“Are you alright?” Alec asked, insistent. His concern was overwhelming.
She wanted to melt into it and savor the protective warmth Alec was offering. This was what she’d been missing for…well, as long as she’d been a dragon. No one had ever given her that kind of promise before. It might have been unspoken, but she heard it all the same. To Alec, her safety was paramount.
Not his meals or his comfort or his ego. Just her.
“Everything will be fine,” she assured him. Had he overheard her phone call earlier?
If she’d been smarter, she would have walked away from the truck and cabin. Instead, she’d stayed where Alec could hear her. A heat washed over her face. Embarrassed that she was trapped in this life, she ducked her head.
“Are you sure?”
Charlie had gotten by this long. She would continue to get by. To have Alec know about the situation she was trapped in made shame weigh heavy in her chest. It pressed against her lungs. He would realize that she was only a pretty doormat and not the feisty teen she had been. Charlie didn’t want to acknowledge it, but that was what she’d become.
Norman had already started breaking her.
She couldn’t go back to him. Which meant she had to find Asher. If Alec wasn’t going to be of help, then she would find him on her own. She yanked her wrist from Alec’s grasp.
“You can ask me anything,” he called out to her.
“You can’t do this for me,” she called back, already running away. “You’re too good looking. I need someone who has the face of a brick.”
Alec’s laughter filled the shore. It eased Charlie’s strained heart. She never expected to bear shame for her predicament, but when Alec lifted it from her shoulders, she realized just how it weighed on her.
After asking Jude, Charlie found out that Asher lived two miles down the road. He had bought a massive lake house with all of his fighting money. Jude offered to drive Charlie down on the boat, but Charlie wanted time to clear her head.
Being around Alec had twisted things in her mind. He was a drug that she wanted to crawl back to, but she had a mission. If she allowed herself to be pulled in by Alec, then Norman’s dragon would arrive, and everyone would know that she belonged to someone else.
Walking down the secluded gravel road gave Charlie time to untangle her feelings. Light danced between the trees when the leaves shook in the wind. It made the shadows tremble on the ground. Patches of warmth would touch her cheeks when she stepped into a ray of light that managed to slip through the trees lining the road.
This was her home. She wished her parents had never left. Alec had made her. They belonged together. But her parents had been scared. They were human and didn’t understand what it meant to be anything else. They didn’t understand the part of Charlie’s heart that cried out for Alec and the land that her beast loved.
She slipped between the trees and slid down the rocky hill toward the lake shore. Spiders skittered between the rocks. A snake slithered over the water. Across the lake were a few kayakers. They paddled their way across the water, making sure to stay out of the way of the group in the speed boat.
Had she brought a change of clothes, she would have jumped into the lake. Monster or no monster, she missed swimming. The monster didn’t seem all that bad to her, anyway. It had looked her in the eye and swam away.
Charlotte? You’ve returned, too?
A ghostly voice tickled her ears. She shook her head, thinking that she should have eaten something earlier. The pancakes were suddenly calling her name, but they were back in Alec’s truck. This was what she got for sitting under the hot sun without food or water.
She was hearing voices.
But the voice was familiar. It prickled at the back of her mind like a face she’d forgotten.
Of all the people I expected to see, your face was not one of them. But I am glad you are back. Your life will be the one I spare.
Was that…Zane? The voice was deeper and muffled, almost like it was underwater. Charlie backed away from the shore. In her scramble to get back up the hill, she slipped and dropped to her knees. A stone scraped over her skin and mud covered her calves, but she managed to get back to the top.
Instead of letting her thoughts unwind as she walked, Charlie ran to Asher’s cabin. Her beast was too close to the surface. She could feel it under her skin. Had she just encountered a ghost? No one told her Zane was dead. It could have been a hallucination, but she wasn’t sure. What else could it have been?
She slammed into Asher’s front door, not bothering to check if it was locked. As a dragon, she just barreled through it. A shout came from the living room, but when Asher saw her face, his complaints died on his lips.
“The hell happened to you?”
“Someone needs to tell me what is happening here,” Charlie demanded.
“I mean, alright, but why are you at my house? Shouldn’t you be spending all your time with Alec if you’re going to remind him of who you are?”
Charlie shook herself. The haunting voice was still sending chills down her spine. A throb in her knee reminded her that she’d fallen. There was a piece of stone embedded in her skin that she had to pick out before her body healed around it. She cursed and let the stone drop to the floor.
“Seriously, though. You should be with Alec.” Asher was backing away from her. “If he finds out that you’re here…well, no one wants to see the nice guy lose his shit. It’s never pretty.”
She cocked her head. “Are you saying he would be jealous?”
“Damn right, he would. He’s being an idiot right now, but I don’t think there has been a day in that man’s life that he hasn’t thought of you. When we were kids, he would write you all these letters. I don’t think any of them ever made it to you, but that didn’t stop him. He held onto the chance that one of them would find you.”
Her heart swelled and a smile overtook her face. “Well, that’s why I need you.”
“Don’t say that. Alec could be hiding behind my throw pillows. If he heard you say that, I could lose my balls.”
“You lost them when you admitted that you have throw pillows. What kind of man has throw pillows?” But Charlie had to admit that they looked nice on his massive, microfiber sectional. It was a plush and inviting place…where Asher had probably boned a hundred women.
Charlie gagged at the thought. Asher narrowed his eyes at her, like he knew exactly what she’d been thinking.
“I need you to stop a dragon from coming to get me,” Charlie said. “Do whatever you can to make sure he doesn’t reach the lake shore. Can you do that for me?”
Asher mused on her request for a long moment. “What do I get out of it?”
“I won’t tell Alec that you groped me.”
“That didn’t happen!” Asher howled.
Charlie was falling back on her old days. It was kind of coercion, but she needed Asher’s help. If he was going to try to hold out for something in return, he was wasting her precious time. Charlie wasn’t going to allow Asher to ruin her plans.
“You fight dirty, Miss Arnold.”
“That’s how jobs get done.” She shrugged, wishing she felt more apologetic. She didn’t feel bad, though. Only desperate.
“Hopefully Alec rubs off on you and not the other way around. Tell me what this dragon looks like and I’ll do my best to stop them.”
“Oh. Uh…” Charlie didn’t know exactly which dragon Norman was sending to the lake. He hadn’t told her who would be swinging by to fetch her. Norman probably thought she would recognize her escort the moment he landed.
“Who is this dragon, anyway? Why does he think he has a right to come and take you away? You don’t have to go with him if you don’t want to.” Asher’s voice softened, like she hadn’t just blackmailed him a moment ago. Like he actually cared about her wellbeing, too. “No one here will let someone steal you.”
Asher thought they could fight to keep her, but Norman would just keep sending more dragons after her. To him, s
he was just another belonging. It would be a blow to his ego to have his belonging stolen from him. One that he couldn’t let slide. As long as she could claim a mate, then Norman couldn’t fight that.
He couldn’t take her away from the man that the universe itself had ordained for her.
“Just search for a dragon that isn’t part of your clan. Cause trouble and don’t let him near the lake. Okay?”
Asher didn’t seem pleased, but he nodded anyway.
Together, they left. Asher mustn’t have a whole lot to do because he immediately took to the sky. She watched his white form circle into the sky and disappear among the clouds above. Cursing herself, she realized that she’d forgotten to ask him about Zane.
The thought drew her attention back to the lake. The monster she’d seen out there was eerily similar to a dragon. The clan was all here save for Zane and Alistair. She wasn’t surprised that Alistair was gone, but Zane had been close to his clanmates. Especially Alec. If Zane wasn’t here and Alec was, that could only mean that something happened to her friend.
But what could have happened to make him into a lake monster? Charlie could barely wrap her mind around it. She was trying to when a rumble broke through her thoughts. Alec’s truck slowly rolled toward her.
His window rolled down, and his eyes immediately went to the mud and blood on her knees.
“I fell,” she said, sheepishly.
He sighed and shook his head. “Get in the truck and I’ll drive you back to the cabin.”
She glanced toward the sky once more, as if expecting to see the incoming fight right over her head, but there were no dragons to be seen. Asher was gone, in search of an unfamiliar dragon to pick a fight for no obvious reason.
Charlie was grateful for this band of dragons. They were the ride or die group she’d always wanted. It was a shame that it took her this long to get back to them. It was even more a shame that she might not be able to stay. When she turned her attention to Alec, she silently pleaded for him to call her by her name.
He hadn’t yet. Her name never left his lips.
If only he would say it, if only he would recognize her, then she would be free to live her own life. There was a bond between them that no other couple could have. He’d made her. A part of his soul lived beside hers. It was her beast, this creature that had never caused her any trouble.
She wouldn’t say her beast was a tame creature, because it wasn’t. It was brash and reckless, just like she had been as a teenager. The creature didn’t fight against her, though. Not once since she’d been given the beast had it argued with her. Charlie and her beast wanted the same thing.
To come back here and find Alec.
The beast might have wanted to find the other half of itself, like Alec had torn a piece from his beast and gifted it to her. Charlie followed that desire with the hopes that she would find love at the other end. Though neither of them said it when they were younger, Charlie liked to think that they loved each other even back then.
It was the foolish kind of love that young teens had. It felt so large and overwhelming and all at once perfect. After leaving the lake lands, Charlie realized she would never find anything that felt like that ever again.
That was what made her think that Alec was her mate. She’d just found him young. They hadn’t been ready for each other at the time. Now they were both adults.
“What do you have to do by Wednesday?”
Charlie cringed. “You heard that?”
Alec was quiet, flexing his hands on the steering wheel. His eyes stayed on the road, but she still caught the flicker of his beast that passed over them.
Charlie sank into her seat. Out there, somewhere, Asher was buying her time. That wouldn’t stop Wednesday from rolling around. Time would creep forward, minute by minute, until she realized it had passed her by.
“I have to be home by Wednesday. My clan leader demands it.”
“Demands? What kind of leader makes demands?”
Charlie swallowed her growl of frustration. Of course, Alec wouldn’t understand. Alec was a man. She doubted that Jude used the men of this clan the way that Norman used women. No one tried to control Alec every moment of his life. They didn’t tell him who he had to be in order to have meaning.
She ran her hands over her face, stifling the need to scream. Charlie wanted to escape. This was supposed to be a vacation, but she was never really out from under Norman’s grasp. He would drag her back over and over. Not once she found a mate.
She hoped.
“You got awful quiet there,” Alec noted. “Is everything alright?”
“No, but that’s fine.” She forced a smile to her lips. It couldn’t reach her eyes and Alec wouldn’t be fooled, but if she smiled enough, then maybe she would feel it.
“You can talk to me,” he told her. “Whatever you need, I can help with.”
He would only be able to help her once he acknowledged her. She couldn’t risk trapping herself in a relationship that wasn’t real. If she made a mess of this, then Norman would know. He would come barreling into this clan’s quiet life to take her back.
Tired of talking about it, Charlie changed the subject. “What’s going on here? The lake is…weird. I thought I saw a monster. You know, like Loch Ness but in the States.”
She expected a laugh, but Alec fell silent. It was like she was throwing brick after brick onto his shoulders. She could see him struggling to keep his head up under all that weight. Instinctively, she reached for him. Her fingers grazed his arm.
Just like when he held her hand earlier, the world became brighter. Her world had been in grayscale and she hadn’t noticed until the moment it was lifted. With Alec, her life was brighter. She held onto the feeling, keeping it close to her heart, to her hope. He was the one.
She could feel it.
“Pretend it’s a ghost story.”
Alec sucked in a breath through his nose, stole a glance at her, and nodded. Charlie liked the slight smirk on the corner of his mouth. She wanted to make it wider.
“Do ghost stories start with once upon a time?” Alec asked.
“I’m not a ghost story expert, but that seems more like a fairy tale. You can only start it that way if this has a happy ending.”
“No happy ending for this story. Not yet.”
They should have made it back to the cabins by now, but Alec was taking every side road that came along. Charlie wasn’t mad. She enjoyed the prolonged time with him, too. Inside the truck cab, it was just the two of them. Their scents mingled in the air. It felt like home, so right that she couldn’t imagine any other way of living.
She wanted everything to smell like this. Her sheets. Her shirts. Everything.
“So, there was this family,” Alec began. His eyes were distant. Was he even seeing the road ahead of them? “Most of them were young and dumb. But one, he was a magician with words. An evil magician. He tried to get his family to turn on the world because he thought he was the only one fit to run it.
“Half of his family rebelled. The other half were blinded by the evil magician’s magic.”
“This sounds like a scary fairy tale,” Charlie added.
Alec made no effort to reply. The story still poured out of him, like it had been stoppered inside him for years, begging to be released. “There were a number of battles between the two sides. The rebels wanted their brethren back. They got one, but it came at a cost. One rebel lost his lover. When the final battle came, they were all broken. They enlisted the help of a witch to defeat the magician. She crafted a prison at the bottom of the lake for the magician.
“They should have known that the magician turned the witch against them, too. The family of rebels thought they’d won. In their eyes, the magician was locked away. Well, the witch had lied to them. She helped the magician escape. In his place, the youngest of the rebels was trapped. He is still locked away in that lake.
“Over time, the witch’s magic changed the young rebel. It warped him until
he was no longer himself. Now, he lurks like a monster, waiting for the witch’s spell to break one way or another.”
A lump formed in Charlie’s throat. She tried to swallow past it, but her mouth was too dry. She couldn’t breathe around it. Not for a long moment, panic slowly growing in the back of her mind.
Finally, the lump dropped. She let out the breath trapped in her chest and a single word. “Zane.”
She slapped her hand over her mouth, realizing that she’d blown her own secret. But Alec must not have heard it. He was still lost in the story he’d woven for her.
Alec pulled the truck to the side of the road and jammed it into park. Before she could move, Alec spun toward her. He took her hand in his and looked her in the eye. The truth of what was going on here had darkened his features.
“Promise me you won’t go anywhere near the lake.” Then, he remembered her muddied knees. The way he looked down at them with anger simmering in his eyes scared her.
The anger wasn’t directed at her. It was at Zane.
She grabbed his shoulders and commanded his attention. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
Zane already told her that he would spare her. She wasn’t part of Zane’s revenge. She wanted to tell Alec, but it would give away her secret. Her fingers inched toward his neck, toward the exposed skin that begged for her touch. Alec leaned into it. She couldn’t tell if it was planned or instinctual.
“Besides,” she said, pulling her hands away and folding them in her lap. “You barely know me. I’m just passing through. I’ll be gone before you know it.”
His beast growled at the thought of letting her out of his sight. Alec didn’t understand what game she was playing at. She’d said Zane’s name. It wasn’t like she had forgotten about her time here. He doubted that she could ever forget the man that had changed her against her will.
So long as they acted like they didn’t know each other, it would be easier to leave her behind. Alec told himself that again and again. At least once an hour. Several times a minute when she was this close. When she touched him, like she just had, he nearly forgot everything he was supposed to be doing.
Alec (Keepers Of The Lake Book 3) Page 5