Caged Kitten

by Rhea Watson

  “Shut your fucking mouth, inmate,” Thompson snapped, his words whip-sharp and promising today’s third beating if I wasn’t careful. In an instant, my expression soured, and I glared back at him, hands in fists. No one dared address a prince like that. Never in my life had some lowly warlock raised his voice to me. I ought to whip him for his—oh, wait, she was coming back.

  My whole being brightened the nearer the witch drew, but as soon as she realized I was watching her—something that had made her blush beautifully only an hour prior—she changed course and beelined as far from me as the cellblock would allow. She stalked along the outer walls of the circular room, determined to ignore me, and her cheeks remained a deathly white even when our eyes met.

  As soon as she disappeared inside her cell, I returned to the table in a huff.

  Curious. This had never happened before. Women never refused me, be they fae or human or any other sort of creature. Another first.

  I… wasn’t all that sure what to do with myself now.

  Rejection—for other things, never a bedmate—always put me in a mood.

  Tonight, it only made me want her more. Not because she was a lovely specimen, a pretty witch with plump lips that would look exceptional around my cock, but because she had refused me. Because she had been unmoved by my smile, my words, my presence.

  And, shockingly, I rather liked that.

  A challenge. For the first time in my long life, a true and honest challenge.

  At last, someone who didn’t immediately bore me to tears.

  Perhaps Xargi Penitentiary would be a great deal more interesting than I initially thought…

  12

  Rafe

  “Something’s wrong.”

  I slapped down the next card in my pile—six of clubs—and swept that and Elijah’s two of spades back to me. “Just because I’m winning doesn’t mean something is wrong—”

  The dragon chuckled halfheartedly, tossing his next card on the table. Jack of hearts. “Right, let’s get one thing straight. You can’t win at War. There’s no skill. It’s all luck.”

  “You only say that because you’re losing.” I pursed my lips when I flipped over my card and discovered a three of clubs. Damn it.

  Elijah drew the two cards back to him. “Rafe, you know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  Of course I did. Almost everything in our world revolved around her lately, and it wasn’t one-sided either. One short month had passed since Elijah coaxed Katja into our little clique, turning our duo into a trio, a move that came with unnerving ease—like she had been the missing piece all along, like we’d been waiting for her to show up and make the puzzle whole. Unfortunately, that came with a lot of other nonsense, drama from the supernatural world that both Elijah and I made a point in our real lives to avoid. We had bonded all those years back because we preferred humanity to our own kind. No games with humans. No innate struggles, no primal clashes. Humans were so simple.

  Katja made things complicated.

  For the both of us—though I refused to admit that, barely even to myself.

  Elijah, meanwhile, still struggled with the fated mate bond. At this point, I had no clue if the witch understood why they were connected—because the stubborn git across the table from me, shuffling his cards and staring at her open cell door, refused to explain it—but she had to have an inkling. The tether between them was obvious. They lit up around each other.

  And it infuriated me that I… I was jealous of that. Not intensely or anything. I just…

  She was a lovely witch.

  Beautiful. Sarcastic. Relatively drama free—except when she decided to involve herself in Deimos’s nonsense, taking a page out of Elijah’s book to rescue that new fae. She smelled like primroses and sunshine. Occasionally, should our hands brush in passing, she felt like fire, though her skin was nowhere near the inferno of her dragon mate. Intriguing, that one. Slowly, we had gone from the occasional midnight chat to consistent nightly conversations, sometimes for hours, both of us lying on the dusty floor and whispering through the mousehole before bed.

  Last night, after her visit with the warden, was the first time in weeks she hadn’t answered me.

  “I… know that,” I remarked slowly. My fingers moved with a mind of their own, shuffling my portion of the deck, tricks and all, just to keep busy. “Perhaps she’s just in a mood.”

  “She’s been in a mood before.”

  “Haven’t we all?” I slid the top card off my pile, then tossed it to the middle of the table. Queen of spades. Another easy victory.

  Elijah added his opposing card without looking. Four of hearts. Tongue flicking over my fangs, I studied his profile with a sigh, slowly sweeping the cards back to me.

  “Elijah…” Nothing. I booted him hard under the table, and he flinched, shooting me a scowl that quickly morphed into a smirk when I fluttered my lashes. Most didn’t dare poke the metaphorical bear; after all these years, I just seemed immune to his ire—a gift more precious than gold, to be forever on an alpha’s good side. “Leave her be. If she wants to talk about it, she will.”

  “What the fuck did Guthrie say to her?” he growled, shaking his head ever so slightly, brows knitted as he threw his next card into the arena. Ten of clubs—beat my six of spades. “Sick bastard probably—”

  “Drop it. You’re just going to get yourself worked up, and then if she does come out…” I finally glanced toward her cell, despite trying my damnedest all afternoon not to. The prison rotated inmates through work assignments, which meant all my cellmates had staggered shifts throughout the week. By some miracle, Elijah and Katja had the day off, same as that new fae, Avery, and Deimos. Strangely full house today. The demon and his lackey hadn’t left their usual table, both reading the best books from the library cart in a merciful silence, and the fae had been asleep since we’d returned from breakfast. Katja wasn’t asleep. She’d been in her cell alone for hours, but I just knew she wasn’t asleep. “You’ll be all intense and off-putting, and then you two will bicker as soon as she sits down, and I’ll have to break the tension with a—”

  “With a poem?”

  I fumbled over my next card, swallowing hard when I found him staring through me—not at me, right into my skull and out the other side. So. She had told him, had she? My pathetic attempt to stop her weeping the first night had become a crutch whenever I sensed her on the verge of tears. Thus far, we had worked through six of my collective works; Katja liked the one about the fae princess and the willow tree the best.

  “Well, I… I…” Fuck me, I needed to feed. Seven months in this hellhole and I needed more than a few goddamn tablespoons of blood a day. Usually I was much quicker on my feet. Clearing my parched throat, I motioned to my lone card in the middle of the table—nine of diamonds—and arched an expectant eyebrow.

  “She must be special,” Elijah mused, eerily calm as he placed his card beside mine. Four of diamonds. I took the two back as the dragon shifter tapped his deck on the tabletop, voice hushed as he added, “Even I haven’t heard your poems.”

  I offered a dismissive sniff and rolled my shoulders back. “You’ve never asked, you unsupportive prick.”

  That wasn’t fair, of course. Elijah proofread my articles every now and again, and he had never once refused to be my sounding board during a pinch of writer’s block. I just… It had been centuries since I recited my human work to anyone. Poetry was from another time, a different life, and I seldom wished to go back to it—to memories of a starving deckhand, working odd jobs to survive, taking the most dangerous Dublin had to offer to keep a roof over my head every few weeks.

  Being attacked in an alley after a rare night on the town with the boys.

  My maker leaving me to bleed out…

  Leaving me orphaned.

  Orphaned vampires seldom survived. We weren’t trained like those newly turned in covens, human companions of established vampires who had gone through the official channels, received the pr
oper permits and permissions, to become immortal. No one wanted us. My existence six hundred years on was a rarity.

  A damn miracle, honestly.

  Elijah and I played two more silent rounds in the game of War, the unspoken conversation simmering between us, until—

  “Rafe, tell me how you feel about her.”

  I slapped my next card down harder than necessary, gut bottoming out at the request. “What?”

  Elijah’s lips thinned, and he withheld his card, leaving mine out there waiting for its opponent with an irritable sigh. “Can we drop the pretense? My inner dragon senses it and he hasn’t been out of the cage in months.” He worked his jaw, cracking it noisily, and then flicked his card onto the table. “Neither of us want to rip your skull open, so… just tell me.”

  My king of spades beat his three of hearts. I snatched the cards and added them to my deck, shuffling it absentmindedly. Anxiety was so strange as a vampire: an unwelcome prickle in the middle of our chests where our dead heart lay dormant, like a set of slow fingers with clawed tips stroked at our bones. Odd—unsettling. Difficult to focus on anything without a proper meal in months.

  “I…” The prickling intensified as if one of the claws had chipped away at a rib, and I dug my knuckles into my breastbone with a scowl. “It’s nothing. She’s good company, that’s all, and I suppose is becoming a good friend… A prison friend, of course. I mean, she’s your… your… fated.” Why was that such a struggle to say, my throat locking around the word? “I would never dream of coming between—”

  “I can’t say I like it,” Elijah growled, setting his deck aside—as if that would pause the game. Stubbornly I refused him, tossing a card toward the middle of the table, flipping it over when it turned midair and landed face-side down. Two of clubs. Damn it. The dragon shifter just stared at me again, through me, his eyes more gold than brown, sharpening, burning. “But she looks at you differently than she does anyone else.”

  I scoffed. “Please. The way she looks at me pales in comparison to how she looks at you—”

  “We’re complicated.”

  It was the first time I’d heard him admit it, that his connection with his fated mate was more tangled and messy than clear-cut and clandestine. Shifters grew up on stories of fated mates, soulmates bound together by fate, destined for a life in the stars. They never heard the other side, the tales of fated sweethearts who loathed each other from first glance, who despised the way some divine source had woven their lives together, free will a thing of the past.

  Katja and Elijah certainly didn’t loathe each other. They meshed well, emboldened in each other’s presence, a strong team in the bakery, him protective of her and her nurturing of him—she always gave him her leftovers. Always. Even if her stomach roared an hour after dinner, she did it, seemingly without thinking. But Elijah had never wanted a supernatural mate. He wanted a human: a simple, uncomplicated, beautiful human girl, preferably one from the village back home, who would give him an easy life free of otherworldly nonsense. Instead, he got a witch.

  A witch who clearly didn’t understand what was going on between them—possibly even resented the fact that he made her feel without her consent.

  “Anyway, that’s not what I’m talking about,” he pressed. “I’m not talking about her and me right now, and you know that.”

  “Elijah, don’t think for a second I would do that to you.” No surprise I couldn’t look him in the eye as I said it; I just… She made me—feel. Not love or anything quite so over-the-top. But comfort. Affection. Attraction. The beginnings of something that I didn’t want in the slightest.

  “Anyone out there looking for you, Rafe?” Katja had asked a few nights back through the mousehole, whispering it after a stretch of silence so long that I’d worried she had drifted off to sleep on the floor. “Your coven, maybe?”

  “No coven. I’m… an orphaned vampire. It’s just me and Elijah now.”

  I’d heard her rustling about, shifting onto her side to peek through the hole at me. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s old news.”

  “Still though.”

  “What about you? Anyone looking for a prison that shouldn’t exist? That, you know, doesn’t exist in our world?”

  Her quiet had been answer enough, but in a soft, sad voice she’d murmured, “Humans.”

  That night, we were both orphans, two supers without a coven, without anyone out there looking for us in the right places. I’d felt close to her, even if only for a moment, as if the rest of this shithole didn’t exist. We had ended up just lying there, both of us right next to the hole, so close yet so painfully far apart, until eventually she wandered to bed and I did the same.

  I still couldn’t explain it, the bond percolating between us, but it wasn’t welcome. Nothing more than friendship was welcome, but it bloomed all the same.

  Supernatural drama. Honestly. What a mess.

  “All I’m saying is that while I might not like it, it’s not unheard of,” Elijah carried on, tensed as he tossed another card on the table. Our eyes met fleetingly, and I flinched when I noticed his narrowed pupils, thin black slits in a sea of fire, the dragon inside trying to claw its way out, fighting the collar that bound him in his human flesh. When he next spoke, his voice had deepened an octave. “It’s not uncommon for a female to take… other mates. We might not be a pack or a clan or whatever, but we’re bonded, you and I. You’re the brother I chose. In a sense, you are my clan, and fated mates can sometimes bond with the entire—”

  “This is nonsense,” I muttered, rolling my eyes and slapping another card down. Elijah swept them back to him with a snarl.

  “Can you stop being a fucking cock for two seconds and listen to what I’m trying to say?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Avery glancing our way, and Elijah took a moment to compose himself. When his gaze finally snapped back to mine, his pupils had rounded out, the inner dragon contained.

  “Do you think this is easy for me?” he demanded, posture easing for the sake of our audience, his voice gravelly and low. I shook my head, knowing for a fact that it wasn’t easy for him. He had no control over fate, same as the rest of us. Elijah didn’t get to decide if his mate was a one-dragon girl or not, and I imagined that was devastating. But he’d concede to her, no doubt, because of their bond—and that certainly wasn’t fair either.

  “I appreciate that, my friend,” I said with a sigh. “Really, I do. I appreciate the difficulties in all this, but my loyalties are to us. I would never compromise that.”

  Elijah scrubbed at his cheek, looking more exhausted than he had in months. “Us includes her now. I’ve accepted it… You should too.”

  The weight of his statement hit like a freight train—so much so that I hadn’t even noticed we had company.

  “Room for one more?” the fae trilled, a wall of green materializing almost out of nowhere at my side and easing onto an empty stool like he belonged here. Even Elijah flinched, his shifter senses so entrenched in our conversation that the newcomer had gotten the jump on him as well. Not good. In a place like this, no one should ever be able to sneak up on you.

  I had met more than my fair share of fae over the centuries, especially living in Ireland where the portals between our worlds were so frequent and rooted. Ancient passages stretched from the emerald isle to the Otherworld, and in my experience, most fae were uptight bastards who deserved a good beating just to bring them back to reality. Unfortunately, pummeling a fae had its own set of difficulties. Fast as a vampire. Durable as a shifter. Powerful as a mage and cunning as a trickster. The fair folk were the predator of predators—but at least these collars balanced things out.

  After all, never in my long life had I seen a fae speckled with bruises and scabs like a Jackson Pollock painting. Their healing abilities were a mystery to me, but I had always assumed that like shifters and vampires, they regenerated a healthy form almost instantaneously. This one had seen more action in his on
e day than I had in my seven months. All angles and handsome fairy charm, the bruises did nothing to detract from his natural allure, his messy light brown hair and his impish green gaze. The only positive he had going for him at the moment in my books was that he’d said something to really piss Deimos off, a feat neither of us had accomplished—had to give credit where credit was due.

  In fact, whatever this smirking fae had whispered in the demon’s ear must have still stung, because there was Deimos glaring at us from his table. Miserable, pathetic little shit… Knowing someone outside of his posse had royally pissed him off gave me a special little thrill, but we certainly didn’t need the extra attention. This fae brought heat with him, first from the staff and now our fellow inmates.

  As he glanced between Elijah and me, we offered a stony silence by way of greeting—unwelcome and frosty, usually what we gave everyone who tried to weasel into our duo.

  Everyone except Katja.

  “No?” The fae clapped his hands and rubbed them together, eyes glinting with the cruel mirth commonly associated with his kind. “Playing War, are we? Deal me in. Half your decks each, just to keep it fair.”

  “Who the fuck are you, fae?” I demanded, and he seemed to brighten at my accent—no doubt recognizing a Dubliner, finding familiarity in my lilt. Spearing a hand through his rakish hair, the fae’s mouth stretched into a smile that predicated a humble-brag. Across the table, Elijah rolled his eyes, both of us bracing for bullshit.

  “Prince Fintan of the Midnight Court.” Yup, bullshit. “A pleasure to make your acquaintances… Elijah, dragon shifter. Rafe, vampire. It’s been an eon since I’ve found myself in such company.” He spoke with a lofty high fae accent, a blend between posh English and old-money New York, and then had the nerve to snap his fingers. “Come on, come on, deal me in.”

  Elijah caught my eye, and I shook my head. Prince Fintan, eh? Highly doubtful this one was a prince. There were so many courts in the fae world, so many royal bloodlines and bastards, so many nobles fighting tooth and nail for a piece of the action; it wouldn’t be the first time a lesser fae came to the mortal realm declaring they had a claim to the throne. No one could prove otherwise, and fae arrogance carried an annoying sense of entitlement that was easily mistaken for a royal temperament.