At this hour, only a few other patrons were seated inside, nails or talons or claws in the process of being filed and painted and whatever the Hel they did to them in there. But all of them kept glancing through the window. To him.

He’d already earned a glare from the teal-haired falcon shifter at the welcome counter, but she hadn’t dared come out to ask him to stop making her clients nervous and leave.

Bryce sat there, wholly ignoring him. Chatting and laughing with the female doing her nails.

It had taken Hunt a matter of moments to launch into the skies when Bryce had left her apartment. He’d trailed overhead, well aware of the morning commuters who would film him if he landed beside her in the middle of the street and wrapped his hands around her throat.

Her run took her fifteen blocks away, apparently. She had barely broken a sweat by the time she jogged up to the nail salon, her skintight athletic clothes damp with the misting rain, and threw him a look that warned him to stay outside.

That had been an hour ago. A full hour of drills and files and scissors being applied to her nails in a way that would make the Hind herself cringe. Pure torture.

Five minutes. Quinlan had five more fucking minutes, then he’d drag her out. Micah must have lost his mind—that was the only explanation for asking her to help, especially if she prioritized her nails over solving her friends’ murder.

He didn’t know why it came as a surprise. After all he’d seen, everyone he’d met and endured, this sort of shit should have ceased to bother him long ago.

Someone with Quinlan’s looks would become accustomed to the doors that face and body of hers opened without so much as a squeak of protest. Being half-human had some disadvantages, yes—a lot of them, if he was being honest about the state of the world. But she’d done well. Really fucking well, if that apartment was any indication.

The draki female set aside the bottle and flicked her claw-tipped fingers over Bryce’s nails. Magic sparked, Bryce’s ponytail shifting as if a dry wind had blown by.

Like that of the Valbaran Fae, draki magic skewed toward flame and wind. In the northern climes of Pangera, though, he’d met draki and Fae whose power could summon water, rain, mist—element-based magic. But even among the reclusive draki and the Fae, no one bore lightning. He knew, because he’d looked—desperate in his youth for anyone who might teach him how to control it. He’d had to teach himself in the end.

Bryce examined her nails, and smiled. And then hugged the female. Fucking hugged her. Like she was some sort of gods-damned war hero for the job she’d done.