Chapter 17

Raven closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His exhale—gods, it sparkled, like dust motes lit up by a beam of sunlight, only green and pastel orange and some color human language didn't have a name for.

When his eyes opened, he found me gaping at him in wonder. That probably looked pretty stupid on a tiger's face.

Raven offered me a small, pale smile, and even in that dull, windowless little room, the sun came out.

"The camera's taken care of for now," he said. "And no one will hear us through the door. But that only lasts as long as they leave us alone, and I don't dare to lock it. Tony, you shouldn't be here. You can't be here. He'll kill you."

No amount of blinking or paw-tapping would do at this point. The camera wouldn't catch it, so fuck it, and if someone came in, I'd have to start the carnage sooner than I wanted.

Flowing from tiger to human took an instant's more thought than usual, because I'd been so laser-focused on looking and acting like a normal tiger no matter what, but when I shook my head to clear it, I had hair and not fur, and my ears had migrated down to the sides of my head. The collar hung loose around my neck, and I'd paid attention to how Axel fastened it. A moment's fumbling and it fell to the floor with a clink of chain, and I stood up, fully human, naked, my cock rampantly erect.

Raven's eyes dropped down, lingered, and then skimmed back up to my face. A trace of pink tinged his white cheeks at last. The only color in his face before had come from the purple shadows under his eyes.

And around one of them. Around…as if someone's fist had…

Rage nearly blinded me, and I lunged for him, needing to wrap him in my arms and crush him to my chest and never let him go…

"Don't," he hissed, stumbling back. "Don't! My clothes, and your scent on me!"

I jerked to a stop inches away from him, clenching my hand into a fist around nothing to keep myself from touching him.

That was how I'd gotten him in trouble in the first place. And I'd almost done it again, fuck.

Except that…

"It doesn't matter," I said. "I'm here to take you away with me. You're not going to be with him for one more fucking night."

He bit his lip, glaring up at me. "Don't even say that. You know I can't, that I'm stuck here, and—Tony, this only makes it worse. Seeing you. Having you make me feel like you could protect—you can't keep doing this to me!"

Gods, if I could only kiss him, let him feel what he meant to me. But I wouldn't, not until he agreed to my plan. He had to say yes. If he didn't, I'd be as bad as Cunningham.

And there'd be time for kissing and comforting and everything else. All the time in the world, if I could only get Raven out of here, safely away where no one could ever hurt him again.

"I'm not, I promise," I said. Begged. The air between us quivered, pulsed, with the force of my need to breach it. "I thought of a way out. A way to break your bargain with him."

He went rigid. "You?"

Christ, I probably deserved that. But it hurt.

"Yes, me! And I have a plan to get us out of here. Okay, it's not the very best, but it's all I could come up with on short notice. It'll work."

"You," he said again, even more unflatteringly. "You have a plan to get me out of this. Tony—"

That repetition of my name, in that soft tone he couldn't seem to help even when he was annoyed with me for being an idiot, nearly broke my resolve. I needed one taste of that pretty mouth, one nibble of those lips…my head spun, in a way it usually took a couple of bottles of strong liquor to achieve.

His eyelashes fluttered, as if he felt the same way. The plan had to work. It had to.

"Me." This time the word had more confidence behind it. "You have the coin with you?"

"Yes, but—"

"No buts, just yes. Raven, do you trust me? Even a little bit? I get that this seems really half-assed, what with pretending to be a performing tiger—"

"Pretending to be?" he muttered, and I filed that away next to "dumb beast" in the "get my revenge later on when there's time" folder.

"—and not being able to save you from—Raven, sweetness, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I can see the bruise on your face, and I know there's more I can't see, and I swear to you, if I'd been able to—"

He was the one to lunge at me, winding his arms around my neck, and he tugged me violently down into the kiss that'd been on the tip of my very being, his tongue darting into my mouth, his lips clinging to mine with feverish strength. When he let go and tore his mouth away, leaving me reeling, he tried to slide down my body, as if he meant to go to his knees in front of me.

I caught him under the arms and hauled him back up. "What are you doing? Raven, gods, you said not to do that. Is that a yes? Please tell me that was a yes, because you can't go back to him like this. Look we're here together, you have the coin, I have a car waiting." Hopefully. "I'll explain on the way, but the short version is, you can buy me from a loan shark to break the spell on you."

Raven's mouth fell open, and then he snapped it shut again, chin jutting, eyes wild. "Buy you from a—see, I knew your plan would be something absurd like that. That won't work. So I'm going to get on my knees and suck your magnificent cock, because we only have a few minutes left and I'll never have another chance, and that'll make you happy, and you can finish capering through hoops and then go home. And I'll deal with the consequences of seeing you one last time."

Seeing you one last time. Suck your magnificent cock .

Dirty pool, fuck. Under literally any other circumstances, in any other place, I'd have been willing and eager to forget my own name, not to mention sign away my own soul, if he offered to "suck my magnificent cock."

I leaned in, nose to nose, glaring at him so ferociously I didn't need the alpha glow. "It's not absurd, for one thing. And for another, I was capering through those hoops for you , because I'd do literally anything for you as it fucking happens, and if you think you on your knees is what would make me happy? We've been over this. You not being a fucking prisoner of a sadist makes me fucking happy! Or will, once you get with the program!"

I gave him a shake, not enough to hurt him, but enough that his mouth formed a startled O and a chopstick came loose, a tumble of glossy hair falling over one ear.

"We're going. Now. Are we fucking clear?"

He swallowed, throat working, eyes so big and wide and shiny I nearly fell into them and drowned.

"If it doesn't work, I'll die," he whispered after a moment. "Should I trust you enough to die if you're wrong?"

Well, when he put it that way. Fuck.

"No," I said, reluctantly but honestly. "But you should trust me enough to come with me and try. If it doesn't work, I'll…damn it. I'll carry you down the hall and out. If it doesn't work, you can come back," I lied through my teeth. "It'll look like an insane, naked alpha kidnapped you, and then you escaped."

"Escaped," he said, on a bitter, high little laugh. "From you. Right. Why not? Half shift," he added. "It'll make you less recognizable and give you a chance to get away later, as long as you leave Vegas and lie low for a while."

Yes, gods, yes, he'd said yes! Adrenaline jolted through me, setting every nerve alight with triumph and relief.

And ignoring that nonsense about leaving Vegas and lying low seemed safest, because he might change his mind if he realized my plan B wasn't running away with my cowardly tail between my legs and leaving him with Cunningham, but stashing Raven somewhere safe whether he liked it or not, and then coming back and killing Cunningham until the motherfucker was dead . No matter what happened to me after that.

Half shifting wouldn't do much good, either, because one shifter running away plus one missing tiger equaled one weretiger. We weren't exactly common, and species went on official government records. If Declan could bribe or hack the DMV, so could Cunningham.

"Okay," I said, instead of any of that. "I'll put you over my shoulder and bust out of the room and run. Feel free to struggle as much as you want to make it look realistic. I'll be able to keep you where I want you regardless. You won't slow me down."

"Oh," he breathed. "I wish we had the chance to explore that concept further, under other circumstances."

It took a second for that to compute. Yes. A hundred fucking times yes, and if Raven wanted that too, then nothing was going to stop me from getting us the hell out of here and through all this bullshit to somewhere with a bed.

"We will. You ready?"

He swallowed hard, bit his lip, and nodded.

My half shift wasn't something I showed people all that often, if for no other reason than it had, in retrospect, probably been the original inspiration for my sister calling me Smilodon. When I allowed the magic to well up and transform me, fangs lengthening past my lower lip and claws extending to their full, razor-sharp length, my jaw heavier, fur sprouting on my shoulders and chest, Raven stared at me with glittering eyes, flushed and speechless. Hopefully not with horror, but I wasn't about to waste time asking.

"Showtime," I said, and scooped him up to sling him over my shoulder. With my left arm wrapped around his ass, I wrenched the door open with my other hand.

As the door cracked off its hinges and went flying behind me, Raven and I were, for a split second, the eye of the storm: everyone around us—which included Axel, two of Cunningham's security team, and a passing hotel staff member carrying a towering stack of linens—froze, their mouths open in shock and disbelief.

And then Raven shrieked, loud and shrill enough to leave my ears ringing, and all hell broke loose.

Axel dived for the door behind me, eyes practically popping out of his head, and I didn't know if he wanted to hide or get his stuff or he'd just panicked or what, but I practically tripped over him as I turned to run down the hall.

One of the bodyguards did trip over him, cursing and lunging for me, and the other shoved the staffer out of the way to get to me. That guy screamed as napkins flew up in the air and everywhere, and I bowled Bodyguard Two over, kicking his legs out from under him and racing away at alpha weretiger speed, leaving them all to wrestle and yell and untangle themselves.

As we passed the service elevator, I hesitated for a precious half-second—but no. I could already hear the security guys shouting into their radios, and we'd have the fucking National Guard waiting for us the second the doors opened at the bottom.

I bolted past, Raven still screaming and waving his arms around, and in the distance there was an uproar: the party dissolving into chaos, I suspected. Good, maybe that'd buy us some time. Maybe Axel and his team would slip out unnoticed in the confusion. I hoped so, but I didn't have time to worry about them. My feet slapped the polished concrete floor, the hallway narrowed down into a yellow-lit gray-walled nightmare tunnel, the stairwell had to be—there, the red emergency exit sign glowing above it. I skidded to half a stop, yanking the door open and using the momentum of it to fling myself through, remembering just in time to strafe to the right so Raven's head didn't whack into anything.

Behind us, the service elevator dinged, and then a new hubbub of shouts and frantic commands arose. Good thing I hadn't waited for it, because it seemed to have disgorged a whole security team.

I'd already made it down five flights, flinging myself around the corners, praying that Raven's fae magic could protect him from whiplash, when the team burst into the stairwell.

By the cacophony of new scents assaulting me as they clattered after us, they were mostly shifters themselves, a mix of coyotes and wolves, but they wouldn't be able to catch up.

But a bullet could, and the overlapping, overwhelming chorus of echoing shouts and running footsteps suddenly shattered in a horrendous, earsplitting bang. The shot ricocheted from the wall two feet in front of me, concrete chips flying and ripping gouges into my thighs and stomach.

Raven cried out, for real this time, and I managed to catch a glimpse of a tear in his trouser leg, blood welling through from crimson-painted white skin.

He'd heal, fuck, it was only a scratch, but I ran faster and faster, swooping around and around the square stairs and their central well. Another gunshot rang and boomed.

"Stop, you'll hit the boss's boy!" someone shouted, and thank the gods for that authoritative someone's common sense, but sweat poured down my back and my feet were slippery with it, and with the blood running from my wounds and Raven's, and I ran just as fast but slammed into walls as I took the corners now, without enough traction to prevent it. My shoulder would be ground beef, and the pain nagged at me, but my grip on Raven with my other arm hadn't slackened in the slightest.

The stairwell whirled past me, sickening and dizzying, and Raven moaned. The number 42 flashed by, big white blocky numerals next to a door. About eighteen floors down, nearly a third of the way.

If Sean had the car waiting, if I could even find it, if I didn't pause for anything, if they didn't start shooting again…my heart hammered to the beat of my frantic thoughts, and my frantic feet, and then I caught a glimpse of 33, we were leaving pursuit behind, we might actually fucking make it, 24, then 19, and then…

Down below, a door slammed, and another wall of sound echoed up to meet the noise from above.

Two heads appeared, craning up, and there were more moving shapes, more voices.

I skidded to a stop, bracing myself against the wall, squeezing my eyes shut to try to blink away the stinging sweat. My chest heaved. Even my powerful alpha body needed a second to catch its breath.

We were fucked. Enemies coming up from below, more above, closing in now that I'd stopped. Cornered. Nowhere to run. Out of the stairwell, and I'd be lost in the hotel's maze and end up cornered somewhere else. Raven would probably get killed if I tried to fight our way through, too high of a probability to risk.

A triumphant call and response went up as they realized the same things I had.

"Put him down and back away from him," the same voice yelled from above, the one who'd told his subordinate to stop shooting. "Now! Put him down!"

My arm tightened, and Raven squirmed, twisting around and obviously trying to get a look at the situation.

"Put me down, do what he says," Raven said, loudly enough that everyone could hear. "Stop moving, he could kill me," he added, even louder, and the footsteps slowed down, but I could still see the guys down below creeping up one stair at a time. A glint of halogen lighting on bare metal suggested they were trying to get in position for a clear shot. "He'll put me down. Right? You don't want to die here, do you?"

Hopefully only I caught the quaver in his voice, the faint crack, the signs of weakness. Everyone else would probably think it was fear of me, rather than for me, but I knew better, and a horrible suspicion started to slither up my throat from my churning gut and choke me.

Raven raised his voice again, calling out, "If you crowd him, which one of you morons wants to explain to Arnold that I fell down a stairwell and went splat? Give him your word he can go. And then he'll put me down and hand me over, and you won't have to."

I could have roared—or wept.

I'd been right. Raven was trying to trade the very last of his currency as something valuable to Cunningham for a chance at my survival.

No. Not a fucking chance in hell, in any sense of the word.

Fell down a stairwell and went splat .

Less than twenty stories to the bottom. Splat, indeed, for a normal human. Maybe for a more durable fairy, too, although I knew even regular people sometimes survived falls like that under freak circumstances.

But I was a freak circumstance, wasn't I? Mostly mortal flesh—but with the supernatural strength and healing magic that ran through my every nerve and vein and bone and cell, a lot less mortal than most people.

Death might be more pleasant than the agony of healing a couple of hundred broken bones and a dozen-odd ruptured internal organs.

On the other hand, I'd promised Raven he wouldn't spend one more night with that piece of shit Cunningham. I'd promised I'd protect him.

Fuck it. Splat it had to be.

I bunched up my muscles, crouched, and leapt, my spring through the air high enough and graceful enough to do any tiger proud, whirling up into the center of the stairwell, flailing like Wile E. Coyote—and then plummeting straight down, as all of the security team shouted and panicked, their shocked faces and the railings and the lights on the walls nothing but blurs as we fell.

In the couple of seconds of freefall, I yanked Raven around, getting one glimpse of his horrified face as I pulled him over my shoulder and clutched him to my chest.

Air whistled by my ears, I banged a foot into a railing, and then…

Splat. Or more of a deafening thud and a crunch, really.

The impact knocked the wind out of me first, and my head hit and everything went black, and the last things I heard before unconsciousness took me were Raven's scream and the snapping of my spine.

Searing, pounding agony.

And then nothing.