He shook his head. “Just be careful not to look at anyone. Your eyes are the least human thing about you.”
Aria yanked her hood up with considerable force.
Nikolai’s lips twitched, but he didn’t think a smile would be a good idea. Aria might have all the right bits in all the right places, but she drew the eye even when disguised by a cloak.
As he followed them, he did his best to slouch. Lights flickered on in the surrounding houses as they woke up to begin another day.
This place intimidated him. He’d never visited a city. The town where he’d gone to school seemed crowded enough. But this place—it existed out of balance with the earth. The energy was warped, and it destabilized everything that lived here.
As Lucas led them away from the residential areas and deeper into the city center, the sensation only grew worse. Most humans were oblivious to such things, but to Nikolai, it was like being immersed in a poison that slowly leached away your soul.
You don’t belong here. This place is a symptom of everything that is wrong with the realms.
Wrong? It did feel wrong, in a very fundamental fashion. Nothing in nature was intended to live like this. Crowded together and surrounded by concrete, emitting toxic fumes from their vehicles and manufacturing processes—nearly every sight, sound, and smell was an assault on the life essences that sustained the realm.
His inner voice agreed.This place is unnatural.
Nikolai didn’t reply. His tension mounted with every stride that drew him closer to the heart of Winnipeg. The boulevards might be lined with trees, but their roots sat sheathed in pavement. Rush hour filled the streets with cars, trucks, and buses. Their exhaust fogged in the early morning air; the scent almost choked Nikolai.
Lucas shot him a look, his strange eyes gleaming from the hood’s depths. “You okay?”
Rather than lie, Nikolai gritted his teeth and asked, “Where are we going?” With their hooded cloaks, Aria’s seductive slink, and Nikolai’s looming height—they drew a fair amount of attention as they walked.
“I know someone with a bed-and-breakfast downtown,” Lucas commented. “Hoping she can put us up there until we get a plan in place.”
Aria pulled off her cloak, rolling it to tuck beneath her arm.
“What are you doing?” Lucas hissed.
She glared at him. “I’m hot, okay? I’ll keep my eyes down.” She waved a hand at the passersby. “How am I any different from these people?”
“Other than the fact you’re gorgeous and wearing a slinky bodysuit?” Lucas’s eyes gleamed emerald from within his hood.
The gorgeous comment seemed to confuse her. “How is it any better than wearing these things? No one else is wearing a cloak. Everyone’s looking at us. They probably think we’re up to something.”
“She’s got a point,” Nikolai whispered to Lucas. “We don’t exactly blend in. Maybe we should take them off.”
Lucas glowered at him, before spinning and continuing on, hood still firmly raised.
Between Lucas’s bright-red boots and the occasional flash of bare leg beneath his cloak, Nikolai didn’t consider the Morph much better at blending than either himself or Aria. Although Aria won the award for drawing the most stares. With each step, the tiny scales glimmered and rolled over her luscious curves beneath.
She hesitated at a shop window and then bent over to examine a pair of leather ankle boots proudly displayed within. Nikolai’s shoulder bounced off a light post, Lucas tripped over a projecting bit of sidewalk, and the car driving past nearly rear-ended the one ahead of it.
Oblivious to her influence over her male counterparts, Aria straightened before glancing to Lucas. “So what is a bed-and-breakfast, anyway?”
Nikolai attempted to focus beyond Aria’s butt. It was a valid question, to which he also did not know the answer.
“It’s like a hotel,” Lucas explained, but it sounded as though he spoke through gritted teeth. “Only in a house, instead. This one’s run by another Cryptid. She’ll take some of these coins as payment and exchange them for human currency later.” He shook the cloak pocket holding their stash.
Nikolai listened, but his eyes were riveted on Aria’s hips as she walked ahead. To be honest, her movement could only loosely be described as walking—it was more of a sway, with a significant amount of roll that fascinated the eye and made it almost impossible to look away.
Aria didn’t seem to notice his obsession as she gazed at the bridge ahead. It was bustling with vehicles. Nikolai’s entire gut knotted as they walked onto it—the traffic was far too close and the concrete disrupted his connection to the energy of the flowing river. His tension ramped up, and when he raised his hand to Mai beneath his hair, a small wisp of black fog drifted off his fingertips.
Mai squeaked and withdrew into her hiding place against his neck. When Lucas glanced at him, Nikolai looked away and pushed his hands into the pockets of his cloak.
He refocused on Aria’s hips as a suitable distraction until she turned and caught him. Flushing, he peered over the steel rail to the river below.
You don’t belong here.
