Chapter 6

My first stop for information, the club, yielded exactly fucking nothing. When I finally slammed the hotel door behind me and headed back around the corner, no one I needed to talk to was at work yet. Coffee and a bite to eat at a diner didn't take nearly long enough, but after a couple of hours of seething and pacing, I finally managed to buttonhole one of the bartenders who'd been on shift the night before.

She rolled her eyes, shrugged, and agreed to look at the credit card info from last night—only to inform me that he'd used a prepaid card.

Plan B, trying to get a look at the security camera feed from the parking lot the night before, also hit a dead end. If the fairy had parked there and I'd been able to get his license plate, I'd thought I could probably find someone able to pull his info for me. If nothing else, Louie would have a contact, although trying to convince him that doing me a favor would lead to him getting his cut of a magical coin sounded…exhausting.

But the club's head of security, a werewolf who didn't appreciate how much bigger my shifted form was than his, absolutely refused to show me any of the footage or even check it for me. He explained, in excruciating and condescending detail, his ethical standards for overseeing the privacy and safety of our customers.

His implication, unstated but obvious, had been that I wanted to stalk one of said customers for my own creepy purposes.

He really didn't like cats in general. Or me in specific.

I struck out with Scott, too, tracking him down in his booth where he'd gone with the largest paper cup of coffee I'd ever seen. He didn't look like his night had been a whole lot better than mine.

"C'mon, Scott," I complained. I wasn't whining. Tigers didn't whine. "Jeremy has a soft spot for you. He'll show you the footage if you ask him nicely."

"No can do," Scott said, and chugged from his cup. He wiped a drop off his chin onto his sleeve. Yeah. Rough night. "Jeremy doesn't make exceptions to his policy, and anyway, he'd know I was asking on your behalf. You shouldn't have talked to him first."

It wasn't Scott's fault, so I did my best not to growl at him as I told him not to expect me that night and headed out to try my last play.

Bothering the owner of the club I worked in with a petty, personal issue that involved me breaking the law had been my very last choice. But since Scott wouldn't help me, that left Declan MacKenna as the only person who could go over Jeremy's head.

Before going to the Morrigan to hunt Declan down, I went home, showered thoroughly, and dressed in clean dark jeans and a blue button-down, making myself look almost like the accountant my parents thought I'd become. In fact, if I hadn't been lying to them, I'd have been in this very office five days a week, wearing clothes similar to this, fitting right in.

But the staid, gray-and-navy reception area of the Morrigan casino's business office couldn't have been more different from my usual little hedonistic corner of Declan MacKenna's Vegas empire, and I had to force myself not to fidget self-consciously as I waited.

And I had the uncomfortable suspicion that the receptionist had only pretended to let Declan know I was here and intended to let me rot in this comfortable chair until I gave up. Had I missed some glitter in my hair? Damn it. She glanced up from her computer and shot me the world's fakest smile. Great.

I cooled my heels there for over an hour, with the clock ticking past five and office workers starting to leave for the day, with every passing moment totally failing to blunt my anger.

Last night kept replaying in my mind. I want you to give in to your instincts and knot me thoroughly, and I can offer you this in exchange , he'd said. Offer it to me. Not pay me, not give it to me, nothing that necessarily had to be construed as me keeping it after I'd fucked him. Of course he'd felt comfortable giving me his word that the coin was worth a lot of money, because he'd intended to take it back from me all along!

Oh, he had no idea which of my instincts I'd be giving into when I tracked him down. My instinct to wring his scrawny neck, for one. Or my instinct to put him over my knee.

More than anything, my instinct not to be cheated and stolen from. Maybe if we'd been actually dating that would've been par for the course, but no way would I allow that from someone I spent one night with in a cheap hotel. I had standards.

The clock had almost hit six. Scrolling on my phone couldn't keep my attention.

He'd cried when I knotted him. Why? Guilt? Pain? Some bizarre fae emotion I couldn't even comprehend? But my stomach tightened and twisted with something between helpless desire and rage every time a visceral memory assaulted me.

His soft, broken sounds. The clench of his heat. The sweetness of his skin. The way I'd called him that, sweetness, in my stupid, enchanted daze.

"Mr. Kaplan? Mr. Kaplan?" When I glanced up from frowning down unseeingly at the floor, I found the receptionist frowning too, standing up from behind her desk as if she thought she'd need to tap me on the shoulder to get my attention. She had her purse over her shoulder, clearly about to leave. "Mr. MacKenna can see you now," she said, sounding both surprised and disapproving. "His assistant's coming to get you."

Well, fuck her, anyway.

I still thanked her politely as the double door opened, and I nodded and followed a much more pleasant older lady down a long and bland hallway. My whole unlived life seemed to flash before my eyes, and I shuddered. No, I really didn't regret not answering phones and staring at a computer screen in one of the offices we passed on our walk to Declan's.

Much better to gyrate on a stage and occasionally get not-paid for sex by gorgeous, lying fairies.

Fuck my life.

We reached the end of the corridor, where a huge glass-walled office occupied the corner of the building. It'd still been full daylight when I arrived, and I blinked at the disorienting view of black sky and Vegas lights.

The assistant put her head in, said, "Tony Kaplan, Mr. MacKenna, let me know if you want coffee," and went back to her desk.

Declan MacKenna rose from behind his own, coming around to shake my hand. He wouldn't have been out of place on stage at Lucky or Knot himself, to be honest, being an alpha werewolf with dark-haired good looks and quite a few tattoos peeking out of his rolled-up shirt sleeves. Not my type, but he'd make great tips if he wanted to moonlight away from his fancy executive suite.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," he said, the faint tinge of an Irish accent seeping into his voice. "I had a meeting that ran long. And I've another one coming up, so I'll have to make this quick. Is there a problem at the club?"

Declan tended to a more friendly, down-to-earth style of management despite how many calls he had on his time, and he made a point of knowing everyone who worked at Lucky or Knot, dropping in now and again to have a drink with us after closing. So I'd spent a fair amount of time with him, though he hadn't come by for a while.

The way his scent had changed since I saw him last—mingled with someone else's and with overtones of sex and contentment—confirmed the rumors I'd heard about his reasons for spending more time at home.

"No, more a personal problem, and don't apologize, I didn't have an appointment," I said as I took the seat he waved me to next to a coffee table at the end of the room. He dropped into a matching one and sprawled his legs out. "Speaking of personal. Congratulations. Heard you mated?"

I'd actually heard he kidnapped another alpha, turned him into a sex slave, and then went feral and staged some kind of shootout in the desert—and then mated, but I figured only the last part would be polite to ask about.

Declan's flashing grin had me smiling in return, despite my mood. "That I did. And maybe you'll meet him one day, and maybe not. I'm keeping him the hell away from Lucky or Knot. No matter how often he asks me to take him there."

"Looking forward to it, or maybe not," I said, laughing, and he laughed with me.

Pretty sure he wasn't joking, not that he had much to worry about. Even if he hadn't been a hot, rich, intelligent alpha, I could smell how happy they both were by the way their scents had almost fused into one. My nose always knew when mates weren't devoted to one another. And Declan and his mate were, without a doubt.

"Sorry to bring you this bullshit when you have better ways to be spending your time," I went on, and he sat back and nodded, giving me his full attention. "But I'm here to ask for a favor. Last night…"

I left out most of the more prurient details, but I had to confess that I'd agreed to fuck a club customer for money—not something you wanted to tell your employer. But he didn't even blink, not being na?ve or stupid. He knew what went on at literally every strip club anywhere, and as long as we were discreet and exercised a bit of judgment, he didn't give a fuck.

On this occasion, well. At least I'd been discreet.

When I finished my story, Declan shook his head, sighed, and grinned. "Sorry, but it sounds like you really did get rolled by a fairy," he said. "I'd be furious too, if I were you. But I'm also never going to let you live this down. You know that, right?"

Yeah. I'd known it going in. "Fuck you, Declan."

He laughed again. "Fair enough. And you want me to pull the security footage for you? I'll do it. Jeremy is doing the job I pay him to do, but in this case I'll overrule him."

"Thanks. I wasn't super eager to tell him I got—you know."

"Rolled by a fairy in stripper heels?" Declan stood and headed for his desk. "Don't blame you. And I know Jeremy has an ego," he threw over his shoulder. "He's good at his job, but believe me, I know. I don't think I need to even involve him, anyway. I can log in from here. Come on over."

He sat down and started tapping away on his laptop, and I came around behind him to look over his shoulder. A moment later, a tiled screen full of live camera feeds popped up, and he moved it over to the big monitor set up next to his laptop. Cassidy danced onstage in one of the feeds, and there was the semi-private champagne room, the door to Scott's booth, a dozen other angles.

A moment later, the screen went to a shot of the parking lot, and then Declan had a drop-down menu open. My heart started pounding. I might be able to see him on the screen, and it pissed me off beyond anything to realize my excitement stemmed as much from the idea of seeing his face as from the possibility of getting his car's license plate.

"Try about midnight," I said. "His credit card transaction went through at twelve-twenty, so he probably arrived around then."

Declan chose the right time window and turned up the speed a bit, letting the footage run. And— "There!" I said, tapping the screen.

Even on the grainy black and white feed, my keen alpha eyes picked out his long hair and slim body. But it was the thud my heart gave against my ribs that tipped me off a second before I consciously recognized him.

Declan stopped it and ran it back, slowing it down to a normal speed. A dark-colored luxury coupe pulled in and parked near the back of the lot, the license plate way too far from the camera to be legible. After a moment, the fairy got out and walked to the building, glancing up toward the camera when he was halfway across the parking lot.

The sight of his face stopped my breath and dizzied me for a frozen instant. My vision blurred, and I had to catch myself as I swayed toward the monitor.

I clenched my fists and breathed through it. That'll wear off, I think . Yeah. Not so much. When I found that little fucker, I really couldn't be answerable for my actions.

"Shit," Declan said, sounding startled. "Hang on." He started running the recording back again.

"I don't think we'll be able to get the plate number from this angle, even if you replay it." Keeping my voice somewhat even took a serious effort, and I knew I wouldn't be fooling another alpha. He earned my extreme gratitude by not commenting. "Maybe you could try looking at the recording from this morning, see if it was daylight by the time he—"

"No, I will if you like, but it's not necessary," Declan said, and his tone had gone grim. He paused the video at the precise instant that the fairy tilted his face up, giving us both the best possible view. "I recognize him. I know exactly who this is. And you're not going to like it any more than I do. Here, I'm just going to show you."

All the hair rose on the back of my neck, right where my tiger's hackles would've been. Would it have been too gods-damned much to ask that another high-heeled peep-toe pump wasn't waiting to drop?

Of course it would. Because nothing could be simple.

I waited with my jaw clenched for whatever Declan wanted to show me. I already didn't like it.

He minimized the camera feed and pulled up an internet browser, typing in a name that rang a bell. Arnold Cunningham. And when he clicked over to images, I realized why: the hard-jawed, harder-eyed guy in the photos had a finger in half the real estate pies in Vegas, and I'd seen him in the local news more than once, usually shaking hands at a ribbon cutting or standing next to a state representative. His last name appeared on so many of the construction signs in the city that I'd tuned it out like background noise and forgotten where I knew it from.

Also, I vaguely remembered that…

"Didn't he have a stake in this place before you bought it back?" I asked. My arrival in Vegas had coincided with Declan taking over the Morrigan, which I was pretty sure his grandparents had originally built, way back when. The details of his family's ups and downs hadn't interested me enough for me to bother learning all of them, but I knew that much. "And I hear he's a total prick."

"He didn't want to sell, and he got outmaneuvered." Declan turned in his chair to look up at me. "He hates me for it. And he is a total prick. He's an alpha were, did you know that?" I shook my head, and he quirked an eyebrow at me. "Right, most people outside of his immediate contacts don't, because he doesn't publicize it. You want to know why?"

"I want to know where the fuck you're going with this," I said bluntly, because I was starting to get some ideas of where he could be going. And I hated all of them. "Who is this asshole to the guy I was with last night?"

"I'm getting there. He's an alpha, but he's a coyote. And he resents it, and everyone who's something a bit better, as it were."

I nodded, because while I didn't particularly care what people were, the smaller, less elegant predators definitely caught a lot of mockery and flack from the flashier species—like mine. Or even the werewolves. In a way, it was harder than being "prey." Of course, tell that to a gerbil.

"He has a real chip on his shoulder about being the big man and the alpha in the room," Declan went on. "And he's an art collector. A wine snob. And so on and so forth. Makes a big fuss out of his taste and his possessions and having the very best of every single thing you can own. And compensates for being less-than among shifters by only associating with the right sort of rich people, and I," Declan bared his teeth at me, "am far from the right sort, and I bought this place out from under him."

A collector of the best and the most beautiful, obsessed with his status. That kind of man would have a certain type of taste in lovers, too, wouldn't he?

My stomach had turned to lead, my hands and feet tingling with the urge to transform, to claw, my throat raw with a roar I had to suppress. Not that Declan would hold it against me, I didn't think, but it'd be beyond rude.

"Yeah?" I said roughly. "All right. Give me the punchline."

"I think you already know. Your fairy's his—" Declan's steady dark gaze had been fixed on me, and he stopped abruptly, his jaw tightening, as my reaction passed across my face. "Beg your pardon," he rumbled. "Companion, let's say. The last few times I've seen Cunningham somewhere, he's been with him. I wasn't introduced, but my assessment was that the fellow's one of Cunningham's ruinously expensive objets d'art . I'm sure you take my meaning."

"Yes," I managed, swallowing to get some moisture into my dry mouth. "I appreciate you trying to put a finer point on it, but yeah, I get it. Except that what the fuck—Christ, Declan, what the fuck happened last night? The fuck!"

I couldn't stand still anymore. I'd explode. So I spun on my heel and paced, rubbing at my forehead where that headache had come roaring back like an angry tiger, a low growl I couldn't control rolling out of my chest. The spacious, frigidly air-conditioned office felt like an oven with the walls closing in, constricting around my throat, broiling me alive.

"I'm sorry." Declan's voice came from behind me, echoing as if he spoke to me through a tunnel whose walls were closing and opening and pushing the sound through at odd angles. "This isn't what you wanted to hear. And you need to be careful. Tony. Focus."

I stopped, vibrating down to my toes, and closed my eyes. One rasping breath in, then out, then another, until my blood pressure dropped and my urge to rend and destroy and maim simmered down to a low-level pounding in my veins, my alpha magic ebbing enough that I could see more than the golden haze of my own fury.

Magic. He'd enchanted me and made me want him, then enchanted me to knock me out. My rage had to be at least half due to that, and the same with my headache. Shifters didn't fucking get headaches unless someone hit us over the head with a steel beam—or magicked us.

I had to get it together. None of what I felt was real, which meant I could push it aside.

But it sure seemed real. Turning around to face Declan took effort. Controlled motion was so much harder than simply remaining still. But I gritted my teeth, tasting blood as my lowered fangs pierced my lip, and managed it.

He'd taken up a position between me and the office door, poised and wary, his own eyes glowing and a couple of inches of claw gleaming at the tips of his fingers.

Guilt hit me hard enough to almost drown out the rest of my churning emotion.

"I won't lose it," I rasped out. "I apologize for the—I'm sorry. You don't need to protect your staff from me."

Declan nodded, and the tension slowly eased out of his big body, his hands flexing as his claws whispered back in.

"All right. You're paying attention?" he said, taking a step towards me and lowering his voice, even though the office's glass door was shut. I nodded. "Good. Because Cunningham's a prick and a right bastard, and he's at least as possessive as the average alpha. More so. And vindictive. And he'd hate you on principle simply for what you are, but if he found out what his pretty boy had been up to last night, he'd hate you more than he hates me. You understand?"

Oh, I understood. Vegas had always had a vicious, violent undertone to it, because huge sums of money made people crazy and ruthless. The mob was bad enough. Add magic and alpha weres to the mix…

Christ. My head spun, from the magic and from literally fucking everything.

Hockey and beer. Why the ever-loving fuck hadn't I taken the night off for hockey and beer?

And then I'd never have looked into his glossy black eyes, seen him pout with those flower-petal lips. Never have kissed his sweet, hot, forked-tongued mouth, licked his satin skin, filled him with my come and my knot and made him cry while he took what I gave him.

I rubbed at my temples. "I need a fucking drink."

Declan sighed and shook his head. "That you do," he said heavily. "I'm—look, I can't skip this meeting. I wish I could. But I'm out of time for this tonight, much as I hate to send you off with this shite hanging over you. You want my advice?"

The quirk of his lips suggested he knew damn well what I'd think of that.

"You mean your advice to drop it, let it go, and walk away? The advice you'd never take in a million years if you were in my shoes?"

"Precisely," he replied. "That advice. It was one night, Tony. You got a good fuck out of it, that coin was probably worthless anyway, and the fairy's not worth it, either. It's a funny story you can tell when you're drinking in a few years."

"And if you were me?" I pressed. "Don't bullshit me. I know you can get more information for me about him, if you want to."

After a long, reluctant pause, he said, "I'll text you later once I have someone look into it. But you're going to get yourself killed."

That didn't seem worth arguing about. It didn't actually matter, because I wouldn't, and couldn't, walk away, and we both knew it. So I thanked him, shook his hand, and showed myself out.