranger to them.
“The campus alarm,” he answered, placing a hand on top of hers. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Maybe someone’s pulling some kind of prank—”
“CUT THE MUSIC!” someone ordered, a strong, booming voice that Erik didn’t recognize. “CUT THE MUSIC!”
Erik’s fellow dragon, Kyle, who was the DJ of the party, turned off the music, and the crowd parted a little to let two campus security guards stride inside until they were in the middle of the room.
Erik frowned to himself. Sure, the party had gotten kind of wild in the last few minutes, and Daxton and Michael had gotten into a fire-breathing competition, but mess and chaos had never been a problem in any EMU fraternity celebration, so he didn’t see why this one had caused campus security to show up, much less why someone had sounded the alarm. Hell, the smoke detectors in the building hadn’t even gone off yet!
“What the hell?” cried someone amidst the sudden silence.
“What’s going on?” demanded someone else.
“Everybody, please remain calm!” one of the security guards said, raising his arms in what Erik assumed was meant to be a tranquilizing manner. “The security system caught sight of a non-magic being entering campus—”
Erik immediately tensed, and he heard gasps coming from several people in the room.
“There’s a human here?!” someone cried.
Next to him, Aubrey also tensed, her grip on his arm growing tighter.
“There’s a good chance that there is, indeed, a human on campus,” said the other guard, stepping forward next to her companion. “But please,” she continued when people began to scream and panic, “please try to remain calm! We are currently doing everything in our power to find this human without any magic beings getting hurt!”
“What does it matter?” Chad yelled from somewhere away from Erik. “We can take on a human!”
“Do not, under any circumstances, engage with the human!” ordered the first security guard. “We don’t know how dangerous they might be or how much they might know about us, so if you see them, please contact campus security immediately! We must find them and take care of them as soon as possible!”
“In the meantime,” added the second guard, “the campus is on complete lockdown! That means—” she had to raise her voice in order to be heard over the protests of Erik’s fellow students, “—that absolutely no one goes in or out of EMU, understood?”
“And no transforming!”
That, out of everything else, was what made more chaos ensue, and Erik thought it was completely understandable. Asking a magic being to hide half of their identity was preposterous. That was why they had places like EMU, why they had been built in the first place—for magic beings to have a safe haven, a place where they could be themselves without having to hide from the humans.
“We understand your anger,” said the second security guard. “But we can’t let the human see anything that they wouldn’t find in their own world.”
The two guards began to leave the way they had come, but the first one turned around to tell the crowd one more thing. “Remember, if you find any trace of the human, contact campus security! Do not engage them! Keep yourselves safe!”
“What a bummer,” said someone standing close to Erik once the guards had left. “Goddamn humans, why do they always ruin everything?”
“Hey…” Aubrey tugged gently on Erik’s arm to get his attention. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, allowing her to drag him back toward the hallway leading to the fraternity brothers’ rooms. She stopped in front of his door and looked from side to side, like she wanted to make sure they were alone. “What is it?”
“I have to get out of here,” she told him hurriedly, clasping her hands together.
“What?” Erik reached out to hold them between his own, but she stepped away from him. He tried to ignore the pang of pain he felt inside his chest. He wasn’t entirely successful. “Aubrey, what’s wrong?”
“I need to get out of here,” she repeated.
“Look, I’m all for breaking the rules and sticking it to the man and all,” Erik said, “but there’s a human here. That’s nothing to be breezy about.”
“Yes, I heard,” Aubrey muttered, glancing away from him. “But I…I still need to get off the campus!”
Erik took a deep breath and slowly let it out. It was obvious that Aubrey was scared by the prospect of a human loose on campus, but there was not much a single human could do against an entire university of magic beings. Still, it was better to steer clear of them, as encounters between magic beings and humans had never gone too well in the past.
“Hey.” He gently grabbed her shoulders. “You don’t have to worry about anything, okay?” He smil
ed confidently at her. “You’re with the Dragon Prince. And even if I wasn’t, there’s basically an army of magic beings here, all right? We’re safe, don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
His words, rather than reassuring her like he had hoped they would, seemed to have the completely opposite effect. Aubrey looked, impossibly, even paler than she had just a few moments ago, and Erik wanted nothing more than to help her regain the rosy color of her skin, to calm whatever worries she might have, to hold her close through the danger and make sure nothing happened to her.
“Y-you—you’re—” she stammered, and Erik felt embarrassment flushing his cheeks.
“I know, I know, I should’ve told you before,” he admitted, “but I didn’t want you to think that—”
“No, no, you don’t get it!” Aubrey hissed. “Erik, I—I’m not supposed to be here!”
“Not supposed to…” Erik repeated Aubrey’s sentence in his head, and suddenly, it was like the pieces of a puzzle had finally fallen into place, and Erik was able to see the full picture for the first time. He realized why he hadn’t known what kind of magic being Aubrey was, why she had looked downright sick when she’d seen Michael and Daxton breathing fire, why she felt the urgency to leave.
“It’s you,” he whispered. “You are the human.”
Aubrey broke free of his grip and wrapped her arms around herself.
“How…” Erik blinked in confusion. “How did you even get here?”
Elite Magic University was surrounded by a magical barrier that kept humans from just walking up and interacting with a world that wasn’t their own, and Erik couldn’t even fathom how in hell Aubrey had been able to simply step inside one of the school’s fraternities without sounding every single alarm the campus had at its disposal. It was a miracle her presence hadn’t been noticed sooner.
“I don’t know!” Aubrey cried quietly. “I don’t know, I was just… walking with my friends, and then they were gone and I was in front of the entrance and… oh, god…” She buried her face in her hands as though she were about to burst into tears.
Mixed emotions coursed through Erik. He couldn’t believe he’d felt such a connection to a human when he had never before been in the presence of one, when being close to one should’ve had the same effect as being close to a fae, yet somehow, the fact that she was a human didn’t change the need he felt to protect her, to make sure she was safe and sound. He thought it might be his duty as Dragon Prince, but he knew what that felt like, and it wasn’t this.
What he felt for Aubrey was completely new; it was not only the need to be with her, but also the desire to be with her. And it wasn’t just a sexual kind of desire, it was also the thought of waking up next to her for the rest of his life, of the two of them celebrating their birthday together for eternity, of her sitting by his side when he dined with his parents and exchanging a knowing look every time his father made one of his comments.
I would die for her, Erik thought to himself, and he knew it in his bones to be true. They were meant to be together. He was meant to meet her tonight, on their birthday, on his first quarter of a century, because she would spend the rest of it beside him. She was his mate, and Erik would protect her with his life.
“Aubrey,” he called her, softly, and it pained him to see that she took another step back. “Aubrey, I’m not going to hurt you.”
She looked up from her hands at him, and the fear in her eyes made Erik want to march to the security system and get rid of any evidence that could endanger her.
“You’re… you’re not?” Aubrey asked, her voice tiny and terrified.
“No,” he replied. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
It was going to possibly be the most dangerous thing Erik would ever do. Covering up and hiding a human was already bad, but to help that same human escape would be the equivalent of turning his back on his fellow dragons, on every single magic being that attended this campus. If they were caught, he could be expelled, disowned by his family, banned from the only home he had ever known… and yet he would risk it all to ensure Aubrey’s safety.
“How?” Aubrey questioned. “You heard the guards! Everyone’s going to be looking for me!”
“I’ll come up with something,” Erik promised her. If the campus was on lockdown, that meant that the professors and teachers and the rest of the staff had been warned about the human, and they would be the ones on the lookout. Erik wasn’t sure about how the security system operated, or how it had known that Aubrey wasn’t a magic being, so he didn’t know how to fool it. Would a disguise of some sort be enough to help him sneak her out to the edge of the campus? It would, at the very least, buy them a few seconds, perhaps the seconds they needed for Aubrey to make a run for it.
In the worst-case scenario, Erik could shift into his dragon form and fly her to the EMU entrance, and he could come up with some crappy excuse about why he’d transformed when they had been forbidden to do so once Aubrey was safely back in her own world. He was the Dragon Prince; he could get away with some mischief.
“Okay,” he said. “I may have an idea. It might not work, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“I’ll take anything over being caught,” Aubrey murmured. “What’s your plan?”
“We’re going to disguise you,” Erik told her. “You’re already wearing my jacket, so that should help us.” He noticed, with a certain amount of fondness, that Aubrey huddled deeper into his jacket, a lovely pink blush covering her cheeks. Despite everything, she had not once tried to take it off.
“Anything else?” she prompted, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. “Maybe something to cover my head?”
“Good idea. I think I must have a scarf or a hat.” He turned to his door, muttered a quick “Wait here” under his breath, and went inside his room to find a scarf his mother had knitted for him on his 20th birthday. He had never worn it on campus, not wanting anyone to see what the Dragon Queen had embroidered on it, so if anyone saw it, they wouldn’t automatically know it was his.
Erik took the scarf to Aubrey and locked his dorm room behind him. When he turned back to her, Aubrey had undone the braid crown atop her head and was now trying to tie her hair into a bun.
“Easier to hide like this, right?” she pointed out, but Erik could hear her disappointment. He pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and left his hand there, caressing her cheek. He didn’t know if she meant to or not, but she leaned into the touch, letting out a little sigh.
“I’ll get you out of here, Aubrey,” Erik vowed. “But I need you to trust me, okay?”
He dropped his hand from her face but held it with his palm facing upwards. He hoped, against all logical reasoning or expectation, that she would grab it, the same way she had taken his hand every previous instance tonight.
Aubrey stared into his eyes. Erik could still see the fear in her gaze, but it was subdued by a sudden fierceness that surprised him. Without breaking eye contact, Aubrey took his hand and nodded her head.
“I do,” she said with no hesitation whatsoever.
Erik squeezed her palm. “Good. Now let’s sneak you out.”
6
Aubrey didn’t know how to explain why she trusted Erik so much—with her life, even. It was almost like a gut feeling, except it was much stronger, and she didn’t only feel it in her gut, she felt it down to her very soul, as if it was some sort of primal instinct, something ingrained in her genes. He had promised he would get her out of the campus, and she believed him completely.
I would love to stay, though, she sighed to herself while Erik led her to the back exit of the building. She was aware that she couldn’t remain in a place where she didn’t belong, but she wished she could stay if only for one night with her Dragon Prince.
Her Dragon Prince? They hadn’t even known each other for longer than a few hours, at most, and she was already calling him hers?
But he is mine, Aubrey thought, and the revelation made her breath catch
in her throat. Of course she had been shocked to learn that he wasn’t actually human and was, in fact, the literal prince of a race of dragons, but rather than scare her off, she felt even more connected to him. She remembered dancing with him and kissing him earlier, and she realized that she wanted to spend the rest of her life doing the exact same thing: dancing with him and kissing him in front of anyone around them. She wanted to introduce him to her friends. She wanted to stroll through Central Park by his side, holding hands and enjoying each other’s company.
Aubrey couldn’t claim to understand what it was, exactly, that drew her to Erik, but she knew she had never felt like this with any of her ex-boyfriends. Erik was something else entirely, and she didn’t want to let him go when she had just found him.
“Here.” Erik stopped before the back door leading out of the building and helped her wrap his scarf around her head like a shawl. God, it also smelled slightly of Erik, and Aubrey breathed his scent in and held it as long as her lungs allowed her to.
She was terrified of being found by the magic beings, but she was even more scared of the prospect of never seeing Erik again.
“Hey.” Erik seemed to sense her fears, because he reached out to grab her other hand and squeezed them both. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I know,” she replied, and she did. “It’s just that… this is not the last time we’ll see each other, right?”
Erik’s eyes widened, but then he smiled at her, and that smile almost singlehandedly erased all of her worries.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” he said, his smile turning into a cocky smirk that sent warmth rushing through her. It was easy to believe him when he had enough confidence for the entire campus. “C’mon, we gotta be quick.”
The stone paths across the grassy field of the campus were empty beneath the moonlight. The distance between each building seemed even bigger now that there was no one around—no one except the security guards looking for her, Aubrey assumed. Erik kept her close to the walls, and when they had to walk close to any of the stone paths, he tried to remain under the shade of trees or behind the cover of bushes so they would be less noticeable even if someone happened to stumble upon them.
