by Ivy Asher
Oh well, at least the prison decided to feed me today. That’s something.
Sitting down on my cot, I bust out some of the food she gave me and have myself a prison picnic for one. The food is delicious. The company kinda sucks though.
I’m sleeping heavily, dreaming about fucking multiple men at one time, all of them faceless, and none of them with a lick of cockatrice to them. Boring brown hair and no tails to speak of, they’re giving me mediocre sex and subpar orgasms, and they’re nothing at all like that asshole prison guard of whom I now no longer speak.
“Sunrise.”
I frown in my sleep as one of the Average Joes stops thrusting into me as he says that word.
“Sunrise,” he says again, but his moving lips don’t line up with the voice, so it’s like a bad Japanese voice-over movie.
“Stop talking,” I grumble, my jaw feeling heavy, though it has nothing to do with the dream-threesome I just had, unfortunately.
“Sunrise.”
Great, now it’s the other faceless dude saying it. What, are they stuck on repeat?
“There is no damn sunrise! I know that, because you can’t see the goddamn sun in this goddamn dark, depressing cell!” I tell them, hoping they’ll all just shut up and let me get back to the unexceptional fornication.
“Sunrise!”
“Fuck! What?” I jolt awake at my own yelling and blink wide-eyed at Rook who’s standing over me. The haziness of the dream exits the recesses of my memory as I take in the stupid prison guard who’s finally deemed me worthy enough to grace me with his appearance in my cell.
Narrowing my eyes, I turn over on my cot, giving him the cold shoulder. Literally. My shoulder is freaking freezing in this dank cell because I refused to use the blanket he brought me. A stupid refusal in hindsight, because this place is super drafty, but I was feeling prickly.
I feel his weight settle on the cot behind me and the iron frame creaks. “Hey,” he says, settling a hand on my hip. My blood boils at the contact, and my tail testily slaps his hand and then flicks it away from my body. “Are you okay?”
“I’m dandy,” I reply, monotone. “Now go away. I’m sleeping.”
I hear him sigh. “Look, I’m sorry it took me a bit to come back here. Things have been crazy.”
My blood pressure rises faster than a sixty-something Texan with an affinity for red meat and arguments. “A bit?” I repeat, turning back around and then fluidly sitting up so I can scoot back and face him head-on. “It hasn’t been a bit,” I mock. “You’ve been gone for five fucking days!”
My screech is so loud and unexpected that Rook cringes back slightly. He has the audacity to look all hot and scruffy, his hair messy and somehow still perfect. He tries to reach for me. “I’m sorry, Sunrise.”
“Don’t Sunrise me!” I snap, getting to my feet to put some much needed distance between us. I don’t want him to touch me. I can’t trust my body not to react if he touches me, and I don’t want that.
I cross my arms in front of myself. “Do all your conquests get a shower? Or was that just a way to appease me?”
He frowns, getting to his feet. I try not to notice how sexy he looks or the fact that he switched out his name tag back to his regular one. He ruined the game between us by being such an ass.
“Conquests?” he repeats.
“Mm-hmm. Let me see your belt.”
The line between his brows deepens. “What?”
“Your belt. I wanna see if you have a new notch in it.”
His confusion turns to anger in a flash. “What the fuck is your problem? I told you I was sorry. I couldn’t get back here!” he shouts, his rumbling voice knocking against the small space of the room. “You’re not some fucking conquest, Sinclair.”
“Sure,” I say calmly, my face derisive. “Can I get a shower or not? Preferably before your little guard friends call you for another bullshit Operation Black Block.”
Irritation traces the edges of his hardened face, and he stalks toward me. I don’t move, because I won’t give him the satisfaction of cowering or running from him.
“You think real highly of me, don’t you?” he asks, his face a mask of anger.
“That would imply that I think of you at all. I don’t,” I reply with a cutting whip. “You were a good fuck; I’ll give you that. But now that’s over, which you clearly demonstrated by leaving me down here to rot in your crusty cum and silent absence. Thank fuck the prison fed me, or I would’ve run out of food.”
His eyes flash with remorse, but I ignore it.
“Did you and all your guard buddies laugh your asses off?”
His face grows stormy as his mouth tightens. “Stop saying this shit, Sinclair. It wasn’t like that. I’m not fucking like that.”
I shrug. “Whatever. I don’t care,” I say dismissively. “Now, unless you’re giving me food or taking me to the shower, get out.”
Rook runs a hand down his face and glances around, like he’s looking for a way to make it out of this mess. “Look, Sunrise—”
“Don’t call me that.”
He clenches his teeth. “I can’t get you into the showers today, but I’ll come back tomorrow, and—”
“Save it,” I snap, interrupting him. “I’ve heard your I’ll come back tomorrow bullshit.”
“It wasn’t bullshit,” he seethes.
“Mm-hmm,” I say, keeping my tone unaffected and bored as I walk around him and head back to the corner of the room. I pick up my pipe and start digging again, just to give myself an excuse not to look at him.
“Sinclair.”
I ignore him, scraping the pipe along the rock, making dust and rubble fall at my feet like the crumbles of my stupid heart.
“Sinclair,” he tries again, but I just dig harder, making the screech of the pipe drown out his stupid, rumbly voice. “Just... Fuck,” he curses, before he turns and storms out of my cell, slamming the door behind him.
I keep digging long after he’s gone, my movements jerky and irritated. “Andy Dufresne never had to deal with this shit,” I mumble to myself, hating the heat I feel in my eyes. Nope. I will absolutely not have any emotion whatsoever about what just happened. I will not, under any circumstances, feel sad.
Fuck him.
And fuck me too for falling for it.
I growl, pissed off and needing to purge it as I slam the pipe down hard into the divot I’ve created in the wall. I use way too much force and must hit something super hard because the tip of the pipe skips away and somehow arcs over and slices deeply into my thigh. It hurts, and I grit my teeth against the pain. Blood immediately pools and quickly spills over my thigh. I try to pant through the stinging sensation and the tears that well up in my eyes.
“Fuck!” I shout, angrily chucking the pipe across the room. It bounces off the wall with a clang and then comes flying back at me.
Shit!
I dive to avoid getting impaled, and glare at the pipe as it clatters to the floor and rolls to the corner for a time out.
“I made you what you are today, and this is how you repay me?” I yell at it.
I hobble over to the blanket and press it against the cut on my leg. Like me, the blanket isn’t the nicest smelling thing anymore, but I scoff and shake my head. Who cares? I probably just got tetanus or fucking Ebola from the pipe. What’s a little blanket bacteria to add to the mix?
Blood soaks through the folds of the blanket quicker than I’d like, and I pack more against the wound and apply harder pressure. Fuck, that hurts.
I sit, angry, frustrated, and stewing in pain of the emotional and physical variety. What if I bleed to death in here? Iron isn’t good for shifters. It fucks with our natural healing properties, so who knows how much this thing will bleed?
I wonder how long it would take for anyone to find me if I did bleed out? Maybe my new food delivery friend, Selena, will be by to bring me some more stale cookies and find me in a puddle of my own rusted blood. Knowing me, my death-sprawl will probably be really embarrassi
ng. I won’t be a pretty corpse, I just know it. I’ll be the cadaver with the drool hanging out of her mouth and a piss stain on her pants.
Sigh.
Continuing to dramatically think of my imminent death-by-plumbing-pipe, I stare up at the blinking fluorescent light, wishing I could just see outside. I need to feel fresh air on my face and smell things besides rotten desire and BO. At first, solitary confinement didn’t bother me, but I’m starting to go stir crazy now.
Lifting the blood-soaked blanket, I look at the cut on my thigh, noting that it sort of looks like the bleeding might be slowing down. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. I quickly tear long strips from the blanket of assholish origin—which is what I will now call it—and wrap the strips against my wound, tying it off tightly. I do that a couple more times until it feels pretty secure, and then I pull a knee up. I rest my elbow and forehead on my knee, and I just let my mind wander. It lands on Rook, but I flick the spinner away, trying to land on something else. Something pleasant. But my mat and pat come up next, so I flick them away angrily, only to land on Alpha Bowen next. Fuck you, mind spinner. Those are all terrible topics.
I need to get out of this cell.
I must doze off sometime between not thinking about one shitty person or another, because the next thing I know, a loud clang jerks me awake.
I pull my head up, alarmed, and swipe stringy orange hair away from my face. The door to my cell opens, and it takes my eyes a second to wake up and blur together who it is. I huff and look away from Rook, wiping the drool from my cheek and chin.
My head hurts, my body is sore from the weird ass position I fell asleep in, and I just know that there’s an embarrassing red mark on my face from where my head was pillowed against my arm. I blink, ready to steel myself with irritation that he woke me up and found me like this, but...I feel weird. I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off, but it’s so dry that I can’t seem to make my tongue work, and I’m a little dizzy.
“I said I would come back today, and I did. Sinclair, please don’t be—” He pauses, stopping in his tracks. “What the hell? Why are you bleeding?” he demands, his nose flaring as he takes in the scene.
A bag of something drops to the ground, and suddenly Rook is down on the hard floor next to me, his hands cupping my face. “What happened?”
He looks down at my leg, and I follow his gaze. The bandages that I wrapped around my cut are soaked in crimson, and there’s a drying puddle of my blood next to my leg.
Did he say today? Damn, how long did I pass out for?
“Did you do this?” Rook asks, and I have just enough wherewithal to roll my eyes at him.
I close my mouth and open it again to speak, but it’s as dry as the Sahara, and I croak more than talk. “You clearly think a little too highly of yourself,” I tell him, my voice all sand and gravel. “It was a tunnel-digging accident,” I explain, oddly out of breath.
What the hell is wrong with me?
His lips press into a thin line. “Come on, we need to get you looked at. Everything in this fucking prison is toxic, and you’ve lost way too much blood.” Rook scoops me up off the floor with minimal effort, and I’m impressed and pissed at the same time. I gather all the waning strength that I have and try to push out of his arms. I don’t budge an inch.
“You are not taking me back to that doctor. She’s a fucking psycho, Rook. Promise me you won’t take me there.” The words feel like glass in my throat as I utter them, but my eyes plead for him to listen.
He studies me for a second, and I can see the debate in his gaze. I shake my head no, and he exhales a defeated breath. “Fine. I won’t take you there, Sun—” he starts, but I glare at him, not wanting to hear the nickname that’s now tainted with disappointment and loneliness. “Sinclair,” he corrects. “But you need help, which means I’m going to have to patch you up. Can you stop hating me long enough for me to do that?”
I tilt my head yes, and then despite myself, rest my head against his shoulder as he starts to carry me out of the cell. He moves so fast that I almost feel like I have motion sickness. I close my eyes to help combat it, but that just makes it feel worse. My leg throbs angrily, and I have a serious crick in my neck from sleeping on my elbow and knee for so long. I meant to take a little rest, not lose a whole day.
When I open my eyes again, Rook is carrying me into a large, clean, white-tiled bathroom, with several private shower stalls. It’s too nice to be a block bathroom, but I can’t imagine he would have taken me to the guards’ locker room either.
Rook looks down at me, and he must see the questions in my eyes. “It’s a new addition to Nightmare Penitentiary. It’s going to house more criminals of the white collar variety,” he explains in answer to my unvoiced question.
I look around again with that new information rolling around my mind. Figures. If you’re white collar, then you’re used to certain perks and privileges. Why should prison be any different? I suddenly want to smear ogre blood all over it. Let them bathe privately in the smell of cat piss while their lawyers get them out on technicalities and they laugh smugly together about all the shit they get away with.
Rook sets me down on a cool tiled bench, and he pulls his support away slowly, like he’s expecting me to fall. Psh, I’m not some weak ass. I totally don’t need his help to—whoops! That ground sure is tilting funny.
Rook catches me before I can face-plant, and he sets me upright again. I roll my eyes at the worried look in his gaze. I obviously would’ve stopped myself from falling...or the floor would have caught me. Either way, it would’ve been fine. He’s overreacting.
When he watches me for several seconds and I don’t tip over again, Rook disappears into a stall and turns on the water. He’s back in a flash, kneeling in front of me, and I wonder if I just blacked out again or if he really moved that quickly. He carefully unties the knots in the makeshift bandages around my leg and unwraps the torn pieces of the dirty blanket of assholish origin. The fabric sticks to the cut like it tried to meld together and become one. He pulls the strips of fabric away, making me hiss in pain, and the edges of my cut come up too, like they’re trying to keep the fabric from leaving. It’s like watching two lovers being torn apart; hurts like it too.
As soon as he gets the bandages off, my leg immediately starts to bleed again. I watch the tracks of blood slip down my thigh, and I can’t help but feel like it’s mourning the loss of the bandages. I stare at it for another beat before fingers snap in my line of sight, and I’m pulled from my weird ass thoughts.
The snapping fingers lead back to Rook, and I focus on him. “I need to go get some things for your leg. That iron must’ve been laced with something. It’s fucking up your healing. I think you’re hypothermic too, Sun—I mean, Sinclair, so I’m going to sit you in the hot water, and you should start to feel better in just a couple minutes. Our cockatrices bounce back pretty quickly, but I don’t know how long you’ve been like this…” Rook trails off, and I can see anger and frustration etched in his expression as he speaks.
“Just sit and get warmed up, okay? I’ll be right back,” he stares at me for a moment, but I don’t react. My thoughts are muddy and thick.
With a troubled exhale, he pulls my oversized gray shirt over my head and picks me up before carrying me into the steam soaked stall. The hot water hits my bare skin, and I hiss and shy away from the heat.
Rook tenderly shushes me as I whimper. “You need this, Sinclair. I know it feels too hot right now, but just give it a couple minutes, and then it won’t feel hot enough, I promise.”
He sets me down on the warm tiles, and a waterfall of heat envelops me. I rest my head back against the tile, and Rook watches me to make sure I’m okay for a minute before running out. I can hear his boots squeaking against the pristine white tile, and then all I hear is the water falling from the showerhead to patter against the floor and flow down the drain.
After a couple minutes of the scorching water raining down on me, I realize th
at my body stops trembling. I didn’t even know I’d been shaking. Slowly, the hot deluge brings me back to life like some magical potion. My brain slowly feels like it’s clearing up, and the scorching water rinses out the gash in my leg, helping to clean out whatever iron-rusted muck was in there. A steady stream of red swirls down the drain, but it’s no longer dirty, and it already looks and feels better. Things around me start to seem more in focus.
Just like Rook said, the hot water soon doesn’t feel like it’s burning me alive anymore. As my temperature regulates, I find that I need it to be even hotter. I look down at my cut and the water flushing it out. I reach up and turn the dial all the way to red. The water instantly gets hotter, and I sigh at how good it feels.
Cockatrices can have trouble regulating their temperatures sometimes. It’s not an issue really when it comes to the heat, but when it comes to the cold, we can catch hypothermia very quickly. I can’t believe I didn’t notice the signs. Stupid, cold-ass, lizard-killing solitary confinement cell.
I scoot more directly under the shower spray and moan.
Fuck, that feels good.
The sound of my satisfaction echoes around the tiled bathroom, and I feel wrapped up and cocooned by it. I feel like me again, washed clear of my injury and sex session.
As I start to rinse out my tangled hair, the sound of squeaky boots on tile bounces off the walls, alerting me that Rook is back with whatever he left to get. I suddenly feel unsure and vulnerable. I don’t know how I feel about him being here, taking care of me.
I’m grateful that he found me and knew how to help without taking me back to the creepy Dr. Brina, but it doesn’t excuse his abandoning me for the last five days…or six.
Dark blue pants appear to the left of the wall, and Rook moves closer. When he turns the corner and sees me, a flash of relief moves over his features. “Oh good, you turned up the heat. How are you feeling?”
“Better,” I answer as he kneels down to get closer to eye-level with me. “It got weird there for a second. My cut and bandages were having a full Romeo and Juliet moment, but I’m normal again.”