Matthew: House of Wilkshire ― Paranormal Dragon Shifter Romance

by Kathi S. Barton

  “I have a home. And before now, I couldn’t make tears either.” She looked at him. He said again that he’d not been able to before now. “I think you’ll find that you can do a great many things that you couldn’t before. I know that I did. I can make gems for us. I’m sure that as my mate, you will be able to do the same thing.”

  “This is too much.” She sat down, her legs a little worn out from walking so hard. “I’m sure you know this, but your brother has killed a few people in the name of selling you off. He’s not done it recently. Mostly I think because few people believe in dragons anymore. But that won’t make him stop.”

  “No, it won’t. I’m sure the fact that my father and stepmother are far away is the only reason he’s not done anything untoward to them. Mostly my father. Julia isn’t a dragon, but a faerie. Rolland, my brother, he has a little magic, but not nearly as much as his mom does now that she’s mated to my dad. I think you’ll like them both. I’ve not told them about you yet—I was waiting to see what sort of information I could give them. I don’t know a great deal about you. Nor do you about me.” Aisling told him that there was very little about her that anyone would care about. “I do. I really do. I know that you were once a warrior. That your rider was killed while you were both in battle. At that same battle, you were nearly killed. I know that you’re beautiful, intelligent, and have a good heart. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have taken Dak back to your side.”

  She looked at the little faerie as he sat, watching the two of them. “He’s kept me safe for longer than anyone else has. He can be a pain in the ass, but I love him.” She looked at Matt when he stood up. “What is it? Something going on?”

  “Before I came in here, Honey, my faerie, told me there was an injured man at my home. She just told me that he died, but has left a message through his ghost. Did you know that Connor and Roxanna can—? Never mind. That’s something for later. Rolland killed him.” Aisling asked him why that had him tense right now. “It was an off duty officer that was looking into things for Devon. Apparently, he came upon Rolland while doing a check on one of the many buildings in the area, and Rolland killed him. Devon—and I understand why—is really pissed off.”

  “What can we do?” Matt said that he needed to find him. “That should be easy, right? With this crazy shit that we both have. Right?”

  “No. For some reason, he’s considered family. And I’ve never been able to locate him in any kind of way.” She stomped over to the dirt she’d stepped in earlier. “You might not be able to do anything.”

  “Or I might well know where the fucker is.” She didn’t have any shoes on, ditching them as soon as she entered the cave. “I’m not sure how to do this, but give me a minute here. I’m better at learning by trial and error.”

  She didn’t know Rolland, nor did she have any idea what he looked like. When arms wrapped around her from behind, her first instinct was to toss them off her. But the magic that she was using suddenly became stronger. And right there in front of her was the very man she’d bet she was looking for. When he disappeared, she figured that she’d lost him, or hadn’t had him at all.

  “See if you can look around. I can do that now too. Before, I could only just see where the person was standing.” She turned her head to the left, as Matt suggested. Her view went right. “You’re inside of his head. I mean, you can see whatever it is that he’s seeing. This is amazing. See if you can look around and figure out where—as you called him—the fucker is staying.”

  She felt like she was off-balance, moving around the room. Every time she wanted to turn to look at something, Aisling had to think which way to go. Her right was his left for some reason, and that was making her dizzy. Seeing a window, she made her way to it to see if she could have a look around.

  “Can you see where we are?” He said that he could, but didn’t know the place. “Yeah, me either. I’m looking for a sign, like a street one, or even a place that I can ask about. There isn’t much going on around this area, is there?”

  “No. It looks, however, like it’s under some sort of construction. See all the piles of wood there? It looks like it’s new wood, too. It’s not been stained by the elements yet.” She had seen the wood but didn’t think about how it was still a bright color. “See if you can see anything on the wood. I mean, perhaps we can—”

  “Look there. It’s a nursing home. Shady Meadows.” He said that he’d never heard of it. “Me either, but I’m betting someone has.”

  Stepping away from him was much harder than she thought it should have been. Aisling wasn’t sure what it was about him, other than the mate thing, but she knew that he’d not hurt her. More than that, she felt like she could trust him with her all. That didn’t mean that she was going to give it to him just yet, but she knew that, on some level, he’d be good for her to vent to when she needed it.

  “My mother is close too. I’m sure you might have been able to feel that.” Matt said that he had. “I don’t know what to do about her. I mean, she’s a fucking bitch, and there are times when I wished her dead, but she’s still my mother at the end of the day.”

  “I think I understand. However, I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about her overly much. Devon said that she was in violation of a great many deaths of our kind. He could take care of her without any kind of emotional involvement.” She told him what she’d been thinking for decades. “You think that instead of someone giving her you as a hatchling, she may well have stolen you? That will be easy to find out when she gets here. Also, you will find that the other women, the rest of the mates, have a great deal of power and magic. Roxanna is a necromancer. Perhaps she can figure it out before someone has to be close enough to Medusa to touch her mind.”

  She knew that he thought he was helping her, but all he was doing was making her more overwhelmed. Even though she’d been asleep, or resting to heal, Aisling had been alone for the most part. Now not only did she have a mate, but there were others around too. She was almost afraid to ask him what the other women could do. Better left until later, she told herself.

  As they went into the sunshine to travel to his home, they didn’t speak. Shifting from human to dragon was never hard for her, but now it was much easier. Even taking to the skies, the wonderful sun shining down on her face, she enjoyed it more than she had before. It was then that it occurred to her that she’d had little time for the pleasure of being able to fly. Before, it was mostly for working.

  Aisling decided that she was going to do this more often—simply fly for the sole purpose of being out. It was something that she’d missed, she realized—having the wind beneath her large wings, her body floating on the air streams. Letting the current hold her for a bit, she laughed. Aisling thought she could really get used to this flying for fun.

  They landed in the yard much sooner than she had wanted. But almost as soon as her feet touched the earth, she knew that something else had happened—something to do with Matt’s family. Going to him when he only stood there, she asked if him if he needed anything.

  “My father is on his way home. Julia has been injured, and he wants to bring her to my place to heal.” She nodded. “He’s heartbroken that he was not able to keep her safe. But the boat they were on capsized before he could get to her. She’ll live, of course, but he’s taking it very hard knowing that he wasn’t there to keep her as safe as he promised.”

  As soon as they entered the house, a whole new bunch of things were there to overwhelm her. A staff? Faeries everywhere? Christ, she wished she was still a warrior. That way, she only had to follow rules and not set the faeries to work, as she was having to do now.

  “His lordship’s mother is on her way here with his father. I will need some of you that have knowledge of medical magic.” Honey said that she’d make sure that it was taken care of. “Also, this is Dak. I would like for you to work with him as much as you can, please. Neither one of us is very prac
ticed at living in a lovely home like this one.”

  “I will, my lady. And if you don’t mind me saying so, good for you in hitting the ground running. You’ll do us all proud.”

  She hoped so. Aisling was looking for a place to run, all right. But far away, not getting things prepared for people she didn’t know.

  Chapter 4

  Rolland was still worried that he’d found himself staring out the window a little bit ago. He’d been working on his plans when suddenly it felt as if he’d been possessed or something. Looking out the window for the tenth time in as many minutes, he wondered what had happened again and again.

  Washing up his clothing in the sink earlier meant that he was now standing around in his underwear. It wouldn’t have bothered him so much if there hadn’t been a mirror as big as the bed in front of him. Every time he walked past it, he’d see how out of shape and fat he really was.

  “No, not fat. I’ve put on a few pounds. That does not make me fat.” He’d been to a therapist when he was younger and fat even back then. He told him that he needed to have a more realistic way of thinking about his body. Not just that, but himself too. “I’m not fat. I’m overweight.”

  It wasn’t him just thinking that either. He wasn’t in good shape, not even close. Walking up the stairs had nearly killed him when he’d first found this place. But as for him being overweight, he figured that he’d put on only about thirty pounds in the last few years. Not a great deal, when at one time he was close to being two hundred pounds overweight. A few here and there didn’t make him feel any better, but he knew that as soon as he had some cash, he’d join a gym and get rid of it.

  Rolland looked at the window again and frowned. All that was in this part of town was a nursing home just around the corner from him. The smallish grocery store seemed to have more to do with hemp products than it did anything else. And of course, there was the obligatory pizza place and bar.

  If there were any houses around, with the exception of the one he’d taken over, he couldn’t find them. It was like the entire town had made its existence around the nursing home and bar. Sitting down at the window, just to assure himself that there was nothing out there coming to get him, he thought about how he’d come to find this place.

  The house had been boarded up when he arrived, which really surprised him when he saw that all the windows were intact. There was a houseful of covered up furniture, as well as a few items, most of them expired in the cabinets. He’d had to plug in the fridge, again surprised to find that it came on, and he had to figure out how to make the hot water flow. At first, it had been only cold. After reading the directions on the heater, he was able to get the pilot light lit and the water heating up.

  Thanks to being so close to the nursing home, he had food too. Not the things that he’d normally eat—creamed corn was disgusting. But when the big truck that brought them their food backed up to the door, Rolland snuck into the truck and tossed off what he wanted while the driver was talking one of the cooks up.

  He had hamburger and a canned turkey, and a lot of things like the canned meat and gravy that he’d gotten. Not much in the way of real meat except for the burger meat. But he figured that at some point there had to be another truck coming in with other items on it, such as toilet paper and other paper products. He needed towels too but wasn’t sure what to do about that.

  As he sat there, he watched the old people in their windows. One old man had been sat in a chair by the window earlier that morning. He was still sitting there, his face set in what could only be called a resting pissed off face, and he didn’t seem to be doing much more than staring. Rolland thought that he might be dead at one point, but saw him pull a blanket up and over his chest, and that idea was gone.

  He saw a truck coming down the street and gathered up his shoes to get what he might need from it. Going out in his underwear wasn’t what he wanted, but it did allow him to get in and out of situations quickly. Or so he told himself.

  The side of the truck looked as if it had been put together by several other trucks so that the panels on the side read DOLSTESH. Since he was in need of something to do, he made his way to the bar while it was getting its delivery.

  Liquor, most of it anyway. Rolland didn’t drink, but he did take a couple of bottles of wine. As the other driver, this guy was inside for a lot longer than he should have been just to drop off a few cases of shit.

  In the back of the truck, Rolland found a wonderful surprise. When he touched the handle of a big door back there, he knew that it was going to be some sort of cold storage. Just barely getting the door closed behind him when he heard the driver coming back, Rolland found cheese, pizza dough, as well as kits for making up all kinds of subs. The bread was even included in the kit.

  Pushing all he could take out the side door where it let off into the street, he was glad to see that he still had plenty of time to get it all hidden away before the truck left. All he could think about was how well he was going to be eating for the next several days. There had even been packages of chili that had been frozen in portions, pasta noodles, as well as some kind of breakfast burrito things.

  Giddy and dancing in the street nearly got him caught. Kicking all he could close to the truck when the driver entered the truck again, he hurried himself along, putting his treats in one of the bags he’d gotten from the last truck. As he stashed his bags near the side of the building, he looked inside one more time to see what he could get.

  Some of the cases were marked as pies. Opening the box up, he found not just cherry that was on the front of the box, but there were peach, blueberry, as well as pumpkin. Taking two of each of them, he was able to get himself out of the freezer compartment and near his other things before the driver got into the cab and started away.

  Shaking his head, Rolland decided that he was going to have to be much more careful from now on. If he’d gotten caught in the freezer, he’d be nothing but a Popsicle before the driver got to his next stop.

  It took him four trips to get all the things he’d gotten from the truck to the house he was living in. Lucky for him, he supposed, there was a large freezer in the basement that he’d plugged in when he’d gotten the fridge going.

  When he decided what he wanted to eat, he turned on the oven. There was so much to choose from now that he had a difficult time figuring it out. Rolland had thought for sure that he was going to end up eating that big number ten thing of creamed corn for the next several days.

  The house didn’t have a television, which totally pissed him off. There wasn’t any way for him to watch the news, or whatever qualified for news around here. Nor did there seem to be any mail or computers. He knew that being stuck out in the boondocks could keep you from good service, but the fact that he wasn’t able to connect up to anything bored him to tears.

  Sitting at the table with his thick meatball sub, he heard someone at the front door. He’d never been able to unlock it, as it had some kind of security thing on it. But when the door flew open, he picked up his food and went out onto the back porch through an unlocked sliding door.

  Rolland had forgotten his shoes and coat. Taking a bite of his sandwich, he tried to hear what was going on inside. They were talking—he could hear their voices—but what they were saying was impossible for him to hear. Something about an auction and sales. When they were close enough for him to hear what they were saying, he felt caught. Even though they’d not found him yet, he knew that it was only a matter of time.

  “Do you smell that?” The other person, both of them males, said that it smelled like spaghetti and meatballs. “Yeah, I can smell that too. You’d not think a smell like that would linger so long after this place has been shut up. Well, no matter. Once the auction is over on Saturday, we’ll be finished up with this town. Too bad they don’t have anyone in the family wanting any of this shit. But that’s the way it goes, I guess. Man. Now all I want is a
sub. How about we hit up Richard’s Bar over there and see about getting something for lunch? I’m starved now.”

  When the door closed at the front of the house as they left, Rolland wasted no time in getting back in the house. The idiots hadn’t even checked on the oven, which he’d left on, or they would have seen that someone was there.

  Heating up his sandwich again made him a little nervous. He didn’t want the men to return. Rolland wasn’t sure that his poor cold feet could take another stay outside.

  As he finished up his meal, a couple of things occurred to him. There was a calendar in the place, but it was still on last year. Rolland didn’t even know what day of the week it was, much less the date. He knew that it was mid-December, but other than that, he was foggy about how long he’d been here. Making a mark for the times he’d gone to bed didn’t help him as much as he thought it would.

  Rolland hadn’t ever been one to keep up with things like times and dates. His phone had been handy for all that. If he had an appointment, it would tell him. If he had to be someplace at a certain time, it would give him the option of bailing out on it or not. His time in the jail had not only messed up his timeline, but at some point, while he was jailed, his dear brother had turned off his phone.

  “Bastard.”

  He didn’t hate his brother. Rolland didn’t like him either. They were just two men that had been thrown together when his mother had married Matt’s dad. Of course, it wasn’t as if they had a great deal in common. He knew that his brother had money. Not a great deal of it, but he had been able to bail him out when he needed it. Not that he did that anymore.