The Shifting Storm (Book 4)

by Jeff Hale

  We gathered up Alex and got down to Club Xtassy as quickly as we could. Dave was at the door playing bouncer and when he saw me I could see distaste in his eyes. I wasn’t sure what I had ever done to have Dave dislike me, but maybe he figured I was just like Nina since I was a shifter. He didn’t say anything as we went past, and as we got further into the club, I could already see and hear that something was going on.

  I tapped another bouncer on the arm. “Can you get us through? I think we might be able to help take care of the… drama… out there.”

  He looked me over. He wasn’t horribly huge, but he looked like he worked out and he wasn’t hard on the eyes. He didn’t miss both Darien and Alex standing right by either of my shoulders, like my own personal bodyguards.

  “Sure thing, little gal, but I think someone else is trying to take care of it as well.” He motioned for us to follow him, parting people in front of him like the red sea.

  There was a bright flare of light out in the middle of the crowd that I could see watching the spectacle, and I could have sworn I heard Aerick’s voice raised in anger. Just as we broke through the throng and into empty space, Nina came skidding across the dance floor on her hands and feet, her back arched, sliding to a stop almost next to my leg.

  I hadn’t imagined it. Aerick was standing on the dance floor, several feet away, with his fiery blade conjured. He looked good, in a tight black tank top and black jeans. He also looked pissed and dangerous. There was a girl hovering near him, staring at Nina with a look I’d seen before.

  I blinked and looked at the girl again. I’d seen her at school on several occasions, although I’d never spoken to her. She had sat a few rows behind me in Cryptozoology this last semester and I though her name might be Lisa, or Liza, or something along those lines.

  I glared at Aerick. I was still mad at him for multiple reasons that I probably shouldn’t have been, and I was mad that Nina had made us have to come down and pull her out of a mess. I was so close to not wanting to have anything to do with her anymore that this might actually be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  “If you’ve hurt her, Aerick, I swear I’ll…” I said, crossing my arms over my purple tank top. I felt something against my leg, saw Nina leaning on me. Fucking great. I resisted the urge to kick her away; I certainly wasn’t going to let Aerick see how it affected me.

  “You’ll what, Kat? Go ahead and try it. Go ahead. Give in. Be like them. Be a fucking animal, you bitch!” Aerick hurled the words at me with as much vitriol as he could, conjuring his other blade at the same time. He looked at me with such hatred that I felt a little part of me die inside. If he was trying to hurt me, he had succeeded. I think I could have stood to see him screw Nina again rather than see him look at me like that.

  I felt Alex’s hand touch mine briefly, realized my emotions had been sharp enough to spill over, and I reined them in. Darien was already taking steps toward Aerick and I could feel him about to shift.

  Shit. And Aerick was almost begging for Darien to do it. The club was eerily quiet as everyone in it watched the scene unfold in the middle of the dance floor like some prime time soap opera.

  “Darien! No!” I yelled, switching my glare to him, hoping to stop him before he did something I would make him regret. “You promised me, remember?” He brought himself under control, giving me a somewhat apologetic look, and I turned my attention back to Aerick. I hadn’t broken into tears yet. I was proud of myself.

  “I’m not going to fight you, Rick,” I said, laughing a little to hide my anger and nervousness. “I’m not that stupid.”

  “Only my friends call me Rick.” He gritted the words out through his teeth. “And I know you won’t fight me on your own. That’s why you had your father hire a fucking assassin. You knew you couldn’t do it yourself. I just can’t believe you’d do something like that. And to hire an unhinged Sentinel to boot. You’re a fucking cunt.”

  That one word hit me with such fury that I took an involuntary step back. And then the rest of his words filtered into my brain. “Wait! What?”

  Did Aerick just claim that my father had tried to have him killed?

  “Who…? My father sent an assassin after you?” I knew my father didn’t like Aerick, at all, never had for some reason, but I couldn’t believe he would actually go that far. But why would Aerick lie?

  I cast a glance Darien’s way to see if this was news to him, but his face was impassive, as if the knowledge wasn’t a surprise. It wouldn’t be the first time he kept something from me at my father’s request. My glance turned into a hostile glare.

  “Did you know about this?” I accused him angrily, watching him flinch. Fury ripped through me and disbelief, disbelief that he would keep quiet and allow harm to come Aerick’s way just to keep him out of the picture.

  He’d kept one too many things from me this time and I wasn’t going to deal with it anymore. I was so done.

  “You did! You knew, didn’t you? You fucking prick! I can’t fucking believe you!” I screamed at him, using all my willpower to not tear into him. I was still going to make him hurt, just not physically. “I want you the fuck out of my apartment! Tonight!” But he wasn’t the only one I was pissed at. “Oh, and you can give my father a message. Tell him I hate him and I never want to speak to him again!” Damned if I was going to talk to that overbearing controlling man about anything anymore. He and Darien were a pair. Maybe I should feel sorry for my mom. “Come on, Nina, Alex, let’s get out of here.”

  I turned my back on him, ready to get the fuck out of there and away from him, when I thought better of it. I turned back to Aerick and I could feel the tears right on the verge again.

  “I’m so sorry, Aerick. I didn’t… I’m sorry,” I told him, hoping he could see how I felt. “I just…. I can see how you would think.... If you never want to… I…” I turned my head away, wiping away at tears, but when I looked back, he was gone.

  So was Darien.

  ______________________________

  We had to take a cab home. Not that I really had expected Darien to be self-sacrificing enough to leave his car behind for us; I wouldn’t have.

  We pulled into the apartment complex and I was half afraid Darien’s car would be there, but it wasn’t. I dropped onto the couch when we got inside, Nina following Alex through the door.

  “No,” I said tiredly, shaking my head and waving a hand at Nina. “Get her out of my sight, Alex, please? Take her home, drop her off a bridge, I don’t care. I don’t want anything to do with her anymore.” My words were harsh and uncaring.

  Somehow, irrationally, I partly blamed Nina for all of this. If we hadn’t had to go bring her under control, I would never have seen that hate in Aerick’s eyes, never have found out about Darien’s deception. Logically, I knew that it wouldn’t have changed anything, I just wouldn’t have been aware of it.

  Still, I had to channel my hatred somewhere, and despite my words, despite the fact that we were no longer together, I still loved Darien, damn his arrogant hide.

  Alex came back sometime later to find me curled up in a little crying ball on the couch. I felt the cushions dip down, felt his arms go around me and I turned in to him, burying my face against his chest and just letting the waterworks flow.

  He patted my back softly, rocking me, and I heard him chuckle half-heartedly. “I told you he’d drive you right back into my arms.”

  His comment only made me cry harder and I smacked him, hard. “Don’t, Alex, please, I know you’re only trying to make me feel better, but I still love him, and it hurts, and now I don’t have either of them…” I broke off into gasping sobs.

  He sighed and rubbed little circles on my back. “Sorry.” I felt his cheek against my hair. “Why don’t you just forgive him then?”

  I pushed away, looked out at him through tear swollen eyes. I probably looked like a raccoon from my makeup. “I can’t! I told him not to keep anything from me anymore, he promised me! And yet he did it again! And o
n something so bad, too! He’s got to get it through his head that he can’t just go trying to arrange my life for me, I can’t live like that!”

  “Ssh, calm down, I get it, believe me I do.” He placed little feathery kisses on my forehead, my cheeks, and I stilled against him. He sighed. “Only if you ask me, Katie, only if you ask, because unless he’s outside city limits, he’ll probably know and then there will be no taking it back.”

  I ran the thought briefly through my mind, but Alex was Darien’s friend, and I knew how that felt now. My head moved the tiniest shake. “Not going to happen again, Alex, it can’t. It was one thing when I didn’t realize how I felt about him, but I can’t do that to him, now that I know.”

  He stretched out on the couch, pulling me in tight against him, wrapping me in his scent, that comforting feel of pack. “Then just lay here and use me as a stuffed animal again. Sleep.”

  That was an offer I took him up on.

  A fleeting sense of emotional pain woke me sometime later, but it was gone as quickly as I noticed it. I wiped at my mouth, frowned because I had drooled on Alex’s shirt, and tried to wiggle off the couch.

  “No, stay, Katie, it’s okay,” Alex murmured, arm tightening around me.

  “I need to sleep in my own bed, Alex,” I said softly. “But I do appreciate you letting me get your shirt all nasty again.” I was trying for levity but my voice sounded hollow.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  I dropped a kiss on his forehead and shuffled off to my bedroom, not bothering to take my clothes off before I slid in between the sheets and buried my face in the pillows.

  Darien.

  I could smell him all around me, the scent of forest and earth, and I hugged the pillows tight to me as I cried silently into them. The room was too quiet without the sound of his soft breathing beside me, the bed too big without him in it. I fumbled for my cell phone where it lay on the nightstand. I needed to talk to someone, someone a bit more neutral, and without thinking about why, I dialed Lucien’s number at the Flame.

  “Lucien here, how can I help you?” he answered after the second ring, sounding chipper despite the fact that it was almost two in the morning. I was pretty sure he was used to keeping late hours though, if he even needed to sleep. He was The Phoenix after all.

  I sniffled into the phone, running my hand across my nose before saying, “Lucien?”

  “Katelyn? What’s wrong?” He immediately sounded concerned.

  “Ev-everything!” I wailed softly into the phone. “Rick, Darien…”

  “You’ve seen Aerick then?” he asked carefully.

  “Yeah. And he hates me, Lucien! What did I ever do to make him hate me?”

  “He told you this?”

  “No,” I admitted sadly. “He didn’t have to; I could see it in his eyes.”

  There was silence on Lucien’s end for several moments. “Give it some time, Katelyn, he will come around,” he finally said. “He cares more than you know.”

  “Yeah, right.” I yawned, loudly.

  “Go to sleep, Katelyn. You’ll feel better in the morning,” he promised me. There was a soft click as he hung up.

  I dropped the phone back onto the nightstand and curled into myself. I had hoped for something more concrete from Lucien than that, but I couldn’t exactly expect him to be my middle of the night emergency therapist. Feel better in the morning? I highly doubted it

  I felt weight settle on the bed in front of me, felt a soft wet nose press briefly against my cheek before he lay down with his muzzle resting on my arm. I cracked one eyelid enough to see the glow from Talon’s blue eyes and I fell asleep with his even breathing in my ear, images of chasing through the forest after an elusive black wolf plaguing my dreams.

  ____________________________________

  I really didn’t want to go to class the next day, so I didn’t. I hadn’t slept much, and what sleep I did get had been plagued by unhappy images and half-nightmares. I debated about just skipping the following day too, taking another ‘me’ day, but after Alex told me that moping about the apartment certainly wouldn’t put me in a better mood than it had the day before, I got dressed and headed to the campus. Kris took one look at me and instantly knew something was wrong, turning to shake her head at Celeste as the little blonde started to say something to me.

  “So, why so upset?” Kris asked me as I took my seat between her and Celeste.

  I dug my book and notebook out of my backpack and dropped them carelessly onto the desktop in front of me, then slouched in my seat. “Darien and I broke up,” I answered glumly.

  “What? Why?” Celeste gave me wide, astonished green eyes.

  “He was lying to me again and I just lost it, kicked him out. I…” At that point, Bianca turned from her desk to face the class, raising a hand for silence. “I’ll tell you later,” I whispered to them both.

  She was maybe ten minutes into a lecture on the dangers of unicorns when I heard the door at the back of the classroom open, then close, and the soft sounds of someone taking a back seat. I didn’t bother to look because I knew how Bianca felt about being tardy and I knew someone was going to get their own personal lecture any moment now.

  “So, you should have all read Chapter Fifteen last night and I expect you all to be prepared…” Bianca stopped her lecture mid-sentence, an annoyed expression crossing her pretty features, and stared up at the latecomer. “Well, Mr. Kerensky. Glad you could join us. I realize you are new to the class, but I hope you don’t plan to make a habit of being late,”

  Kerensky?

  I swiveled in my seat, along with Kris, Celeste, and most of the rest of the class, but I was pretty sure it was only me and Kris who were gaping at him because of who he was.

  And sure enough, there was Aerick, sitting in the back of the classroom, with a text and notebook on the desk in front of him, trying to look like he belonged here. He also looked like he was trying to bite back making an incendiary comment as well.

  Bianca began lecturing again, ignoring him now, but it was something I just couldn’t do. I turned back to face the proper way, but my shoulders hunched in and I was doing my best to keep from crying. What the hell is he doing in my class? Stalking me to make me feel even worse? I peeked over my shoulder again, noticing that Kris and Celeste did the same, then hurriedly turned back when I saw him looking our direction.

  “Why is Aerick here?” Kris asked me in a whisper.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered back. “Trying to make me miserable?”

  “Who is that guy?” Celeste asked me, keeping her voice as low as possible.

  “He’s Kat’s ex,” Kris supplied quietly.

  Celeste looked confused for a moment. “That’s not Darien.”

  I shook my head. “No, from before Darien.”

  “Oh. Is he the one that…? Ya said one of yer ex-boyfriends was like Ms. Haid, could do the magic?”

  I almost nodded, then I thought a moment. Maybe Aerick wasn’t here to stalk me. He did have a job as a private investigator after all, and there were rumors that one of the guys in our class, Kent Dyson, had disappeared. Maybe Aerick was here on business. I sighed. Besides, it wasn’t my place to tell anyone else exactly what Aerick was without his permission.

  So I just shook my head and whispered a little white lie. “Nope, not him.”

  “Excuse me, ladies, what’s so important that you must whisper to each other during my lecture?” Bianca demanded. We all three looked up and Bianca was giving us that stern look that no one wanted to see. “And what is so fascinating about Mr. Kerensky up there? I know he’s new, but you will have plenty of time to ogle him after class. Now I want answers, girls. To both my questions.”

  Great, freaking wonderful. If I thought I had any leeway with Bianca because she had coached me a couple times in the use of magic, I was wrong. Maybe she was mad that I hadn’t come back yet. The three of us looked desperately back and forth at one another and then it was finall
y Celeste who spoke up.

  “I was jus’ curious about ‘im is all. He looks like the frat type, but I’ve nevah seen ‘im before,” Celeste offered.

  “And what? You’re supposed to know every frat boy just because you’re in one of the most popular sororities?” Bianca lifted one brow as she asked the question and Celeste’s cheeks went pink as she frowned. “I’m sure there are plenty of frats that have slipped under your high and mighty notice, Ms. Lynn. So why did Ms. Shaughnessy have to be included in your curiosity?”

  All three of us were in that sorority and I wasn’t sure why Bianca was singling out Celeste over me and Kris. Maybe she didn’t care for the other girl’s innocent nature.

  “Kat kinda knows ’im so she was tellin me about ‘im,” Celeste answered meekly, her accent heavier since she was being put on the spot.

  “And just what did Ms. Shaughnessy tell you about him?” Bianca wanted to know, still pinning us all with that glare.

  I couldn’t let Celeste take all the brunt of this, so I spoke up quickly, using another white lie to cover my tracks. The class didn’t need to know that Celeste had asked if Aerick was the one who was a Sentinel. “Just that I dated him for a short while, and that he tends to move around a lot.”

  “Well, you can stop now. He’s nothing but a normal human boy here to learn like the rest of you. So shall we get back to it?” Bianca asked firmly.

  Normal human? I almost snorted out a laugh but I swallowed it back and the three of us said, “Yes, ma’am,” in unison.

  I did my best to ignore Aerick for the rest of the class, dreading the end of it and the possibility that he might try to talk to me. I was saved from that fate as Bianca called him up to talk to her at the end of the lecture so I escaped while I could. I heard Kris and Celeste say something about picking me up later, although I wasn’t quite sure what they meant. I didn’t stop to ask, afraid Aerick might get done talking with Bianca. Instead I called back, “Whatever,” over my shoulder and hurried back home.