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Her hair shone like a beacon in the black light, a silvery grey that looked unnatural for someone of her age. Abnormal hair colours weren’t entirely uncommon for witches, though, and that’s what I scented on her. Witch and nymph. “Have your cash on the counter. I’ll be right back,” she said, sliding further down the bar.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her as she leaned across the wood to talk to another patron. At first I thought she was flirting, but then I noticed her expression. She was furious. Slamming a beer down in front of the vampire Alpha in front of her, she said something that I had to assume was some form of ‘fuck off.’
She was back down to my spot with my whiskey before I had the chance to grab my money, and she let out a long-suffering sigh as she waited. Handing her a $20 bill, I stopped her when she went for change. “Keep it. Was that guy bothering you?” I asked, gesturing to where the man had been. He’d vacated the bar stool, but he was still watching her intently.
“Nothing that you need to worry about.”
The woman had stepped away to help someone else before I asked anything more.
Probably for the best, considering I was here to blend in and not to play white knight for a woman who didn’t need any help. She was her own knight. Peeling away from the bar, I fell into the crowd once again, strolling across the middle of the dance floor to the edge of the room. A DJ was setting up for the evening, Club Chaos switching from the quiet bar atmosphere to loud and bass-driven club music. I’d arrived just in time to witness the swap.
There was a raised platform where I could stand and look out at the crowd along the edge of the room farthest from the bar, my height giving me a good vantage point. I couldn’t help but watch the gorgeous bartender, curious to see if she was that brusque with everyone or just me.
It was everyone.
Every man that went up to her turned away with their drink and a slight frown, upset at having been shot down so thoroughly. Made me feel better about it, honestly.
I mingled and chatted with people, keeping one eye on her the whole time. She wasn’t the mission, but she was intriguing and I couldn’t help myself. No one had pulled me in this much since Caspian, when I first met him. The man she’d told off was watching her, same as I was, but he left before me. My bartender left shortly after, out the back door with a bag of garbage from behind the bar, raising red flags.
It totally wasn’t creepy if I followed her outside, right? To make sure she was safe?
Weird or not, I was doing it. The bouncers weren’t about to let me go out the back door, so I pushed my way to the front and jogged along the side of the building to the back. All I needed was one glimpse of her to make sure that other guy hadn’t given her trouble. Then I would go back to the hotel and report to Shan so the mission could start for real.
“Come on, sugar, you know you want to have some fun,” a croaky voice said from around the edge of a dumpster.
I froze, anger making my body tremble. My beast shifted inside me, eager to wake up and fight the scum of the Earth. “One last chance to get the fuck off me,” the bartender said, her tone surprisingly level, considering she was likely cornered.
Feet shuffled, and I jumped into action, darting around the corner and raising my hand to pull the man off her. When I saw her, I stopped dead. She was frowning down at an unconscious lump of a man. There wasn’t a mark on her. At my arrival, her gaze darted up and she muttered a spell, waving the wand I’d neglected to notice in her hand.
“Fuck,” she muttered, stepping over the man and towards me.
My body couldn’t move, not even my lips to make a sound. She brought her hand up to my cheek, caressing it gently and tugging at my chaotic mess of a beard. I felt everything, heightened by my inability to move. Her purple eyes looked like they were glowing, her magic welling up as she restrained me. Should I be scared right now? Probably. The woman was formidable. I wasn’t scared, though. My instincts told me she wouldn’t harm me.
“Fucking Alphas,” she said. “Always trying to be the knight in shining armour. Or a rapist like this guy.” She gestured to the vampire Alpha, his body unmoving except for the faintest rise and fall of his chest. “I liked you, too. It’s a damn shame I’m going to have to send you away so soon. Next time you see a pretty woman at work, leave her the fuck alone until she approaches you, yeah? You might not like what you find if you go snooping.”
The Alpha laying on the ground twitched, and she pulled a dagger out from under her skirt. “You ruined my fun, too,” she continued, as if she was having a conversation and not talking to a man who couldn’t respond.
She sunk the dagger into the vampire’s chest, twisting until he stopped twitching entirely. We both felt when the life left him. Part of me was terrified that I was next, but my instincts still kept me calm. She wouldn’t. I didn’t fall into her typical victim pool. How had I stumbled onto the very murderer we were looking for on the first day? Alone? None of us were expecting it to be a woman who killed unsavoury Alpha males. “Can’t do two things at once, so I had to get rid of him early.” Her lips turned up into a hint of a pout. “Now, look at me.”
Her fingers turned my face in her direction, because I couldn’t look under my own power. I was a strong shifter, but shifters were weak against magic like this. We were built for battle, not resisting deceptively powerful witches who took us off guard. “You’re going to forget everything you saw here tonight. You’ll forget coming here, you’ll forget meeting me. You won’t remember ever talking to or thinking about coming to Club Chaos at all. Do you understand?”
My head nodded without my consent, mind blurring. Altering memories was difficult to do and harder to master, but she knew exactly what she was doing. I was confident I would remember nothing when I woke up in the morning, which was a damn shame. She was pretty and murderous. Shan would love her when he inevitably found her. At least I would be alive.
“You’re never going to come back, OK? If you try, you’ll be in a lot of pain. The pain will steer you away from here, so as long as you listen to it, it will never bother you.”
“Yes,” I said, my voice hollow and coerced.
“Go home. When you get there, go to sleep. In the morning, you’ll wake up feeling completely normal, but with a few missing memories. Goodbye.”
I turned and walked away when she let me go, mechanical movements taking me down the alley and away from her. As soon as Club Chaos was out of sight, there wasn’t so much as a hint of her gorgeous silver hair in my brain.
Until now.
My jaw dropped as I stared at her, her eyes widening as she caught sight of me on the ground, the pain slowly fading from my body. With my memories back, her command had been broken, and I was no longer banned from the club. Pushing myself to my feet with a grunt, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from her.
This woman was a vicious killer, a skilled magic wielder, and… a weak-appearing Omega. No wonder none of us had even considered the alternative that she didn’t have a protector at all, but protected her damn self.
“Freya—,” I said, but choked on my words when she drew a simple rune in the air with her wand.
It stopped my tongue from moving, that familiar sensation coming over my body. I could move this time, but slower than I should be able to.
Not fast enough to stop her when she took the arm of a tattooed shifter man who pulled her off down the street. Over her shoulder, she mouthed something that looked suspiciously like ‘I’m sorry’ as she walked. And then she was gone, around a corner with her captor, and my body was freed. I ran after her, but there was nothing but the ripple of a portal in the air where they’d been.
She was gone.
We’d lost the object of our mission and the woman my partners were obsessed with in one fell swoop.
