More importantly, his shoes and his dignity remained intact. He’d take that as a win.
“Seems kind of dead,” Chapel commented.
A few people congregated near the entrance, mostly businessmen dressed in their suits and ties. Not unusual for a weekday evening, especially before sunset.
In his experience, most people didn’t like to be seen frequenting such establishments, even if nothing technically illegal happened beyond the doors.
“It’ll pick up in a couple of hours,” he told her. “We’re a little early.”
“I guess I got all dressed up for nothing.”
Sammy laughed. While she objectively looked stunning in anything, he wouldn’t call a black tank top and skinny jeans club attire. The knee-high combat boots were a nice touch, though.
Beside him, Dominic grunted. “We’re not here to socialize.”
Chapel straightened at his admonishment and nodded seriously. “Yeah, Sammy. Get it together.”
“I will bury you in the back garden,” Dominic said, punctuating the threat with a low growl. “And you.” He pointed a finger in Sammy’s face. “Don’t encourage her.”
Smothering a chuckle, Sammy turned away to hide his smile. He managed to keep it together, too, right up until Chapel caught his eye and winked.
“I swear to the gods,” Dominic grumbled when Sammy’s soft snorts turned into quiet laughter. “Let’s get this over with.”
Which only made him laugh harder. His mate looked absolutely done with both of them.
“Come on,” he said, pointing to a shadowed alley between the club and a pizzeria. “We can go in through the side entrance.”
The wolves followed him across the street, letting him lead until they reached the mouth of the alleyway. There, Dominic stopped him with a hand on his shoulder—the weight warm and comforting rather than controlling—while Chapel did a sweep from one end to the other.
Sammy had used the route thousands of times without incident during his employment at the Sky Lounge. So, to him, the caution felt unnecessary, but he said nothing and waited for Chapel to give the all-clear.
Gray and drab with rust along the bottom, the metal service door showed signs of its age. The numbers on the electronic keypad beside it had been worn away over the years, but Sammy didn’t need them. Relying on muscle memory, he punched in the code, then stepped back when the lock disengaged with a hollowclunk.
Chapel entered first, but Dominic held him back when he started to follow, keeping a hand on his nape until the female motioned for them to join her. The whole thing felt kind of intense, but he didn’t mind.
It wasn’t exactly a hardship having his mate’s hands on him.
For days, he had been going over every possible scenario, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Turns out, he had been confused.
It would be easy to dismiss people as stupid or lazy for knowing so little about changelings, and many did. In reality, even he didn’t know how his abilities worked. It just kind of happened.
While he could become anyone’s fantasy in both appearance and temperament, he didn’t actually know what they liked. He didn’t receive flashes of their thoughts. No mysterious voice whispered in his ear. Nothing informed him on a conscious level that someone preferred blue eyes or dark hair.
It started with a faint hum of electricity, a current that connected him to the other person. The longer he spent with them, the stronger the tether became, always tugging, pulling him deeper.
Sometimes he could resist. Sometimes he couldn’t. And he never knew which it would be until it had already happened.
With Dominic, there had been no spark, no current. There had been nothing for him to fight against, and he’d misinterpreted the lack of friction as a divide in their bond.
He had started piecing it together the previous night, but it hadn’t been until Dominic had come to his door that he’d been able to test his theory.
The moment he’d locked eyes with his mate, his pulse had jumped, and he’d felt a flutter of excitement in his stomach. Only this time, it hadn’t been tainted by unconscious desires. The reaction had been purely his own.
Maybe wires had gotten crossed, or maybe he had needed time to separate their mate bond from his changeling abilities. Whatever the case, he now understood what his friends had been going on about.
And it was both exhilarating and frightening in equal measure.
Following behind Chapel, they made their way down a dimly lit corridor that branched off into the employee breakroom, the kitchen, and the front of the club. He motioned them straight ahead.