When he’d greeted and exchanged a few pleasantries with his guests, Barton led Cad and Phair towards an elegant olive wood bar that was set in the far corner of the room. They passed by scores of tables coated in white linens where men sat about, groping young women who grinned and giggled at their no doubt ridiculous jokes as they stroked their heads, their chests, or any other part of them that demanded stroking.

In any other establishment, Phair would have expected to pick up the scent of feminine arousal on the air. But not here. Only a shifter’s nose could detect the truth of the matter: these women were terrified and disgusted at once. The place smelled of cigars, alcohol, fear and hatred.

Whatever was going on in this club, these women didn’t belong here. The females in Barton’s employ had somehow learned to act, to coo on command, to convince these awful men that they were excited by their presence. But they didn’t want to be here.

Something told Phair that they were as much prisoners as the shifters Barton’s men had locked in cages a few months earlier. The only difference was that the cages that held the women, it seemed, were invisible.

“Have a seat, gentlemen,” Barton said, ushering them towards the expensive looking bar stools. “What’ll you have?”

Phair was about to ask for a beer when he remembered that he was wearing a tuxedo. Men in tuxes probably didn’t chug lager like it was going out of style. “Your finest scotch,” he said. “Single Malt Islay, preferably.”

“Same,” said Cad.

“Of course.”

When Barton wandered over to the bartender to speak to him, Phair leaned in towards Cad. “We need to talk to one of these women,” he said.

“One? I’d say we should talk to all of them, if you get my meaning,” Cad replied, raising an eyebrow suggestively.

“That’s not what I mean, you arse. Look—they’re scared. They’re not here for the fun of it. I want to know what’s going on. It might help us to figure out what Barton’s up to.”

“Fine. Whatever you like, big guy,” Cad said, reaching over and squeezing the Béorn shifter’s thigh.

A low, long growl erupted from Phair’s throat. “If you don’t want to draw back a bloody stump, you’ll take your sodding hand away right now,” he said.

Cad obeyed immediately, a flash of terror passing over his features. No doubt he’d seen a shadow of the beast who now lived within Phair’s body. Even a Dire Wolf knew not to mess with such a creature—not even jokingly.

“Calm down, mate. I’m taking the piss,” said Cad. “I know why we’re here. I can feel the fear in the air as well as you can.”

“Then act like a man and not like a right sod, mate,” Phair shot back.

After a few seconds, Barton returned to seat himself next to his guests. “If you look about, you’ll see a lot of eyes on you, but don’t worry about that. My clients are merely curious. This isn’t exactly a haven for shifters, but the two of you are most welcome, I assure you.”

“You don’t normally cater to our kind, then?” asked Phair, trying to speak with his most upper-class-sounding accent and failing. He probably sounded more like a surly dock worker than an Oxford graduate.

Barton shook his head. “No, not usually. To be honest, it’s probably a bad idea to welcome you so publicly, given the current political situation out in the world.”

“You mean the fact that humans don’t want us to breathe the same air that they do,” Phair grunted, drawing an irritated glare from Cad that said Best not to alienate our host quite yet. There’s plenty of time to do that later.

“What my friend means,” Cad said, “is that he doesn’t blame your patrons for feeling uneasy. But we’re not here to make trouble, as you know.” He looked about the room from one woman to the next and back to Barton. “We’re here for the…entertainment. We’ve heard it’s the finest in the city. It’s not so easy to meet ladies these days, at least not for our sort, if you know what I mean.”

“Then you have a good deal in common with most of my clientele,” Barton replied. “They come for the intimacy, too. As for whether your presence is welcome, the place isn’t officially humans-only. So when your donation came in, well, I decided that we should open our minds and doors. Everyone should have his chance to take a poke at a beautiful woman now and then.” With that, he winked.

Phair tightened at the man’s words. To hear such easy talk about women being treated like mere objects was enough to draw the aggressive creature inside him to his surface. But he took a few deep breaths, trying to remind himself that he wouldn’t get very far on his mission if he took Barton out within five minutes of meeting him.

Keep Calm and Carry On, he told himself, or at least Keep Calm and Don’t Lose Your Shit.

Right now, he only wanted to know one thing: How the hell was this absolute shitgibbon Barton persuading these incredible-looking women to work for him? He had to be holding something over them. Blackmail, extortion, something. No self-respecting member of any species would willingly labour for such a monster.

But maybe things weren’t quite as nefarious as they seemed. It was just possible that the women in the club didn’t know what their boss was really like. Maybe they thought he was a benevolent overlord, rather than the heinous sort of man who fantasized about wiping species off the map in their entirety. They probably didn’t know of his under-the-table dealings, or his repeated attempts to get the ball rolling on shifter genocide. It was possible that the fear Phair sensed was of something different entirely.

“Normally we’d be looking for female shifters, of course,” Cad said, “but on the other hand, human men aren’t the only ones who hunger for human women.” He leaned in and winked back at Barton. Phair glared at him, then reminded himself that they were supposed to be putting on an act. Apparently Cad was better at it than he was.

“He’s right,” Phair said. “Our tastes run from the exotic to the even more exotic, to say the least.” He spun around on his stool, leaned his elbows against the bar and glanced around the room. The thought of requesting the company of any woman in the place seemed awful, but at least he and Cad could save her from a few minutes spent with the idiots who hung about this place.

After a few seconds, his eyes landed on a woman who stood against the wall at the opposite end of the room. She wore a green silk dress that hugged her every curve like a well-fitting glove. A dress that wasn’t see-through, but somehow managed to show everything. The curve of her breasts, even the peaks of her nipples. Her hair was red, her limbs long and graceful.

But it wasn’t her beauty that had drawn his gaze, at least not entirely. It was that she was staring at him, a curious, lost look on her face, telling him she wanted to be found. She stood alone, pressed against the far wall as though trying to stay as far away from Barton as possible.

Something told Phair that she was the woman he and Cad needed to talk to.

But a few seconds after their eyes met, she peeled hers away. He could sense the fear in her, the quiet desperation of a woman in trouble. The question was why? What was it that she was so afraid of?

Terrified or not, she was exquisite. Something out of a dream. With one look she’d managed to drive blood through his body, heating to fever temperatures as it shot its way to the place between his legs. For the first time, he was grateful for this assignment.

Of course, I’m not supposed to be looking at women like this. Boss’s orders, he told himself. But it was too late. He’d looked. After a month of abstinence, after years of telling himself that he didn’t care to involve himself too intimately with any woman, Phair had become hooked in the blink of an eye.

“What about that one?” he asked, nodding towards her. He tried to be casual about it, but the truth was that he was already invested, body and soul, in the prospect of meeting the woman. All of a sudden he didn’t just want to see her up close; he wanted to comfort her, to calm her fear. He wanted to hold her, to speak softly to her. To heal whatever plague was eating away at her mind.

“Mir? You want Mir?” Barton asked when he’d turned to look. “I don’t know if she’s right for you. She’s not…” Phair could tell that that he was on the verge of saying no, but for some reason, he stopped himself and smiled. “You know what? After the donation you made, how can I say no? Do you want to take her for the night?”

“Take her?” asked Cad, who actually looked as horrified as Phair felt. Maybe he wasn’t such an arse after all. “That depends—what exactly does that mean?”

“Oh,” laughed Barton. “I don’t mean that you remove her from the club or anything. I was just offering you a night with her in a little place we call the Blue Room. It’s where the men sometimes go with one or two of the ladies to have some…intimate time. If either of you wants her…”

“Both of us,” Phair shot out, grabbing Cad by the arm like a man possessed. “We both want her. Tonight.” He slammed his mouth shut as soon as he’d spoken. Wow, that was probably a really stupid thing to say. For one thing, he’d already defied Roth’s orders on every possible level, and they’d only been here a few minutes. For another, he’d basically just told Barton he wanted to hire a hooker for the night.

With Cad.

Nope. Absolutely nothing about this insane plan of his was smart.

Cad turned his way, an amused look on his face that said Are you off your meds, mate? But he played along. “Yes, absolutely,” he said. “She’s beautiful. What would it cost for us both to have her to ourselves for a few hours?”

Barton tensed for a moment, digging his fingers into the bar, but he released, his lips ticking up into a smile. “This one’s on me,” he said. “Enjoy yourselves, lads.”

He rose to his feet and signalled the woman over, calling her name over the sea of curious faces in the room. “Mir!” he shouted. “Come here. There are two gentlemen who’d like to meet you.”

She moved gracefully across the floor, the dress flowing around her body in a way that drove Phair mad. He inhaled a deep breath, his heart pounding harder with each step that she took towards them.

No woman had ever had this effect on him, and he wondered if Cad felt the same way.

Either way, he knew one thing. He wanted her badly, and so did the beast inside him.

The same beast who told him she was their mate.