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CHAPTER 5
Saints & Sinners nightclubwas a thumping mass of electronic music and writhing bodies. I watched the dancers below with disinterest as I sipped on my beer. I had very quickly come to regret agreeing to come here with Rio and Marcus. Itusedto be our favorite spot in the city...ten years ago. We’d been in our mid-twenties then, and life had been all about drinking, partying, and seeing what men or women we could entice into our beds.
Now, at thirty-three, the shine of our twenties had worn off, and the thudding bass of the music and the flashing lights were starting to give me a migraine. Marcus and Rio, for their part, looked just as bored as I was by the whole thing.
Marcus was responding to a work email, the screen lighting up his face as he frowned at what he was reading. Rio was staring off into the distance and looking decidedly, well, moony as Marcus liked to say. I’d kind of noticed it this morning when he came home smelling like a cherry tart, but it seemed like it’d gotten worse since then. I made a note to get to the bottom of it whenever I got a chance, I was definitely intrigued by whoever the owner of that scent was.
My relationship with my pack members was an open one, but we rarely ever strayed outside of the bounds that we’d set with each other. Marcus and I were busy, and Rio had always been content with the life we’d settled into after I ran for congress, but six months ago there had been a shift in his attitude. I didn’t mind, of course, but I was definitely curious. I also knew that Rio was notoriously bad at flirting, so I would probably need to help him make any progress with his mystery person.
“Okay, you two,” I said when I’d finally had enough of their boredom. We could still have fun even if we were thirty-somethings with high-stress jobs, and I was going to prove it, dammit. “Enough with the moping. Marcus put away your phone or it’s getting tossed over the balcony, and Rio, wipe that lovesick expression off of your face. This is probably going to be our last night to have any fun for the next year—so you two need to lighten up and enjoy it.”
I gestured for one of the waiters, and ordered bottle service. Things were finally starting to look up when Rio and Marcus began to roast each other which was, in my opinion, their love language.
“Why in the world did you have to wake me up like that earlier, Rio?” Marcus poked the other alpha in the ribs hard enough to make the dark-haired man gasp.
Rio gave him a playful shove, “because you were liable to bite my face off if I came any closer.”
When I’d arrived home a few hours ago, Marcus was still complaining because, apparently, Rio had decided to wake him up by nudging him in the side of the head with the handle of the broom.
“I am not that bad.” Marcus argued, glaring at Rio with his bright green eyes.
“You are absolutely a pain in the ass to wake up Marcus. Do you remember the time I accidentally elbowed you when we were asleep inmybed, and you bit me?” I joined in on the teasing, “I had a red mark on my back for a week.” While my feelings for Marcus were not romantic, there were still many nights that we all piled into my bed, especially when Marcus woke up with nightmares.
Marcus tilted his chin up in what I liked to call his ‘quintessentially snobby British mode,’ before saying, “it isn’t my fault that I appreciate a good sleep. You Americans work too much.”
Rio and I stared at Marcus incredulously, becausethosewords coming out ofhismouth? That was definitely the funniest thing I’d heard all day. Rio and I made eye contact, and promptly burst into laughter while Marcus glared at us. “Oh, fuck off you bastards. If I’m a workaholic, it’s because I’ve assimilated too well into American society.” This just made us laugh harder.
As Marcus and Rio continued to tease one another, my eyes found their way to the scene below again. Earlier, when we’d first come to sit down, we’d passed by the dance floor, and my eyes had been drawn to a woman dancing amongst the throng of bodies with her eyes closed as if she didn’t have a care in the world. I’m not sure what made me notice her amongst the hundreds of other bodies that were pulsing together, but ever since then, my eyes had routinely sought her out. I had watched her leave the dance floor with a group of blonde women before heading to the bar for a drink. I also saw a random man approach her, which didn’t sit right in my gut for some reason.
When I looked back again, one of the blonde women was stomping her foot as she argued with the dark-haired woman, who looked like she would rather be anywhere else. Then, the blonde ran off and was soon followed by the rest of the group, leaving the dark-haired woman on her own. Everything inside of me screamed that leaving her alone was a bad idea, but at least the man had decided to leave her alone, and I watched as he disappeared into the crowd of club patrons surrounding the bar.
I was distracted from my observation for a few minutes by a waitress asking me if I’d like another drink, and when I looked back, what I saw made my chest go cold.
The woman was standing now, and despite the distance between us, I could see that she was hanging onto the stool that she’d been sitting on as her legs shook. If it was any other night, I probably would have written off her inability to stand up straight as drunkenness. But tonight was different. Every single one of my instincts was telling me that something was very wrong with her, and that was further exacerbated by the way that the woman began to stumble toward the bathrooms.
I must have made some kind of noise of displeasure, because suddenly Marcus and Rio’s scents enveloped me, and I realized that they had come closer to find out what I had been staring at for so long.
“What’s wrong?” Marcus asked, his green eyes scanning the crowd like there was some kind of danger hiding within the mass of people still dancing below.
I didn’t quite know how to put my worries into words without sounding absolutely crazy, and the woman needed help as soon as possible, so I just spat out what I was thinking.
“There’s a woman who I’ve been watching...and I think someone might have slipped something into her drink.” I sounded completely batshit insane, but I also knew that my pack members would take anything I said seriously, which was soon proven to be correct when Rio and Marcus stood without asking any further questions.
“Where did you last see her going, and what does she look like?” Rio asked as Marcus pulled out his phone.
“I’ll get a hold of club security and see if they’ve noticed anything.” Marcus dialed and held the phone up to his ear while using his finger to plug his other ear in an effort to drown out some of the thumping music that still surrounded us.
“She was an Asian woman, with long dark hair and a form-fitting black dress.” The description wasn’t very good, and could probably have described about a hundred of the women currently in the club, but it was the best that I had for them to go off of.
We split apart then, Rio heading towards the bar, and Marcus towards the security office. I made for the restrooms where I had last seen her heading to.
Taking a shortcut, I pushed between the bodies on the dancefloor, ignoring the dizzying plethora of scents that surrounded me as I made a beeline for the restroom.
The club restrooms were located down a long hallway that was surprisingly empty, considering how packed the club was. The first thing I saw, as I glanced down the hall, was a man practically carrying a woman past me.
The woman was the same one that I’d seen stumbling away from the bar only a few minutes before. The man had her arm slung over his shoulders, and he was talking loudly, probably for the few people who were entering the hallway to use the restroom.
The woman mumbled a no that was loud enough for my ears to hear over the thumping bass of the music, and the man just pressed her face into his chest.
