by Amelia Jade
“Yes sir,” he said respectfully. “Completely.”
“Good. Now go make yourself scarce until the bus leaves, so I don’t have to deal with all sorts of questions.”
Harden practically ran from the office, a mixture of fear and giddiness. Mostly giddiness. He was going to stay! A whole week without interference from Angelo and friends, for him to find a way to make things work with Erika, and to maybe even reconnect with his wolf.
What more reason did he have to be happy than that?
Chapter Eighteen
Erika
Knock. Knock. Knock.
She leapt from bed, grabbing the baseball bat she’d bought Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t much, and it wouldn’t deter a shifter. The wooden shaft would probably just snap over them, to be honest. Which is why she’d had the construction shifters out front slam a number of large nails through the end while they waited for concrete to dry. They’d all threatened to take care of whomever it was, but she said they couldn’t be around all the time, and she needed some space from shifters at the moment as well.
“Who is it?” she yelled, standing fifteen feet away from the door.
“Delivery!”
“Leave it on the front step!” she yelled back.
“Need a signature!” came the call.
Shit.
Nervously she tiptoed up to the door and peered through the hole. It was a delivery guy, far too short and far too rotund to be a shifter. Cursing her luck and her developing hatred for knocks at the door, Erika reached for the handle. A thought occurred to her before she twisted it.
“If it’s flowers, I don’t want them, I’m sorry.”
There was a pause. “It’s a box, ma’am. Maybe a foot square, six inches or so high. Don’t think it’s got any flowers.”
“Okay,” she said, pulling up the door with a defeated rush of breath. “Fine.”
She signed his electronic reader with a flourish that wasn’t at all what her signature was like. Just because. Nobody ever checked the damn things anyway, so what did it matter? It made her feel better, and she took out her frustration on an inanimate electronic device that didn’t give a damn what she did. Wins all around, right?
“Thanks,” she said and closed the door. “I need to get a doorbell.”
“Pardon?” the delivery guy asked, halfway down her front walk.
“Oh, nothing to you,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Sorry.”
He shot her an odd look, shrugged, and then took off.
“Welcome to Monday morning I guess,” she said, eying the package.
It was as the guy had said, about a foot on either side, and perhaps five or six inches high. Tentatively she shook it. There were no fragile stickers on it, but that didn’t mean a thing. Delivery companies were notorious for not caring if something did or did not have a Fragile label on it.
Something moved around, but not very freely. Frowning in confusion, she searched for a return address, or anything on the box that might help her know what it was, but she came up blank. There was nothing but the delivery company’s sticker with her address, a barcode, and a few other details that didn’t help one bit.
“Okay, fine. I suppose I’ll have to open it after all.” Carefully locking the door, she walked to the kitchen, drawing a knife and cutting through the tape that secured it closed.
Lifting the lid, she tore out the white packing paper that was inside, revealing the contents to be a plain-looking cellular phone. A piece of paper was taped to the screen. On it in messy but still legible handwriting were the words “Speed dial #2.”
“The plot thickens. Just who might this be from I wonder?”
Taking the paper off, she powered up the phone, waiting impatiently for it to go through its bootup. All the while her finger was poised over the 2 button. Internally she debated dialing it or not. Her finger plunged down once it finished booting, but she jerked it back before holding it long enough to engage the speed dial function.
“What are you doing?” she asked herself. “You have no idea who is on the other side, or the trouble you could be getting yourself into.”
That was all true. But she had a hope about who it might be, and the longer she waited, the harder it was for her to resist dialing the number. Even if she shouldn’t. Just by knowing who it might be meant she shouldn’t dial. But her hand kept moving of its own free will, and a minute later, it started to ring.
She immediately hung up.
“Oh hell,” she said, pacing up and down in front of her kitchen counter, the hand holding the phone shaking with nervous energy.
Don’t do it, Erika. Don’t do it. You know he’s going to pick up. And if it’s not him, it’s probably the other guys. Whatever you do, don’t dial the phone!
“Hello?”
The faint, tinny voice made her jump. Looking down she saw that her finger had, at some point, hit the dial button.
Harden’s voice came out through the phone, distant until she hit the speaker function.
“Hello? Erika?”
“Why are you calling me, Harden?” she asked, trying not to be rude, simply distant. Allowing him back into her life was not an option. Not at this point.
“Don’t hang up!” he said quickly.
“I shouldn’t have even called,” she replied, thumb hesitating on the End Call button on the screen.
“Wait. Listen. I know you can’t afford to be seen with me. I get it, even if it hurts something fierce. I understand, I truly do, Erika,” he said, rushing on before she could interrupt him. “But I can’t get you off of my mind, and I have a feeling I’m not alone in that.”
She didn’t answer, but that in itself was a confirmation of his words, and he knew it.
“This is my solution in the meantime.”
Erika sighed. “You want to talk over the phone?”
“Yes. Well, no, but if this is the only way that I can talk to you, then that’s how I’m going to talk to you. Whatever it takes,” he said firmly. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“And what if I ask you not to call me?”
There was a long pause. Erika could practically hear the cracking of his heart as she threatened to shatter his emotions into little pieces. She didn’t want to, but she had to know. Had to know that if she told him it was over, that he would respect her wishes.
“Then I won’t call you. Ever.” The finality in his voice hurt something bad, reaching out through the phone to tighten around her heart, making it hurt noticeably.
“Okay,” she said as the silence stretched on. “Let’s talk.”
The relief was palpable through the phone, all the way from Cadia.
“I want to find a solution,” he told her. “A solution to this, so that there are no further worries or fears.”
She nodded. “Me too. But you must understand, Harden. As much as you are always on my mind, as much as I can’t stop thinking about you or longing to be with you, I must put my child first. I can and I will sacrifice whatever I need to for it, even my own happiness. I need that money, that support that is being offered to me from Cadia. I can’t risk losing it.”
“I know,” he said. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do otherwise. I want to help you, and the baby.”
“I believe you,” she said softly. “But how?”
A mental picture of her, Harden, and her baby appeared in her head. She was sitting on a swing out back of a house, a real house, not the tiny unit she lived in now. The sun was shining on a beautiful summer day. Harden was in his wolf form, prancing around the yard while their child—she couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl—clung to his back and rode him around. Her child tossed its head back and made an “awoooo” sound, echoed by Harden, who was also howling every now and then, much to the child’s delight.
To her surprise, she was rubbing her stomach, swollen once more with child, a beatific smile on her face, a sense of perfect contentment reaching out to her even through the daydream. A second child?
The sun disappeared without warning behind black clouds. Harden stopped howling playfully and came to an abrupt halt, their child falling from his back, erupting in tears. The giant wolf began to growl at something unseen as she rushed to pick up her child and soothe him. Darkness swirled around them, and she tried to call to Harden to tell him to stay with them, to protect her and the babies, but he didn’t hear her. He dashed off into the darkness beyond her little circle, leaving her all alone.
“However I can,” came his voice. “Doing whatever I need to. I will stop at nothing to protect you and provide for you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she whispered. “You left me yesterday, all alone, so caught up in yourself and the idea of vengeance. I need to be able to trust you, Harden. Not only with my life, but with that of my child. My baby.”
“I know. I failed you yesterday,” he said heavily. “But it won’t happen again. I…sort of talked to someone. Not completely, but somewhat. It helped, and it opened my eyes, made me realize on a fundamental level, not just intellectual, that I’m not looking out for myself anymore. That I need to be looking out for you two, and putting you above myself. My own needs.”
In her mind the darkness lifted and Harden came trotting back to her. His snout was covered in…something, but he turned and put himself between her and the last of the shadows, standing firm and unyielding, a guardian against the unknown.
“I…believe you,” she said once more, stunned at the power of her dream, and how it had affected her emotions so noticeably.
“I’m not sure what to do though,” he admitted. “I need some help, some ideas.”
She nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see her. “Well, they hate you. Why? Just because you’re from Kronum?”
“And I smell different,” he said, but she shook that aside. Nothing they could change there. “They think I’m a freeloader, someone who is only taking from them and not giving anything back.” He growled. “Which, in a way, is true. However, they offered me a place to stay once I was healed, said that I could live in Cadia.”
“Now they’ve revoked that?” she asked, not understanding.
“Different factions,” he said. “The king, the ruler of Cadia, said I’m welcome to stay. But the pencil pushers, the bureaucrats, the ones who actually run the government, well, Angelo is the son of one of the more powerful ones. He could deal with me, and the king and others who don’t care would never know. They’d never hear about it.”
“Could you go to the king then, and tell him what’s going on?”
Harden snorted. “Like going to the teacher when being bullied at school ever did anything except make life worse for the person being bullied.”
“Good point,” she admitted. “What do we do then?’
His reply was a long time coming.
“I don’t know.”
Chapter Nineteen
Erika
The week passed in an odd combination of fast-forward and barely crawling, like an empty highway before and after a major accident. The only difference was, she could easily identify when it was going to slow to a crawl, and when it was going to speed by.
Every day, twice a day, without fail, Monday through Thursday, she had talked on the phone with Harden. Not once had he been late, not once had he canceled or forgotten. Her phone rang promptly at the time he’d told her he would call, and she’d been there to answer, usually having sat down ten to fifteen minutes ahead of time in excited anxiousness.
Then they would talk. Ten minutes. Twenty, an hour would go by. Rarely did they talk for more than an hour. It kept things so that they would always have more to discuss the next time. She liked that; he wanted to keep things exciting, interesting even. She learned more about Kronum, about what it had been like before the Institute destroyed it. He made her laugh with descriptions of the slowness of life there, and how it had been something he really enjoyed, though he wasn’t interested in living the farmer life. She’d laughed for five minutes straight when he’d told her about how his attempt at herding sheep had gone terribly until he’d shifted into his wolf form.
Then, oddly enough, it had gone quite smoothly. They’d both shared a laugh over that one.
She’d told him about her life growing up. Being the only child of two teachers, both of whom had passed away before her twenty-first birthday, her mother by weeks. It hadn’t been a cause for celebration, as she’d hoped, but she had taken advantage of being of a legal age. So much, in fact, that she’d lost all memory of the entire weekend. That had been her first, and only experience with binge drinking. Since then she’d learned to restrain herself, but the memory of her experience loomed overhead constantly.
They’d mostly tiptoed around the subject of how to fix things with him and Cadia, but so far, they weren’t finding any loopholes, any ways around it. She could tell that it was driving him mad. He spoke of it only quietly, in fervent tones, about how he was going to fix it. How he was going to make it right. She was growing to doubt him.
At the same time, Erika found she was having a harder and harder time telling herself that she could do without him, that life sans Harden would be tough, but doable. Each time they spoke, she felt relaxed, and happier than she had been in quite a while. It burned her not to be able to see his face, to stare into his pale-green eyes and to feel the strength in his hands as he held her. She craved it.
On Wednesday she thought about telling him to come over.
On Thursday she’d started speaking the words, and then stopped in her tracks.
Now it was Friday afternoon, and they were talking earlier than normal, in anticipation of the evening being busy with plans. Not that she’d made any, and she doubted he had either. But they’d acted as if they were both going to be up to something, keeping up the charade of a normal life.
“So, you’re finally coming back to Cloud Lake,” she said into the phone, lying on her side on the couch, the little device on speakerphone on the soft blue material in front of her.
“What? No,” he said. “I’ve been here all along…” he trailed off.
“What?!” she yelped, sitting bolt upright. You’ve been here all week?”
“Yes. I-I thought you knew that. I never went back. I had to try and figure something out, work out a solution. So I went to the ambassador, and I told him. He helped, Erika. He said I could stay here.”
She wanted to wring his neck! Why couldn’t he have told her this earlier? At the start of the week! Then perhaps they could have arranged to see each other. She could have laid her head on his chest and listened to his heart beat as he held her. It would have been bliss.
“When are you here until?” she asked instead, keeping her tone as calm as possible.
“Sunday at eight,” he said immediately, but the dead air on the phone told her that he was holding something back.
“Unless?” she prompted, wondering if he had to leave early.
“Unless a resident of Cloud Lake takes responsibility for me, and says that I can stay with them.”
Oh.
Oh.
Erika knew who that “resident” would have to be. It was unlikely that someone else would sponsor him, so to speak, to remain within Cloud Lake. She certainly wasn’t going to ask anyone else to shoulder that danger. No, if he was going to stay, one Erika Rey was going to be the only person who could vouch for him.
And she wasn’t’ ready to commit to that yet.
“I see,” she said carefully, trying not to give anything away.
“Yeah.”
“They would know immediately if I did that.”
“I know.”
Erika sank back into the couch, arms at her sides, eyes closed. “Dammit. I wish this could be easier.”
“Me too. This would be so much easier if I didn’t live in Cadia.”
“If that were the case, you’d never have met me,” she said. “But I understand what you mean.” She thought that over for a minute. “Is there a way
?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is there a way for you to live elsewhere? To remove yourself from Cadia, so that you aren’t part of their responsibility? So that these others wouldn’t hate you so much.”
He snorted. “Oh, they’d probably still hate me, but for another reason.”
She almost asked him what that was, but decided against it.
“But where would I live? I can’t live with you,” he said.
“What about Cloud Lake itself?” she asked. “Is that possible?”
He was silent.
“Harden?”
“Yeah, I’m still here. Just thinking. I don’t know. Maybe there is. Perhaps I could take out a loan or something. I’m not sure.” He fell silent again. “I’m going to go. I have some questions to ask, and unfortunately you can’t give me the answers.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you later?”
“Count on it,” he said. “I’ll call you once I’m done.”
They said their goodbyes and she hung up, a smile spreading across her face. For the first time all week, she’d heard something in his voice, something that had been lacking since she’d told him he couldn’t come back into her house.
Hope.
Chapter Twenty
Harden
He shoved the phone into the back pocket of his pants, the standard black tactical outfit that was ubiquitous of a shifter. It didn’t hurt that they were comfortable as all hell. The door to his room rattled on its hinges as he slammed it behind him, rolling down the hallway at a quick trot.
Impatience almost got the better of him, but in the end he didn’t simply vault over the railing and drop to the floor. Instead he bounced down the stairs taking them five at a time. Three steps later he was on even floor again, striding across the tile toward Andrew’s office. If anyone was going to know how he could stay in Cloud Lake without Cadian interference, it would be him.
Questions built up in his mouth, threatening to come out in a word vomit the instant he walked into Andrew’s office. Knots formed in his shoulders, signs of the tension he’d been trying to ignore for the past week, hoping that it would all just work itself out. If Andrew could be of help, perhaps he had finally found a way to fix the situation. Despair had been his constant companion for days on end, but now he felt something else clawing at him, trying to tear its way through the layers of darkness.