by Rhea Watson
Besides, believing a fae at their word, especially in the beginning, was foolhardy at best. Until you could read them, decipher their physical tells, map the rhythms of their slow-beating hearts, it was best to take everything they said with a grain of salt.
Elijah straightened to his full height, larger than me and Fintan when he sat up and rolled his shoulders back, then tapped his half of the deck on the table. “What did you say to Deimos?”
“Oh, that little parasite?” In a unison that would have been laughable anywhere else, we three turned toward the demon, who had been staring unabashedly our way since the fae sat down. However, without his full horde as backup, he yielded fast, going back to his book with flushed cheeks and a snarl. Fintan chuckled, drumming his fingers hurriedly on the metal tabletop, a ball of energy despite having had the shit kicked out of him—twice—in less than twenty-four hours. “I told him that while I appreciated his offer to become an underling and lick his boots at every sunrise, I had no interest in sucking micro-dick for the short time that I’m here.”
Much to my surprise, Elijah snorted, which had me grinning incredulously—both of which seemed to delight the fae.
“Now, can I play or not?” Those bright green eyes darted between us. “Or are you two the true schoolyard bullies of Cellblock C?”
My dragon counterpart conceded first, handing over a chunk of his cards, and I did the same, neither of us offering the suggested half. Let him start at a disadvantage—he hadn’t earned anything more yet.
“Talking about Miss Fox, are we?” Fintan glanced up expectantly in the silence that followed, shuffling his cards with a skill that could give mine a run for its money. The deck practically flew between his hands, just a blur of white and black, his fingers dancing. When neither of us answered, the fae chuckled again and set his deck on the table, carefully straightening it out so it was a perfectly uniform rectangle. “Oh, it’s just so obvious. She returned from her meeting with the warden rather upset last night. Shame it’s still bothering her… She’s a breath of fresh air in here.”
Elijah’s jaw clenched, muscles rippling, and he glared daggers at me, pupils in slits again. For Christ’s sake. Shifters and their mates—so tedious.
“She isn’t a conquest, fairy,” he rumbled, his snarl a warning that would have made lesser men flee. Instead, Fintan merely plucked the top card from his stack and eyed it curiously.
“No, the good ones never are,” he mused, turning the card to reveal the ace of hearts. “Are aces high or low?”
“High,” Elijah and I growled in unison. Once more, Fintan ignored the warning signs, grinning like a fool.
“Right. Might as well just give me your cards now, gentlemen.”
We did, begrudgingly, neither of us in possession of anything to either beat or match his ace.
“Why are you here?” Elijah rasped, tossing his next card into the middle of the table. I did the same—eight of clubs—and Fintan followed shortly after.
“At this table?”
“In this prison,” I hissed, sweeping the three cards back to me. Fintan shrugged with the nonchalance of a man who had never had to care about anything in his life, that smirk implying this was one big game.
Maybe he was a prince.
“Got caught taking names from humans at a bar,” he admitted with a sigh and a slight roll of his eyes. “I wasn’t going to keep them… I’m just so fucking bored most days, and I get extra trickstery when I drink. Bounty hunters picked me up, brought me here, told me I was guilty… Which I suppose I am, but hardly by fae law.” He sniffed, elegantly stroking another card from the top of his deck. “But at least this is a bit of excitement… for as long as it lasts, anyway. I’m sure the rescue party is on the way.”
Elijah might have dubbed me a member of his clan, but we lacked the telepathic bond shifters shared with their kin—blood or otherwise. Still, when our eyes met, as usual I knew precisely what he was thinking. This guy is fucking delusional…
Maybe. Hard to say with some of the characters in here. He could just be a spoiled fae fuck, or he could be completely off his rocker. Only time would tell, but at least we outnumbered him.
“You here to play games?” Elijah took the next round.
“Only with those who deserve it,” Fintan remarked, pouting handsomely when I took the one after.
“You plan to join a gang?” I had to know—had to at least feel him out. The fae glanced between us, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Is there an opening here?” he purred, everything about him—his posture, his tone, his expression—suggesting this was a man accustomed to getting his way. When neither of us gave him that, Fintan cleared his throat and reshuffled his deck, those skilled hands struggling to stay still. “Everyone else just seems so petty. I’ve done the gang thing—been where that demon is with clout-chasers ready to lick my taint and gargle my balls if I asked.” What the ever-loving fuck? “It’s played out. It’s cliché, and cliché is boring.”
I exchanged another quick glance with Elijah, and once again his reaction surprised me. Exuding a calm alpha aura, he set his cards aside, threaded his huge hands together, and placed them on the table. Pupils narrowed, he spoke with a rich, gravelly dragon rasp that I so rarely heard—and never in a conversation like this.
“We don’t play games,” he stated, catching Fintan’s gaze and holding it. “We don’t pull rank. We don’t draw unnecessary attention to ourselves. We just want to do our time and get the fuck out of here.” He leaned closer to the fae, head cocked. “Now, is that boring for you?”
“Hello, dragon,” Fintan whispered, swooping close and staring directly into Elijah’s eyes. He seemed about two seconds away from grabbing the shifter’s face so he could really get in there, scrutinize to his heart’s content, but he withdrew just as a snarl rumbled in Elijah’s chest. He flashed us both a grin, then tossed his card onto the table. “Maybe in time this whole sit on the sidelines shtick will lose its appeal, but for now, honestly, it’s probably what I need.”
He gestured to his bruised face as if that was reason enough. Elijah might have nodded and set the four of clubs next to the six of diamonds, but he didn’t believe him—a sentiment we shared. Miss Fox. If anything, Fintan had weaseled his way into our trio with the intention of getting closer to Katja. Obviously he hadn’t realized what a minefield he’d stumbled into, but if he was as observant as he implied, he would eventually see it—the complications, the tension, the tense air that surrounded all three of us.
Perhaps in time he would regret wandering into the fray, moving on to simpler games and easier targets. In the end, that was probably best for a fae who reeked of self-indulgence and wanton extravagance. Katja navigated her prison sentence just as we did, and while from the outside our little group was quite dull, we had our fair share of drama brewing, and at no point would the spotlight ever rest solely on Fintan. A man who only cared about himself would eventually gravitate toward a more eager audience.
And, in the meantime, if he didn’t keep his hands to himself, Elijah and I would just rip them off.
13
Katja
“I know something’s bothering you.”
“For goodness’ sake, Elijah.”
“It’s been bothering you all week, ever since you—”
“Can you just drop it?”
“I wish I could, but you know I can’t—”
“Stop.” I slammed my recently packed plastic bag down and glowered at him from across the table. Sweat glistened on his brow, his handsome features flushed, his golden-brown waves extra fluffy in the bakery’s humidity today. He was so damn gorgeous, every girl’s type, but it seriously pissed me off that he was using our weird, unspoken, steadily growing bond against me. Maybe he could sense that I had been off since my meeting with Lloyd Guthrie—and rightly so—or maybe he just saw it on my face, had learned to read my expressions because we spent almost every free second together if we weren’t forced apart…
Whatever the case may be, whether he actually felt my distress over learning that my dad’s lifelong paranoia had been justified and that a psycho now thought he literally owned me, or if he was just adept at reading torment on the face of a fellow inmate—I hated it. No matter the source, no matter his reasoning, I hated that he was capitalizing on our connection to wheedle me for information.
Did I think he planned to use the information against me? No.
Did I think he was doing this to hurt me? No.
Elijah was a good guy. Sweet, sometimes stoic, annoyingly protective, and seriously good at every card game we played, he and Rafe were two of the best men I’d ever met, and that was saying a lot. Prison offered perspective, I guess. Fintan, on the other hand, was still a wild card, but besides the fact that I couldn’t look him in the eye without blushing bright crimson still, a week after his arrival, the fae didn’t factor into this.
Rafe and his melancholy poems didn’t either, his velvety baritone that whispered into my cell every night, smooth as liquid gold, rich as dark chocolate. It also wasn’t about him. This was about me and Elijah and the fact that he was driving me up the fucking wall this afternoon.
It was my first bakery shift with Elijah in three days courtesy of the rotating schedule, and whoever had been in here before had left the place a mess. Jensen, the guard who constantly Snapchatted and played games on his phone, didn’t seem to notice or care that dough hadn’t been proofed, that a few buns from a recent batch were burnt on the bottom, that no one had bagged any of the loafs—that no one had even precut the loafs to begin with. Instead, Elijah and I had arrived to a buttload of work—seriously, what had those jerks even done for nine hours?—and I so wasn’t in the mood.
For any of this.
For bakery duty with double the work.
For Xargi Penitentiary and its rigid routine.
For Williams—nose-picker guard—who openly leered at me in the shower this morning.
For the looming threat of Lloyd Guthrie.
And for Elijah—who wouldn’t stop pushing.
“I’m not trying to be nosy,” the dragon shifter huffed, spinning a full plastic bag of perfectly sliced rye and tacking a plastic clip on the end. Why was he so good at this? I ran a café; my baked goods should dominate his. Instead, I had a pile of slightly smooshed bread loaves to my left from when I’d manhandled them into their plastic bags and the beginnings of a headache that would probably split into a migraine by the end of our shift.
“Yeah, well, I really don’t want to discuss it.”
“I know. I’m not a fucking idiot, Katja.” Elijah set his packaged loaf aside, handling it so carefully with those huge hands—delicately, same as he treated me most days, even more so since my mood nosedived after meeting with Guthrie. “I can just… feel something is upsetting you, and my inner dragon—”
“Can mind his own business,” I snapped. Seriously. Just because he had an inner beast who could, I don’t know, smell misery didn’t give him the right to pry like this. Fuming, I piled all the loaves I’d packaged onto a metal tray, then stalked away from our worktable.
What bothered me the most wasn’t his poking and coaxing. In fact, most inmates would probably kill to have someone like Elijah on their side, innately connected to them, concerned about their well-being enough to fight for an answer, to not be deterred by a grumpy attitude and a few withering glares. I slowed, closing my eyes and sucking down a deep breath. Sometimes I was too harsh on him; he was just trying to be a good guy. If he knew what was wrong, maybe he thought he could fix it.
But he couldn’t fix it.
And despite being a good guy, despite our bond, it felt like he was taking advantage of something that I still didn’t understand. Rafe had stopped pushing days ago. Fintan didn’t seem to notice something was off despite following us around like a lost, pampered puppy. Elijah wouldn’t let it go, and I’d made my feelings about that clear.
And…
I just wanted to go home.
I missed the café. I missed my job, my people, my neighborhood.
I missed Tully. So, so, so much. One day in this place was too long—almost two months illegally detained in a prison run by a sociopath was torture.
Tears made themselves known with a painful sting when I opened my eyes, and I meandered toward the shipment crates a little slower. Unfortunately, the telltale sounds of Elijah’s heavy footfalls lit a fire under my ass, and I sniffled back the sadness, then blitzed around the corner, headed to the rear of the bakery to unload my prepped loaves into the shipping containers. Of course none of this gorgeous bread went to the inmates. We sometimes tried to guess where the prison shipped it off to; the writing on the label suggested somewhere English-predominant, and the artisan stamp told me they charged a fortune for it.
Teeth gritted, I balanced the tray on the corner of the wooden crate, then started unloading my haul, neatly arranging the loaves on top of what was already in there. Beyond everything else I missed, I deeply craved the use of my own magic again. It was all there, swirling inside me, flickering in my fingertips and shivering in my chest, but I couldn’t access any of it. In time, it would sour from lack of use. All this work, the full nine hours of it, could have been knocked out in one or two with a few simple phrases and a flick of my hands. Sure, my magic had always been a bit unstable without a wand, but it would get the job done.
“Can you just stop for a second?” Elijah growled as soon as he entered my personal bubble, looming over me, statuesque and broad and imposing. As if it wasn’t hot as balls in here already, his presence sent a wildfire ripping through me, starting in my chest, in my fluttering heart, and flooding out to every limb. I had recently managed to put my pathetic earnings toward a pair of underwear and a hair tie now that I had access to the prison shop. No bra yet, but that was a work in progress; at least the black stretchy elastic kept my hair away from my neck during bakery shifts.
Elijah set me ablaze regardless. Which was also just… great.
“Can you?” I fired back, glaring up at him and distractedly swiping a hand over the back of my neck. Yup, sweaty. My jumpsuit collar absorbed a lot of it, but that didn’t make me any more comfortable. So, as per usual, not only did Elijah fluster me mentally, emotionally, my mind struggling to understand the pull between us, but he affected me physically too. And right now, that definitely didn’t help his case.
He clenched his strong jaw, muscles briefly rippling beneath the coarse brownish scruff, and, narrowed gaze still fixed on me, he dumped his entire tray into the crate. Just. Plopped it all in, no organization, no regard for the rows of neatly stacked loaves I’d started.
This was the first time he wasn’t careful with his work.
Again—not doing himself any favors.
“For gods’ sake, Elijah,” I muttered, immediately diving in and straightening everything out. The dim overhead lighting flickered, and in any other scenario, I might have blamed it on my magic, on the tempestuous storm brewing inside me, the air crackling between us. But there was no magic in Xargi—not for us, anyway. Shitty lights.
Shitty everything.
Panic lanced through the flames dancing inside me, vicious and sudden. I’d outright refused Lloyd’s offer, preferring incarceration to whatever that psycho had in mind for me, and at no point did I want word to reach him that I was bad at my job. The guy would probably use any excuse to kick me off a work assignment that so many other inmates considered cake; a guard who barely paid any attention, free rein of a sprawling underground space—even if it was hot as hell most days—and all the freshly baked bread you could scarf down when no one was looking. Bakery duty was a dream, same as the kitchens, the library, and the new greenhouse. I didn’t care if they stuck me somewhere else, but if I got a reputation as a slacker, I just knew Lloyd would use it against me.
He seemed like the type.
Just as I reached in to fix the next row of loaves, Elijah snagged my wrist and hauled me upright. I
went with him, unable to muscle my way out of his hold even if I tried, and then glared, hard, conjuring up the sternest expression I could muster.
“I’m worried about you,” he admitted gruffly as his thumb stroked the underside of my wrist, gently brushing over my racing pulse. The physical contact seemed to grab us both, gazes plummeting to where we touched. Exhaling shakily, I shifted my glare back up to Elijah’s face where it belonged, only to find him steely-eyed as well, a mildly annoyed look plastered across his rugged features.
What the—I so didn’t understand this shifter.
But his hand felt like fire, a cuff fresh from the hearth, branding my skin the longer and tighter it held on.
“You’re hurting me,” I croaked. Elijah’s eyes flicked to mine, more gold than brown, his gaze that of the dragon. My belly suddenly looped—with fear or interest, I still couldn’t tell.
“No, I’m not.” He wasn’t. “You can take it.”
I could. His grip might have been firm, might have seared my flesh and sizzled down to the bone, but in my heart of hearts, I didn’t want him to let go. It wasn’t pain driving us apart… Not in the slightest.
“Let go,” I muttered, the order catching in my throat. Elijah shook his head.
“I can help, Katja, if you just let me in.”
“Maybe I don’t want to let you in,” I told him, the fight flaring inside me, briefly shouldering all the other muddled emotions aside. I yanked my arm away from him, twisted it, but he wouldn’t let go—wouldn’t stop looking at me with the eyes of the beast. “Maybe I don’t need you poking around my head in here… Have you ever considered that?”