by Rhea Watson
I had nothing here.
“Well, I intend to survive this shithole, no matter what it throws at me,” Elijah insisted, and our eyes locked as he said, “if that means anything.”
Fighting with the lump in my throat, a sudden rush of feeling throwing me for a loop, I nodded.
“Yeah,” I croaked. Somehow, his sentiment bolstered me—gave me courage in the darkness. “It does.”
With that, we got back to work, rolling dough balls in the bakery’s brutal heat. Strangely unified, this dragon and I, we stood together at that table for hours and hours, until I couldn’t stand anymore, my feet aching, my knees crackly, my lower back begging for relief…
But my spirit just a little stronger.
9
Katja
“Okay, I’ll deal the next hand…”
“You sure about that?”
I shot Rafe a narrowed look as I gathered the deck to me, smoothing cards across the table and organizing them into a neat pile. We had just finished our thousandth round of gin rummy, and frankly I would have killed to be back in the bakery. But work shifts only lasted so long—and stuck in the cellblock, the library cart’s arrival still a few days away, there really wasn’t a hell of a lot to do.
Unless you were in Deimos’s posse.
Then there were games and groveling and shifting power dynamics to wade through, every day a new adventure in demonic mayhem. Fortunately, I had shifted my stance on being a part of a crew roughly a month ago.
Thirty days back to be precise.
Forty long ones since I’d woken up in the interrogation room, missing my skirt and my wand, terrified.
I was still terrified, but at least I had two less reasons to be afraid lately.
“Hey, we can’t all have a vampire’s dexterity,” I sneered when Rafe smirked. Across the table, Elijah watched the interaction with his chin on his fist, elbow planted on the table and a grin toying across his handsome mouth. One month after our first bakery shift together and I still blushed if we made extended eye contact, but no more than if Rafe and I accidentally knocked feet under the table or brushed hands on the way back to our cells.
Naturally, it was different with Rafe: he was just hot as hell. Gorgeous. Scrumptious. Beyond mouthwatering. I had a crush. Hard not to with a guy who looked like a brooding model capable of getting his hands dirty and reciting sonnets.
The connection wasn’t visceral with my neighbor—just physical. And probably one-sided. In all the time we spent together as a threesome, Rafe catered to Elijah and me, always volunteering to step back if we were in a situation that only allowed for a pair instead of a trio.
Not that he needed to often… Besides the occasional lingering glances across the cellblock during random spot checks, Elijah and I had done a great job ignoring the fact that we felt something—something unnatural but familiar, unwelcome but honest—in each other’s presence. He still set my body on fire. I’d never been so hot in all my life, wishing I could sleep naked at night but terrified of a guard bursting in for one stupid reason or another. It happened more times than I liked, and it was always over nothing. Hauled out of bed, we had all been forced to stand at the door for the better part of an hour while a few guards ripped our cells to pieces.
Somehow Deimos always came out of those instances smelling like roses despite being Xargi’s king of contraband, his empire slowly expanding to the smaller cellblocks. He’d even offered me a place by his side—with the implication that I would be equal to Constance, which meant offering new recruits blowjobs. Flattering. My response back then was a straight-as-an-arrow middle finger, and paired with a glowering dragon shifter and his vampire bestie as backup, Deimos had gone after easier targets in the last few weeks, only occasionally tossing lewd gestures my way if the guys weren’t around.
So, yeah. This was my life now. Almost every second of the day controlled by warlock guards. Two meals that seldom met standard nutritional requirements. Three to six shifts a week in the bakery, sometimes alone, sometimes with hours spent alongside Elijah, prepping dough and proofing it and baking buns so fresh and golden—buns that never made it to the inmate cafeteria. Where they disappeared to was anyone’s guess. We had caught the bakery guard munching on one once, so maybe the staff quarters, but we bakery drones made enough in a day to feed a small army, worked to the bone and exhausted come the late afternoon.
Well, I was exhausted. Elijah had shifter resilience to fall back on, which meant he usually picked up the slack by hour nine, neither of us allowed a break at any point. Unfortunately, sometimes I had to handle the workload alone if Elijah was scheduled in the metal shop.
Those days sucked especially hard.
“You know, if you held the deck like so—”
“Piss off, Rafe,” I warned in a singsong voice, fluttering my lashes at him. “I know how to shuffle a deck of cards.”
The vampire’s black brows shot up, the corners of his mouth twitching. “That remains to be seen.”
I sucked in and then let out a dramatic Darth Vader-esque breath, then dropped my voice to its lowest octave. “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”
The vampire rolled his aquamarine gaze. “Have you always been the world’s biggest dork, or is it a recent development?”
“Always and forever,” I remarked with a slight lift of my chin. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Elijah’s features shifting from wry amusement to outright affection. My belly looped and tightened, secretly thrilled with the way he watched me, but I did my best to ignore him; if I looked his way, even fleetingly, he would school his features like it had never happened.
Just as I started to deal the next hand, an alarm screamed bloody murder from the center of the cellblock’s conical ceiling. Almost instantaneously, the resident afternoon guards who liked to loiter all day and do absolutely nothing to combat Deimos’s douchebaggery hopped to like they were some elite militant squad. In rushed six additional guards, the scene painfully familiar, and I tossed the deck down with a huff.
The dramatics could only mean one thing: new prisoner incoming.
“On your feet, inmates,” one of the guards bellowed—a new warlock who I’d seen around the halls, stalking to and fro like he was lording over the scum of the supernatural world’s underbelly. Bald head, steely stare, a mouth that never smiled; the guy was a little much, even for Xargi. Wand at the ready, he leveled it at all nine of us, jerking from one inmate to the next. “At your posts!”
“Small dick complex, in the flesh,” Rafe mused, to which Elijah snorted. While our dragon companion meandered to the left, Rafe and I hurried right, headed to our neighboring cells together. Whether he was aware of it or not, the vampire always positioned himself between me and the other inmates, his hand hovering over my lower back. After weeks of the behavior, I still wasn’t sure why he did it—or who he did it for.
Elijah? The two were close, obvious friends who had each other’s backs. Elijah and I had some weird innate connection that, while neither of us had explored, had probably been shared with Rafe at some point.
Or did he do it for me? Was it purposeful or just instinctual for a man born almost six centuries ago to protect a defenseless woman?
And if it was the latter, should I be insulted?
I still couldn’t get a good read on him despite our bedtime chats on the nights when neither of us could nod off. We would lie together on the floor, whispering through the grimy, dusty, filthy little mousehole that connected our cells, talking about nothing important—and nothing to do with our old lives. Elijah and I had discussed the past here and there, but with Rafe, the conversation erred toward safe subjects.
Maybe he, like me, found talk of the outside world, of our lives before, depressing.
Elijah had a knack for drawing it out of me without either of us realizing, the conversation fluid and deep. With Rafe, sometimes I was too aware, and if I could help it, I steered clear of conversation topics that would bum us both out.
> Just like the day I’d first been ushered into Cellblock C, as soon as the guards had us standing beside our cells, the main door flew open, and in waltzed two processing guards dragging a new inmate between them. The alarms finally died down with his arrival, and I stood up on my toes to get a good look at him, even as my legs protested, my feet swollen and my lower back miserable after today’s bakery shift.
But…
My gods, this guy was worth the pain.
I had never been so instantly in lust with someone before. Dressed in green, Cellblock C’s newest arrival had a willowy figure, all lean limbs and elegant fingers. A dancer’s body—graceful but strong. Where Elijah was bulk and muscle and man, this one was subtle strength, his arms taut and corded with a physicality that had me drooling like I’d never seen a gorgeous man before—like I wasn’t already surrounded by them in this prison, day in and day out. Tanned skin, as if he spent all his time lolling around a yacht in the Mediterranean. Crowned by a crop of lush, thick, artfully tousled cinnamon-brown hair, the new inmate’s bright green gaze flitted around the cellblock, bouncing from one super to another before pausing on Rafe, then sliding over and lingering on me.
His stare might not have set me on fire, but it certainly made my knees weak.
A sculpted jaw. Cheekbones that could cut diamonds. Just the right amount of scruff.
This guy was what wet dreams were made of—excluding all the bruises. The busted lip. The black eye. A dribble of dried blood under each nostril. While I recalled being manhandled during processing, I had let it happen, too shell-shocked to fight. Apparently not everyone put up with it. Apparently some of us had a backbone.
Gorgeous and brave. Nice.
As the processing guards steered McHottie toward the last empty cell in the block, one situated between Helen and Constance, I glanced Rafe’s way and found him glowering at the new arrival. A soft clearing of my throat had his eyes darting to me, and I quickly mouthed, “Green jumpsuit?”
He shrugged one shoulder and mouthed back, “Dryad, elf, or fae.”
Although the guards had already hauled him into his cell, no doubt giving him the same depressing tour they had offered me that first day, I didn’t recall seeing any insanely pointed elf ears. Dryads were beyond rare—an endangered species at this point.
Fae, then.
Interesting.
While I had never personally met any of the fair folk before, those that traveled into our world through portals from the Otherworld, I had heard the stories. Arrogant, dangerous, suave, seductive, fae society operated outside the laws of humans and supernaturals alike. They had their own culture, their own codes, and considered themselves way above the rest of us. Not that I could blame them: fae possessed the innate magic of a witch, the speed of a vampire, and the durability of a shifter. They were the total supernatural package. Immortal, their courts stretched back a full millennium at least, their social mores deeply rooted in traditional monarchies. Many supernaturals considered mankind to be their lesser, but to fae, humans were no better than domesticated pets.
Man, I bet his collar was just covered in symbols—far more than any of ours. So much raw ability to suppress…
How in the world had they managed to catch him?
We all stood in front of our cells twiddling our thumbs for a good twenty minutes before the militant welcoming committee finally left. After Thompson gave us permission to move again, Deimos’s underlings rushed to the huge table in the middle of the cellblock, claiming it before we could—like we had ever tried to take it from them in the first place. I, meanwhile, studied the shadowy open doorway to the fae’s cell, intrigued.
“Nap before dinner?”
“Huh?” I pushed off the wall, my entire body protesting each step away from my cell—from the cot that, for once, was calling my name. We had another hour before the forced march down to the cafeteria, and from the heaviness around my eyes, the effort it took just to shuffle around the cellblock, Rafe’s suggestion sounded like heaven. But nope. Not happening. Not when there was something exciting going on here for once—and I was finally no longer the new kid on the block. “Uh, no. I’m fine.”
We ambled back to our usual table closer to Elijah’s cell—and now this new fae—all the while ignoring the smug looks tossed our way by Deimos’s posse. Seriously. Their table was just a table. Constance flicked her brows up at me when I accidentally caught her gaze, and I rolled my eyes—hard. Not that my blasé reactions mattered. They didn’t care that we didn’t care. It was the same crap, different day with these supers.
Only it wasn’t the same day. Not anymore.
Even as Elijah joined us at the small round table, I couldn’t tear my eyes from the fae’s door. Something about him… Maybe it was just the thrill of seeing a primordial supernatural creature, one I’d never thought to meet. Seattle wasn’t exactly crawling with fae—
“What is it?” Elijah growled, hands planted on the table, leaning over it and so utterly fixated on me that fire exploded through my veins. I pushed my hair over one shoulder to cool the back of my neck, skin suddenly scorching.
“It’s nothing.”
The dragon glanced toward our new cellmate’s doorway with a frown, then back to me, that frown deepening, brows knit with confusion. Rafe dropped onto his usual stool with a pointed sigh.
“She thinks he’s attractive,” the vampire mused, gathering the abandoned card deck between his graceful fingers and shuffling it how he saw fit. My cheeks burned brighter when Elijah looked to me for confirmation, but I glared squarely at Rafe, pissed.
“Rafe.” The vampire’s bright gaze innocently darted to mine, his hands still expertly working the deck. I bit the insides of my cheeks, allowing him a moment to realize how he’d screwed up, but when he said nothing and Elijah continued to burn a hole in the side of my head, I crossed my arms tightly and bit out, “It’s rude to listen to my heartbeat.”
He scoffed. “Well, it’s rather loud.”
Slowly, Elijah eased onto his stool, and when I finally risked a look, I found him watching Rafe shuffle, his jaw clenched, the muscles rippling. Damn. It shouldn’t upset me that the news bothered him, but it did—the stupid connection between us meant I actually cared what this gorgeous, possessive dragon shifter thought. How he felt. Why he felt it.
From the expression on Rafe’s face, he was either playing dumb or he genuinely didn’t realize he’d poked the wasp’s nest with a sharp stick. A quick glance between us slowed his skilled fingers, and he tapped the card deck on the table, rolling his eyes again at my What the hell, man? scowl.
“I mean, he is rather handsome,” the vampire added as he set the perfectly uniform deck in the center of the table. “Did you see those cheekbones? They could cut glass.”
Okay, now he was just being a dick. Rafe smirked at me, daring me to argue or deny, and I responded with a swift and solid punch to the arm.
Which, unfortunately, was like punching marble. Pain bloomed on impact, unfurling from my knuckles up my forearm, and I reared back with a hiss.
“Oww,” I whined, knowing full well that I deserved it. “Shit.”
Despite the grit of his jaw, Elijah still reached out for me—as if on instinct, driven to comfort, to soothe away the pain. He did it all the time, reacting without realizing, but like always, he stopped just shy of touching me. Scowling, the dragon withdrew his hand and stuck both under the table in a sullen silence.
“Serves you right,” Rafe told me. “Honestly, beating on a defenseless vampire…”
This time, Elijah kicked him under the table, both of them wincing at the thwack. Seconds later, they were both grinning, and I finally settled on my stool, shaking my head and smiling. While I still didn’t understand my relationship with these two, neither individually nor as a trio, I found comfort in their company and their friendship, and despite the weird tension between Elijah and me, the confusion over what Rafe and I even were on the relationship scale, sitting down with them at th
is table, at the one in the cafeteria, in my cell beside Rafe each night and at the workstation in the bakery with Elijah each day felt good.
It felt like home.
Fleetingly.
Until something in this hellhole reminded me that I was in prison, like the leather strap around my neck or my pathetic shower shoes, or Deimos and his crew fighting for a stupid table…
Then, you know, it was business as usual: feeling helpless in a system designed to break you down, to make you feel lower than dirt, like you really were a criminal.
Never mind that most of us were innocent.
The fae emerged from the shadows of his cell faster than I had that first day, loitering in the doorway and scrutinizing the cellblock with impossibly green eyes. In turn, I watched him over my shoulder, from his sculpted face to his perfect posture to his large, elegant hands rubbing bloody, raw wrists. What was he: innocent or guilty? Criminal or bystander?
Impossible to tell at first glance.
While he hadn’t so much as peeked my way, I felt someone else watching me intently. Elijah’s caramel gaze drilled into my forehead, and I let out a sharp exhale, beyond annoyed with this particular side of him. Even if it wasn’t intentional, he had no right to be all huffy. So, rolling my shoulders back, I looked him dead in the eye—a challenge in the shifter community—and cocked my head to the side, daring him to say what his eyes screamed, what the clench of his jaw so obviously implied.
Jealousy.
Possessiveness.
Elijah stared back, his expression softening somewhat, but not once did he blink. Neither of us flinched. Neither backed down. He conceded slightly, but this dragon shifter was an alpha through and through: he bowed to no one, not even me. Unfortunately for him, spending all this time in his company, in Rafe’s, meant I’d also found a slight backbone—and I wasn’t about to fold either.
“Guys…” Rafe flicked cards around the table, dealing out the first hand of a new game. “You know I fucking hate it when you do this—”