Chapter 30 #2
“Gee. I wonder why?” I reply sarcastically before I face the guy. “How many people die a year doing this?”
“We’ve had no deaths yet.”
My eyes bulge. Julian nods like that’s a great answer.
“Yet?” I echo for us, ’cause apparently I’m the one on living-duty today. “What do you mean, yet?”
“He means it’s safe,” Julian deadpans, motioning me forward. “Come on. Let’s go.”
I laugh, and the sound is slightly manic. “I’m not doing that.”
He swivels to look at me, and he seems genuinely surprised by my reaction, which yeah, fair enough. I literally went bungee jumping yesterday, but this is different. This isn’t my life on the line, it’s his, and that is far more precious.
“You are seeing what I’m seeing, right?” I gesture to the serpent that goes zooming past us. It’s like an electric eel on steroids. “Right?!”
“It’s safe,” he replies, but the look the guy gives me makes it seem anything but.
I shake my head. “No way, Julian.”
Jewels eyes me for a moment longer before he nods. “That’s fine. If you don’t want to do it, I won’t force you. I’ll do it by myself.” He turns, looking at the glass with a smile as if one of the serpents hasn’t been consistently crashing its nose into the glass to get at us.
“No way,” I say to both my mate and the psycho working this station as he grabs a wetsuit off a hook. “Julian, no.”
“No?” he echoes, and he laughs too, but there’s no humour in it. His eyes narrow when they focus on me. “I want to try this, so I’m going to.”
He says simply as though that’s all there is to it. As if this is just a walk in the park, and not a risk to his life. A life I care very, very much about. And shit—I really do care about Julian. That isn’t new, of course I care about him. What is new is realising how much I do.
“I’ll do the shark one,” Julian offers, and I know it’s him trying to compromise, but it still scares the shit out of me. It’s a great white, and I’ve seen some of those shark movies.
“Please don’t,” I beg, and he frowns. I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly so I don’t look crazy as I step towards him. “Julian, this is dangerous.”
“What you did yesterday was dangerous,” he retorts with another infuriating shrug. “And this isn’t up to you, Aiden.”
He steps forward, the matter done for him. I grab his arm. “Julian—”
“I’m doing this, Aiden.” He wrenches his arm free, and with a warning glare, he leaves me where I am and follows after the waiting employee. The guy talks him through the process, and there are a bunch of safety procedures that just make the sirens in my head sound louder.
What if something goes wrong? What if something happens to him? What would I say to the pack then? What would I do then?
My stomach roils as an uncomfortable shiver makes hives break out across my skin.
Stepping forward quickly, I grab Julian as the guy hands him the wetsuit. He frowns at me, no longer confused, now just annoyed.
“Aiden, you’re overreacting,” he says under his breath. “I’m going to be in a protected cage. I’ll be fine.”
“But what if you’re not?” I hiss back. “Then what happens with the pack?”
Julian stills, his eyes hardening with ice and anger. I feel it in our bond, feel the swell of hurt as he shoves my hand away.
“That’s not fucking fair,” he grinds out past clenched teeth. “You get to do what you want and try new things, but when it’s my turn, suddenly it’s about the pack?”
“No,” I breathe, shaking my head as panic clogs my throat. “No, that’s not what I meant. Just—” Goddess, what are the right words? “Just don’t—” Don’t do it. “I don’t want to watch you do it.”
“Then go, Aiden.”
My shoulders fall, if only from the shock of his words, or rather, the harshness he delivers them with. I stare at him, and he stares back, equally stunned, but in no mood to fix them.
“Fine,” I mutter, stepping back, swallowing the anger and the hurt.
“You can’t be mad at me for wanting to try something,” he calls after me, but I keep walking. “Seriously, Aiden, this is ridiculous!” His voice chases me, and unease wells in the bond. “Fine!”
It’s the last thing I hear him yell before I leave the room. He doesn’t come after me.
I clench my fists at my sides, resisting the urge to rub a hand over my chest. It’d do nothing to ease the pain growing there, just like leaving did nothing to ease my nerves.
My eyes burn, fingers ache, but no.
I need to hit something.
It takes punching the heavy bag until it snaps free of its chains and flies across the hotel gym for the knot in my chest to finally loosen.
I try to catch my breath, looking at the slumped bag of sand.
The other people working out are avoiding me like the plague, and so far, the staff have been too scared and/or too turned on to come say anything about me destroying hotel property.
Perks of incubi staffing. But from the way their fingers are tapping furiously on their keyboards, I know we’ve gotten a new charge to the room.
Flexing my fingers, I walk over to the bag and bring it back to my station. It takes a minute to hook it back up, but once I do, I take my stance and start again.
I’d come here to work out the anxiety and burn the edge off without breaking something that matters, and it’s doing the job. But it’s been hours since I last laid eyes on Julian, and the effects are starting to wear off.
He’s mad at me—I can feel it in the bond like a roaring fire in my blood. I’m mad too, at him, and at the mess of emotions wracking me.
I did crazy shit all the time, but that was me. I barely cared about the consequences before Julian, only just started really fucking caring about myself again. But I care about him. I wanted him safe and whole, but he wanted to put his life in danger.
He’s his own person, I know that. I know I can’t control him or tell him what to do, but fuck! How could he risk himself when he’s so important?
If something went wrong and he got hurt, it would literally kill me. Just imagining it made my limbs lock in fear.
I wouldn’t accept a single second less with him than I’m destined have in this lifetime. I just want that—am terrified to imagine anything else, but I know he doesn’t see it that way. He probably thinks that I’m trying to control him, but I just want him to be safe.
How could I get that across? How do I tell the guy I’m falling for that he meant the fucking world to me?
Maybe I should’ve just said that—exactly that—instead of leaving. But it felt easier to leave in the moment. It doesn’t anymore, hadn’t really when I felt his pain in our bond at being left behind.
“Ugh!” I stop myself from punching the bag as that would probably make it burst.
Enough of this shit. He has to be done trying to get himself killed by now. I grab the water bottle I’d gotten from the desk and head towards them with what I hope is an apologetic look.
“I’m sorry, about”—I glance back at the swaying, sad-looking bag—“that.”
“It’s fine,” the succubus stammers out with a wobbly smile. Their feelings towards me are still decidedly mixed, and I don’t want to find out which comes out on top.
I head out with a one-track mind focused on finding Julian. Odds are he’s in our room, but I head to the Goddess-forsaken aquarium first, just in case.
The place is empty, so I head up to our room instead, trying to get some sort of conversation starter ready in my head before I actually see Jewels.
I’m still pissed, and I’m shit at hiding things, but I hate us fighting more than anything else. Just this once, I much prefer to take the blame along with whatever insults he threw my way so we could be good again.
“Hey, Jewels,” I call the second I enter our room. “I’m sorry.”
There. That wasn’t so hard. Only, there’s no response.
Tossing my shit on the counter, I take a quick look around, but I’m the only person here. I can’t even tell if he’s passed through ’cause it looks just as clinically clean as when we’d left.
Sighing, I grab my room key before heading back out, clicking the elevator button about a million times before it finally opens. Only when my fingers reach for the buttons inside do I falter.
Where the fuck do I even start?
Julian, the weirdo, doesn’t have a phone, and this place is fucking massive. I could track him, but that would mean searching each floor one by one until I catch a fresh scent. Goddess knows how long that would take, but I press a random floor and resign myself to doing just that.
One thing I know for certain is that Julian is here.
He wouldn’t head out without me, which means I just have to be patient and find him.
Sadly, patience isn’t my strong suit, but it’s forced to become one as I search floor by floor for my mate, giving in to every wolf stereotype out there by keeping my nose high as I look.
I’m sure I look like an idiot. I feel like it too, following every hint of lemon I pick up until it finally grows stronger. I don’t even know what floor I’m on when I finally spot a familiar golden head turning from side to side in a hallway with his nose to the sky, just like me.
I let out a laugh that’s mostly a breath of relief.
“Julian!” I call, and he turns immediately.
I see the way relief floods him before he rushes towards me.
I barely manage apologies to the people I shove past until I can reach him.
His body crashes into mine, and for a moment I just hold him, breathing properly for the first time as we come together—until he shoves me away and then hauls me back in with fiery rage in his eyes.
“I’ve been looking for you for two hours!” he barks.
“Me too!” I say, clutching him. “Well, I don’t know if it was exactly two hours, but—”
“Where the hell were you?” he asks, cutting me off.
“The gym. Needed to hit something,” I say as the anxiety finally settles, and I remember what drove us apart in the first place.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts, beating me to it.
“No, I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “I shouldn’t have thrown a tantrum and left you like that.”
“True,” he says, his gaze hardening again. “You shouldn’t have thrown the pack in my face either.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” I mumble, barely resisting the urge to cower. “I didn’t mean to guilt trip you. I just—”
Moment of truth, Aiden.
I take a breath. “I don’t like you putting yourself in harm’s way. The thought of losing you scares the shit out of me.”
“Well, I’d hope so, Aiden,” Julian snaps as he lets me go.
“Did you think I enjoyed watching you jump off a mountain with only a rope keeping you alive? I didn’t, but I knew you wanted to do it, so I went along with it, for you.
” His shoulders slump and fresh misery chills our bond.
“I wish you would’ve done the same for me. ”
I duck my head, have to now, cowering for real. I feel too shit to hold my head up.
“I’m sorry, Julian,” I whisper. “I should’ve stayed—should’ve done a lot of things, but I am sorry.”
He studies me, and I hope to Goddess he sees that I mean it.
“You look like a kicked puppy,” he sighs, but when I peek up at him, there’s a soft smile on his face. “It’s alright. I forgive you.”
He opens his arms, and I dive into them. I hug him for dear life while he laughs, his chuckle warm against my ear.
“Is it too late to start the day over?” I ask when we draw back.
“It’s not,” he replies, eyes soft. “Once you’re willing, I’m happy to give this another go.”
He says it like he means it—for everything, not just this. Like, no matter what happens, he’ll be there to try once we both put a foot into the ring.
It’s crazy how safe that makes me feel, and how much it makes me want to tell him everything. I shouldn’t want to, but with Julian …
“I’m more than willing.”