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“You don’t have to worry about us. We can take care of ourselves.” He pauses, then grimaces slightly. His voice dips down, going quiet. “We… do what we can, anyway.”
This is the first time that I’ve heard him sound anything but confident. He sounds upset, almost. But not at me.
“Would you like to shift?” I ask. “I don’t mind.”
Shifters sometimes feel more comfortable in their animal form than in their non-animal form. He doesn’t have to hide his wolf from me. I won’t be upset.
“No.”
His tone startles me. “Aww, what, you don’t want to show me your big bad wolf?” I tease him. I’d actually kind of love to see his wolf—petting one sounds like a great idea right about now, very soothing.
North, to my surprise, gets even sharper in his tone. “No,” he practically snaps.
“Oh. I’m.” Uh. This is awkward. “I’m sorry.”
This is… spoiled of me, probably, but I’m confused. This is the first time since meeting them that one of these three has denied me anything, and he sounds like the Beast fromBeauty and the Beastwhen Belle asks what’s in the West Wing. Is there a shifter custom I don’t know about that I’ve violated? Have I hurt him somehow? It seems odd that this of all things would be what he denies me after the men have made a big point about my being their mate.
North goes stiff, but nods, as if he accepts my apology. He looks about as awkward as I now feel. He gets up. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Okay then.
North leaves, closing the door behind him, and I lie back down, confused. What—what am I supposed to do with these men? What made North so upset? And why do I even care? I’ve never wanted to know about anyone before. They kept to their business, and I kept to mine. So what if there were questions or awkwardness? It wasn’t my business.
But I do want to know. I want to know why North was awkward, why he said no, what he’s feeling.
I’ve never cared about anyone else before. And now that I do… it scares me.
It takes me a long time to fall asleep.
CHAPTER14
We take a portal to Nevada, but that’s only going to buy us so much time before whatever bounty hunters are after me will catch up to us. If you could shake off bounty hunters or mob collectors simply by taking a portal, then everyone would do it, and nobody with a bounty on their heads would ever get caught.
But taking a portal will buy us a bit of time, and it’s the only way to really get to Nevada in any timely fashion.
We arrive in Las Vegas, which is kind of my paradise. I would love to rob this place blind. The human places, anyway. There are some supernatural-owned casinos, and they’ve got more security than the White House. You don’t break into one of those unless you’ve got some kind of death wish, and I do not have one of those, thanks. I stay far away from supernatural casinos.
But there’s no time for me to indulge my desire to playOcean’s Elevenat The Luxor. We rent a car and head straight out into the desert, toward the building that Cain and Raven saw.
It’s way out in the middle of nowhere, away from civilization, and we spend some time in the car together. Raven’s driving again. North is sitting in the front this time, though. I wonder—is he upset about last night, still? Did I say something wrong? Hurt his feelings in some way?
Normally I don’t care about that kind of thing. It feels… disconcerting to care so much about it now.
Cain sits with me, occasionally leaning forward to murmur to Raven as they make sure they’re heading in the right direction based on their visions. He smiles at me encouragingly, and winks.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, sweetheart,” he tells me. “Raven and I know what we’re doing.”
Normally I would bristle at anyone calling me ‘sweetheart’. But Cain sounds like he really, truly means it—like he thinks I have a sweet heart.
I don’t know what to do with that, or the warm feeling that it causes in my chest.
We travel down dirt highways that I think the rest of humanity—and time—has forgotten, until we reach a set of absolute ruins. I think there might be some kind of magical shielding charm still in place around the building, because one moment it’s not there, the next it is, rising up out of the hard-packed desert earth.
Raven parks the car and we stare up at the ruins. It really does look rundown, the sort of place that’s definitely haunted in movies.
“Looks just like the vision,” Cain murmurs.
I’m impressed in spite of myself. I’ve never seen any fae use the Sight before, so I have to admit I wondered about how accurate it was. How much guesswork is involved and how much of it is just… knowing.
