But especially when she tried.

  “You’re going to hurt the poor girl’s feelings,” she said, feigning sympathy.

  He merely shrugged in response.

  He looked at me one more time, the devil in his eyes. He stared until I turned around, having been dismissed. Kat’s plan was starting to make me really nervous. Mack was scarier than I’d imagined.

  “So you’re the wolf that mated the enforcer,” he said, curiosity in his voice. “Something wrong with your own kind? Got a thing against male wolves?”

  “Nope. I’ve got a thing against small cocks. Jensen won the big dick award. And let’s face it, if you’re looking for someone powerful, the enforcers are an impressive crowd. They practically have a free pass in this city.”

  “You like to break the rules?” he asked, leaning closer to Kat.

  “I like to do what I want,” she replied. “Jensen let me.”

  “Feisty,” Mack replied, pressing his body against hers. “I like feisty.”

  Kat reached down between them and grabbed his package.

  “Where were you when I was looking for a mate?” she asked, heat so thick in her voice that I nearly combusted.

  Then Mack laughed and it sent a chill down my spine.

  “You get right to the point, don’t you?” he asked. I could see his hand running up her side toward her breast, and I had to quell every urge to jump up and tell him to leave her the fuck alone. She’d known this would happen. She was taking one for the team.

  Right before he reached his destination, her hand shot up and caught his, stopping him short.

  “Feisty, remember?” she said, staring at him. “You have to pay to play, my friend.”

  “What’s the price?” he asked, his lips brushing against her neck. How she wasn’t cringing was beyond me.

  “Refuge.”

  He pulled away.

  “You want to join the pack?”

  “This city’s gone to shit,” she said with a shrug. “Can you blame me?”

  “No,” he replied, amusement in his tone. “I can’t, but now you see, you just gave away your leverage in this situation. Perhaps you aren’t as feisty as I thought.”

  “I’m cutting through the shit to get what I want,” she argued.

  “Your impatience is going to cost you now.”

  “Maybe,” she said casually. “Or maybe I’m just letting you think you have the upper hand. Maybe this is exactly what I wanted.”

  “We’ll see about that,” he said, taking her arm to lead her toward the back of the room. I couldn’t see a set of stairs anywhere. No marked exits in sight. Wherever they were headed, it didn’t look like the back alley.

  “Watch where they go,” I said to Grizz as I whipped my phone out. I pulled up my text messages and found the one Kat had sent to Knox: “See you in five…”

  I hit call and held the phone to my ear while I struggled to see where Mack was leading Kat. The crowd seemed to swallow them whole.

  “Shit!” I muttered to myself. “Grizz, follow her. I’m going to go get the boys.” The bear shook his head just as Knox answered. “Goddammit! I don’t have time for your shenanigans.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Mack is taking Kat somewhere not mentioned in the playbook. You need to get down here now.” While Knox barked orders at the guys, I grabbed Grizz by the shirt collar and pulled his face near mine. “Find her!”

  I jumped off my seat, phone in hand, and tried to push my way through the gambling mob to little effect. Grizz blew past me, tossing bodies out of his way. It wasn’t subtle, but it was damn effective.

  “We’re coming down the stairs now,” Knox said. I could hear the echo of footsteps on the other end. Knowing the cavalry was coming made my chest relax a tiny bit. Unleashing my powers in a mixed environment was a last-resort option only. What I needed was more brute force, and Knox and the boys had that in spades.

  Grizz picked up speed as we neared the far side of the room. Once we met the brick wall, he yanked me to the left, headed toward a tight hallway. And it was empty.

  “Did they go down here?” I asked. He didn’t bother trying to reply. His increased pace was answer enough. “Grizz… tell me you didn’t lose her.”

  A growl. A cloud of mortar dust.

  Grizz stopped short and I slammed into his back.

  “Where are you?” Knox shouted at me over the phone as though he’d asked me more than once.

  “Go to the back wall. There’s a small hallway on the left side.”

  At the end of the narrow way was a utility closet of sorts—an old-fashioned broom closet. It wasn’t big enough to be used as an actual door, but I wondered…

  “The door,” I said aloud as I squeezed past Grizz to reach it. As I neared it, a familiar rush of magic washed over me. I ran to it and grabbed the handle, throwing it open. Behind it was a brick wall. A door to nowhere.

  Or was it?

  I reached my hand out and was met with a strange sort of resistance—one that was decidedly not brick.

  “Motherfucker!” I shouted, throwing my phone aside. “He took her to Faerie, Grizz!” The look on his face was murderous. For a moment, I contemplated whether or not we should go. But the thought of Mack’s hands on Kat made my skin crawl, and before I knew it, I was dragging Grizz through the veil with me. If anything happened to her because I hadn’t had her back, I’d never forgive myself.

  Neither would Grizz.

  We were spit out in the middle of a vast, open field. Tall grass surrounded us, but nothing else. It seemed to stretch on for miles, the terrain flatter than the plains states I’d driven through when I escaped NYC. I spun to search for her in every direction, calling her name repeatedly to no avail. Even though their head start had been short, they were somehow long gone.

  Fucking screwy fey time.

  I tried calling my powers to search for her, but unlike in the earthly realm, nothing happened.

  “Dammit!” I shouted, Grizz pinning concerned eyes on me. “We have to go back. I can’t search for her here.” My rising panic threatened to undo me right then, but I forced myself to keep it together for Kat’s sake. The girl could hold her own any day of the week, but Mack was an unknown—a wild card—and the fact that he had a fey portal in his establishment didn’t bode well at all. I feared Kat might be outmatched.

  Then I feared for what that could mean.

  I reached out into the air around me, trying to home in on the portal. It didn’t take long to find it, and I snatched Grizz’s hand again and dragged him through it with me. It spat us out into the hallway, tossing me right into Knox. I practically knocked him over with the force, but Jagger steadied him.

  Apparently fey time was screwier than I thought.

  “He took her to Faerie,” I blurted out. “I can’t find her there, Knox. I can’t search for her like I can here, and they were nowhere to be seen… what do we do? We can’t lose her…”

  “We won’t,” he said, bending down to level his gaze with mine. “Listen to me. I need you to calm down and focus. Can you do that?” I took a deep breath and tried to center myself. When I nodded, he continued. “We need to go outside and see if we can track her. There are fey portals all around this city. They may have slipped in one and out another. That could be why you didn’t see them.”

  “Then let’s go!” I shouted, shoving him back down the hall. We ran in single file until we broke out into the main room. Knox, Foust, Brunton, and Jagger cut a path through the room like missiles while Grizz prodded me on from the rear of the pack. Our exit was a bit of a blur. My mind was consumed by dark thoughts, all of which involved unfortunate fates for Kat. I tried to remember that she was resourceful and tough as nails, but those truths did little to assuage the what-ifs taking over.

  When we emerged into the cool evening air, dusk settling in around the city, I looked up at the darkening sky and closed my eyes.

  “Take me to Kat,” I said, my voice low but commanding. I added a “quickly” to it just to be sure.

  The wind that had guided me so many times before rustled my hair, tossing it wildly in front of me. I sprinted down the corridor without another thought. The boys all trailed me until we approached the car. The wind died the second we ran alongside the SUV. My bewilderment didn’t last long.

  “Get in!” I shouted, throwing open the passenger door. The boys didn’t question my order. They jumped into the vehicle and slammed the doors, ready to chase down the sketchy bastard that had kidnapped our girl.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Our guide had abandoned us. But then small droplets of rain began to fall from a cloudless sky onto the windshield. It drew away, headed east. Knox threw the SUV in gear and pulled out, winding his way through traffic to follow our private storm.

  I watched the clock, begging it to slow down. If we’d lost much time in Faerie, that meant Mack had had more time to carry out whatever ominous plan he had for Kat.

  “This is taking too long!” I shouted before punching the dash.

  “Piper,” Knox said, doing his best to sound calm, as though I couldn’t see his hands white-knuckling the steering wheel in my periphery. “We’re going to find her.”

  “You didn’t see how he looked at her, Knox.” I literally shuddered at the way his greedy eyes had sized her up.

  “And she’ll probably take his arm off if he tries to touch her.”

  “Something isn’t right about him,” I replied, shaking my head.

  “He’s a werewolf,” Jagger said. “Just like Kat.”

  I wheeled on him in my seat. “He was, whenever it was that you last knew him, but how long ago was that? A year? Five?” Jagger just stared at me silently and my anger grew. “You have no fucking clue what he is now or what he’s capable of. He’s an alpha, and Kat made him think she was willing to do anything to join his pack.” I let my words sink in for a second. “And I mean anything, Jagger.”

  “Alpha or not,” Brunton said, his expression hard and unreadable, “she’s hard as fuck to bring down. He’d better have a small army waiting for him, or he’s in trouble.”

  “Which he very well might have, wherever he is.”

  Jagger looked out the window to see where we were. His eyes were strained, like he was trying to figure something out. Like he recognized where we were.

  “Knox…”

  “What, Jagger?”

  “Mack used to live around here. A couple blocks up.”

  I looked over at Knox, who hazarded a glance at me.

  “Drive faster,” I said, and Knox complied, damn near flooring it through traffic. He wove the beast of a vehicle through the cars like it was an Indy race car. The storm got stronger as we neared our destination, raining on everyone around us. I looked up at the sky as lightning shot down, hitting the lightning rod on top of a high-rise building.

  “There!” I screamed, pointing at it.

  “That’s the one!” Jagger shouted.

  “Motherfucker has a portal to Faerie in his apartment,” Brunton said under his breath. And there was nothing friendly about the way he said it.

  Knox pulled up outside the building and double-parked the SUV, much to the chagrin of the doorman. He chucked the keys at the poor man before slamming through the entrance. We all followed behind him, ignoring the threats from the gentleman about calling the cops.

  “Shut him up,” I said under my breath. I heard the thump of a body hitting the pavement and looked back to see him passed out in front of the building.

  We filed into the elevator and pushed the ‘close door’ button until it finally obeyed. Then we stood there and stared at the numbers on the display. I held my finger out in front of them and closed my eyes.

  “Show me which one,” I said. A gust of air from the vent knocked me forward, forcing me to hit the PH button.

  “That’s new,” Jagger said from behind me.

  The ride up to the top floor was agonizing. Every passing second made me want to jump out of my skin. By the time the elevator came to a stop, I was ready to punch through the metal doors to get to Kat.

  I was the first out of the elevator, closing the distance between it and the penthouse door in a few strides. I could hear signs of a struggle inside. Mack was shouting horrible things at Kat, but I heard nothing in response. Before I could contemplate what that meant, Knox’s foot flew past me toward the door, busting it down in a seamless move.

  We all raced into the apartment poised for a fight—then caught a glimpse of the one already taking place. The expansive living room before us had been practically laid to waste. Kat stood on the far side of the only unbroken table smiling wickedly at Mack, who was getting up from having been knocked down.

  “Hey guys,” she said casually as blood streamed down her face. “This is my new friend Mack. We’re just taking some time to get to know each other a little better. If you want to come back in maybe five minutes, I think we’ll be fully acquainted.”

  “Kat…”

  “It’s cool, Piper. I’ve got this.”

  Mack appeared totally unfazed by our presence. Instead, he glared across the room at Kat, his golden eyes burning with rage. His face was bloodied, though not as badly as Kat’s, and his arm was bent at a strange angle. Then I noticed the bone protruding through his jacket.

  He sprang halfway across the room to get her, but he was intercepted along the way. Knox tackled him to the ground in a graceful move and held him there with a knee in his back.

  “Sorry to cut in on your date like this,” Knox said, looking up to Kat. “But I think it’s late. Time to get you home.”

  Kat licked the blood from her lip and feigned a pout.

  “But I was just starting to like him.” She walked around the table to where Knox held Mack captive. “He’s much more fun to be around when he’s bleeding.”

  “You’re going to die bitch!” Mack snarled.

  Kat buried her foot in his face in response.

  “You had your chance to kill me and you blew it,” she said, sounding bored. “Don’t’ call me names because you’re bitter.”

  Knox hauled Mack up to his feet and slammed him down in a busted up wingback chair. He made a move to get up, but Brunton was there with his hands on Mack’s shoulders, shoving him back down. His claws were extended and digging into the alpha’s flesh for good measure.

  “Piper,” Knox said, looking over to me. “Search the place for a portal.”

  I closed my eyes and waited for the pull of magic to call to me. It didn’t take long before it did. From an abstract painting on the left wall of the living room I could feel the call of Faerie.

  “There,” I said, pointing to it.

  “Good job. Now, do me a favor and shut it down.”

  I walked over to the massive canvas hanging on the wall and ran my hand across the front of it to take in the breadth of the opening. It was much larger than the one in the broom closet we’d entered earlier that night. Grizz growled when my hand got too close to the surface, and he actually yanked me back one time when I skimmed the rough fabric.

  “It’s okay, buddy,” I said, giving his arm a squeeze. “I’ve done it before. I can do it again.”

  “Don’t!” Mack shouted from behind me, followed by the distinct sound of fist meeting face.

  “You talk when I say you can talk,” Knox warned, cocking his arm back for another blow. Kat caught it, pushing her way between the alphas.

  “If you’d be so kind as to allow me the honor. I wasn’t quite finished with him when you and the cavalry arrived.”

  Her sharp blue eyes held an undercurrent of need as they stared up at Knox. After a moment he relented, letting her stand before Mack, a sadistic grin overtaking her face.

  “I told you there would be a price to pay for touching me,” she said casually, looking down at her hand as though she’d broken a nail. But she clearly hadn’t. Instead, she flicked at one of her claws that had extended. Bending down slowly to put her face in Mack’s, she placed the blade-like claw at his neck, pressing it in until a single drop of blood escaped. “The last person that tried to without my consent didn’t fare so well.”

  The claw dug in deeper.

  “Kat,” Knox said, his tone cautionary.

  “I know,” she replied, pulling back a bit. “We need him to help find our little admirer.” Then, in a blur of movement, Kat’s clawed hand swiped down at Mack’s lap. “But he doesn’t need that to do it.” The delayed scream Mack let out was half human, half howl, and wholly terrifying. Every hair on my body stood on end. “He’s all yours,” she said, turning to stroll toward me. Blood spurted behind her, creating a rainbow of red framing her approach. For the first time in my life, I feared what Kat was capable of. Seeing the look of distress on my face, Kat simply smiled. “He’ll heal, don’t worry. It’s just a flesh wound.”

  “Piper…” Knox called, assessing the injury. “A little help over here?”

  I muttered under my breath for Mack to be healed and waited for the downpour of blood to cease. When it did, Kat looked annoyed.

  “You couldn’t have let him come a little closer to dying before saving him?” She shrugged at my lack of response, then came to stand beside me. “I wonder how long it’s going to take to get anything useful out of him.”

  Mack was a lowlife on the grandest scale—Jagger had made that point clear. His moral compass hadn’t seen due north in a long time. I wondered just how deep he was in with both the fey king and queen, and how hard it would be to get anything useful out of him about the assassin.

  “Let’s get something clear before we get started here,” Knox said, drawing my attention to the interrogation behind us. “Jagger is dead to you. Your beef with him is over, understood?”

  “Like I give a shit about that pussy.”

  Knox’s fist met Mack’s face for the second time that night. “Understood?”

  “Yeah,” Mack said, spitting a mouthful of blood over the arm of the chair. “I got it.”