The Watcher At The End Of The Finish Line

Sylvie POV

“Zarek Nox is here.”

The whisper moved through the crowd just the way bad news does, moving from person to person until the whole room knew what was happening without anyone actually saying it loud.

My breath caught as the intense aura from whoever just walked in shifted the energy at the VIP entrance. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who noticed. It was like his wolf could reach out and slaughter anyone in less than a second if he wanted to. Conversations dropped mid-sentence, laughter cut off, people who were chattering all night, making my job difficult went still.

I looked up from my tablet.

He came through the entrance with a small group. Four, maybe five people, all of them surrounding him as they moved like currents around him. He was tall, dark and built in a way that definitely didn't look like it came from an I-fitness gym membership

The crowd parted immediately, everyone avoiding eye contact with him.

He reached the front of the line, his wrist reaching for my line of sight without him looking at me. I scanned it and the tablet beeped.

“Zarek Nox.” The name registered on the tablet.

He looked up finally, his gaze locking with mine for a moment.

I have worked enough doors, enough events, enough rooms full of people who think their time is worth more than yours, to know exactly when someone is making a decision about me. 

"Thanks," he said, dropping his gaze and walking in.

I went back to the list, to check wristbands.

I didn't think about him or what just happened, that kind of man, those kind of people, they are trouble. I had grown up close to someone like that. I knew what it cost the people around them. My brother Cole had not been rich or powerful, but he had been the kind of person other people organised themselves around, and in the end it had gotten him killed in a city I'd never been to, over something I still didn't fully understand.

People like that controlled the rooms they walked into and I had learned to avoid them at all cost.

One of the reasons I'm living and doing a temporary job in a town were nobody knew shit about me, not even my name.

I checked the last few names, and avoided doing anything about the fact that people on the line began to file back to the regular section of the event.

It wasn't my problem, I had done my job.

Four hours of work and not one person had asked me anything beyond whether their name was on the list, nobody had tried to make conversation or offer to get me a drink or asked how long I'd been doing this or even said anything that required me to come up with an answer with any real information in it.

I loved this job.

My boss had told me to hand in the tablet and head to the side exit by eleven. It was eleven fifteen and I was in a dark corner of the warehouse watching a car I had absolutely no business betting on tear itself apart on the track.

The races were something, I'd give them that. Underground circuits look nothing like what you see on television, no barriers, no commentary, no crowd control, just bodies pressed together around a track carved out of industrial concrete, money changing hands in cash and the sound of a high-performance engine that's being pushed past what it was designed to survive.

The car I'd bet on, number forty-three, matte black, which I had chosen based entirely on a feeling that turned out to be nothing more than wishful thinking came third, then fourth, then it blew a component somewhere in the rear and pulled off the track in a way that screamed clearly that it would not be coming back.

Fifty pounds, gone to waste like that. Just exactly how my luck had always been. 

I turned off my tablet, tucked it under my arm, and started toward the side exit. The crowd was thinning since the race was over, it was time to be gone before my supervisor remembered I existed.

I was almost at the door when two men stepped in my front, obstructing my path.

I went left, one of them moved with me, I dived right and the other one followed.

“Uhm…do I know you?” I asked, pretty sure they didn't since I had spent the last few years erasing anything that connected me back to my past, meaning I was a ghost as far as I knew.

“Something feels wrong about these people.” Sable, my wolf spoke for the first time all evening.

“They are probably just a bunch of perverts.” I responded, taking a step back to escape the proximity.

"Ain't ya Cole's sister," one of them said, a sly smile tugging at his lips.

I paused for a moment, my eyes widening as my heart skipped multiple beats at once.

I hadn't heard that name from anyone's mouth in a while.

I had been in Velthorn City for three weeks. Before that, Edinburgh, before that, a town in the midlands. I had arrived here with nothing connecting me to anything that I had left behind. No social media, no address, no contacts kept, nobody who knew that I had a brother once.

I had been so careful. I was always so careful.

So how's this possible?

Unless…unless the clean slate had never been actually been clean after all.

Someone had been looking, and they had looked long enough to find me.

I didn't move, I didn't speak. I just stood between them with the tablet under my arm as my heart threatened to burst out of my ribs.

The taller one opened his mouth again.

A voice came from somewhere behind. I didn't catch what it said, but whatever it was, it just saved me.

Both men's eyes moved past me, as they took a step back, then another, until they were gone, folding back into the thinning crowd without sparing another glance at me, 

I turned around.

Zarek Nox was standing close enough that I should have heard him approach but somehow I didn't, even the intense presence from earlier wasn't there anymore.

He looked down at me the same way he had at the entrance.

"You should come with me."