Chapter Six
Indy
I wanted Seth. Bad. The passion between us was the same as when we’d grown up enough to recognize one another as mates. It never waned. Didn’t that mean anything?
We both knew it did, but we couldn’t follow that meaning into the future.
I couldn’t count the times I’d fantasized about whisking Seth off, protesting or not, to a faraway tropical island and never letting anyone know where we were.
I’d sabotage the boat or plane that got us there so neither of us could ever leave.
We’d gallop and graze through the rainforests like the mythical beasts we were, never going hungry, always together for the rest of our lives.
“More fairy-tale nonsense,” I’d always mumble to myself.
Fairy tale? Nonsense? Enigmatic as always, my beast would question me but never give me answers.
Duty and my heart were in conflict. I lived in a perpetual state of anxiety and indecision.
In the San Diego hotel room, I sat beside Seth on the couch and pulled him in for a kiss. He offered his mouth but then sat back a bit abruptly, focused on a website on his laptop.
I let out a whine of disappointment.
“Look at this.” He pointed to the screen.
“Seth. Don’t look at your computer. Look at me. This is our last weekend together.”
He glanced at me, eyes glimmering, then looked away. “I know that.”
“I’m sad.”
He leaned into me. I rubbed my face against his, sighing hard.
“We need to do something fun,” he said.
“I can think of a few things.” The bed was only a few feet away.
“Me, too.” He still wouldn’t look directly at me.
“Seth.”
“I’m right here, baby.”
“I can’t take this. I’m starting to really freak out. I don’t want to marry a stranger. I don’t want to become my herd’s ruling alpha.”
His hand came over my shoulders. “I feel the same. But please don’t freak out on me.”
“I can’t help it. Aren’t you feeling anything?”
“Of course, I am.” His voice shuddered. His emotions mirrored mine. Maybe we didn’t have a bond, but the spark between us let us share everything. We even finished each other’s sentences. How could this be wrong? How could Fate have us meet and then turn her back on us?
“Please put your computer down,” I said.
“Wait just a sec. Would you look at this?”
I blinked hard, my response curt. “What?”
“It’s something interesting. Let’s distract ourselves. Do something fun. We’re here only Friday to Sunday. Let’s go a little wild.” He pointed at his laptop screen. “Look.”
His words didn’t comfort me much, but for a moment, I could breathe again. “What is it?” I leaned forward. “You know I’m not patient.”
He smiled and cupped my cheek. “There’s fun things to do.” He kissed me gently again. “I promise I’ll make love to you all night long. But I’ve found something interesting here. It might be a good distraction for us.” He held up his laptop for me to see.
“I don’t want to see it. If you want to go out, I’ll go with you. But what I really want is to spend the rest of my life right here with you in this room. And never leave.”
He squeezed my shoulder. “Would you just take a second and look at this website? And tell me what you think? When I started reading about it, I got a weird feeling. Like déjà vu.”
Trying not to show my frustration, I pulled his computer into my lap. I had to blink several times to clear my vision before I could read it.
The website he’d found was for a nightclub. Big deal. I started to roll my eyes, but as my heart fell, I saw a word. Shifters. He was on the shifter web. And the nightclub was appropriately named: Animals.
A warm shiver crawled slowly down my spine. It was just a nightclub, right? It was for shifters, but that wasn’t anything too interesting.
“What’s so special?” I asked.
“You don’t feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“I don’t know. I told you, it was like déjà vu.”
Another shiver.
“It’s a feeling,” Seth continued. “Like we need to go there. Just to check it out if nothing more.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t have any reaction?”
I’d never lied to him. “Well, yeah. Like a shiver. Like maybe I’ve heard about that place before or dreamed about it.”
“Exactly! That’s what I experienced, too.”
“But that doesn’t mean anything, does it?” I asked.
“My beast is stirring. Isn’t yours?”
My unicorn moved inside of me as if suddenly wanting to shift. Then the spot on my forehead began to tingle.
“Yes, but I think he just wants to shift.”
“The website says there’s a space to shift behind the club. Lots of acreage and discreet.”
Yes, please. I need to run. Running makes us less sad.
I dropped my head to Seth’s shoulder. “The website is definitely giving me weird feelings. My unicorn wants to go. You want to go.”
“Then the question remains, do you want to go?” he asked, pulling me closer to him so the laptop almost slid from my lap.
How could I ever say no to him? “I guess.”
“We can leave early if we hate it. But we at least owe ourselves a drink and a shift in a safe space.”
“Promise you’ll make it up to me?”
“I told you, I have plans to make love to you until dawn.”
I nuzzled his neck, messing up my carefully combed-back forelocks. “You’d better keep that promise.”
After he kissed me again, we got ready for a night of clubbing. I wore black on black, a vest over a shirt. My vest had tiny silver strands woven throughout the fabric to make it sparkle. Unicorns sparkled. Most unicorns loved flashy fashion and tended to be ostentatious compared to other shifters.
Seth sparkled in a different way. He chose rings, necklaces, and bracelets, all tasteful. He loved color and wore a purple blazer over a pink button-down and blue skinny jeans.
We’d both driven to San Diego separately so as not to alert our neighbors or families that we were together. Both our cars were in the hotel’s parking garage. We decided to take Seth’s.
The drive was gorgeous, the sun just setting and turning the western sky bright orange. Soon we were headed southeast, a pink sky guiding our way. Even with a little traffic, we made good time.
But my energy flagged when we pulled into the parking lot and saw it was already nearly full. The longest line I’d ever seen stretched from the entrance of Animals and all the way beyond the length of the large building.
I turned to Seth. “Not a good sign.”
He drove down a line of parked cars, letting out a frustrated whistle. “Maybe you were right.”
No. Keep going. There’s a space ahead.
There was no way my beast could know that. I was about to tell Seth to just take us back to the hotel for dinner when a space appeared between two large cars.
“There!” I pointed. “My unicorn told me there was a space.” I frowned. “But how did he know?”
Seth grinned. “Meant to be.”
“I don’t know.” I made a face. “Now we have to navigate that super-long line.”
“I still have a feeling, though.”
My forehead had not stopped tingling since we’d left the hotel. “Me, too.”
“Something’s going on here. Something interesting. Let’s walk around and see what we see. If we can’t get in, we’ll go out to eat, and maybe come back later.”
“Deal.” I leaned over and pecked him on the cheek.
“Deal.” He turned and met my lips.