elemental 03 - whitecap

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

WHITECAP/ Larissa Ladd. -- 1st ed.

D
ESCRIPTION

SOMETHING IS WRONG. AIRA HAS come into her full powers but is more unstable than ever. Filled with dread, she visits her grandmother and learns her grandmother doesn’t have long to live. Racing against time, Aira focuses on her training, absorbing all her grandmother teaches. Before her grandmother dies, she transfers all her magic to Aira and warns her that she is now the key to war or peace in the Elementals world and she must choose a mate quickly--her safety depends on it!

C
HAPTER
1

AIRA FIDGETED AS SHE, AIDEN, and Dylan finished packing up the two cars to finally make their return trip to her grandmother’s house. It had been two weeks since she came fully into her inheritance as an air elemental. Aira was still adjusting, still trying to understand the depths of the change that had happened to her. She knew, as much as she didn’t want to interrupt her life once more to spend weeks with her grandmother, it was absolutely necessary. She could still remember Alex and Dolores, and how close they had come to subverting both her and Aiden. Aira knew at her grandmother’s house, she would have a few precious weeks of absolute safety while she learned to use her abilities and control the strength of the air-aligned energy she possessed.

In the two weeks since she had come into her own, Aira had been struggling to keep her potent abilities in check; it had caused an uncommonly windy time in her area and the meteorologists were baffled. At least at her grandmother’s house, there would be no awkward questions since she lived in the middle of nowhere, on acres of land, isolated from even her nearest neighbors. No one would notice if Aira let go of her dominion over the air for a few minutes, and fewer would remark on it. An added benefit was knowing her grandmother would have the energy to dampen her. There was no danger of destroying the house or even the area around it when her grandmother could react to her volatile temper.

That aspect of her coming into her powers was almost the most difficult. Aira could gain control of herself when it came to manipulating the winds, but her anxiety increased with the rapid quickening of her thoughts. She and Aiden had begun to squabble on an almost hourly basis, irritated with each other over the smallest things. She knew her air-aligned impatience and irritability was triggering Aiden. She was unconsciously feeding his moods and strengthening them, but she couldn’t quite make herself stop. On more than one occasion, Dylan had been forced to intervene, using one of the spells Aira’s grandmother had taught him to quench the two of them before their arguments resulted in violence. Aira wasn’t used to feeling trapped in her own home; the galling feeling of being unable to go out—too unstable, too powerful, and yet too physically weak—was driving her insane.

After she and Dylan had disposed of Alex and Dolores, Aira had fallen almost immediately into a deep sleep. She had expected it to some degree; her mother and grandmother had both prepared her for that part of her transition into full elemental status. The magic that had come to fruition inside of her needed time to saturate every cell, and while she could have awoken if her life had been in danger, she was protected enough between the combined efforts of Aiden and Dylan that she had continued to sleep for more than twenty-four hours. She had awakened in the evening ravenous and with stiff muscles from lying in one position for such a long time. What she hadn’t shared with either brother was the fact that the entire time she had been in the deep sleep, she had been dreaming. For the first time in her life, Aira had a taste of what her grandmother experienced in her psychic trances.

When she awoke, Aira was filled with a sense of dread that had nothing to do with her powers and everything to do with her grandmother. There had been a recurring theme in her dreams: waters rising up, overflowing the banks of a river, flooding everything in sight. It didn’t take a proficient to know the element her grandmother was aligned with was involved—meaning her grandmother was involved as well. That evening, after she had eaten the largest meal of her life, which Dylan had ordered from a restaurant she loved, Aira called her grandmother. She immediately asked if she was okay. “I’m fine, dear,” her grandmother had insisted and then changed the subject abruptly to what she had ‘seen’ of Aira’s transition. “It’s a shame that Alex fellow had bad intentions…he was quite a dish.”

Aira had questioned her grandmother, wanting to know what Alex had been talking about—she remembered, distantly, that some part of his motivation for trying to bind her to his family had to do with her grandmother. “I can’t explain it over the phone. You’re coming up in a couple of weeks, I’ll have time then,” the older woman said firmly. Aira realized she wasn’t going to get her grandmother to tell her what it was, and her sense of foreboding increased.

“Which car are you riding in first?” Dylan asked her, standing at the driver’s side of the car he and his brother had driven to Aira’s from her grandmother’s. Aira looked at Aiden loading the last of his luggage into her own car, and made a face. If she rode with Aiden, Aira knew they would argue.

“The most dangerous times are going to be while we’re close to her house and as we approach her grandmother’s,” Aiden told his brother, standing up straight and looking at Aira. “All three of us will have to be alert. She should ride with me.” Aira rolled her eyes, immediately bristling at the suggestion.

“Right, because you defended me so well the last two times someone tried to marry me against my will.”

Aiden let out a low growl. “Excuse me, but I think I did a decent job of getting you out of the first situation. And the second… well, we were BOTH to blame for that.”

Aira scowled. “Which one of us was supposed to be in charge of security?” she asked with a bitingly sweet tone. “I seem to have forgotten. Wasn’t it you who said you wouldn’t be distracted?”

Aiden started towards her. Aira felt the air crackling with his fiery energy as he muttered something under his breath, a spell she didn’t know. Dylan quickly inserted himself between the two of them, his hands holding them both at bay.

“I swear to God, you’re both acting like first graders,” he muttered. “If you’re going to throw yourselves at each other, get it over with—but stop with the fighting. It’s giving me a headache.”

Aira turned her scowl on the younger brother, offended at his insinuation that she and Aiden were attracted to each other. The wind began to rise under the influence of her irritation, whipping up quickly. Dylan looked at her sharply and Aira felt ashamed of her reaction. She took a deep breath, calming the rage starting inside of her. The wind began died down to normal proportions and Aira swallowed, closing her eyes and gradually regaining her sense of calm.

“I’ll ride with you, Dylan. Aiden and I will just fight if we’re stuck in a car together, and I wouldn’t want us to accidentally throw someone off of the road—or get thrown off the road ourselves.” She looked at Aiden with undisguised annoyance, turning away from the older brother and yanking the passenger side door of Dylan’s car open. She threw her purse into the floorboard and sat down firmly, fastening her seatbelt and refusing to look at either brother. In spite of her efforts to control the effects of her temper, her irritation was still intense, and she knew Dylan’s calming presence and time were the only things that would make a dent in her state of mind.

She heard Dylan and Aiden arguing briefly before the older brother turned away and got into her car. Aira’s annoyance increased at the thought that she had been hedged out of even riding in the car she owned, but she reminded herself firmly it was hardly important. Dylan climbed into the driver’s side and they all set off, Aira maintaining her silence for several miles before her generally positive nature overcame her frustration and worry.

“What do you want to listen to?” Aira asked by way of an apology for her behavior, taking her iPhone out of her purse and opening up her music library.

“Let’s do Foo Fighters,” Dylan suggested. Aira smiled. She pulled up the albums in her collection and picked one at random. The two of them began to sing along with the music and almost immediately began moving as much as the seats would allow, getting into the fast-paced tunes. Aira felt her sense of apprehension and irritation dissolving as she immersed herself in the music, watching the scenery flow by.

By the time they had made their first stop, a few hours away from Aira’s apartment, she was in much better spirits; Dylan suggested that she switch cars at that point and ride with Aiden for the next leg of their journey, and Aira agreed after only a moment of hesitation. She got into the car with Aiden, a cup of coffee in hand, steeling herself against the elder brother’s temper. Aira thought Dylan must have given Aiden a talking-to as Aiden sat down in the passenger seat, she could tell he was trying to restrain his impatience. Aira started the car and handed her iPhone to him. “I’ll let you pick the first music selection,” she said, not quite looking at him as she pulled out of the rest stop and onto the road. Dylan followed behind, close enough to keep a watch on her but not so close that he was obvious to anyone who might be watching.

Aiden picked out a Radiohead album, and Aira forced herself not to comment on it. While she didn’t object to Radiohead in general, she wasn’t in the mood for the odd, experimental music. She let the silence between them drag on for several moments, waiting for Aiden to get into a better mood. “Have you gone on the forum since…” she let the sentence die off. Aira glanced at him, taking her eyes off of the road for only an instant to see his reaction. He shrugged reservedly, looking out the window.

“I reported Dolores and Alex to the site administrator. I haven’t really been tempted to look around on there since.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You know, that was a low blow earlier. You were distracted by Alex just as much as I was by Dolores; that was the whole point in their strategy.”

Aira shrugged, changing lanes to get around a slow-moving car.

“Yeah, well, I was dealing with everything going on with coming into my powers. Besides, you were supposed to be guarding me.”

Aiden snorted. “How many times have you insisted that you can handle things yourself? Seems like you’ve got as good a track record as I do.” Aira gritted her teeth, trying to suppress her rising frustration and anger at the dismissive tone in Aiden’s voice.

“Yes, well, I’m not getting paid to protect someone, am I?” Aira felt wind pummeling the car, making it hard for her to keep control. She reached out with her ability, calming herself enough to suppress the rising gale. “They planned well,” Aira admitted begrudgingly. “If they’d found someone to seduce Dylan, I’d be screwed right now.”

Aiden chuckled. “Oh no—you’d only have been screwed for a couple of days.”

Aira shot him a surprised glance at the seeming compliment.

“Alex was never a match for you. I thought so in the beginning, but the way you shut him down just proved it.”

Aira smiled slightly, turning her attention back on the road.

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