Chapter 3: Not A Request

He doesn't make me wait long.

Ten minutes of standing in the wrong room with stolen champagne while he does the thing he apparently does at parties which is stand at the window looking like he's considering purchasing the city, and then he moves to a low table near the center of the room and sits and the room rearranges itself around him without being asked, people shifting, conversations angling away, space appearing like it was always meant to be there.

He doesn't look at me.

He doesn't need to.

"Mr. Nyther."

My real name. Again.

Third time tonight. First time was in the parking garage with a syringe against my ribs. Second time was in my own head trying to remember when I last used it. This time it comes from the man at the table in the voice that carries across rooms without trying and every single person between us finds something else to look at.

I walk to the table.

I sit down.

I have no explanation for this. My legs simply do it and I let them because standing while he sits feels wrong in a way I cannot articulate and also because there is no version of leaving this room that does not involve those three men by the door and I am not ready to test that version yet.

He looks at me across the table.

"You're faster than they were expecting," he says.

"Excuse me?"

"The parking garage." He reaches into his jacket and sets a photograph on the table between us. Me. Forty minutes ago. Moving through the lobby of my building. "They've been on you for three days. Tonight they moved."

I stare at the photograph.

"Who are they?" I demand.

He is quiet for a moment.

"Have you heard the name Noctyros Malvane?" he asks.

I have not heard it before and I shake my head.

"You will," he continues. "He runs one of the five noble houses in our world. Publicly, philanthropy and old money. Privately." He pauses. "He collects things. Rare things. Things other people have decided don't exist or can't be found." His eyes hold mine. "He has known about you for years. Those men tonight work for him."

"What does he want from me?" I ask.

"That," he says carefully, "requires a longer conversation than a party table." He turns the photograph face down. "What you need to understand tonight is that the two men from the parking garage are currently being held three blocks away and Noctyros does not yet know his attempt failed. That window closes by morning."

I look at the photograph face down on the table.

"You pulled them off me," I say slowly.

"My people did," he confirms. "They've been running interference since you entered the building." Something moves in his expression. "You were never going to make it to the forty second floor, Mr. Nyther. The party was always on forty three."

The room feels smaller.

I think about Dex and the message and the wrong floor number and I think about how I pressed forty two and the elevator stopped at forty three and I stepped out like it was my own decision.

It wasn't my own decision.

"You orchestrated this," I say flatly.

"I created a situation," he replies. "You walked through it. That part was yours."

"That is the most relaxed description of manipulation I have ever heard."

"Probably." No apology. Not even the shape of one. "You're safe. That's what matters tonight."

I look at the photograph face down on the table.

I look at the men by the door.

I look at him.

"What do you want?" I ask.

He holds my gaze for a moment and his voice when he answers is very quiet and very direct and leaves absolutely no room for misreading.

"To keep you alive," he says. "Which, given tonight, is more urgent than I anticipated."

My wolf presses forward warm and certain and I press back hard because this is not the time and this man just admitted to engineering my presence in this room and I need to be suspicious of that and I am trying to be suspicious of that and my wolf is making it extremely difficult.

"I don't know you," I say.

"No," he agrees. "But I know you." He leans forward slightly and his scent hits me at full proximity and my brain does the offline thing again and I breathe through it carefully. "Vaelis Nyther. Twenty four. Six cities in three years. Currently operating as Cole Varen, which is a poor alias, by the way. Too clean." His eyes hold mine. "You've been running from the wrong people. When you're ready to hear why, I'll tell you."

I look at him for a long moment.

"And if I walk out right now?" I ask.

His gaze moves briefly to the door and back.

"My people step aside," he says simply. "You walk out. And the two men from the parking garage, who are currently being held in a vehicle three blocks away, are released an hour after you leave." He holds my gaze steadily. "Your choice. It has always been your choice."

The table is very quiet.

My wolf is warm and certain and infuriating about all of it.

"One night," I say finally.

Something shifts in his expression.

"One night," I continue. "I'm not agreeing to anything. I'm not signing anything. I just..." I look at the photograph face down on the table and think about the syringe and my real name in the dark. "I just need one night to think."

"One night," he agrees.

"Separate rooms," I add. My face go warm instantly. 

His mouth does something that is almost a smile and gone before it finishes. "Of course."

He says it completely professionally.

I still feel my face stay warm.

He stands.

He moves toward the door and the three men step aside without being asked and he looks back at me once, just briefly, and I follow him because my wolf is already moving and I have learned tonight that my wolf and I are apparently operating on different timelines.

His timeline started the moment those elevator doors opened.

Mine is catching up.

As we pass the catering table, he pauses and picks up something from the display and holds it out without looking at me.

A small pastry.

I stare at it.

"You haven't eaten," he says. Still not looking at me. Just holding it out like it's nothing.

I take it because I don't know what else to do and I eat it in the elevator going up and Thalrion looks at the elevator doors and says nothing and I look at the elevator doors and say nothing and the pastry is genuinely excellent and my wolf is so warm and smug about all of this that I want to have a serious conversation with him about boundaries.

The doors open.

The apartment is big and dark and quiet and expensive.

Thalrion shows me to a room at the end of a corridor and opens the door and stands back and I go in and look at it, large bed, city view, bathroom through the far door.

I turn around.

He is in the doorway.

And something about the way he is looking at me, standing in his doorway in his apartment that I walked into from the wrong elevator on the wrong floor, does something to me that starts in my chest and moves outward and I think I need him to not look at me like that if one night is going to mean one night.

"Sleep well," he says quietly.

He pulls the door closed.

I stand in the middle of the room and press both hands to my face and breathe.

My wolf is insufferably pleased.

Get a grip on yourself, little man.