Please let a cube be free… Please let a cube be free…
Relief floods me when I see a vacant cube dead ahead.
Willfully ignoring the vacant swing chair nearby, I hurry forward, Alexei’s hand firmly clutched in mine.
“Quick,” I say. “Before someone else gets it first.”
Just as we near the entrance, a man appears from the other direction, darting toward the cube. His aura tells me he’s a shifter, some sort of bird, his face and body all sharp angles and his movements furtive.
The darkness I sense from him makes my skin crawl, and a shudder shoots down my spine.
I have to get to the cube before him.
Just as I reach the entrance, he speeds in front of me, his movements so fast that he blocks my path before I can blink.
His lips twist into a snarl, his dark gaze drilling holes into me. “This cube is mine.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
My front foot is already planted inside the cube’s entrance, my chest about to smash up against the shifter’s.
I lurch back and to the side in an attempt to avoid contact without removing my foot.
He’s even taller than Alexei but very thin, and up close the strength radiating off him makes the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end.
He may be a shifter but he’s certainly aligned with dark magic.
A quick glance to the left tells me he isn’t alone. A gorgeous man with the aura of a warlock stands one step behind him together with a pale-skinned witch. It takes me a moment to identify the warlock’s power… a necromancer? The way he’s alert to our surroundings gives me the impression he’s some sort of bodyguard.
My instinctive magic rushes to the surface. I’m ready to defend myself against all three of them, but Alexei’s voice rings out behind me, a dangerous, protective growl as he focuses on bird shifter who claimed the cube. “It looks to me like the lady got here first.”
The shifter darts a glance at Alexei, his shrewd gaze quickly studying Alexei’s size and, no doubt, judging his power, pausing for a second on his assassin’s ring.
The warlock notices it too, stepping up to the shifter with a questioning look. Any supernatural encountering a Master Assassin for the first time should be smart enough to consider their actions wisely.
The shifter, on the other hand…
A confident smile passes across his lips, and he waves his bodyguard away, saying, “I’m in no danger.”
He ignores Alexei and leans down to me, his pointed nose a bare inch from mine. The shifter’s dark power washes over me in a sickening wave as an angry hiss passes through his partially clenched teeth. “Get out of my cube.”
My fingertips tingle as my instinctive magic sizzles through them. Electricity crackles in the air around me and the neon lights flicker above us, enough to make the nearby patrons glance up.
Despite the danger, the shifter considers me with amusement, arrogance oozing from every angle of his face and posture.
I can’t back down.I need this cube. I’m not about to walk away now…
I grit my teeth, seconds away from releasing my power, when Alexei steps up beside me.
His fingers curl around my arm. It’s the lightest touch, but the energy inside me immediately calms, and a sense of peace washes over me, radiating from his hand and cleansing the darkness of the shifter’s power from my mind and body with startling speed.
Surprise shoots through me, but I force myself not to react.
Is Alexei using his assassin’s magic to calm my magic somehow?
The slow burst of power around Alexei is like nothing I’ve felt before.
A curious glow builds around us, mistakable for the haze that covers the dance floor on the level below us. It caresses my arms, waist, and hips like a shield, but it also pulls at me. Not at my body, but at my power…
