ChapterOne
FREYA
When I slipped from the employee lounge, I entered chaos. Crowds of people were hurrying in a crushing wave toward the front and side doors, and I got swept up in it. At first, I couldn’t figure out what had everyone all worked up. Then the crowd thinned around me, everyone else in far more of a hurry to leave, and I spotted the source of the panic.
Holy fucking shit.
There was a hellhound crouched and snarling in the middle of the dance floor, a couple of fae women cowering before it. It was taller than me, each paw the size of my head with talons sharp enough to flay me with ease. Silky black fur made the creature look surprisingly pettable, until I noticed the fire. Flames licked up its back and down its tail, scorching the floor around where it stood.
My understanding was the creatures never left Zemterra because the flames they produced were too hot for Earth. Not to mention how dangerous it would be to let a pack of giant wild flame dogs run around.
“Freya, get the fuck outside,” Mattie’s voice shouted over the chaos and I caught sight of him approaching the beast.
Of course he was going to play the hero. Shan and Caspian had better make sure he wasn’t injured. He may be a vampire, but my boss was a lover more than a fighter. I nodded at him and he turned his attention to the hound. Following the last trickle of patrons to the front door, I stepped off to the side and hid in the coat check alcove, no one paying me any mind.
When all the screams had vacated the building, only the sounds of a fight in the main room remaining, I tentatively stepped out the front double doors and into the night.
Off to my left, crawling on the ground with a series of grunts and groans, was a man I never thought I’d see again. Our gazes locked and his eyes widened to match mine. Why… “Freya—”
He started to speak, but I was quick to shut him up, my wand flicking through the air. Whatever he planned to say, Kylan’s goons didn’t need to hear it. I sensed a presence behind me, even with me reeling as pieces fit together in my mind.
The man whose memories I’d wiped months ago was here, crawling toward the club like he was on a mission. His determination reminded me of someone. Two someones, actually. The one’s I’d just slipped out from underneath.
Plus, he’d known my name, cementing an idea I’d never thought to consider before now. He had to be Em, the third team member who had been out of the field during their mission so far. He’d been out of the field because of me. The Next Life Company would be too cautious to let him loose in the city after coming in contact with a magic-user who’d spelled him. They had witches and fae of their own who could assess for underlying magic, the type that would kill him if he revisited the site of his lost memories.
I’d been on the radar of their employer for far longer than I’d thought.
Internally, I cursed. If Shan had taken the stick out of his ass and told me what was going on, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Any of it. He’d learn the information he’d been lusting after once I was gone, at least. Emmett’s memories were back, and he’d learned what I was months ago. A murderer, and honestly pretty proud of it.
A hand grabbed my arm and I stiffened, turning away from where Emmett was struggling to move. “He gonna be a problem?” the man asked, gesturing with his chin at Em.
“I took care of it,” I said.
Emmett was trying to get to me, his body fighting the magic. I’d taken him by surprise for a second time, though, and he wouldn’t be able to shake off the spell until it faded in a few minutes.
The man’s grip tightened on my arm and I fought the urge to shake him off and growl. I let him lead me away, doing my best not to look back. I lost against the urge and glanced over my shoulder right as we were about to turn the corner into an alleyway. Em’s eyebrows were drawn together and he looked gutted by my leaving, which gave me some insight on how Caspian would feel when he found out what I’d done.
My heart clenched and I spun to look forward again, but not before mouthing the words ‘I’m sorry’. Maybe he would tell Cas I’d apologized. Maybe it would make this less crushing for my incubus.
The man unceremoniously dragging me away was a shifter, heavily tattooed from his face down his neck and expanding along the length of each arm. He was clothed in jeans and a t-shirt, so I couldn’t see the rest of him, but I had to assume he would be covered in ink. His face was handsome in a way that didn’t appeal to me in the slightest, with a scruffy beard and long hair, and when I inhaled a deep breath of his scent, it surprised me.
An Alpha, and he smelled of apples. Crisp and fresh and with a hint of lemon, which I hated but wasn’t disgusted by. There were no gross hints of manure or rot in his scent. None of the warning signs I would usually get from a man who planned to hurt me. My biology didn’twanthim, but it wasn’t warning me away either.
We strode through the alley and across a street before darting into another sheltered passageway. I was about to suggest I portal us somewhere to avoid Emmett catching up when a figure stepped out from the darkness. She had long hair going down to her hips in a brilliant shade of orange, and another huff of breath confirmed my body’s confusion wasn’t just with the shifter man. She didn’t trigger a scent response in me either. This woman smelled of oranges and roses, strong because of her Alpha designation. I’d never met a female Alpha before — they weren’t common.
They didn’t speak to me, the man holding my arm to ensure I didn’t run away. Like I would, when they had my cousin in their grasp. The woman pulled a spell book from her pocket and recited the words, her fingers tracing the letters as she spoke them. When she was done she drew a circle in the air, creating a portal that glowed orange.
I’d never seen anyone else’s method of portal creation before. My family never needed to portal anywhere, so I’d learned the skill on my own when I’d moved to the city. The woman was a witch as well, so it wasn’t too different from how I conducted the magic, but her flourishes weren’t the same, and she didn’t use runes.
“Go on,” she said, gesturing.
Her voice was high-pitched and feminine, not revealing anything about how dangerous she must be. If I spoke to her on the phone, I would have assumed she was a child.
The shifter man pushed me in first when I didn’t move, keeping his grip on me through the portal. My head spun faintly, as usual, but righted itself to take in the surroundings. This certainly wasn’t our final destination, seeing as it was another alley smelling of old food and piss. When the woman came through behind us and closed the portal, we hurried through the streets of an unfamiliar part of town until we stopped in another alley and the woman created another portal.
We did the same routine three more times until the woman was sweating buckets and I was tired simply looking at her. I knew why they were doing this — they didn’t want to make it easy to follow us to our destination — but I was confused about why they hadn’t brought a more robust team. I’d never sensed anyone else around. What if I had been disagreeable? What if Shan and Caspian hadn’t been sufficiently distracted? One shifter and a witch wouldn’t have been enough to fight them off.
Everything about the situation was slightly off.
