Chapter 25: Aiden

 

 

 

The great hall. Smell of burning wood. Reindeer blood, still warm from the vein, as the priest paints my cheeks. A crown is placed on my head, forged from the armor of my enemies. Erick is at my side, my ever-faithful servant….

 

* * *

 

I opened my eyes. The smell of reindeer blood was still inside my nostrils. It turned my stomach.

"Aiden?" Erick mumbled sleepily as I jumped out of bed.

I ran into the bathroom and dry-heaved over the toilet, but nothing came out. After splashing some water on my face, I walked back into my room to see Erick awake. His back was propped up on some pillows. Sunlight streamed through the window at his right, painting a sunny stripe diagonally across his naked chest.

I paused in the doorway, appreciating the sight of him in my bed.

He's mine, I thought in wonder. Butterflies swarmed in my stomach. I almost thought I was going to throw up all over again.

A crease formed in Erick's brow. "What's wrong?"

I just shook my head and got back into bed, sliding under the sheets until my body was touching his once again.

"Low blood sugar, maybe?" I guessed. He raised his left arm, so I could curl up against his side. "I didn't exactly eat a big dinner to sustain the calories I burned riding your dick."

Erick groaned and placed his fingertips to my chin, angling my face up towards his. His stomach tensed under my hand, and something in his pelvic area moved under the sheets. The fact that he was getting hard made me instantly hard as well.

"After breakfast," I promised, between kisses.

Naked except for our boxers, we removed ourselves to the kitchen. I tasked Erick with making toast while I dropped some bacon into a hot skillet. The bacon crisped up in seconds, leaving behind a thin layer of clear grease. After cracking a couple of eggs into it, the toaster ejected our toast, and breakfast was ready.

Once again, I felt sick. The smell of bacon made me so nauseous it was making my head spin, but I felt immediately better once I took my first bite of food.

Across the small kitchen table, Erick was noticeably quiet. He was so quiet, in fact, that it distracted me from enjoying our first sit-down breakfast together.

"Something on your mind?" I asked.

Erick glanced up very suddenly, looking like he was caught. "No. Just tired."

I set down my fork. "You're not that good at being human just yet. I can tell you're lying."

Erick set down his fork, too. He returned my suspicious gaze with a small, embarrassed smile. "Okay," he said, to my surprise. I hadn't expected him to give in so easily. "Caleb visited me last night. He knows that I'm a dragon shifter."

I gasped. "And?"

"And he asked me to burn down Scheherazade's Spa. Dragon's fire can destroy any magical artifact they are hoarding, including the animal spirits of those shifters."

"The Black Paws want to burn down my spa?" I said in disbelief.

"Not the Black Paws. Just Caleb. Kaden would never allow it, which was why he came to me so late last night. And…it's not your spa, Aiden. You just work there."

My first instinct was to be offended. At the spa, I was part of a team. Not only that, the coven had cured me of shifting.

But…

I thought about the way Eliza punished Janelle.

In the end, they were still a coven of witches, and I was an outsider. If it came down to it, would they be loyal to me, the way I'd always been loyal to them?

Not my spa, I thought to myself. Not my coven. I decided to let the shifters and the witches determine their own fate.

"I won't stop you," I said, "if you think it's a good idea. Do you?"

Erick's gaze was unflinching and unbreakable. "I do."

 

* * *

 

My last appointment of the day was for the signature facial.

As I rolled the spiked derma-roller over my clients' face, I decided that the coven was getting what they deserved. Shifters had literally bled to help make Eliza rich, and what was she doing in return?

Turning shifters against themselves.

"You're going to look fabulous," I whispered to the middle-aged woman on my table. "Just you wait."

I wrapped her up in a soft cotton sheet and left her to enjoy the sound of crashing waves floating gently from the speakers.

The door leading to the lab clicked shut the moment I stepped out into the hallway. I glanced over to see that Karen was returning from a trip to the supply closet with a stack of folded sheets.

"Can you set these out for tomorrow before you go?" she said, dropping them into my arms. "Thanks."

I just smiled and nodded, but Karen didn't even bother to wait for a response. She walked right past me to the lobby, leaving me to glower bitterly at the back of her head.

There's no point in planning for tomorrow, I thought.

Feeling slightly better, I went into the empty appointment rooms to replace the sheets, anyway. After my client checked out, I offered to relieve Carla of her lobby vacuuming duties.

"You sure?" she said.

I shrugged. "Sure. I don't have anywhere to be right now," I said. "I can lock up, too. And I'll make sure to set the alarm."

There was a twitch of fear in her eyes, which she masked with a short laugh. "Ha. Yeah, you don't wanna get Eliza mad, do you?" she said, waggling her fingers at me as if she was talking about the boogeyman.

Laughing, I waggled my fingers right back.

Barely five minutes later, I waved goodbye to Carla and Karen, who left the spa arm-in-arm.

"We'll make it to happy hour this time," Karen said gleefully, just before the glass door swung shut.

Watching through the windows, I pushed the vacuum cleaner around the lobby until Karen and Carla drove out of the parking lot. Once they left, I checked the rest of the building.

Then, I sent Caleb a text.

The bear has left the cave.

It meant that everybody had left the building. That was the most important thing. Death wasn't on the menu.

Only destruction.

Just before setting the alarm, I thought about the sixteen animal souls stashed under the laboratory sink. Mine was among them, and Erick's fire was about to burn it out of existence.

Other than the scar on my calf, it was the last lingering souvenir of the night that I was attacked.

"Good riddance," I muttered aloud.

I punched in the code. That was part of the plan, too. There really was no use arming a building that would be nothing more than a pile of ash in a few hours. But once the security system was compromised, it would send an alert to the company, which in turn would call Eliza's personal cell phone at the exact moment she lost everything.

I had to give it to Caleb. It truly was an elegant way to end things.

After locking the doors, I took one last look at Scheherazade's Spa. I couldn't help but feel a little emotional as I reflected on all the memories I'd made here, but when I remembered the abominations under the sink, it truly was enough for me to light the match and walk away.

Figuratively speaking.

For the last time, I got into my car to begin my drive home from work.

Just before I started the engine, something moved in the backseat and clapped a hand over my mouth.