16. Rowan
ROWAN
No one can accuse me of knowing when to quit.
The bass hits like a physical force, rolling through the floor and up my legs, rattling my bones from the inside out.
Lights strobe through smoke in sharp, violent pulses, painting the room in flashes of neon and shadow.
The Slay Pen isn’t a club so much as a living organism—breathing heat, exhaling excess, feeding on anonymity.
Everyone here pretends they’re chasing freedom.
They’re really chasing validation. Of what, I don’t know.
I stand at the bar, acutely aware of how out of place I feel in the emerald-green dress I had Flo track down for me—because I wouldn’t have the faintest idea where to start dressing for a place like this. Not on my own. Not in a den of sin that wears excess like a birthright.
Around me, bodies gleam beneath masks.
Wings. Horns. Lacquered veils.
Leather, lace, latex—stitched and strapped and molded to skin. People dressed with the easy confidence of those who know exactly who they are here… and what they’re allowed to be.
This is my third night here.
Three nights of pushing through sweat-slick bodies, memorizing exits, clocking security, learning the rhythm of the place. Three nights of cataloguing masks—wolf, devil, angel, something abstract and sharp-edged—and trying to imagine the man beneath them.
Marcus Delaney could be anyone here.
That’s the problem.
He doesn’t stand out. He dissolves. He hides in plain sight, wrapped in money and entitlement and the kind of confidence that doesn’t need to announce itself.
I scan the crowd again, slow and methodical, letting my gaze slide over shoulders, hands, posture.
I look for patterns instead of faces. Men who linger instead of dance. Men who watch instead of participate.
Nothing.
Just heat and motion and bodies pressing too close. Just temptation and danger tangled together so tightly they’re indistinguishable. Laughter spills over the music, sharp and reckless. A woman brushes past me, mask glittering, fingers trailing down a stranger’s arm like a promise.
I turn back to the bar, frustration curling tight in my chest.
Short of climbing onto a chair and calling Marcus Delaney’s name into the chaos, I have no way to draw him out. No way to separate him from the swell of masks and shadows. The anonymity he craves is working exactly as designed.
I take a slow breath and scan the room again.
This place thrives on illusion. On the idea that you can be anyone for a night. That consequences can’t follow you home if your face is covered and your name stays unspoken.
But illusions crack if you stare at them long enough.
Somewhere in this room, Marcus Delaney is breathing the same air as me. Drinking. Watching. Waiting. And when I finally find him—when the pattern breaks and the mask slips—I’ll be ready.
Until then, I stand my ground at the bar, searching the crowd for the one man who believes he’s invisible. And reminding myself that monsters always underestimate the person who looks the least like a threat.
By midnight, my feet are screaming and my patience is gone.
I’ve been jostled through a dozen strangers—sweat-slick arms, borrowed laughter, bodies brushing past like none of it matters—and not one of them is the man I’m looking for. I circle back to the bar out of habit more than hope and check my phone.
Nothing.
I swallow the last of my water like it’s an admission of defeat. Then I make the call.
I’m done.
The bouncers by the door give me a sideways glance as I leave, curiosity flickering across their faces. I don’t know whether they’re clocking the costume or the fact that I’ve survived three nights without cracking. Either way, they don’t stop me.
Outside, the cold hits hard enough to sting. I fold my arms around myself and start down the steps. The club sits in a hollowed-out pocket of the city, a place where the noise cuts off abruptly and the night closes in, thick and watchful.
That’s when I see it.
A car idles a few feet away, headlights dim, engine purring low. Waiting.
There’s a man in the driver’s seat.
He’s wearing a bunny mask.
Pink ears. Plush and absurd. Ridiculous—and somehow obscene—against the dark.
A dull ache blooms beneath my ribs and I have to lock my knees to keep myself moving.
Cold floods my hands, sharp and sudden. The realization crashes in all at once: how easily girls disappear.
It could happen without so much as a scream or a chase.
Just a door opening. Then closing. Quietly.
He doesn’t motion for me. Doesn’t roll down the window. He just watches. Head tilted slightly, as if he’s assessing something. As if he’s letting the fear do its work for him, climb my skin in static waves.
I take a step toward the car. Then another.
If this is the man I’m hunting, I’m two strides away from answers. From proof. From the crack in Marcus Delaney’s armor.
If it’s not, I’m two beats away from becoming a cautionary tale—a headline written in the past tense.
I hate that I can’t tell the difference. And I hate even more that I keep walking towards him anyway.
“Hey!” a voice snaps behind me.
I pivot instinctively, eyes back to the club.
One of the bouncers has left his post, jogging toward me, broad and uncompromising.
Behind him—the man in the silver-and-black mask from yesterday, descending the steps like judgment in a suit.
He moves fast. Purposeful. Not a man leaving a club. A man intercepting a problem.
I turn back to the street.
Mr. Bunny guns the engine.
The car spits gravel and surges away from the curb. Tires scream, then fade. The ears disappear into the night without a glance backward.
“Hey!” the bouncer calls again, closer now. “You good?”
I am not good. My pulse is a hummingbird in a jar.
“Fine,” I manage to squeak, which is a lie and we all know it.
Silver and black stops a few feet away, close enough that he’s angled to place himself between me and whatever the night has decided to unleash next.
Something stirs at the back of my mind.
A tug. A whisper of recognition I can’t quite grab hold of.
Up close, his presence is heavier, and it’s not just physical. He seems like he’s the kind of man who doesn’t waste movement or space. The silver in his mask catches the streetlight and throws it back at me in cold, fractured shards, forcing my eyes to narrow.
I stare.
Not because he’s threatening—though he is.
Not because he’s beautiful—though the symmetry of him suggests danger in that direction too.
I stare because something about him feels…
familiar. Wrongly so. Like I’ve seen him before in a different context, under different light. Somewhere I wasn’t meant to notice him.
My pulse skips, irritation and unease threading together.
Where do I know you from?
I search his stance, the tilt of his head, the way he holds the space between us like it already belongs to him. The answer hovers just out of reach, teasing, infuriating.
And the fact that I can’t place him—that it tickles at the back of my mind instead of settling—makes my skin prickle with the sense that I know who this man is.
“You shouldn’t walk out here alone,” he warns, snapping me out of my daze.
“Good thing I’m not alone, then” I retort, meaning the two of them and ignoring the fact that fear is flowing through my veins.
He studies my face like he can see through the mask and bravado. “Who were you meeting?”
“A rabbit, apparently,” I say, because I’m not handing him a single real thing.
He doesn’t like that answer. I can feel the air tighten. The bouncer shifts his weight, scanning the block in professional sweeps. Silver-and-black keeps his eyes on me.
“You come here a lot for someone who doesn’t drink,” he remarks.
“You ask a lot of questions for someone who comes here to drink.”
A pause. The bouncer mutters something to himself. Somewhere, a siren eats the distance. In the cold, my breath stutters in my chest.
“Were you supposed to meet someone here tonight?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. Then, because the truth has a way of making a fool out of me, I add “Tonight wouldn’t be the first time I’ve outlived a bad idea.”
Something flickers behind the mask. Approval? Annoyance? I can’t tell, and it bothers me that I want to.
The bouncer glances at silver-and-black, some silent exchange passing between them. “We’ll walk you to your car.”
“I took a rideshare.”
Silver-and-black’s eyes flicker.
“Organise a car for her,” he tells the bouncer, who promptly sends a text to an unknown person.
I should argue. I should insist I’m fine. Instead, I take two steps back into the shadow of the club and feel the night breathe around my ankles like a tide.
Headlights appear down the road. For a second, my heart jams in my throat. Not bunny ears. Just a car nosing its way toward my little apocalypse.
Silver-and-black doesn’t move. He stands like he could stand there forever, like patience is a weapon he enjoys using. He looks at me the way men look at a safe they intend to open—calm, certain, curious enough to be dangerous.
The car crawls up to the curb, headlights slicing through the spill of neon.
I step toward it, fingers curling around the handle—then freeze.
The car’s empty except for the driver. No mask.
No fuzzy pink ears. No one lurking in the backseat.
Still, my pulse kicks like it knows something I don’t.
My reflection in the window is a blur of blonde hair and a black mask stretched thin over nerves that won’t quit.
“My driver will get you home safely,” silver-and-black murmurs behind me, his voice dipped in certainty.
I slide into the car. The door shuts with a soft click, and before I can even adjust my seatbelt, the window glides down on its own. He steps closer, hands buried in his pockets like he’s got all the time in the world.
“In the future, be careful who you get into the car with, Rowan Hale,” he murmurs. “Not everyone can be trusted.”
My throat goes tight. My eyes snap to his, wide and startled. How does he know my name? How does he know anything about me? But the question barely forms before the window seals shut again and the car rolls forward, smooth and decisive.
I twist in my seat, staring through the rear window.
The bouncer is already returning to the doors, his bulk swallowed by the pulsing line.
But silver-and-black remains exactly where I left him—standing on the curb, hands in his pockets, head angled like he’s listening to something the rest of the world is too mortal to hear.
A second later, the shadows close over him. And the city exhales, slow and satisfied—like it’s just been given what it was waiting for.