Haven City Series Books 7-9: Alpha's Gamble (Haven City Series #7), Alpha Enchanted (Haven City Series #8), Alpha's Cage (Haven City Series #9)

by Zoe Perdita

  Tyler climbed in the backseat, and Quinn turned and gave him a questioning look, but he didn’t say anything. Probably because she didn’t know the real reason they were doing any of this, and Tyler wasn’t about to explain it.

  She might be a fellow shifter, but that didn’t mean she understood. Hell, she already worked for a fucked up bastard like Bradley in the first place and let Quinn be kept as a slave right under her nose.

  They had to drive around half the lake to get to the old Vanderbilt mansion, and Merci pulled the car onto the side of the road and stopped. She crossed her arms and glanced at Quinn. “If you’re late again, I’m leaving without you and you can explain it to Bradley. Got it?”

  “Yes,” Quinn said and slipped out of the car.

  Tyler climbed out too and headed toward the fence. Unlike the smooth iron gate around the Montgomery place, this one bloomed with rust. Wild roses grew up and over it—their thorns as brown and thick as the stems. The dull hint of magic hung in the air, faint under the sweet floral spring scent.

  Tyler looked at Quinn, who stood next to him.

  “What business do we have here?” Quinn asked, his voice low.

  Tyler smiled, showing his fangs. “I’ll tell you once we’re inside.”

  They didn’t try to scale the fence in the front—too many chances for injury. Tyler held out his hand, and Quinn gripped it. Together, they walked around the perimeter, Quinn’s grip tight and cool against his palm.

  When they were far enough away, Quinn stopped. “This is that old woman’s house, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. If the spell is anywhere, it’s in there,” Tyler said and squeezed his hand before he leaned close and pressed his lips to Quinn’s.

  Quinn’s mouth came alive with the kiss. When it ended, he drew in a long breath and let it out again. “You could’ve come here alone.”

  Tyler shrugged, and bit back what he wanted to do—what he wanted to say. His heart throbbed so hard it felt close to bursting. They were on the tip of his tongue, but words had little value. Actions spoke much louder. “I thought you’d want to have some fun. Was I wrong?”

  Quinn shook his head and pushed his hair back.

  Around the corner of the fence they found their way in—a place where the iron had rusted away enough that a quick kick snapped it in two. Tyler pulled the switchblade from his pocket and sawed at the rose vines, avoiding the thorns.

  That’s just what he needed on top of everything else—an injured finger.

  Once he’d made a large enough gap, they slipped inside.

  Quinn stood still in the knee-high grass and weeds, his head tilted like he was listening to a far off song and trying to place it.

  In that moment, Tyler imagined the creature from the illustration slipping through the woods, all elegance and grace. He should tell Quinn that he knew the truth. Well, he’d do it soon enough.

  “Is there some magical monster that’s going to jump out and attack us?” Tyler asked, fingers itching for another smoke. He pushed the urge aside and trudged forward when Quinn didn’t answer.

  “I thought I heard her voice,” Quinn said slowly and followed.

  The house underneath the pounds of ivy that crawled up its sides had been white at some point. Four large columns stood on the porch, pitted with rot and even more roses. The paint had faded to gray and peeled across the surface, revealing graying wood underneath. The door was a solid black and the dull sheen was still evident under years of dirt.

  Tyler tried the knob.

  It didn’t budge, which is what he’d figured. Too bad picking locks wasn’t his forte. Instead, he stepped carefully along the porch and stopped in front of a window. Two swift jabs with his elbow and the glass shattered. He broke the rest of the pane and stood aside.

  Quinn peeked inside, his lips drawn. “You’re pretty good at this. Have you done it before?”

  “First time, actually,” Tyler said. “Well, I did think about robbing a place up here back when—”

  “Back when what?” Quinn asked and watched Tyler carefully, those glass-green eyes didn’t miss much, and he never noticed until now.

  Shit! He was a fucking idiot. He almost admitted to stealing—to making that dumb shit plan to rob one of the old families when he was so desperate for another hit he’d have done anything. But he wasn’t that person anymore. Unreliable and high all the time.

  Tyler bit his lip ring and shrugged. “Never mind.”

  He climbed into the house first, and Quinn slipped in after him. Dusty sheets covered the furniture, and it smelled thick with age, but the heavy scent of magic didn’t hang in the air.

  Good. That probably meant they were safe for the time being.

  Or not.

  Quinn stood stock-still, his face ashen in the dim, dusty glow that managed to filter through the ivy and rose vines and into the windows around them. He looked diminished, like a candle burning low, and Tyler nudged him.

  The alpha rumbled, begging him to bring the light back to Quinn’s eyes, but Tyler had no clue how to do that.

  “Hey. Have you been here before?”

  Quinn jolted. “No. Not that I remember. I just—I thought I heard something again. Do you think this place is haunted?”

  Tyler snorted. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “The moon said they’re real, so yes. I do.”

  Well, Tyler didn’t have an argument against the motherfucking moon, so he didn’t say anything more.

  They slipped through room after room looking for something that might be a spell book. Whoever cleared the place after old lady Vanderbilt died took most of her things. The shelves in the library were bare, covered in cobwebs and a thick layer of dirt.

  Tyler frowned and kicked the wall. It crumbled under his shoe and a pile of dust and plaster rose in its wake. “Where the fuck are the books?”

  “Maybe the other old families cleared them out after she died. But I’ve been through all of the books in the Montgomery library and never found the spell she used.”

  “It has to be somewhere,” Tyler growled and stalked out of the room. His footsteps pounded, hollow and muffled, on the wooden floors. The rest of the downstairs consisted of a kitchen and a dining room, so he headed up the curved staircase.

  The alpha bristled so close to the surface that the only way to subdue it was to move. Tear through each room looking for something that would help him free Quinn.

  He didn’t find a damn thing in the first three rooms.

  Then Tyler moved into the largest bedroom. A monstrous bed took up the center of the room with huge wooden bedposts that came to twisted points. It was the only piece of furniture that hadn’t been covered with a sheet, and the floral quilt was pulled up and tucked in neatly like it’d been waiting for someone to come to bed for a very long time.

  Tyler tore through all the furniture—the drawers empty. Glanced in the closet—also empty. And finally drew his fingers through his hair.

  It was supposed to be here!

  “Are you scared of failing?” Quinn asked. He stood in the doorway, his arms wrapped around his waist and his gaze wary.

  Tyler hadn’t even noticed him. His scent and presence were so ubiquitous they just felt normal now.

  Necessary.

  How the fuck was he supposed to live without them? But if he didn’t break the spell—that’s what Tyler would have to do.

  Well, if he even got to live at all. If the thing he wanted least came true. . . . Yeah, he knew what would happen.

  “Of course I’m scared of failing!” Tyler snarled and bit his tongue to keep from saying anything more. It wasn’t Quinn’s fault, but that doubt in the back of his mind nagged at him.

  Cage’s dumb warning.

  Unicorns were dangerous. Shouldn’t be trusted. Isn’t that the same shit they said about Tyler himself?

  Look how much he hated it.

  Fuck.

  He wasn’t going to buy into that. He knew Quinn. Watched him for nearly two
months. Felt the warmth of his flesh and the joy in his smile. He wasn’t evil or dangerous—he was lonely and trapped and needed someone to help him.

  He reminded Tyler so much of himself in some ways that a knife twisted in his heart. Even facing Quinn right now felt like he’d failed.

  It wasn’t even the full moon yet—but it crept so much closer. Another week, and it’d all be over. His alpha side snarled. It wasn’t acceptable. He wasn’t going to lose like this—lose Quinn.

  Not after everything they’d been through so far.

  Quinn didn’t utter another word. He glided through the room like a spirit, both of them looking for something—anything—that might be a spell book.

  They didn’t find one.

  As a last resort, Tyler trudged into the kitchen. He’d glossed over it before, but it was the only part of the house left. No silverware was in the drawers, and the dishes and cookware were all gone, but a few fading kitchen towels remained. They were covered in roosters and little red barns, not the kind of thing he expected a high and mighty Haven City sorceress to own.

  In the drawer beneath that one he spotted a small cookbook shoved into the back. Or, at least, he thought it was a cookbook when he glanced at it. The cover was red and worn with no lettering on the front.

  With trembling fingers, Tyler lifted it from the drawer as if it would crumble to dust in his hold. It felt ancient, like the books in the library that Cage showed him, and he hoped it was written in clear English, not that Middle English crap.

  He slowly turned a page. It cracked—the paper inside worn and dry. Sloped cursive writing covered the first page in fading pencil.

  At first, it did look a lot like a recipe. It had a list of ingredients and a number of steps, but the outcome wasn’t food. It apparently was some kind of spell to control people.

  He took a deep breath and stared at the page for a long moment.

  This could be it.

  “Quinn!” Tyler called. His voice seemed to shake the dust loose from the rafters.

  Quinn didn’t respond, and Tyler fingered through it carefully. If it had the spell, it may have the way to break the spell too.

  He turned the next page and it ripped in his fingers. “Shit,” he mumbled and scanned it.

  ‘Binding Evil Things’ it said on the top, and his breath caught in his throat. Squeezed.

  The house hung silent around him.

  “Quinn! Where the fuck are you?” Tyler called again.

  He hadn’t even heard Quinn descend from upstairs, but he’d been too pissed off to really be listening anyway. Now that he could look at Quinn again without feeling like his insides were going to turn to a big pile of guilty mush, the damn unicorn was nowhere to be seen.

  He skimmed past how to perform the spell—not that it made much sense. It wasn’t full of eyes of newts and raven claws but insubstantial things like fear and pain.

  How the hell did someone collect those?

  Tyler thought about what it was like when he needed a hit—the thing writhing inside him that drove him toward the sickly sweet scent of the opium dens and the way it washed over him—the emptiness that engulfed him—and found he didn’t want to know.

  At the end was a small passage that read: ‘The ingenious part of such a spell is in the way it binds by using the very nature of the one who’s bound against it. Only when that nature is broken will the spell break, making it near impossible to shatter. They grow tighter with every action, and looser only if. . . .”

  Tyler flipped the page.

  “. . . the bound one does something uncommon to his kind. With the unicorn, whom this spell is performed on most frequently, the creature not only must act against his own good but someone must peer into his mirror of their own free will knowing full well what they’ll see. This proves most impossible since most don’t know what they’ll see, and if they do, looking into that dreadful mirror is akin to death.”

  Ice crackled over his bones at those words, and he stood frozen. Either he saved Quinn and (possibly) died, or he didn't save Quinn and also (possibly) died.

  Great outcome both ways.

  The alpha howled, and his stomach felt like it collapsed on itself.

  What the fuck kind of decision was this?

  Is that how Davis felt when he ran after he stole all that money and got a price on his head from the Triad? Is that why he couldn’t just return to Haven after the leader of the Tigers got killed and his name was wiped clean? Because either choice hurt those he loved.

  Tyler frowned.

  He was about to toss the book out the window when he heard the steady thump of footprints on stairs.

  Quinn burst out of a door at the side of the kitchen, one Tyler hadn’t paid much attention to. His hair was draped in cobwebs, and he held an armful of dust laden wine bottles. His expression wasn’t as hollow as it’d been when they first entered, and that just twisted the knife further into Tyler’s gut.

  “They have a wine cellar, and someone left all the wine!”

  “That’s where you’ve been?” Tyler said and set the book on the counter.

  The guarded elation that filled him a when he found it deflated now that he knew the truth. He couldn’t even bring his damn mouth to explain what he’d found to Quinn.

  Not when Quinn smiled, all sunshine, and started looking for a corkscrew.

  “I thought if that sorceress stuck around she’d be in the basement, but it was a lot like Bradley’s basement except with more spiders and centipedes. Then I found the wine. This is all I could carry.”

  Tyler yanked the switchblade from his pocket and dug it into the cork. It didn’t free it smoothly, but he broke the cork enough to pull it out piece by piece. Maybe he needed to start carrying a Swiss Army knife instead.

  “Are we celebrating something?” Tyler asked.

  “Finding wine and this house. Oh, I don’t think it’s really haunted anymore. And I don’t think I’ve ever had wine before. Bradley said he didn’t want to waste it on me. Did you find anything?” Quinn asked and sniffed the bottle.

  Tyler frowned at the book. He didn’t answer.

  Instead, he took a drink from the bottle. It was a heavy red wine that clung to his mouth, dry enough not to be sickening. Ken might like it. Wine wasn’t really Tyler’s thing, but if it was there, he might as well drink it.

  And this was the perfect time to drink.

  Quinn watched him carefully and took the bottle once Tyler finished his long swig. He sipped it slowly, and his cheeks flushed. “That’s not bad.”

  Tyler avoided his gaze and checked out the other bottles. A few had labels, all covered in dust. One wasn’t even wine. He turned it in his hands. “This is olive oil.”

  A grin quirked Quinn’s lips. “You know what that can be used for.”

  Tyler blinked. The alpha inside him surged, and his groin flooded with heat, revealing the desire that always filled him in Quinn’s presence. They didn’t have much time left – a week at most, but giving up that easily wasn’t in Tyler’s nature.

  “Seriously?”

  Quinn nodded and nudged his shoulder—the one that hadn’t been injured. “It’s slick enough. You want to try it? You said you didn’t want to go slowly, and yet. . . .”

  His voice trailed off as his lips slid over Tyler’s neck. That book didn’t say a damn thing about how horny unicorns were. Not that he minded.

  Tyler growled low in his throat. “What do I do?”

  Quinn’s teeth snagged his ear. “Who says you get to be on top?”

  “I am the alpha,” Tyler said and turned his head to catch Quinn’s lips while he gripped the man’s hips firmly. “And I know what you are, unicorn.”

  Quinn stiffened. Leaned back, his mouth pink and slick. “You know? And you don’t care?”

  Was he acting like he cared? Tyler snarled and smashed their mouths together. The primal need that rose with every kiss flooded his veins and set his nerves on fire. Words didn’t suit the situation.r />
  His body spoke louder than his mouth.

  Quinn groaned and melted into the kiss, his hands groping and fondling their way down Tyler’s chest as his teeth caught the lip ring and pulled delicately.

  The ice around Tyler’s bones melted. Boiled. Turned to goddamn steam in a matter of minutes. He yanked at Quinn’s shirt and slipped it over the man’s head, musing his pale waves into a silvery blond halo.

  He could just pull off those jeans next and fuck him against the kitchen cabinets, but this was his mate—not some chick he picked up at a club.

  Tyler kissed Quinn and balled the shirt in his fist. “Back to the bedroom. Now.”

  It was Quinn’s turn to blink—his cheeks flushed and chest heaving. That sweet grin lighted on his lips. “Okay.”

  Tyler took the oil and threw back another swallow of wine. Hell—he’d just take the bottle. The red spell book sat innocently on the counter, and Tyler turned from it.

  After.

  He’d tell Quinn after the alpha got what it needed—after he claimed his mate. That way, even if he died, he wouldn’t regret things he hadn’t done.

  He shoved the items in Quinn’s arms and lifted him up, like a groom carrying a bride.

  Tyler’s wounded arm protested, and Quinn gave a yelp of surprise. “I can walk.”

  “Shut up. I’m being romantic,” Tyler grumbled and kissed the side of Quinn’s head.

  He didn’t remember the climb up the stairs, or setting Quinn down, or even shedding the rest of his clothes once he got there. The only thing on his mind was their destination. The way his heart pounded and his hands buzzed with something akin to static.

  Tyler’s cock ached.

  Curled.

  It was as slick with hunger as his mouth, and when he yanked at Quinn’s jeans, the unicorn’s was just as wet.

  Just as hard.

  He never imagined claiming a mate, especially not in some abandoned house on a floral quilt, but here he was. And he wasn’t about to stop.

  The alpha wouldn’t let him.

  “What do I do?” he asked once Quinn’s jeans were discarded on the floor with the rest of their clothes.

  “Lube me up. Use your fingers,” Quinn said and opened the bottle of oil.