Together they manage to pull her over her head, but its removal doesn’t help as Reaghan’s skin flushes and grows warmer. Isla reaches out to touch her forehead but pulls her hand back in a panic.
“Take off her gloves,” she instructs Alarik. “I’ll get a cold compress.”
Alarik swallows hard and he stares down at Reaghan, feeling helpless. He pulls each glove off, one by one, mesmerized by her creamy skin and beautifully long fingers. He sets them aside and turns to her face, committing it to memory.
Not that he needs to. He’ll never forget her.
But he notices the way her dark eyelashes rest delicately on her high cheek bones, and the lightest sprinkling of freckles that smatter across the bridge of her nose.
Fucking perfection.
His bear grumbles deep inside of him, expressing their shared anguish over what’s happening. Like Alarik, he wants to know why this has happened to her—and what exactly happened—and how to make it better. He wants her to open her beautiful eyes and tell him everything is fine.
She’s going to be okay, Alarik tries to console his grizzly but it’s no use.
Mate, he roars louder, making Alarik’s skin vibrate. He wants out. He wants to take care of her himself. He wants to protect her.
Not yet, Alarik replies, giving himself over to his bear’s declaration. Reaghan is his mate. Whether she be human or dragon, she was made for him and he was made for her. He’d been a fool denying what his bear claimed hours ago.
Isla returns with a cold, wet washcloth and hands it to Alarik. He folds it and places it on her forehead.
“What happened? Did you say something to her?”
“No, I barely walked into the room. This is something else,” he states calmly, swallowing down his worry and wishing he had his phone to call Colton again. Maybe he’d have answers for him. “She grabbed her head, placed her hands over her ears and screamed like something was in her head and it was hurting her.”
A shiver runs down his spine at the thought of something hurting her and his bear pushes up onto his hind legs, ready to throw down for her and destroy whatever threatens their mate.
“It’s possible her shifter abilities are waking up,” Isla offers, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation. It was clear this is as much a mystery to her.
“I’ve never seen or heard about anyone reacting this way.” He shakes his head, because it’s not an entirely impossible concept. It is, however, a rare one.
“Neither have I, but our animals reveal themselves to us at a very young age. The resilience a child carries is one of the biggest reasons it happens during that time in our life. Maybe this is happening because her mind and body are older?”
Before Alarik can respond, Reaghan drags in a long audible breath and her eyes flutter open, wide and full of panic. The lavender orbs connect with his and his bear sighs with relief, but their worry remains.
“Reaghan.” He reaches for her hand, but she pulls it back. “Are you okay?”
“What happened?” she asks struggling to sit up. Alarik reaches out to help her again, but she bats away his hands. “No, please, don’t touch me.”
Both he and Isla frown as Reaghan looks around the room with confusion and a slight hint of fear.
“You passed out,” he explains, resisting the urge to touch her again. His bear watches her like a hawk, studying every detail and movement, searching for some clue to her wellbeing.
“Shit,” she cries out before bringing her hands up to cover her face.
Her head pounds as the memory of what transpired comes back to her. Something caused her to drop her guard and, in the process, she exposed a dangerous secret to him.
Remember, the voice in her chest scratches at her mind, releasing the wave of Alarik’s thoughts and memories that came to her moments before the blackness.
Thoughts and memories that should frighten her to the core, but they don’t. She lifts her face from her hands and meets Alarik’s worried gaze.
Mate, the voice whispers like it did before but this time she’s able to keep her guard in place.
“You know what I am,” she whispers to him, before lifting her eyes to Isla too. “And you.”
“Reaghan—” he starts.
“Tell me why I’m different. Tell me why this keeps happening to me. Tell me what I am,” she demands. They look at one another, then back to her, but they say nothing.
“I’m not sure,” he finally breaks his silence, but it’s not what Reaghan wants to hear and it further upsets her.
“Liar,” she cries out reaching for his face and places a hand on either side, but for the first time in her life nothing happens. She pulls back and looks down at her hands. “It didn’t work,” she murmurs in disbelief.
“What didn’t work?” Isla asks, moving to sit down beside her. Reaghan reaches out to touch the woman’s arm, but again, nothing happens when she makes contact. Panic begins to rise inside of Reaghan, and she stands to quickly across the room to a photo of a man who resembles Alarik. She picks it up, places her palm against the cool glass and waits. Nothing happens, nothing comes through. Reaghan picks up another photo, and another, but as she attempts to pull from each one, nothing comes through.
What the hell?
She turns to Alarik with fear in her eyes. “What did you do?”
“Reaghan, sit down please,” Isla cuts in, but Reaghan’s panic is in full control of her body.
“Tell me what is going on here,” she demands, refusing to move from her current standing. She looks at them with pleading eyes. “Why can’t I feel anything anymore?”
“What are you talking about?”
“When I touch something, or someone, I can feel their thoughts, their emotions—everything. But it’s gone.” She begins to pace the length of the room, feeling a new craze settle into her body.
No, it isn’t.
“And who in the hell is talking to me?” she shouts looking around the room.
Alarik and Isla exchange another look, adding to Reaghan’s frustration.
“I know you have answers, I’ve seen them in your faces, in your eyes,” she admits finally, revealing more of herself in hopes they tell her everything she needs to know.
“You’re not human, Reaghan. There are many strange things in this world—” Alarik starts.
“If you’re about to tell me I’m a fucking alien from outer space—” She places her hands on her hips and narrows in on him.
“No, nothing like that,” he chuckles because he finds her attitude sexy as hell. “We’re not aliens.”
“Wait, we?”
“Yes. We’re alike.”
“Do you mean you can touch things and feel its emotions and memories?”
“Well, not in that aspect, but I do have a gift,” he explains as she finally begins to settle down. “Why are you here, Reaghan?”
“Hey, I’m asking the questions—”
“Answer this one question and I will tell you everything I know and everything you need to know,” He stares her down with his piercing gaze. She nods her head because she can’t help wanting to submit to this one request from him and she’s tired of fighting him and the world.
“I’m looking for my past.” She swallows hard, holding back the wave of emotions she’s been fighting since she could remember. Feelings of loss, of fear, and most of all, not being wanted. “Sixteen years ago, I was found wandering the woods just north of here. I was five. I was alone, and I had no memory of where I came from. I’ve spent the last few years searching for any clue to my identity.”
“The little girl.” Reaghan turns to see unshed tears in the older woman’s eyes.
“The couple that found me moved heaven and earth to find my parents, but no one came forward and no one ever filed me as missing. They adopted me and raised me.”
“Do they know about your ability?”
She nods slowly, remembering the nights she’d hear Janice and Robert fighting about what to do wit
h her and the ‘thing’ she could do with her hands. Robert wanted to seek medical attention, but Janice didn’t want to chance turning her daughter into a science experiment. Reaghan began wearing gloves soon after and when she was asked about them, she’d claim she didn’t want to touch any germs. It worked. It made her an outcast at school, but at least Janice and Robert stopped fighting.
“We all have a gift. Some great. Some not so great. But it’s a trait in our world, one more thing that makes us special,” Isla explains, taking Reaghan’s bare hand in her own. “Mine is on the not so great side. I can create an atmosphere of comfort and relaxation.”
Reaghan’s brow twitched. “That seems like a good one to me.”
“Sure, but compared to yours?”
Reaghan nods, although she still hasn’t grasped the concept completely. Everyone needs comfort at different times in their lives.
“What your gift?” Her question makes Alarik smile.
“Mechanics.”
“Seems like you’re in the right business for that one,” she smirks, before giving him a side eye and blushing. There is something about this man that makes her feel like a giddy teenage girl. Even in moments like this when her world’s shifting under her feet.
Mate. The word resonates deep within her person, but she pushes it aside.
“Do you have a voice too?” she asks them as her shoulders slump forward and she closes her eyes. At the moment, she feels like a crazy person.
“Yes,” he says, and her crazy dissolves almost immediately. “That’s the part that separates us from the rest of the world. The part that makes us really different. How long have you been hearing it?”
“I think I heard it the first time when I was young but last night was the first time it happened since. It told me I could trust you,” she explains. “What is it?”
“You’re a shifter, Reaghan.” Isla smiles gently at her. “The voice you hear is your animal communicating with you.”
“Shifter, like in a fantasy paranormal world situation?” Reaghan asks slowly because she can’t believe her ears. Isla said they are shifters. That she is a shifter. What the actual fuck? “You’re kidding me, right?”
“It’s a little more complicated than all that, but yes. I believe your animal is keeping you from picking up on anything when you touch something. Sometimes they can help control our gifts.”
Reaghan stands and looks between them both, unable to comprehend what they’ve told her. She wanted to believe them, but it went against everything she ever knew about the world. Then again, so does her ability to touch something or someone and feel emotions or memories. She looks between them both, trying to decide if they’re telling the truth or playing some sick joke on her.
After all, she hasn’t known them long at all—can she really trust them after so short a time?
But as she thinks back to every moment since meeting Alarik, he’s never done anything to earn her distrust. Neither has Isla, except to warn her off about poking her nose around town.
They’d never harm you, child, just as I would never harm you. We are one.
How? Why? I don’t understand, she replies back to it.
I’ve been dormant to keep you safe.
Safe…the word, in that voice—there’s something about it familiar to her. She knows it from somewhere, but she can’t place it because her memories are gone.
I can release them, Reaghan, but not yet. You’re ready for the truth yet, it tells her, knowing everything in her mind.
Don’t tell me I’m not ready. I’ve spent my entire life with this hole in my heart and in my mind.
Not yet… it fades growing quiet once again.
“I think I need to be alone.” She stumbles through her words. Alarik reaches for her, but she sidesteps him and hustles down the hallway to her room. She closes the door and leans against it, taking in a deep breath.
This is not what she expected to discover here in the little town of Eileen, but deep down, she’s always known she was different.
But she never, in a million years, imagined this level of different.
Chapter Five
Evening has set in, and Reaghan spent the day watching the shadows play outside her window, processing everything Alarik and Isla told her this morning. Like the rain, nature calls to her and she finds great peace in it.
What are we? she calls to the voice inside of her. She hasn’t spoken to it, or it to her, since revealing it has the key to unlocking her memories and her life before her adopted parents.
We are a rare breed of great stature and strength. We are a dragon, it responds proudly, like it had been waiting for her to ask.
Like a fire-breathing, people-eating, flying creature?
We breathe fire. We fly. But we do not eat people. She chuckles. And please stop referring to me as an it. I am one with you. We are the same.
What do I do now?
You must go to our mate.
Our mate?
Yes. Alarik. You must go to him.
Why do you keep calling him mate?
Because he is. He is our other half. Our perfect mate.
“No, that can’t be.
You feel it too. That pull, when he is near.
Reaghan knew exactly what she’s referring to but that didn’t mean he was their mate. That just meant she was attracted to him.
No, think about it. Truly think about it.
It’s attraction, she argues forcefully. The human part of herself won’t let her trust the shifter side—especially since she just learned of it, and was still a little leery of the explanation that she was a paranormal being.
But she’s seen firsthand what real love is. She was raised in it, but she also knows love comes in different ways. The faster it comes, the easier it is to burn out. No, Reaghan wants a slow burn love, one that builds and lasts for a lifetime.
Her dragon sighs deeply, annoyed by Reaghan’s need to fight on this subject. “You have a lot to learn about men. Or rather, one male shifter in particular. We don’t love like humans do.”
“It doesn’t matter anyways, the man has a woman. We saw his mother talking to him about her.” She thinks about the flashes she got right before she passed out.
“Liar,” she feels her dragon coil in outrage. “He. Is. Ours.”
“Tell that to his mother—”
When she learns you are mates, the other woman will no longer matter. Her dragon relaxes and stretches out again. Reaghan doesn’t believe her because she finds it difficult to grasp the concept of what a mate is. The closest thing in the world she knows is soulmate. That’s exactly what mates are to one another—butt on a much deeper level.
Reaghan grows quiet, processing the nuances of everything she’s learned about herself and the world around her, wondering what it will feel like to shift into her dragon.
“Will it hurt?” she asks, thinking out loud.
Silly girl, you’ve done it before. It works the same with—
No, not that, she exclaims, feeling a rush of warmth hit her cheeks. She blushes harder, knowing her dragon was there to witness every awkward moment of her encounter with the opposite sex. And it was incredibly awkward, which is why Reaghan hasn’t made another attempt at it. There hasn’t been a man in her life to even spawn the thought in her head, until Alarik. Just thinking of his name causes the nerves in her body to electrify. I meant shifting into you.
Sure, you did, she teases. The first few times it may, but once you learn to relax and allow it to happen, you’ll enjoy the freedom of the form.
Reaghan shivers, recognizing the dragon beneath her skin and the power she has. She tries to focus on that, and getting her dragon to answer more questions about her ability and her other form, but her thoughts go back to the man who is supposed to be her mate.
Even as she sits there fighting the pull to go to him, she knows it’s pointless. She’s never felt this kind of way about anyone, but it’s even deeper than she realizes. There’s something abo
ut him, something carnal that calls to her. She wants to wrap herself around him and never let go. Her body craves him.
You’re making us both miserable. Just go to him.
I don’t know how to do this, Reaghan admits with a sigh because she’s fighting an uphill battle, and she knows it. Is he a dragon too?
“No, thank goodness, but he is the strongest of his people and will die protecting what he loves.
That’s a bit extreme.
It’s how our kind is. We protect what’s ours.
It’s a simple statement, and as she thinks about it, she feels the truth in it. She is safe here in Eileen, no matter what truths she unveils about herself here. As long as Alarik is by her side, the world doesn’t seem as daunting as it did yesterday.
“Are you sure she’s a dragon?” Colton asks, making Alarik repeat himself once again.
“Fuck, man, are really going to make me say it again?” he growls and pulls back his annoyance. He’s not annoyed at Colton, but rather the entire situation.
He’s known Colton a couple of years. They meet briefly while Colton was in training. After Alarik’s injury, Colton reached out to him, but his pride got the better of him and he never returned the man’s call. Alarik did that to most of the Enforcers he knew. Maybe it was because he couldn’t handle not being a part of the action any longer, or maybe it was because of his pride.
“Calm down, I believe you, but some shit has gone down since we last talked.” Colton explains, cutting into his thoughts.
“Yeah, what’s that?” he asks and rakes his hand through his hair. It’s been a long fucking day and it’s taking everything in him not to cross the street and beat down Reaghan’s door. Not to mention the fact his bear has been irritable with him because he didn’t agree with Alarik wanting to give her some time to process.
“Fernandez is dead.”
“No shit? Blood and Bone finally got their guy.”
“You wouldn’t believe they shit they uncovered either. He’d been doing his shit for sixteen years, as far as they can trace it.”
Alarik (A Rogue Enforcers Novella) Page 4