Portia wasn’t the least bit rattled by her niece’s uncertainty. “Go on. I’ll come to check on you if I don’t see your cute ass on that beach in the next fifteen.” She blew her a kiss, downed the rest of her drink, and went back to the bar to chat up one of the bartenders. Ruby thought she recognized the guy, but if she had any chance of napping, she had to get moving.
Portia would knock her door down if Ruby didn’t comply.
The joys of family. And humans thought they had the patent on dysfunction.
THREE
ETHAN
There were a lot of things Ethan Adair would have done for his pack. Fight a couple of rogue wolves. Protect his land. Find a mate. Pop out an heir.
The usual kind of shit.
Thiswas so far beyond what he thought would ever happen. An alpha wolf shifter at the opening day of a resort for supernatural creatures?
There was the fucking question.
Ethan had repeated similar refrains about three times a second since boarding his flight out of LAX. He lost the number of times he changed planes. Hell, he even lost the number of hours he spent on that ferry boat.
He was pretty sure the captain was instructed to fuck with them. The ferry trip was stretched out to make it hard to find the resort …ifsomeone was looking to find a resort where a bunch of Hell’s creatures and all kinds of paranormal people let their hair down.
If humans … or thewrongkinds of humans got wind of it, it would be open season on the whole paranormal population. That’s the only thing that made sense to Ethan because this resort’s security was on a whole other level. ALucifer might be involvedkind of level, but what did he know? He was just some small-town alpha from California. What he did actually know about the larger paranormal world could fill a shot glass in a bar on Spring Break.
That is to say very little.
Maybe that’s why he was a bit nervous as he walked into Hellscape Holiday Resort.
The entire place was odd but beautiful. A mix-match of stuff that didn’t super go together but somehow worked. It was like your buddy’s dream surf shake had been decorated by his rich trophy wife, who had access to way too much money.
Weird, yes, but somehow, it worked. It had to be some kind of magic for it to blend in all so nicely. Ethan could smell it in the air. He didn’t know if it was magic, exactly, but he did know that it wasn’t something he had ever smelled before. He decided it had to be magic that made every breath so fragrant.
“Fucking demons,” Ethan mumbled under his breath as he whipped off his sunglasses. The damn place was so hard to find, he was late for check-in, and if there was one thing Ethan hated, it was being late.
His pack didn’t call him a tight-ass for nothing.
It might not be his favorite term of endearment, but it rang true. Tardiness was something he just couldn’t abide by. He took long and purposeful steps toward the high counter where a receptionist was fluttering off the ground. Her wings were flapping wildly behind her, keeping her up off the floor.
Her. Wings.
Ethan had never seen a fairy or pixie or whatever she was. A low-grade panic settled in his stomach. He was so out of his comfort zone that all he wanted to do was get the hell out of … well,Hell.
Maybe he was wrong, and hehadtraveled a long while. Maybe he was in Hell, after all. Who knew? Sure as shit, not him, nothing but a wolf shifter.
“Hey, there,” the flying creature said in a voice so chipper that Ethan was immediately suspicious of her. “Welcome to Hellscape Holiday Resort. How may I assist you? Oh, my name is Una, by the way.” She tapped her little name tag.
“Ethan Adair. I have a reservation.”
She flipped through a huge leather-bound book, letting her finger run down a few pages before she grinned up at him. He must have been way more exhausted than he thought because, for a moment, it sure seemed like the names on the page were moving around on the page.
“There you are. Oh, Mr. Adair, good for you. You booked the premium package! Good for you,” she repeated nervously. “You …”
Ethan couldn’t take it anymore. Dragons with wings, he could deal with. That made biological sense for the dragon. But this tiny woman had shining and almost translucent wings sticking out of her back. There were actual wing holes in the back of her bright red blazer to let the things out. Ethan shook his head, now completely sure that this plan was a terrible idea.
“Yeah, uh-huh. Thanks, there, Flappy, but if I could just get my room number and key.” He held out his hand while the other tapped the smooth and shiny countertop. A chant ofdon’t shifthummed in the back of his mind.
Just a little bit of a shift to show this flying thing we can, his wolf tried to insist, but the flying Una giggled with glee. The sound was too high-pitched to be considered a laugh.
“Flappy?” the creature clapped her hands together, giggling more with absolute glee. “Oh, that’s a new one. I like it. I get it too! It’s because I’m here flying instead of standing. Clever, Mr. Adair. Very clever.” She dropped the key into his hand, and her features darkened, going from light and harmless to downright terrifying. “But call me Flappy one more time, Scooby Doo, and I’ll drain your spinal fluid faster than you can saysorry.” She opened her mouth in a smile, only it wasn’tactuallya sign of mirth. Una was showing him her mouth was full of tiny sharp fangs.