Aiden pulled his hoodie tighter against the morning cold and readjusted his rucksack. Why is it always so damn hard? It’s just a knock, he said to himself as he stared at the house across the road.
She was at home. He could sense her.
He forced his feet forward slowly, prolonging the feelings of resentment, fear, and pain that had started to bubble like a cauldron in his stomach.
“It’s just a knock. You’ve done it many times before, and it’s always been fine.” It was his homecoming mantra. Not that Sarah's place was home, but it was the closest he had to a home, and probably, ever would have. Aiden spent his days living in hotel rooms, using backpacks as wardrobes. He was used to hiding away from the world. It was part of his job.
Wiping sweaty palms on his black combats, Aiden inhaled deeply, then rapped a knuckle on the door.
“I don’t know why you still spend twenty minutes psyching yourself to knock on the bloody door, Aiden,” Sarah said. “People will think you either have issues or that you’re a weird, door-knocking stalker.”
“I do have issues, and I just might be a weird kind of stalker. I could be a psycho axe murderer for all you know,” he said, closing the door behind him.
“Still struggling to forgive me?”
Dumping his rucksack on the floor, Aiden shook his head. “Do we really have to repeat this conversion every time I come and visit? I told you, I understand why you switched me. I’d have probably done the same if I was mated to an Alpha. Hell, I’d have done the same if I was mated to a wolf at all.”
He didn’t fail to notice the pain in her warm brown eyes as she forced a smile. “You look like him, you know. He was just as stubborn as you, too.“
“Have you ever met an Alpha who wasn’t stubborn? Thank fuck I’m not in a pack. Not that they’d have a half-breed like me, anyway,” he said, stretching out on the sofa. “Seriously though, my issues aren’t with my lineage. I’m just not very good at this family thing, that’s all. It feels weird, I guess, having someone that cares and having somewhere permanent that I can come to. It’s not what I'm used to, that’s all.”
Sarah perched on the sofa by his feet and placed a hand on his leg. “I understand. We can take things as slow as you need to. I’m not going anywhere and will always be here when you need me. How’s the shifting going? I still can't get my head around why you can do what you can do.”
He didn’t understand it either. Sarah had told him before that Changelings didn’t shift, not really. They would take on the appearance of the baby they were switched with but not shift into something else in the way a wolf would. “Same as always. Humans, but no wolves.”
“It will come in time. The beast always comes. Speaking of shifting, I did some digging into what you asked, you know, the touch thing? I found nothing. But, I did remember something, a story from my childhood. It’s said that there was a faery prince who fell in love with a kelpie princess. He loved her more than anything in the world, but it was forbidden to have relations with anyone who wasn’t a faery. Anyway, he was followed one night when he was meeting his lover. They were both attacked, and as she lay dying, she cursed the king of the faeries. It’s said that he would morph into every faery that he touched because of that curse.”
Aiden rubbed his temples. The lack of sleep was beginning to take its toll. After completing his contract, he had stopped long enough to get his things and then gone straight to the airport. “Are you implying that somehow I’ve got a connection to this cursed king?”
Sarah tapped his leg and laughed. “I always thought it was just a story to scare us into sticking to our own, but who knows. It seems you’ve proved that there may be a little bit of truth in it, after all.”
“Faeries are just as bloody insane as wolves with their legends and tales. Why couldn’t I just be a normal bloody human?”
“Don't be ridiculous. Humans don’t have half as much fun as you do or the strength, my handsome half breed. Besides, it could be worse. You could sprout wings.”
Aiden roared with laughter at a vision of him fluttering around the nightclub on glittering wings, hunting a mark.
“Wouldn’t that be a picture and a sight for sore eyes? Knowing my bloody luck, I’d be the first flying fucking wolf.”
The feel of a vibration from one of the phones in his pocket cut his laughter short. Pulling it out, he looked at the screen, “I’m sorry, I have to take this,” he said.
Sarah nodded and walked into the kitchen as Aiden made his way back outside.
“Hello? Yeah, that’s me. Okay… Location?... I can be there in forty-eight hours... Of course. I’ll see you then.”
Aiden sighed as he placed the phone back in his pocket. He wouldn’t normally take a contract so soon after completing one. Doing so brought risks that he could do without. It wasn’t like he needed the money; he had plenty of that in numerous bank accounts around the world, but the call had come from someone he had worked for before, and when Rafael Hernandez called in the reinforcements, it was serious.