Conveniently Convicted

by Ivy Asher

  I look over and see him and two others looking at the mock-up journal I made for myself. I have to keep myself occupied in my cell, so I’ve taken to writing in a journal about my days. Since I don’t have a notebook, I take extra napkins from the cafeteria and use those to write on. I even bind them together with a piece of pink thread. I thought it looked fun, and I liked adding a napkin every day, but to see them flipping through my personal words and laughing...my jaw clenches and my face burns.

  “That’s mine!” I snap.

  Everyone ignores me.

  “Ooh, she talks about fuckin’ some guard in here!” he says as he continues to flip through it, his eyes lighting up in leering excitement. “You think she calls him Glow Worm because he has a worm for a dick?” he asks, and the guards all laugh.

  “If you’re happy to fuck a worm, just wait until you see my snake,” another guard calls out, and acid crawls up the back of my throat.

  Humiliated tears burn the skin of my cheeks, and I can feel Rook’s eyes on me, but I don’t look at him.

  “Whore,” Sandbag says, nudging me with his boot and laughing when I wince. “I think we’re done here. Let’s go.”

  I listen as the guards move out, bringing my destroyed paraphernalia with them. I stay on the floor, not daring to move until I hear my cell door slam shut.

  Peeking past wet lashes, I see Rook looking at me from the other side of the bars. A turquoise gaze filled with agonized guilt meets me, but I look away and bury my head in the crook of my elbow.

  He...didn’t help me.

  He just stood there and watched as the Warden threatened me. As the guards wrecked my entire room. As Sandbag kicked me. Spat on me. As they mocked my words that I’d written about him, then left me on the floor like a beaten dog.

  And Rook didn’t do a damn thing.

  A sob wrenches out of me, smothered into the skin of my arm.

  I don’t move until I hear his footsteps turning and fading down the hall, following the rest of the guards.

  Gingerly sitting up, I nearly start retching again as the pain in my stomach and side rears up. With a grimace, I manage to pull myself to my feet and look around my disaster of a cell.

  There’s broken glass and plastic, the last remains of my TV and fridge that are now gone. My mattress, beanbag, and pillows are gone too, leaving only one shredded blanket behind. Even my bedazzled underwear are in ruins.

  Hiccupping another sob, I yank the blanket and wrap it around me, before burrowing into the corner of the cell where I bury myself beneath the cover and close my eyes, wishing that I could wake up and this would have all been a shitty dream.

  Because all of this—the humiliation, the punishment, the physical blows—it doesn’t hurt anywhere near as much as it did to have the male I care about just stand by and watch it all happen.

  A tear drips unhindered down my cheek as I lie and stare at nothing.

  My thoughts are chaos, and instead of focusing on any of them, I float in the white noise of my mind. I’ve spent hours playing judge, jury, and executioner over what happened. It’s all Alpha Bowen’s fault. If he hadn’t put a price on my freedom or sent me all the shit I didn’t ask for, I wouldn’t be in this mess.

  The problem with that line of thinking is that it doesn’t change the fact that I am in this mess and that Rook just stood there.

  He couldn’t help, part of me argues again. If they knew what we were doing, he’d be fired. Probably punished. Better for him to stand there and for us to be able to see each other again than for him to be gone. I’ve defended and prosecuted him over and over again in my mind, but it all makes no difference to my heart.

  I hurt.

  And not just because my knight in shining armor didn’t get the memo that that’s what he’s supposed to be. But because it wasn’t just my TV, fridge, and ribs that got shattered, it was also my belief that all of this would work out.

  I came here thinking that this would be the safest place for me, but I’ll spend the next eight months here...and for what? I’m not out of reach the way I thought I was. Alpha Bowen hasn’t given up. My situation in Nightmare Penitentiary just got a fuck ton worse. Zen is no longer here to help keep the wolves at bay. The guards are officially out for blood, and the Warden is ready to make my life a living hell.

  I finally get the whole nightmare part of Nightmare Penitentiary. And doing something to extend my sentence here like I originally planned means figuring out how to survive all of the bullshit even longer.

  No matter how I look at it, the future I wished I could have with Rook is impossible. We can’t be together in here, and Alpha Bowen will make sure that we can’t be together out there either. So maybe it’s a good thing that Rook just stood there, because I clearly needed a wakeup call. Like the Warden said, this is prison, not a vaycay spot.

  Another tear spills down my cheek. It free falls to the ground, just to be slowly replaced by another. I’ve accepted my reality, but again, it makes no difference to my heart.

  “Inmate 11764, stand up and put your back to the wall.”

  Fear lances through me at those words, and I shove away the blanket I’ve cocooned myself with and painfully get to my feet. I press my back against the cinder block wall as my ribs and bruised stomach twinge in protest. I look over to find Sandbag staring at me with both disgust and a gleam of something that makes my skin crawl. His sandy-colored gaze runs down my body and then moves slowly back up my still bare legs.

  I suddenly wish I had a suit made of impenetrable metal, as a sick feeling settles in my gut about the thoughts currently swimming in his eyes. He leers at me for a second more, clearly enjoying me being a good little inmate as I keep my body plastered against the wall.

  With a smirk, he opens the cell door and walks into the room, and I tense, but he moves to a crumpled pile of gray fabric, picks it up, and then throws the pair of pants at me. I try not to show any relief, not wanting to provoke his inner sadist.

  “You have a visitor,” he snarls, and I quickly step into my pants and get dressed, ignoring the pain it causes to move so fast.

  I don’t argue. I don’t ask questions. I just silently move to follow him to the visitation room I’ve come to know so well. I didn’t think I’d get visitors when I first landed in here. Dinah swore she’d come visit, but I told her not to. I’d hoped that my parents wouldn’t find out where I was, and I didn’t want her accidentally leading them to me. I guess that was before I had to move up my timeline and improvise, though.

  Sandbag gestures for me to go first, and I’m even more leery of putting him at my back, but I don’t really have a choice. I keep alert for threats or any hint that I’m being taken somewhere else. For the first time since I started to serve my sentence, I’m relieved when we stop outside the door marked Visitor Room with the peephole hatch in it. Sandbag opens it, and I step into the room and find a very angry looking mat staring at me from the other side of the plexiglass.

  Sandbag shoves me further into the room, deciding I’m not moving fast enough for him, and slams the door shut behind me. I wonder if mat will give him a bonus for roughing me up. Probably.

  I sit gingerly in the metal chair and try not to wince when I reach over for the phone receiver, though my entire side feels like it’s on fire.

  My mat already has her handset gripped in a white knuckle hold and pressed to her ear. I barely pick mine up before she’s growling hate and anger at me through the line.

  “You had no right to spread lounge business around the way you did!” she screeches at me. “You are not the matriarch, and you don’t know what’s best for my people!”

  Ah, so she found out. Well, fuck her. I’m not in the mood.

  “No,” I growl back. “You don’t know what’s best for the people. Look at what you’ve done. Look what your vanity and thirst for power has done! You single-handedly took down one of the strongest lounges, and for what?” I scream at her, furious tears joining the heartbroken ones on my cheeks. “Ou
t of spite? Because some alpha said he didn’t like your hair? Or worse, did he disagree with you, mother?” I demand. “You were prideful and stupid. You inherited a whole new lounge and a mountain of debt with it that you had no hopes of paying off.”

  She opens her mouth to let me have it, but I’m done taking her shit. “The lounge didn’t even know they should be watching each other’s backs and protecting themselves. All because you’re too selfish to warn them that there was a threat. What kind of leader are you? You should be ripped apart for your incompetence,” I seethe at her, and for the third time in my life, I see my mom smile.

  She stands up and leans toward the plexiglass, and I mirror the movement.

  “Well, too bad that you’re in there and not out here to challenge me, little girl,” she declares, her eyes filled with venom and her words filled with hate. “You won’t be there to protect all your little gossiping, disloyal friends. How well do you think people like Cena, Mack, and Stur will be able to survive out in the world after they’ve been exiled and declared rogue?” she taunts, and my face drains of color.

  I look at the sick smirk spread across her thinning lips, and all I see is an evil, vindictive, power-hungry bitch. She wants me to beg her not to do that. She wants me to promise to be good and to go to Alpha Bowen when I get out of here and fix all of her problems for her. But I know her. She’ll exile everyone anyway. Nothing I do now other than killing her will change their fate.

  I shake my head at her, and a new plan clicks into place. I came here to escape until everything blew over and Alpha Bowen got bored of me. I scoff humorlessly. Rook was right. I was a coward. But that’s all going to change.

  I stare at my mat’s crazed green eyes, and I know exactly what I need to do when I get out of Nightmare Penitentiary. I need to take her out.

  And what better place to learn all the ways to make that happen than prison? Yeah, Zen and her protection is gone, and I need to watch myself around the guards. A life with Rook is still impossible, but I knew shit in here wouldn’t be all Pop Rocks and meatloaf. I can do this. I can get fiercer and stronger and more brutal. I can become exactly what I need to become to take my lounge from my mat and finally lead and protect them the way they’ve always deserved.

  A determined smile creeps across my face. “I’m coming for you,” I tell her, and then I hang up the handset on my side and turn, giving her my back.

  For the second time in my visitor history, my mat loses her shit and attacks the thick bulletproof—and probably magic-proof—barrier between us. I hear her claws raking down the glass as she goes into an enraged partial shift, and I revel in the fact that I got under skin.

  I mentally start switching up my plans and think of ways I can reach my goals in the next eight months as I bang on the door and Sandbag opens it. His eyes lift over my shoulder at my hissy-fit throwing mat, and he speaks into his walkie-talkie to get people to go handle her instead of forcing me to stay and deal with her vitriol. He gestures me out of the room and motions for me to lead the way.

  I move in the direction my cell block is located, but I get a kick to the back of my knee for that directional guess. Stumbling forward with a yelp, I turn to glare at Sandbag, but when I turn, his hand comes down against my cheek, snapping my head to the side.

  “Wrong fucking way!” he barks, his slap causing a ringing in my ears.

  I taste blood in my mouth, and I tongue the inside of my cheek where I accidentally bit it. Swallowing down my anger, I look in the other direction. There are only two options in this particular hallway—left to my cell block and right to...who the fuck knows where.

  I turn right, ignoring my screaming instincts. My beast wants me to let loose and fight this fucker, but I can’t. He would just fuck with me even more, and I don’t need another reason for the Warden to pay me a visit.

  I tell myself that the hallways here are well-lit and monitored. If it looks like Sandbag is taking me somewhere he can get away with hurting me, then I’ll fight and deal with the consequences. Until then, I’ll endure the kicks and hits and hope that I’m being escorted somewhere safe.

  Four knee kicks, two dead arms and a baton slap to the thigh later, I’m stopped at a gray metal door with no distinctive identifiers on it that could clue me in on where the hell I might be. I can hear the faint chatter of people on the other side, and my stomach tangles into knots. Are the voices on the other side friend or foe? Sandbag knocks twice and then waits.

  The door opens, and I see the Warden standing there. His eyes sweep over me dismissively, and he gives Sandbag a nod. “Cuff her.”

  Panic builds in my chest, and my arms are wrenched up and my wrists slapped with heavy handcuffs before I’m turned and shoved into the room. I look around and see a very ordinary space with a conference table set in the very center. People are sitting around the table, and their voices of quiet conversation dry up the moment they see me enter. Everyone is a stranger to me, but they’re all paranormals dressed in business suits.

  The door is closed, thankfully leaving Sandbag outside, and the Warden motions for me to head to the empty chair at the end of the table. “Take a seat.”

  With no idea what the hell is happening, I do as I’m told, the chain connecting my wrists jangling as I move. Sitting down, I leave my hands in my lap, my eyes skating over every face in the room. There are eight people, and I pick up the scent of a vampire, shifters, a few elementals, fae, and something else I can’t quite put my finger on.

  The person presiding over the group seems to be the male vampire sitting directly across from me. He gathers some papers in his hands and straightens them as I take a seat. “Sinclair Denali, this is your parole hearing.”

  My brow furrows. “Parole?”

  He nods. “Yes. You’re eligible for early release. We’re here to discuss the particulars of it being granted.”

  My heart suddenly starts pounding in my chest so hard that I know the vampire can sense it. His eyes flash at all the blood zooming through my veins, but my mind is whirling. Early release?

  I...I’m not ready. Not yet. I need time to figure out this shit with my mat. Now that I know I’m going to fight her for the lounge, I have to be smart about it and prepare, or I have no doubt she’ll kill me. And Alpha Bowen...I still have to deal with him too.

  “I don’t understand,” I admit, shaking my head. “How am I eligible?”

  A middle-aged male wolf shifter answers. “Quite frankly, Miss Denali, Nightmare Penitentiary is overcrowded as it is, and we have much bigger fish to fry. You’ve committed minor, non-violent crimes,” he scoffs. “I don’t know how the prosecutor got away with calling a kiss assault or a glitter bomb assault with a deadly weapon, but it is what it is,” he says with a roll of his eyes. I nod emphatically, like, right?! Calling my kiss an assault was seriously overexaggerating.

  “Anyway, the point is that the parole board believes adding the time you served in the human jail to the time you served here means you’re eligible to be released now. We feel you will be better suited to serve out the remainder of your sentence outside of Nightmare Penitentiary on parole with mandatory counseling.”

  “What he means is, we need the cell space for criminals worse than you,” another shifter adds drily.

  I have the vague sense that I should be offended for not seeming like a good enough criminal, but I wisely keep my mouth shut.

  “Correct,” the vampire says, calling everyone’s attention back to him. “We have a letter here from the prosecuting judge with his recommendations for early release with a probationary period of your remaining sentence, plus two years. We also have letters from several prison guards that speak of your good behavior.”

  Good behavior? What the fuck?

  My eyes fly over to the Warden.

  “Yes, the Warden has also put in his statement recommending your early release.”

  The shadows shift around the male where he stands, and he nods in my direction with a creepy as fuck grin. “Like I s
aid, I want you out of my prison,” he states, echoing his earlier words to me.

  He wanted me out of his prison, so he decided to give me early release? This fucker knew my initial plan was to stay for as long as possible. He played dirty.

  I’m so caught off guard by this turn of events that I’m not even sure how I feel about it. On one hand, I’m relieved to be getting out now that I know I have to face shit. It also means I can get away from the guards and the Warden. But on the other hand...I haven’t prepared for facing my mat or Alpha Bowen. And Rook...I’ll be leaving Rook behind for good. My heart squeezes painfully. I’m not ready. I’m not nearly ready yet for anything.

  “But...I knocked over some guards while I was in my cockatrice form,” I argue. “I made illegal paraphernalia and weapons for other inmates. I should definitely be serving out more of my sentence here. Really make sure I learn my lesson,” I blurt, scrambling at straws.

  “Sporks and Jolly Ranchers don’t count as weapons,” the Warden drawls, rolling his eyes. “Child’s play compared to the real criminals in the deeper recesses of Nightmare Penitentiary.”

  “But...I went to solitary confinement,” I point out. “How can I be commended for my good behavior when I was sent there?”

  The Warden’s scowl deepens, and his shadows thicken. I automatically cower in my seat. I probably shouldn’t be fighting this, especially not to the Warden’s face, but this is happening way too fucking fast, dammit!

  “Everyone gets sent to solitary. It’s a good learning tool for inmates.”

  He’s good. He’s very good.

  I look back at the people around the table. “I’m totally up for being released early...but, like, in a month. I vote for that. I get a vote, right?”

  Everyone frowns at me. I guess this isn’t the normal reaction for a prisoner earning early release.

  The vampire clears his throat. “No, you don’t get a vote,” he says somewhat scathingly. He looks around the table. “All in favor?” he asks, and he’s met with every single hand being raised in the air. “Good.” His eyes land back on me. “The parole board has officially decided to grant you early release, Sinclair Denali. You’re to report to the Warden’s office to gather your things, and then you’re dismissed. You’ll have to meet up with a parole officer every week, and you have some other conditions to your parole like counseling, but aside from that, your time is done here at Nightmare Penitentiary.”