“Are you ready, Magnus?” Anandur asked his new roommate.

“Aye, just give me another minute.”

The guy was taking forever to get dressed. Anandur wondered what was going on in the walk-in closet. Was Magnus trying on outfits like some pansy?

“We are going to a club, not a wedding. Stop fussing.”

Finally emerging from his room, Magnus straightened his collar. “How do I look?”

“You look good. Come on, Camden is waiting.”

“Let him wait. This is my first time in an American nightclub. I need to know if I look okay for the local lasses.”

“You’re gonna have to peel them off you.”

Magnus smiled. “Well then, what are we waiting for?”

In Anandur’s opinion, Magnus was a bit overdressed, but he wasn’t going to say a word about it and wait another hour for the guy to decide on what he wanted to wear.

On their way to the elevators, Anandur knocked on Camden’s door.

“What took you so long?” Camden asked as he locked it behind him.

They were on one of the lower levels that were not dedicated to the clan, but that didn’t mean doors had to be locked. The security cameras mounted on the walls were in plain sight. Besides, the human residents had to go through security to get in. The chances of anyone who didn’t belong getting in and stealing anything were negligible.

Camden must’ve lived among humans before rejoining the force. “I guess you didn’t live in the castle?”

“No. I was tired of seeing the same damn faces day in and day out. At least here you have some variety.”

As they entered the elevator, Magnus smoothed a hand over his neatly trimmed goatee. “That is going to change when we move to the village. It will be the same as the castle. A hive. I’d rather stay here. I prefer the urban vibe.”

Camden was the first to get out as they exited on the lobby level. “I concur. Maybe the Guardians can stay here while the civilians move to the village.”

Anandur clapped his back. “You’ve been out of circulation for too long. How exactly is that going to work? We are supposed to be the shield.”

“That is true.” Camden followed Anandur and Magnus through the door marked as maintenance and into the hallway leading to the clan’s private elevator bay. “But there will be a lot of us. We can split. Maybe even take turns between living in the village and here.”

Magnus chuckled. “I have a better idea. We move to the village but use the keep’s apartments as shag pads. Do you think Kian would approve? We can call it a re-recruitment bonus.”

As they entered the clan’s parking garage, Camden clicked open the doors to his rented Chevy. “Hotels come with room service. I don’t want to clean a shag pad in addition to my house in the village, and we can’t employ human housekeepers.”

Anandur folded his body into the passenger seat. “Kian needs to rent out these apartments. Money is going to be tight in the near future, and he can’t afford to throw it around like he used to. Which will make his wife very happy. His lack of monetary restraint always bothered her.”

Both guys snickered, but neither said a word, which made Anandur wonder. Were they amused by Syssi’s frugality? Or was it Kian’s tendency to treat money as if it grew on trees?

Anandur always thought it was odd for someone who worked his butt off to make money for the clan to be so frivolous with it. Other than Kian’s short fuse, that was his only character flaw.

Not that it was a big deal. The guy more than compensated for his few shortcomings. Besides, no one was perfect, not even Annani’s son.

The club they’d decided on was called The Lagoon, and it rocked the nautical theme. The place was located near the marina, but it wasn’t fancy, and it wasn’t a membership only club. Kian had loosened the rules for Guardians, and the non-membership clubs were no longer off limits provided Guardians paired up.

Doomers, unless there was a whole pack of them lying in wait, had no chance of taking on a couple of Guardians or more.

Besides, it seemed as if the Brotherhood had abandoned its quest of finding immortal males in clubs. Other than the string of human murders, which might or might not have been committed by an immortal male, who might have been a Doomer or not, there had been no activity lately.

The most plausible explanation was that the Doomers had gone back to their old ways of sabotaging the clan’s work and undermining democracies around the world, instead of hunting individual clan members. Or maybe it was just a short reprieve while they regrouped and came up with a new hunting method.

Speaking of hunting, now that the restrictions had been lifted, Anandur planned on checking out every new club in town.

“Oh my gosh, you look like Cristian Bale!” A dark-haired long-legged girl put her hand on Magnus’s chest. “A younger version, that’s for sure.” She gave him a thorough once-over, then fingered a strand of his shoulder-length hair. “And your hair is nicer.”

Magnus grinned like the cat who was about to eat the canary. “Thank you. What’s your name?”

“Carly. You even have a British accent, wow. That’s so sexy.”

“I’m Magnus.” He wrapped his arm around her waist. “Let’s dance.”

“One down, two to go,” Camden said.

Anandur shook his head. “Does Magnus really look like that actor?”

Camden shrugged. “It’s the goatee and the long hair.”

Anandur smoothed his hand over his unruly beard. “Maybe I should trim mine too. What do you think?”

“That would be an improvement, no doubt about it. And try to comb that hair. It’s a mess.”

“Eh, why bother, the ladies love me anyway.” He slapped Camden’s back. “See you later, buddy. I like hunting solo.”

“Same here.”

Anandur’s criteria were simple. A horny woman, at least in her late twenties, who was big enough to handle a guy his size. Naturally, the prettier, the better, but he wasn’t as discriminating in that department. The vibe was more important, the immediate attraction. He didn’t want to work too hard on luring a female into a dark corner for a quickie, and he was in no mood for taking anyone to a hotel and spending the night with a stranger.

It wasn’t because he was cheap and didn’t want to spend the money. It was just more honest that way.

Unbidden, a memory surfaced of Brundar and Callie cuddling on the couch and whispering into each other’s ears. He hadn’t seen his brother so alive since Brundar was a little boy. It was as if Callie had resurrected him.

Anandur was happy and relieved and grateful beyond measure, but he was also envious. He wanted that. A woman to cuddle with, go to bed with, wake up in the morning with, and then do everything over again the next day and the day after that.

“Hey, big guy, do you want to dance?” A curvy blond put her hand on his bicep.

After a quick look-over, he nodded. She was shorter than his usual type, and her boobs looked fake, but she had a nice smile and she was nervous, which meant that she wasn't naturally forward and that it had taken guts for her to approach him. She must've liked what she saw.

Good enough.

“With you, sweetling, always.” He took her hand and kissed the back of it.