Chapter 10: Erick

 

 

 

I awoke to the sound of heavy knocking on the thin metal door. Aiden groaned beside me as I blearily opened my eyes.

"Who is it?" he mumbled sleepily, his head still firmly buried in the covers.

I sat up. My groin was cold. When I glanced down, there was a spot of dampness in the front of my navy blue boxers.

"Curses," I muttered.

I'd had a nocturnal emission. This hadn't happened to me in a very long time.

Not since Sigurd.

Aiden made a groaning noise. I glanced out the window to see Rowan's car parked several feet away in the trees.

"It's Rowan," I said. "I'll get the door."

I got out of bed and faced the corner to change into a clean pair of trousers. Aiden was just beginning to stir when I strolled out to answer Rowan's persistent knocking.

"They have a plan," Rowan said, before I could even say hello.

I stepped out of the R.V. "Who?"

Rowan seemed momentarily dazed as she blinked at my bare chest. After readjusting her glasses, she tilted her head back to look at my face. "The Black Paws. They have a plan about confronting the Graybacks. But they need both of your help."

I remembered Aiden's outburst in bed last night. "I don't know if Aiden can handle—" I began.

"What were you guys doing before I got here?" Rowan suddenly asked, staring pointedly at my chest once again. One of her eyebrows rose suggestively.

"Nothing!"

"Your face is turning red."

Was it? I resisted the urge to touch my face. Instead, I coughed a few times to clear my throat. "Did you or did you not come here to ask for our help?"

Rowan stood up straighter. "I did. It would be nice to have a dragon shifter on our side, even if it is a secret."

Eager to redirect the conversation from the topic of Aiden, I inclined my head. "I'll help you. What is the plan?"

Just then, I heard Aiden stomping out of the bedroom and stood aside when the door swung outward.

Rowan jutted her chin towards him. "Mornin'. The Black Paws need you."

Like me, Aiden was shirtless, but unlike me, he was still in his boxers. He crossed his arms across his lean yet well-formed chest. "Why should I help them?"

"Because you're finally getting out of here. They'll explain at the clubhouse," Rowan said.

Aiden's expression softened. It was obvious that he wanted nothing more than to leave this place. I was surprised at how disappointed I felt to see it.

"Is Erick coming, too?" he said.

Rowan gave me another one of her looks, raising that same eyebrow. I ignored her.

"Of course," I said. "I'm not leaving your side."

Aiden's lips set themselves into a straight line. "Okay, then. I guess I have no choice." He shut the door and disappeared back inside, presumably to get dressed.

"Does he know?" Rowan said in a low voice.

"That I'm a dragon? Yes."

Rowan sighed. "No. Does he know that he's your fated mate?"

I swiveled my head and glared at her. "No. And he must never find out."

"You still want to go back to the Wood," Rowan concluded.

"Exactly. And I don't need any complications stopping me." Things were already complicated enough already.

Rowan played with the end of her ponytail. "Right. Well, go get your things together, I guess. I'll be waiting in the car."

When I climbed back into the R.V., I found Aiden sitting on the end of the bed, still in his boxers. He rose quickly when I walked into the room.

"Erick," he said.

I saw the look on his face and stopped. "Is something wrong?"

"After the meeting with the Black Paws," he began, "I want to run away to Eliza Vreeland. She's the head witch of the coven, and she's also my boss at the spa. Will you help me?"

He placed his hands in mine, and that was when I noticed that he was shaking.

"Please," he said.

My thoughts drifted over to Rowan sitting out in her car. She'd promised to help me get back to the Wood, and in turn I'd promised to help her while I was still here. I knew in my mind that I had to keep my word.

But I knew in my heart that I couldn't refuse anything that Aiden asked of me.

"I'll help you," I said.

Aiden's face broke into a wide grin of relief. "Thank you, Erick," he whispered, and he rose up on his toes to place a kiss on my lips.

I closed my eyes, enjoying his scent and the soft warmth of his mouth. He made me weak. I wasn't used to feeling like this.

"Let's get dressed," Aiden said brightly, and he began moving around the room, picking up loose articles of clothing off the floor.

I watched him for a moment, feeling my affection towards him growing with each passing second.

Yes, things were indeed complicated enough already…and there was the promise of more to come.

 

* * *

 

The Black Paw clubhouse turned out to be a crumbling old barn in the woods behind a restaurant called Lucy's. There was a floor of packed earth under our feet and dust raining down from the rafters over our heads. The only others in attendance besides Rowan, Aiden, and myself, were the twin alphas and their four betas.

Josh, the sheriff's deputy, walked in shortly after our arrival.

"Did you do it?" Kaden asked Josh after greeting him with a kiss.

"Yes," Josh said.

"Do what?" one of betas asked. The others fixed me and Aiden with curious, suspicious looks.

Especially me.

"We'll explain in a second," Kaden said. "First, introductions. For everybody who wasn't around a few days ago, this is Aiden and…Erick, right?"

"Right," I said.

In turn, Kaden and Caleb introduced us to their betas. We'd already met Jimmy and Logan. Sam was a sandy-haired, mild-mannered man. Mickey was short but intimidatingly muscular, with deeply tan skin and dark eyes. All of the Black Paws were wearing identical black leather vests, except for Josh, who stood out in his clean, pressed uniform.

After an exchange of stiff nods, Aiden crossed his arms defensively. "Is anybody going to tell me why I'm even here?"

Suddenly, Caleb snarled. "Watch yourself," he snapped, baring his teeth.

Instinctively, I jumped in front of Aiden as I felt the spark of my inner dragon waking. However, it was Rowan who spoke up before anybody else could.

"Look, you guys are the ones who kidnapped Aiden and left him out in the wilderness with no information. So can you blame him?"

Nobody responded, but there was so much tension in the air I could've sliced it with a knife. Aiden's heart was drumming wildly behind me, a faint, muffled hum only I could hear. I made two fists and dug my heels into the dirt, meeting each challenging stare with one of my own.

"She's right," Sam piped up. "Let's all just sit down and hear what Josh has to say. Is that all right with you?"

I twitched when I realized he was speaking to me. I released my fists. "Fine by me."

Rowan motioned us towards some cubes of hay, where we sat down in a row. Josh promptly coughed into his fist and took the floor.

"As of now, Eliza's coven still believes I'm secretly looking to cure myself of shifting, and—" he began.

"How?" Aiden interrupted. "I missed, what, two or three days of work? You've been hanging around so much, you're the first one they'd suspect."

"About that. You've been sick for three days. Here, catch," Logan said, and he tossed something flat and heavy into Aiden's lap. It was his phone. "We took the liberty of texting Eliza for ya."

Aiden's left leg began jiggling against mine. I heard him draw in a breath, ready to snap back, but Rowan pinched him.

"As I was saying," Josh said emphatically with a scowl in our direction, "I'm still on the coven's good side, but the Graybacks aren't. I know this because one of Garland Grayback's betas came into the station to tell me himself. Evidently, they’ve been watching the coven, and that's how they knew that we'd taken Aiden."

"Okay," Rowan said, "but why are they so interested in Aiden?"

"No idea," Josh said with a shrug. "That's why I told the beta that Aiden escaped and is running around lost in the woods somewhere."

"Why?" Aiden and Rowan cried in unison.

Mickey, who'd been observing the whole exchange in a thoughtful silence, finally spoke up. "If Aiden is that important to them, they'll go out to look for him."

"And they'll do it quietly, before the coven realizes he's gone…hypothetically," Sam added.

Josh nodded his head. "Bingo. So I'm thinking we lure the Graybacks out into the wilderness, catch them by surprise, and have ourselves a good ol' interrogation about what they know about the cure, and why they're so interested in Aiden."

"But how are we going to do that? They're just as strong as we are," Caleb said bitterly.

A look of realization bloomed across Kaden's face. He ran his fingers excitedly through his hair and took a step forward towards the center of the room. "We have something that they don't," he said. "A panther."

I stopped breathing as I felt the weight of everyone's attention focused on me. It was a strange feeling, like I was being stripped naked by invisible hands.

"Will you please come and help? I know you don't owe us anything, but our pack would pay you back in kind. We'll give you a favor in return," Kaden said.

I bit my lip thoughtfully. Rowan's eyes widened behind her glasses, and I could tell she was trying to communicate something to me, though I couldn't tell what. Aiden's silence was also telling, but I didn't know what that meant, either.

It was all up to me in that moment.

I began to think of the last private conversation I'd had with Aiden. There was only one thing he wanted over all else right now.

"I'll do it if you release Aiden," I blurted out.

Josh, Kaden, and Caleb exchanged guarded looks. With a start, I realized that they were actually engaged in a silent, private conversation.

It was Caleb who finally spoke first.

"We'll release Aiden," he said, "if he promises not to tell anyone what we did."

"And what we're planning to do," Josh added regretfully.

Aiden sighed, in a defeated, hollow sort of way. "I just want to go home. I don't care what you shifters do to each other."

"Then it's a done deal," Kaden announced.

Kaden and Caleb took turns shaking my hand, then moved onto Aiden. As Caleb pumped Aiden's limp fingers in his firm grip, Rowan leaned back to shoot me a look of wild outrage over Aiden's shoulder. It wasn't until a moment later when she pulled me aside that I finally knew what all her dirty looks had been about.

"I thought you said you didn't want to complicate things," she whispered as we stood together in a corner.

Wordlessly, I glanced up over her head. Aiden was still sitting by himself, tapping around on his phone with his thumbs as the Black Paws conferred with each other several feet away.

Shaking my head, I lowered my gaze back down to meet Rowan's. "This is the last thing. I just need to get Aiden out of this."

Rowan shook her head, too, but it was in a sense of disappointment that was clearly towards me. "You need to tell him," was all she said.