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She was right. We had just been kids, and we hadn’t known what life was really like. I’d come here to find freedom, to create a life that was worth something despite his efforts to destroy me.
Had I walked into a whole different kind of nightmare instead?
“I’m sure it will be okay, though,” Nadia said when she saw how worried I looked. “I mean, he’s still a fair guy. It’s just when you piss him off, and then all hell breaks loose, and it’s a case of running for your life. There’s only one person, apparently, who can still keep him in check.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Felix.”
“His beta. Not even his sister can hold him back. Her power is unstable.”
“But she trains the shifters.”
“And they’re pissed off about it, too.”
None of this made sense. It didn’t sound like the home I’d left behind.
“How can shifter magic be unstable? She’s not a young shifter, she’s got to have some kind of control by now.”
“Yeah, she used to have control, and she was second only to Jameson. When they lost Delaney, she chose never to shift again. Shecan; she justwon’t.It’s causing her to go crazy. If she would still shift, she’d be powerful as hell. Not that it matters now. It’s causing unrest in the pack, though, so I don’t know if it’s going to amount to something bigger than what we have now.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Sounds to me like the LA pack is a mess.”
“You can say that again,” Nadia said with a smile, as if she hadn’t just told me terrible things.
My stomach twisted, and I took another bite of food, but it turned to sand in my mouth. I put it down in the wrapper and sipped my second coffee. “Does she work at the club, too?”
“I don’t know,” Nadia admitted. “She sticks to her training grounds all the time, taking care of the species leaders, but she doesn’t socialize with anyone, so aside from those guys… I don’t think any of uscivilianshave seen her in years.”
That didn’t sound very good. None of it did. I’d been so excited about getting a job at Sapphire, but now that I heard all these stories, I was starting to worry. What if I’d made a terrible mistake? If Jameson really was this terrible, what would he do to me if he found out I was Tate Armstrong’s daughter? Was hiding there a big mistake?
No, it would be fine, I decided. I was just going to work hard and keep my head down. I wasn’t here to cause shit for Jameson, just for my dad. It wouldn’t be forever, either. As soon as I could find someone—fae, hopefully—who could help me destroy that amulet, then it would all be over. I would quit my job at the club, and my dad could crawl back into the hole he’d crawled out of.
The alpha didn’t even have to have me on his radar, I just needed to hide out under Jameson’s careful watch until the coast was clear again.
That was all. Maybe Jameson was a tyrant, but I’d grown up under the rule of a tyrant, too.
How much different could this be?
A small voice told me that it could beverydifferent, but I squashed it. I was still determined to stick this out, even if it seemed to have become a lot more dangerous than I thought.
3
JAMESON
The private lounges at Sapphire were what the club was named after. Instead of the deep red, the color of a heart chamber, when the guests walked in and spent time in the communal rooms, I wanted the private lounges to be more intimate. The walls and carpets were a deep blue, like you were at the heart of the gem.
Circular couches with plush pillows curved around the walls, with a platform and a pole in the middle of the room. The rooms adjacent to the lounges had beds in the same deep blue color, with black cabinets filled with toys.
I sat back on the couch and watched the woman dancing on the pole. Her skin was copper, covered in glitter that shimmered in the low lighting as she moved sensually around the pole like she was making love to it.
She’d lost her bra a while ago, but it hadn’t done much to cover up, anyway. Now, her perfect tits jiggled as she moved, and I stared as the music and her hypnotizing hips drew me in.
The door to the lounge opened. I frowned. A bouncer let Felix in and shut the door again, and the dancer didn’t miss a beat.
Felix, my beta, sat down next to me, staring. His eyes flashed, pupils thinning into the slits of his cat, golden and predatorial. His tongue darted out over his lips.
“Nice,” he said.
