Chapter 9: Aiden

 

 

 

It finally came to me in my dreams.

The fire, the swords, the men as tall as mountains, chanting in an ancient language long forgotten:

Dreki.

Dreki.

Dreki.

I saw Erick's slitted eyes. I saw his scales. He was no longer a man.

He was dreki.

By the time I woke up, I had the answer.

I pushed myself out of bed, feeling more alive than I had in days. Somehow, I knew that Erick had left the R.V., even before I stepped out into the galley to see for myself.

I padded across the floor and down the steps to the door. A hiss of fresh air hit me in the face when I pushed it open. Moving as if in a trance, I set my bare feet down onto the cold earth and started walking.

It was the hours just before dawn, and the sky was twilit a faded sherbet color. I was in just a pair of sweatpants, without a shirt or shoes. But I wasn't afraid. Again, I just knew somehow that I was safe.

And somehow, I knew where to go.

I let my own instincts guide me through the forest. I felt the pull coming from deep inside me, as if an invisible rope was tied around my spine and tugging me gently. If I was still a shifter, I would've thought it was my wolf guiding me there.

I heard the hushing sound of trickling water. Just as I spotted the silver gleam of the river through the trees, an enormous, winged form swooped down from the sky and landed on the riverbank.

It was still obscured by the trees, but I could still see the leathery wings folded against its scaly back. On the ground, it seemed impossibly huge.

I froze, paralyzed with wonder.

The creature was about four meters away from me, and it made a ton of noise, even when it was breathing. As I gaped, it began to emit the telltale wet, crunching sounds of shifting and began to shrink in size.

I saw a man's naked back and a sweep of long, blonde hair. My heart wrenched inside of my chest. Before I knew it, I was running towards him.

He turned around just as he set one foot in the water. The outer edge of his cheek glowed in the gray light of dawn, blue eyes sharp as ice.

Erick.

I pulled my lips apart, wondering what to say. "You…"

Erick turned around and stepped back up onto the bank. There was a question in his eyes.

"What are you?" I finally sputtered. "You're—you're not a panther."

Erick studied me for what felt like a whole entire minute, and for that minute I thought my heart had stopped beating entirely.

"I'm a dragon," he said, without a single change in his expression.

"Impossible," I said, even though I knew it was true. Based on everything I'd seen and dreamed, there was no other possibility than the impossible.

Erick was a dragon shifter.

I walked towards him, without thinking. He stiffened as I drew close. When I was standing right under his nose, I reached up and touched my fingers to his chin.

"How did you find me?"

I said those words, not him. Part of me inside knew that this stranger, this dragon, was meant to find me. It was the same part of me that pulled me out of the R.V. and to the river, blindly reaching for him.

Erick reached up and gripped my fingers. There was a fractured look in his eyes as he gazed down at me, as if his soul were being torn apart.

He drew in a breath, so slow that I could hear the air slipping through his lips and filling his throat, and it send tingles shooting across every exposed inch of me.

"You are under my skin," he finally whispered, lowering his face so I could catch every word. "You always have been."

Something seized me on the inside and forced me to throw my arms around his neck. In turn, Erick dipped his head down and put his mouth to mine.

A single gasp later, we were kissing.

My entire body trembled. My heart was about to burst. I literally saw fireworks. From the moment Erick's lips touched mine, it was like the entire universe froze, suspended in this one, perfect moment.

This was meant to be. We were meant to be. I knew it with every beat of my heart and with every cell in my body.

Erick's hands cradled my face. His thumbs pressed into the corners of my mouth.

"You," he murmured against my lips.

My heartbeat fluttered rapidly. "What?"

"You are mine," he finally said.

I pressed even closer, chest against chest, stomach against breathless, clenching stomach. It had been so long since I had been touched like this. I'd never even seen a naked man since my attack, but now it just felt right.

It was in this moment, kissing and holding Erick, that I silently promised that I would accept anything that fate brought me from now on.

How could I be scared of anything when I had Erick, a dragon shifter?

My dragon shifter.

 

* * *

 

"I was born in the year 855," Erick began. "I think."

I choked on my coffee, spitting it back into my blue enamel cup. "You think?"

Erick smiled wanly. "It was a chaotic time back then."

We were sitting outside on folding chairs. Judging by the angle of the sun and the crisp nip in the air, I guessed it had to be about six in the morning. Breakfast was cooking several feet away, wild caught fish roasting on sticks over a fire that Erick created with a simple puff of breath. If I hadn't seen it myself, I wouldn't have believed it. Now that I knew he was a dragon, there was no use hiding his special skills.

Strangely, though, he refused to show me his full dragon form, even when I asked.

I took another sip of lukewarm coffee, feeling Erick's eyes on me before he copied my movements.

I swallowed. "So you've been alive for—"

"Centuries," Erick finished for me. "But I didn't spend it all on this earth, you know. I was in the Wood."

Of course, once he said that, I had to ask him what the Wood was, exactly.

"It's an enchanted forest in another realm. It was believed long ago that the fairies came from the Wood, though I've yet to see a fairy there, myself."

"And how did you end up in the Wood, Erick?"

"I was sent there at my request by a powerful warlock." He slumped down in his chair and stared intently at the fire.

"Erick."

"Yes?"

"You can't say something like that without explaining anything. Tell me the whole story," I said.

Still slumped in the same position, Erick didn't move a single muscle except for his eyes. He could've been a statue as he gazed at me. A very beautiful statue. Then, a shy smile spread over his lips, the same lips I'd kissed just hours before.

Remembering that kiss, I had to stifle a shiver.

"Back in those times, I was one of the last dragon shifters. My family was allied with a Viking tribe. For generations, we served them. Something changed when the third lord of House Bjärk took the throne. His name was Sigurd. He was my fated mate."

Fated mate. Something sank inside of me when I heard him say those words.

"What happened to him?" I asked numbly.

"He was killed by his usurper, his youngest nephew. Things like that were normal back then. But the pain I felt afterwards was unbearable."

Erick stared back into the fire, as if he could see his own memories playing back to him in the dancing flames. I recalled the same dreams I'd been having and pictured Erick in that dreamscape, wearing furs and armor, drinking flagons of mead to keep himself warm in the year-long winters.

I wondered if he missed it. I gazed across the fire at him. His voice and face were completely devoid of emotion, but I knew that meant that his pain was just as he said: unbearable.

There was a little ping in the center of my chest as I ached for him.

"I am immortal, you know. I can't die," he continued. "I couldn't face life anymore, so I made a deal with a warlock. He sent me to the Wood, where time doesn't exist the same way it does here. I could sleep forever if I wanted, and it would only feel like half a day. The only catch was that I had to come back to earth anytime a witch summoned me, and I was summoned only twice since then. Once, in the 1800s by a mystic in India, to hunt a tiger that was terrorizing his village. And the second time is now. Rowan summoned me by accident when she invoked a great storm."

"There was a huge storm," I said faintly. My coworkers had gossiped about it after it happened. Eliza was pissed about it, though I didn't know any more details.

I peered sideways at Erick. His lips set themselves in a straight line, suggesting to me that the story was over.

I set my empty cup in the dirt and rubbed my hands together. The fire spit and cracked as melted fat dripped off of the fish.

"I don't know much about fated mates. You only get one of those in your lifetime, don't you?" I said softly.

Erick was quiet for a few seconds, not even blinking. "Yes. That's correct."

I leaned back in my seat. "I see."

Earlier, when Erick held my face, murmuring You are mine right into my mouth, I'd felt like my heart was a bird about to explode out of its cage. I felt wanted. I felt happy.

Now, I felt sick, thinking about Erick holding some other guy's face. Some guy who died lifetimes before I was even born, and Erick was still thinking about him now. Because they were fated.

"The fish is cooked," Erick said abruptly.

I jerked out of my trance and forced a smile on my face. "Finally."

We got out the cheap plasticware and ate off of our laps, watching the morning turn slowly.

 

* * *

 

That night, I stopped Erick from going to his regular sleeping spot in the front cab of the R.V. "You can sleep in bed with me…if you want," I said, staring shyly at the floor.

He followed me into the bedroom. Both of us stripped down to our boxers and slid under the sheets from opposite sides of the bed. When his elbow touched mine, my pulse jumped to about a thousand beats per minute.

"Aiden," he murmured, and I could feel him reaching for me.

Sighing, I turned onto my side. I felt his fingertips on my jaw, his breath on my face. We kissed until that kiss turned into more than just a kiss. His tongue probed mine until it was impossible to tell where he ended and I began.

My bare chest was flat against his. My stomach grazed his stomach. I could feel some frozen part of me beginning to thaw inside. Even though I'd never been intimate with a man since that fateful night I was bitten, maybe I could—

"No!"

The scream flew out of me before I even knew what was going on.

My stomach was in knots. A cold sweat was forming on my skin. Erick jerked away from me as I sat up in bed, clenching my legs shut as my heart raced, stealing my breath. Mentally, I'd blocked those memories out, but my body…

My body still remembered.

"Aiden, I didn't mean—"

"I'm sorry," I said. I released a shuddering exhale.

Erick stroked my back, gingerly at first. When he realized I wasn't pulling away from him, he sat up and gathered me into a hug.

"We don't have to. We can sleep," he said. He turned his face to the side and placed a kiss on my cheek.

I closed my eyes and let his steady heartbeat lull me back down to calmness. I'm safe, I kept thinking to myself. I'm safe with Erick.

He guided my head back to the pillow. He was the first one to drift off to sleep, his heavy arm slung comfortingly over my side.

My eyes fell shut one last time. With the faint tingle of Erick's kiss still lingering on my cheek, I finally slipped under, and for the first night in a long time, I didn't dream about anything at all.