The Awakening: Aidan (8 page)

“What kind of consultant?”

He shrugged. “I have a knack for helping failing businesses turn around.”

“Really?”

She didn’t have to sound so damn surprised. Yeah, he’d embraced his laid-back persona pretty fiercely after he’d retired, but he wasn’t some shifter that flitted from job to job as she apparently thought. Man, she was going to be shocked when she learned exactly how much he was worth.

“Yeah, Aidan is pretty sought-after. Who wouldn’t want the bad—”

Aidan sent a warning look to Liam, who’d just come to stand inside the living room. Liam snapped his mouth closed.

“Bad what?”

Liam scratched his head. “The badass Aidan to work for them.”

Aidan suppressed a groan and rolled his eyes. Yeah, like that wouldn’t arouse some curiosity on her part.

Jaylin glanced between them before turning her attention to Liam as he lowered himself onto the couch. “I wasn’t aware that Aidan’s
office
was in the living room. Would you like to do this in your room instead?”

Aidan’s beast immediately growled, but he covered it with a cough.

“No. I’d rather do it in here. I’d prefer Aidan to stay anyway. I think he needs to hear this.”

Aidan scowled at his friend, understanding the hidden meaning in his last words—the warning.

Jaylin hesitated, but she eventually sighed and perched on the couch next to Liam, who situated his body on the cushions so he was facing her better. Aidan didn’t like how close they were, knees almost touching, but he clenched his mouth shut. No reason to be jealous over Liam. Besides, his friend had enough problems without adding Aidan’s irrational behavior to it.

“So where do we start, doc?”

Doc? He didn’t like the nickname either. Aidan rolled his shoulders, and again rubbed his chest.

“I want to ask a few questions first.”

“All right.”

“Right now what do you feel?”

“Nothing out of norm for a bonded shifter.” Liam looked down at the floor as he folded his hands together and let them hang between his knees. “No spikes. She’s just there, you know?”

Jaylin nodded. “Do you feel anything right before a
Bahrraj
episode?”

“No. It blindsides me. I’m sitting there and everything is fine, then I’m just lost in her feelings. I can’t stop it.”

Jaylin reached over and squeezed Liam’s hands. The growl from Aidan’s beast filled the air before he had time to cover it. Both heads slowly turned toward him with eyebrows raised. Liam tugged his hands out of Jaylin’s grasp.

“Are you
serious
?” she asked Aidan.

He shrugged, refusing to apologize. Liam scooted back a few inches from her, and Aidan’s beast sniffed in approval.

“Mr. O’Connell, I need for you to leave the room.”

He scowled at the use of his last name, but stayed sitting.

Liam shook his head. “I’d really like for him to stay, please.”

Pursing her lips, she studied Liam. “Fine.” She pointed at Aidan. “I hear that again and you’re out. We clear?”

He held his tongue, but he wanted to tell her exactly how she could stop the behavior. She had the ability to. She was just being a pain in the ass about it.

“Okay, Liam, from what I’ve observed, when in the throes of an attack, you’re oblivious to your surroundings, which means you’ve completely lost control. What we need to do is give it back to you. The first thing we’re going to work on is recognizing the feeling you get right before an episode happens.”

“I told you, I don’t feel anything.”

She shook her head. “You do, you’re just not aware of it yet, and it doesn’t give you much warning, a few seconds maybe, but those few seconds are crucial.”

“What does it feel like?”

“Every shifter is different. Some feel a vibration. Others feel something akin to a hot flash, while others get this butterfly effect in their stomachs.”

Liam’s eyes widened. “I’ve noticed this odd taste flood my mouth right before I black out.”

“Good. We’re one step closer. What you have to do now is use it to keep grounded. What’s happening is you’re being attacked by her emotions and you have no time to fight it. It’s not like a physical attack where you get hit from behind and stagger but can regroup and fight back. This is an emotional and mental abduction. Without preparing, you’re defenseless.”

“How am I supposed to prepare with only a few seconds as a warning?”

“It won’t be easy. In fact, it’ll be one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to master.”

Aidan grimaced, understanding somewhat better what his friend was going through. What
he
might go through if he wasn’t careful. That acknowledgment was exactly why Liam had insisted on him staying in the room.

“Will I always go into
Bahrraj
?” Liam asked.

“In some form, yes. What we need to work on is keeping you conscious enough to get you out of it quickly and hopefully by yourself. The warning helps you stay aware of your surroundings.”

“Wait. Are you saying I’ll eventually be able to work myself out of them?”

“Yes.”

Aidan was stunned at the true smile that turned Liam’s lips upward. For a moment, he saw his old friend. “Does that mean I can finally live alone again?” He glanced at Aidan. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

“You’ll be able to live independently one day.” She reached for Liam’s hand again, then stopped and slowly withdrew. “It won’t be any time soon, though. We have to make sure you have complete control first.”

“Doc, this is the best news I’ve had since this all started. When I first moved in here, I thought it would be temporary, but as the months went by instead of getting myself back together, I kept sinking further and further into this uncontrollable darkness. I’ve felt like such a worthless leech, and after the
Bahrraj
episode, I thought I was doomed to being babysat all my life. Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

“Would you have listened?”

“No…probably not.”

“And that is why I didn’t tell you. I learned very early in my career that
Dsershon
brings out a mistrust and hopelessness in a shifter that is very hard to get past. I wasn’t surprised when you didn’t show up for your first session. I had to earn your trust, which I did yesterday when I asked you about your beast. I’m telling you now, therapy
will
give you your life back. It won’t be the same as before, but you can have a life again.”

Aidan watched as the lines that had been present on Liam’s face ever since Ava’s
Dsershon
relaxed. Tension eased from his body. If his friend had any lingering doubt about getting therapy, it was now gone. Liam was ready to fight.

“Okay, let’s get back to the warning,” Liam said. “What am I supposed to do when I taste it?”

“Mentally prepare. Remind yourself that it’s her reality you are feeling, not
yours
. As her emotions overtake you, you hold on to that, repeat it, do not allow yourself to stray from it. Think of it as a life vest that will keep you from going under.”

“All right.”

“I’m going to have you bring on a
Bahrraj
episode right now.”

“I can do that?”

“You do
not
try this on your own. Only with me. It’d be very dangerous for you to do it alone.”

Liam nodded.

“Now concentrate on her bond. Think of nothing else but it. When you get that taste in your mouth, immediately tell yourself that you are feeling her, not you, and keep repeating that as the bond takes over.”

Liam cleared his throat and stared forward. Aidan knew the moment his friend entered
Bahrraj
. Jaylin shot to her feet and grabbed his shoulder and snapped her fingers. “Liam!”

He didn’t respond.

“Outside! Now!” She pointed at him without taking her eyes off Liam.

He didn’t question her demand and hurried out of the house. With the way his beast had thrashed around aggressively yesterday, he wanted as much distance between him and that device as possible. The flash filled the living room, spilling from the window. His beast’s reaction was instantaneous. Hissing, coiled tight in rage.

Seconds later voices came from the house and he reentered. Jaylin still knelt beside Liam, listening to his chest through her stethoscope.

“What the hell is that red flash thing you use?”

Jaylin glanced up at him. With a resigned sigh, she tugged the stethoscope from her ears and stood. “It’s called a
Splycer
. During a
Bahrraj
episode, Liam loses all connection with his beast. The
Splycer
jolts the beast back into place, disrupts the episode, and brings Liam back to consciousness.”

“Why does it piss off
my
beast?”

“We’re not sure. All we know is the flash does something to a healthy shifter’s beast—makes it irate. Male therapists have to use trained half shifters to perform a shock.
They
can’t even go near it. It’s why I keep sending you from the room when I need to use it.”

“I don’t think you’ve sent me far enough away. I still felt its fury.”

She placed the stethoscope and device back in the briefcase. “Not like you would if you’d been in the room. I’m genuinely sorry for the discomfort. I know it had to be disturbing.”

Discomfort? He’d take that in a heartbeat over the seething fury he’d felt from his beast. However, she had “disturbing” accurate. “Do you use it only on
Dsershon
patients?”

She lifted a brow. “Curious, aren’t you, Mr. O’Connell?”

Aidan ignored the use of his last name. “Call me crazy for wanting to know a little more about a device my beast gets all worked up around.”

A small smile came to her lips, almost as if he had actually amused her with his response, before she put back on her professional face. “Remember
Dsershon
is extremely rare, so we don’t actually use it for that as much as you think. The
Splycer
is mostly used on half shifters.”

Now that surprised him. “Half shifters? Why?”

“The females of our race may not have a beast but we do have latent shifter DNA, which, as you know, gives some of us special abilities. Unfortunately, rapid healing isn’t one of them. During life-threatening injuries, we have effectively used the
Splycer
to boost the genes to speed up healing. It can save a half shifter’s life when conventional medicine can’t.” Jaylin lowered herself onto the couch beside Liam. “Now do you have any more questions or can I get back to work?”

“No,” he said through clenched teeth and stalked back to the chair in the corner.

Jaylin turned to Liam. “What did you feel?”

“I did what you told me to do once I felt the taste and then I was in oblivion.” He rubbed his face. “She was pensive, agitated. Do fully
Fewsed
shifters go through this?”

“No.”

“Then why the hell do rejected shifters?”

Jaylin grabbed a notebook from her briefcase and drew two semicircles on a piece of paper. She tapped the pad with the end of her pen. “Think of these two halves as the two parts of the
Fewshon
. The shifter is one half and his mate is the other. When the bonding ritual is completed on both ends,” she drew a circle around both halves, “they become one and the effects of the
Fewshon
are constantly flowing between the two as they equally share it.”

“So what you’re saying is had Ava not rejected me, I wouldn’t be so clogged up inside. She’d be taking on her fair share of the feelings too.”

“Yes, exactly. Unfortunately, rejected shifters have only opened up one part of the
Fewshon
. This is not a circle, but a line with no outlet. A rejected shifter takes on both the female’s emotions and his own. Since the male has no way to get rid of the excess—no female to share the burden—the emotions back up with nowhere to go and eventually the victim is pushed over the edge, which is when a
Bahrraj
episode takes place.”

“Does it happen only when she has a spike in emotions? Is that why it comes out of nowhere?”

“From the shifters I’ve studied, it does seem to correlate to a spike in the mate’s emotions. It could be something simple like her watching a movie that makes her laugh or cry. However, I have found the more intense the emotion, the more the shifter is bombarded by it. You, however, are especially in-tune with your mate. More so than any other patient I’ve dealt with before.”

“Why did it take so long for me have my first
Bahrraj
episode? Over the last few months, I noticed I was feeling her more, but I’d never blacked out.”

“How long has it been since Ava rejected you?”

“Six months.” He looked away. “To the day.”

“She’s human?”

“Yes.”

Aidan knew that was one definite factor to her freak-out. Even though shifters lived among humans, they only revealed themselves to their human mates after marking them. While the bonding gave the gift of eternal love to a shifter and his mate, it also protected the shifter’s existence. Once marked, a shifter’s mate was incapable of verbalizing her knowledge of the shifter’s world. Perhaps Ava just wasn’t ready to learn the entire truth about the marks.

“When did you actually bond to her?” Jaylin asked.

“A week after we met. The night we kissed for the first time—our first official date.” A small smile played at his lips. “I’ll never forget the moment our lips touched. How perfect it felt, how I just knew.”

Jaylin’s gaze strayed to Aidan’s before sadness stole across her features and she shook her head. “How long ago was that?”

“A year. We were inseparable after our first date. So fucking in love. Then she was gone. I—I never imagined this would be the outcome.”

“So you were bonded to her for six months before you told her about the shifter part of you? She never questioned the small circular bruises on her thighs?”

Liam shook his head. “I tended to bite her there a lot. She thought they were hickeys. She even joked about it, saying at least she didn’t have to wear a turtleneck to cover them up. I let her believe that. You know how a shifter can worry about exposing our world to a human. For most, it’s an unfounded worry, but in my case, I guess it was a premonition. The night I planned to propose, I told her everything. She freaked out when I explained the marks and Anavrin and refused to have anything more to do with me.”