25. Orsen
Orsen
Wednesday was shaping up to be very interesting. Instead of working on the McCreevy cabin and dealing with a small mountain of paperwork, I was babysitting a very doped-up dragon.
It turned out that getting Bastian inside was damn near impossible, given his size, so we’d gone to a clearing in the forest we knew no one else would visit to let him sleep off the medication, which could still take several more hours.
“When do you think he’ll change back?” Rowan asked in a soft voice. She was sitting in the clearing with the gigantic dragon’s head on her lap because he refused to be apart from her.
I shrugged, laughing softly. “Whenever the medication wears off, I suppose. He seems fine, just a little out of it.”
“And a little clingy.” She chuckled, looking down at the dragon’s face with a gentle smile.
“That, too. I’m pretty sure Bastian isn’t at the wheel right now.”
Rowan hummed in agreement, then glanced at me with that grin still in place. “Yeah, this guy is way sweeter than his human counterpart,” she cooed, running her hand over his dark scales between his eyes.
“His human counterpart isn’t going to be happy when he gets control back.” I cocked my head at Bastian.
My mate smirked. “Well, too bad for him.”
We sat together for a while, letting sleeping dragons snooze, as it were.
Rowan appeared so at ease with a dragon who was easily eight times her size, with his head in her lap.
Six years ago, she hadn’t spent much time around us all in dragon form.
We’d shifted once to let her know what we were, and she’d proceeded to stab one of us, but that was ancient history.
Then again, imagining her stabbing Bastian now wasn’t exactly a stretch, which was pretty hilarious if I was being honest. The two of us were usually the “gruffer” of the clan, but lately, Bastian had upped that assholery even more.
He needed to get with the picture, as far as I was concerned, but that asshole was as stubborn as I was, even more so since Rowan had returned.
Casting a glance down at him, I sighed. “Thank you for indulging him.”
“He’s sweet.” Rowan smiled, rubbing his scales quicker. “Unlike the human Bastian.”
I cocked a brow at her. “You know Bastian is able to hear everything you’re saying, right?”
A devilish smile slowly spread across Rowan’s face.
She knew.
She just didn’t care.
“Yeah, he’s such a good boy, isn’t he?” Rowan cooed, petting the dragon like a puppy. “Sweet little baby.”
Bastian was probably screaming inside, but the dragon? Going by the way his eyes sparkled and the massive purrs he was letting out, he was lapping up the attention. He huffed, nudging his head deeper into her lap, preening at her praise.
My clanmate was probably going to have an aneurysm when he finally got back in his own body.
Hopefully, he wouldn’t take it out on Rowan.
It wasn’t her fault. But it was also clear that Bastian and his dragon needed to have a good fucking talk. They were on very different wavelengths, and keeping that up for a long time wasn’t wise when it came to dragons. Internal strife wasn’t healthy.
“I think you are the sweet one,” I offered, sweeping my fingers down Rowan’s cheek. “Just maybe try to remember that this guy is a part of Bastian, too, when he wakes up.”
She hummed, narrowing her eyes at the dragon. “I’ll think about it.”
Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait long.
After almost an hour in the clearing, Bastian’s scales started to ripple as the thick reptilian skin made way for human flesh.
One moment, there was a dragon with its head resting in Rowan’s lap, and the next, there was a very naked man crouched on the ground in the undergrowth, glaring at all of us.
Rowan bit back a smile, covering her mouth with her hands, but my grin couldn’t be contained, even with Bastian’s growling anger staring at me in the face.
“Give me those fucking shorts,” Bastian snarled, snatching them out of my hand.
When we had guided the dragon to the clearing, I had so thoughtfully stopped at my vehicle and pulled out one of the many spare pairs of shorts we left lying around in case we shifted.
He hurriedly shoved his legs into them while Rowan looked away pointedly.
She was a hell of a lot politer than me; I just stared at my buddy with a smile as he got dressed.
“No shirt?” he asked roughly.
I shrugged. “I didn’t have time to grab one. I was a bit distracted by the giant dragon acting like a lapdog. You’re welcome, by the way. With how you were behaving before your scaly friend arrived, you’re lucky I brought you anything.”
“I’m going to head back to the clinic,” Rowan declared softly, looking between me and Bastian, clearly uncomfortable now that fuckface was back.
Anger radiated off him, and, as much as I wanted her to stay, I knew it was for the best that she got out of sight.
The last thing I wanted was Bastian’s anger blowing back on her.
She’d put up with enough of his shit of late.
“I’ll find you later”—I nodded at her—“and thanks for babysitting with me.”
Rowan tried not to smile again. “Sure. Just keep an eye out for any lingering symptoms or anything out of the ordinary, okay? I’m pretty sure he burned through all the medication in dragon form, but that stuff can linger.”
I nodded again. “Of course.”
She stood there for a moment, looking at Bastian like she expected him to say something, but he didn’t. After that, she turned around and left, leaving me in the clearing with Bastian as he sulked to himself.
Oh, I am so over this.
Facing him, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Okay. Enough. Why are you being such an ass to her?” I growled, roughly shoving Bastian as he stared at me like it was nothing.
He stumbled back, glowered at me, and then stormed off through the trees, clearly trying to get away from me—without answering.
“No, you get back here. We are going to have a grown-up conversation about this. You are not running away!” I shouted, taking long strides to catch up to him.
“No!” he growled, refusing to look at me, still stomping through the tall undergrowth like a man on a damn mission.
Luckily, he wasn’t the only fast dragon around.
After a few seconds, I caught up to him, grabbing his forearm and whirling him around.
The look he gave me could only be described as a death glare.
But I wasn’t about to back down. We’d fought things out before, by virtue of both of us being stubborn as hell, and I was more than fine with duking it out again.
“Let me go,” he snarled.
“No! What the hell is going on with you, Bash? This behavior isn’t okay. Being so at odds with your dragon isn’t okay. I’m fucking worried about you.” My brows pinched together as I stared back at him. “I’m worried about all of us.”
“Just drop it, Orsen.” He turned to leave again, shrugging out of my grip.
“No. Not until you tell me why you’re acting like this!”
“Fuck off.” Bash kept trying to walk away, but this was too important.
“You know this is a problem. I’m not going to drop it until you tell me.”
He pushed forward, but I caught up with him. He growled, and I growled back. I wasn’t leaving the forest without an answer, and even more, I knew Bastian needed to get it out.
“Just tell me!” I shouted in his face, standing between him and the house behind me.
“Because I can’t fucking be hurt like that again!” he bellowed, whipping around to glower at me.
His eyes were wide and wild, the fear unmistakable. I’d lived with Bastian for years, but I’d only seen him this worked up a handful of times. Namely, when Emmeline went missing.
“I love her. Is that what you want to hear? I fucking love her, but if we lose her again… I won’t survive it this time.
Until we know exactly what happened, exactly how to keep it from happening again…
I can’t. I just can’t—” He broke off with a choking sound, dropping his head, the fight going out of his body.
“Bastian…”
“We know nothing, Orsen. We can’t keep her safe. She came back to us. She was here, on our lands, and then she was kidnapped from the clinic we gave her! There is nothing we can do to keep ourselves from losing her all over again. I can’t go through all that. Again.”
Realization dawned on me.
Bastian wasn’t being an asshole. I mean, sure, he was. But it wasn’t because he enjoyed it. The distance and distrust weren’t because he thought less of Rowan now or was mad at her for something she had no control over.
He was terrified.
“We can keep her safe,” I assured Bastian, stepping up to him and gripping his shoulders. “I promise.”
“Oh yeah? How?” He glared, shaking me off him again. “When you have a solid idea, I’d love to hear it, because we’ve been up our asses with nothing. No plans, no answers, no way to keep history from repeating itself. I just… No. No, Orsen. We can’t.”
Bastian took off for the house, and I didn’t have it in me to run after him this time. The truth was, I was terrified, too. He was right. We had no clear way to protect Rowan right now because we didn’t know what had happened. That mystery still haunted us.
And it was about damn time we got some answers.