Chapter Thirteen
As Chloe looked at Erik’s tight-lipped expression, she questioned her sanity. Surely she hadn’t felt what she thought she’d felt. Vampires were a myth. Not to mention, she’d seen Erik plenty of times out in the sun. But she’d felt, what her mind could only surmise, was a fang.
Erik dropped his arms and stepped back. Worse, he turned away from her, his shoulders moving with every hard breath he took.
“Did you have some sort of cosmetic procedure?” She’d heard some people did that sort of thing. Had caps permanently adhered to their teeth to give them fangs.
Erik’s laugh was devoid of humor. “Yeah,” he remarked dryly. “Because of all the things that need fixing, I went with my teeth.”
Chloe stiffened. “You don’t need to be rude about it.”
“Shit.” With a growl so fierce he actually sounded like a dog, he roughly gripped the sides of his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Turning, he avoided her gaze as he bent to pick up the sketch pad and the scattered pencils. “Do you still want me to teach you?”
The way he asked that made Chloe think he expected her to decline. “Yes. But first, I’d like to hear about the teeth – if you’re willing to share.”
Erik straightened up, eyeing her as if he were contemplating what to tell her. The hesitation only made her more curious, more determined to get it out of him.
Sitting on the couch, she patted the cushion next to her. “Sit with me.”
He was still watching her with leery eyes. “It’s not a good story, Chloe.”
She frowned, staring at her coffee table without really seeing it. Finally, she nodded. “Okay.” Looking up at him, she repeated, “Okay. But I’d still like to hear it.”
She wanted to know him. Truly know him. Dark parts and all.
Erik sat, keeping to the front edge of the couch like he needed to be ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. He wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t, look at her, his eyes trained on the closed drapes of her living room windows instead.
After a few moments of silence, he finally blurted, “I was born in a lab. Created. An experimental prototype.”
Chloe’s mouth fell open. She’d braced for him to tell her something awful, maybe that he’d had abusive parents, or that, before he’d joined the military, he’d lived on the streets, fighting to survive. But this…
“My creator was a geneticist determined to design the next evolution of soldiers.” His tone was dispassionate, as if he’d needed to turn off his emotions to get through this telling, but the fist in his lap was squeezed so tightly that his knuckles were white.
“I was her first success. But I wasn’t the last.
“I’m not human, Chloe. Not fully. I, and the others like me, were created to be faster, stronger, and more aggressive than humans. Our DNA was spliced with that of animals to create another breed of predator.” Finally, he turned to look at her. “Wolf for me.”
That explained the teeth. Now that she knew they were there, as she’d watched him talking, she kept catching the barest glimpse of them as he formed certain words.
Thinking back, she’d never seen Erik smile wider than the slightest curve of his lips.
Never enough to show his teeth. Likely purposeful to avoid questions.
“We were also created to be expendable.” Emotion finally tinged his words, and they were pure bitterness. She reached for his hand, wanting to help him, show her support, but drew it back when he flinched.
Erik turned his head to look at the windows once more, and he’d somehow tucked all his emotions away again when he said, “We were educated for war, trained, pushed to our limits, but we were also experimented on. We were nothing more than specimens to them.” He raised his shirt, and Chloe spotted a QR code tattooed on his ribs.
“Labelled like test tubes.” He dropped his shirt.
“My face is a result of one of their experiments.”
He’d been purposely burned? A small, horrified cry left her before she could call it back, and she quickly covered her mouth with her hand as tears filled her eyes.
“It was to test the field viability of a new weapon. One of the subjects produces a highly corrosive substance in her glands. They wanted to see if it lost potency when bottled.”
Acid. They’d poured the equivalent of acid on his face. Chloe’s tears spilled over, and she choked on her words, but she needed to ask. “How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
Chloe was sobbing now, her shoulders shaking, and suddenly she was in Erik’s arms. He was hugging her, his hands rubbing her back to soothe her. She couldn’t imagine what horrors he’d lived through, and here he was comforting her. Gripping handfuls of the back of his T-shirt, she hung on to him.
Monsters. Fucking monsters. He’d been seventeen. Practically a child, and they’d tortured him. “Please tell me they were arrested.”
“The military raided the facility, took the staff into custody, and freed us.” His voice suddenly turned distant, as if he were lost in the memory. “That was the first day I felt the sun.”
His words only made Chloe cry harder. He hadn’t said it, but she could read between the lines. He’d never been allowed to be a child. He’d probably never played unless it was a game utilized as training. He’d never run wild under the sunshine just being a kid.
“Shh, Chloe.” A featherlight brush of lips below her ear, as his hand stroked her hair. “Don’t cry for me.” Leaning back slightly, he held her teary gaze and brushed his thumb gently over her wet cheeks. “Not a single tear. I’m not worth it.”
Chloe shook her head. “You’re worth it to me.”
His face filled with confusion, as if he couldn’t understand her words. Because he’d been brought up to believe he was expendable.
Leaning in, she kissed him softly as she cupped both sides of his face with her hands. Against his lips, she repeated, “You’re worth it to me.”
A shuddering exhale left him before he kissed her more ardently. They clung to each other, a mix of comfort and need, and when they finally pulled apart, they were both breathing heavily.
“Tell me something good,” Chloe said, cuddling up against him. She needed to talk about something lighter to wash away the horror of what she’d learned. “Opera. You never did tell me how you ended up being a fan.”
“After we were freed, I was having a hard time adjusting, so General Davies –”
“Wait.” Chloe’s head popped up. “Did General Davies lead the raid to free you?”
“He was a colonel back then, but, yes.”
Chloe would be sure to kiss the general the next time she saw him. He was already one of her favorite people, but now, he’d earned hero status in her book.
“So General Davies had one of his friends come in to talk to me. Pete was a vet who’d lost his legs and suffered extensive burns from a bombing during the Gulf War.
He brought his dog with him…” Erik trailed off, going quiet for a moment, maybe playing through the memory in his head, and a fond smile touched his lips.
“She was a yellow lab named Blondie, and she’d get so excited to see me.
” He huffed a laugh. “Her tail would wag so hard that she’d nearly knock herself over. ”
Chloe grinned, liking this memory.
He shook himself. “Anyway, one of the times Pete came to visit, he said, ‘You know what your problem is? Your place is too quiet, and in the quiet, all the ugly shit inside of you festers. You need to fill this space with music.’ He claimed that was one of the things that helped him. When I admitted that I wasn’t familiar with a lot of music, he spent the day with me, listening to all the different genres, waiting to see what spoke to me. ”
Quietly, Chloe asked, “And opera spoke to you?”
Erik breathed a sigh. “La Traviata. It was the first opera I ever listened to, and it will always hold a special place in my heart.”
“It’s one of my favorites as well.”
“Pete’s also the one who told me I should have a hobby and suggested I try my hand at drawing. He said even if I never show it to anyone, even if it’s godawful, it’s something to keep me busy so my mind doesn’t wander.”
“Your work is anything but godawful.”
“And speaking of art.” Erik leaned forward and flicked his finger against the sketch pad. “Time to get to work, Ms. Powell.”
She grinned. “Yes, sir.”
Since Erik was self-taught, he had no clue if there was a right way to do this, but he figured he’d start with something easy. So he fetched a teacup and a saucer from the kitchen, set them on the coffee table in front of Chloe, and told her to draw it.
Her tears had dried, and he was grateful for that. He still couldn’t quite process it. She’d cried for him. And while he could shrug that off as Chloe just possessing a soft heart and she’d likely cry for anyone, that didn’t explain why she’d kissed him.
Just the memory of the kisses they’d shared had him shifting awkwardly in his seat to find a more comfortable position, which was pretty much a lost cause. She wanted him. Him. Scars and all. It didn’t make sense, but here they were.
“I think a five-year-old could’ve done better,” she remarked, staring at what she’d drawn with a critical eye.
“Hey, don’t do that. I told you to draw a teacup, and,” he pointed to the sketch, “that is clearly a teacup. For a first attempt, I’d call that a win.”
“Right. Practice.”
“Just like any skill. I doubt you were hitting the notes you can hit now when you first started.”
Chloe laughed. “So true.”
She went back to work, attempting to shade when her doorbell rang, and she stiffened.
Erik glanced at the Ring-cam feed on the laptop.
“It’s just Jayla.” She visibly relaxed, and as Erik got up to let his partner in, he was cursing Jackson Savoy.
Chloe should not be afraid every time her doorbell rang, or when there was a noise outside, or when her phone would ring.
PTSD. Erik had seen it before, and Chloe had it in spades.
Opening the door, Jayla strode in, all well-rested and smiling. “Hello, kids. What are we up to?”
Chloe was the one who answered. “Erik’s teaching me to draw.”
Jayla shot him a beseeching look. “Aw, I want to learn, too. Pretty please?” With prayer hands, she bounced up and down.
Erik huffed a laugh. “The more the merrier.”
“Yay!” Jayla bolted for the couch and threw herself down next to Chloe. “What are we drawing?”
“A teacup.” Flipping to an empty page in the sketch pad, Chloe tore the page out for Jayla, then pushed some pencils her way.
With both of them hunched over their work, Erik settled into the recliner, and when Chloe began to hum, he closed his eyes and listened, immediately recognizing the tune. It was “Sempre Libera” from La Traviata. His lips curved with a smile. This was nice.
Later, they were picking up the art supplies and talking about what to make for dinner when the exterior door buzzer sounded, announcing that someone wanted to be let in.
Since Jayla was closest to the laptop, she checked it, then softly cursed.
Erik came to immediate attention, joining her to see who was here. Would Savoy be that ballsy?
All he could see on the camera feed was a big, toothy smile. A smile with fangs. Then they pulled back so their entire face was in frame. Fucking Kong. “What the hell is he doing here?”
“Shit,” Jayla uttered as more familiar faces were revealed beyond Kong, and he held up a board game, waving it in front of the camera. “I guess I should’ve been clearer.”
“What do you mean? He texted me about game night, and I told him no.”
“He texted me too.” Jayla held up her phone, and Erik read the messages on the screen. The time-stamp was right after Kong had texted him.
Kong: Game night at your place?
Jayla: Staying with my charge now that she knows we’re protecting her
Kong: K
“I thought the no was implied, but I guess he thought I was inviting him here.”
Erik pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well, shit.” There’d be no getting rid of him now. He looked at Chloe, who was watching them with interest. “Feel like company?”
She pointed to the screen. “They’re friends of yours?”
“They’re family.”
Chloe’s smile was beaming. “Then I definitely want company.”