Chapter 12

While Sean smoked another one of the joints, he'd given me a quick rundown on what he knew about Raven and Cunningham's typical activities. On the weekends, Cunningham had the usual round of filthy-rich pretentious-douchebag-appropriate social occasions, to which Raven accompanied him. Sometimes he hosted lavish parties at the hotel, or more rarely at his estate.

On weekdays, Cunningham worked, and Raven tended to either stay completely out of sight or go out doing the things that one might expect of a wealthy man's kept boytoy: shopping, spa days, the salon.

Cunningham fancied himself an art collector, and frequently traveled to various private auctions around the world. He'd been on one such trip earlier in the week, and Sean was pretty sure he'd gotten back Thursday evening—which explained Raven's panic when I'd demanded he meet me that night at the Silver Lode. The gods only knew what explanation he'd given. Something about "communing with the air" or some other hocus-pocus fairy bullshit, I figured. Had Cunningham bought it? I could only pray that he had.

After Sean went back to work half-panicked himself at the idea of being my informant and also high enough to float, I had nothing to do but loiter around and hope he got back to me with something more concrete, as he'd reluctantly promised me he'd do.

Fuck, Raven was probably right there . From my current lurking spot on the roof of the parking garage where I'd met Sean, he was maybe…I eyed the top of the towering blue-glass expanse of Audacity, to which I had a clear line of sight over a cluster of shorter buildings. Shit, I'd need the Pythagorean Theorem if I wanted to know how far away he was.

Not like I had anything better to do but worry and brood. I pulled out my phone and looked up the height of the building, did a couple of calculations.

About 1300 feet, as one of his fellow corvids would fly.

Now I could worry and brood with more mathematical confidence. Fucking great.

It felt like it took forever, standing there in the sunshine listening to the honks and shouts and random bursts of shitty music that drifted up from the street below, breathing in car exhaust and dust, before my phone pinged with a message.

I scrabbled to unlock the screen so violently I nearly dropped it over the edge of the roof.

If I get killed for this, I'm going to make sure I take you with me , he said. Thanks, Sean. Not that I blamed him. Someone told me your guy went to the Endless Sky Spa out in Summerlin for the afternoon. And there's going to be an over the top party here on Friday night, but it's private. That's all I have.

I texted back a thank you and a thumbs up, and after a short wait got a series of emojis that I couldn't interpret clearly but that seemed to indicate mental distress of some kind. A second later, a marijuana leaf emoji followed in its own message.

That was clear enough. Will do, I owe you , I sent back. He didn't reply.

Two minutes later, I was in the car and on my way to the Endless Sky Spa. Weird name, and equally weird that he'd chosen to go outside Audacity, which had one of the best spas in the world, I'd heard, let alone Las Vegas.

Then again, maybe he took literally any excuse to be out from under Cunningham's watchful eye for a couple of hours. In fact, maybe he hadn't even gone there, and it really was an excuse.

Maybe he'd found another alpha and tried again, since it hadn't worked with me.

My heart tried to pound sideways out of my ribs and my vision blurred for a second, and I nearly ran off the road.

I straightened out, cursing, with someone honking in the other lane.

Fuck. Fuck me, maybe he had. Of course he'd keep trying to get out of his magical bondage. He wouldn't shrug and give up because his first attempt had been a failure. I'd already been forcing myself not to spend every minute freaking out over what Cunningham might be doing to him, and now that I'd thought of this…someone else might hurt him.

Cunningham was already hurting him, or at least using and terrorizing him, except that everything added up to Cunningham keeping him around in part as a status symbol, a beautiful thing he owned. He probably wouldn't damage something he valued that much too badly, right? I'd been clinging to that thought, trying to keep myself on this side of storming Audacity and challenging Cunningham to a fight to the death. Raven had been enduring him for a while already. He could hopefully wait a little longer until I could find a better way.

But some fucking random alpha might not have even those scruples, or that level of selfish investment in Raven being in one piece on the other side of whatever encounter they might have.

My claws sprouted uncontrollably, one hand's worth of them digging into the steering wheel, and a gold haze fell over my vision. I had to be breaking the speed limit by a whole hell of a lot, but fuck it.

I screeched around the final corner and slowed down enough to come to a reasonable stop in the parking lot of the strip mall where my map app had told me I'd find Endless Sky.

And there, pulled up right in front, was Raven's shiny black coupe.

I parked on the other side of the narrow lot, backing in so that I could watch his car and the front of the spa, and slumped my forehead down onto the steering wheel, slowly working my claws back out of it and breathing like I'd been running all the way here instead of just driving like a maniac.

Once I'd calmed down a bit, I opened my window, shut off the engine, and settled in for the duration. The urge to barge inside and find him immediately rose up strong, but screw bulls in china shops—a glowing-eyed, six-foot-four-inch alpha weretiger in a day spa took that concept to a whole new level. If I had any chance of getting Raven to talk to me, I had to wait.

So I waited.

And waited, as the sun crept down toward the horizon and shadows lengthened across the parking lot.

Fucking Christ, how much rubbing and lotioning and pedicuring did one small fairy need? He was already so beautiful, and it had nothing at all to do with the efforts of a team of salon employees.

My sister liked going to the spa. Maybe she'd know how long it took. She'd called me the other day, and I'd dodged, texting her that I was too busy to talk.

What would she say if I called her back right now and told her where I was and why? She'd shit a brick. Always on me to find a mate and settle down, but if she knew what I—

My thoughts came to a halt more screeching than my entrance into the strip mall's parking lot.

A mate.

The scar of my alpha bite on Raven's slender, perfect neck, right at the base of it. Off to the side slightly so that it wouldn't be visible unless one of his high collars slipped down, the only mark on all of his silky white skin. His smile when I kissed it, his soft sigh as he tilted his head and leaned into me…

The parking lot reformed around me as the fantasy shattered into a million pieces. My claws had embedded themselves in the steering wheel again. My erection threatened to bust through the front of my jeans and do the same.

And I knew, at last, exactly how fucked I was. Raven wouldn't want that. Any of it. Fantasy-Raven didn't exist, and real-Raven would be horrified to know what he got up to in my fevered imagination.

Worse than that…

A mate.

My mate.

Something I'd never really planned to have, because no one had roused the part of me that would crave so deeply, desire so powerfully, that no one else would ever be good enough again.

No one before Raven. And I knew, down to my bones, there wouldn't be anyone after, either.

Oh, Raven had gotten it right when he said I wasn't any smarter than I looked.

Sort of right, but also sort of wrong. Because I was even fucking stupider than that. The "Dominic could run intellectual rings around me" kind of stupid.

It took me another ten minutes to get my claws out of the ruined steering wheel for the second time, and to will my cock down to half mast, and by then the last of the dusk had faded and all the lights around me had come on. The front of the spa glowed a subtle sort of greenish-purple with little twinkly lights on strings making patterns across the curtained windows.

Fairy lights.

The Endless Sky.

I turned my head toward my open window, closed my eyes, and concentrated, taking deep breaths and consciously focusing on the sensory data my body usually processed instinctually.

Yeah, that was the scent of magic. Faint and almost muted somehow, sort of like that weird underwater light coming from the spa windows. But definitely there, and it didn't smell like Raven. Any scent of him in the parking lot had dissipated before I arrived.

Was this what he'd meant by communing with the air? Did the Las Vegas fae community have some kind of secret hideout inside a strip-mall day spa?

I didn't have long to wonder, because another fifteen minutes later, the door opened, the first time it had done so while I'd been parked here, I now realized.

Raven stepped out and let the door swing shut behind him, frowning down at the phone in his hand and with his car keys in the other. He was in all black again, but of course, and had his hair up in a messy bun.

My breath caught, the sensation starting to become familiar with repetition: a little hitch of wonder that he even existed.

He looked up.

And he stopped dead as our eyes met and held, even through my windshield and across the dim parking lot.

His lips pressed together in a flat line.

I tensed, my hand on the door release. He'd never make it into his car before I intercepted him.

But it wasn't necessary, because he slipped his keys and phone into the pockets of his jacket and strode toward me, shaking his head at me as he did.

An instant later he'd opened the passenger door and climbed in, shutting it behind him.