Caged Kitten

by Rhea Watson

  Lloyd clucked his tongue at me, then lit his cigarette with the end of his wand. A flicker of flame preceded the pungent waft of burning herbs that only made my queasiness worse.

  “Pity,” he murmured after his first puff, easing back in his huge, intimidating chair in that pristine suit, sporting the same perfectly side-swept salt-and-pepper hair, clean-shaven and leering. I attempted to gulp down the lump in my throat again to no avail; while not a single tear had fallen since Cooper marched me into the warden’s den, the floodwaters had been rising ever since he dragged me out of the cellblock and away from the three men who made me brave in Xargi. Frightened as I was of the gangster seated across from me, I refused to let him see me cry this time. Refused to allow him any power over me—refused to give him something that said he had chipped another chink in my armor.

  “Now, kitten,” he rasped, the pet name reserved for Dad and Dad alone followed by a cloud of smoke that had me coughing, “I have the same proposition for you—”

  “No.” Thunder cracked outside immediately after the last flash of white light, rattling the windows and the bookshelves. The storm had drifted right over us, and what I wouldn’t give to be out there, with the wolves and the tempest, if it meant being far, far away from him. “Same answer.”

  Lloyd chuckled, elegant and pompous in the way he tapped his cigarette over an ivory ash tray. “Are you sure?”

  My belly roared—traitor—and Lloyd grinned like that was the answer he’d wanted. Rolling my shoulders back, I glanced pointedly at the wall clock.

  “You’re going to make me miss dinner, warden,” I insisted. We had another hour before they made us line up and amble down to the cafeteria, but something told me this asshole could waste away much longer than that just listening to himself talk.

  “You’ll regret it, little one.” The cigarette’s tip blazed bright orange with his next inhale, the color dancing in his eyes. A tentative glance into them showed the amusement fading—no more teasing and tormenting. My refusal pissed him off, which both terrified and thrilled me. It would probably be my downfall one day, but not today: he still had two more family members to torture me with. Lloyd flicked the ashy tip over the tray, one grey eye narrowing slightly. “I haven’t even begun to apply pressure.”

  “Telling me how you murdered my family isn’t pressure?” I demanded, voice cracking despite my best efforts to keep it steady—to sound brave. Lloyd scoffed, his smile cold and cruel.

  “Just the tip of the iceberg.” He extinguished his cigarette having only consumed half, as if this particular prop in his theatrical arsenal was no longer needed. “Tip of the fucking iceberg, pet.”

  Bring it. I tried to scream it with my eyes, daring him to divulge more horrors from my past. Because Mom and Ewan were out there, floating in the ether, clinging to me like a second skin I would never shed—but I had survived it. With each passing day, Elijah, Rafe, and Fintan made me stronger in their own ways. Knowing they had my back against other inmates was one thing, but our steadily growing bonds, like flowers blooming in the middle of the desert, reminded me that this wasn’t the end. Xargi wasn’t a wasteland, and I hadn’t come here to die. With them, I wasn’t completely alone.

  I could endure.

  I could survive him.

  Never would I ever accept his offer.

  Never.

  Even the nightmares had stopped now that Tully snuggled up to me each night. My familiar provided a deep, dreamless sleep, and I came to refreshed and resilient. While still not quite the heroine of this depressing story, I walked with my head held higher lately.

  And Lloyd Guthrie couldn’t take that from me no matter how many gory details he shoved down my throat.

  “Fine,” Lloyd growled with an aggressive nod toward his office door. “Just go. We’ll be seeing each other again real soon, kitten.”

  Even though my knees wobbled as I stood, I forced myself to roll my eyes—big and obvious, just for him. The muscles along his jaw flickered, and his grey gaze cut down my face to my lips, then just low enough so that when my hair spilled back over my shoulder, he—

  “What the hell is that?”

  He saw Rafe’s bite. Panicked, I dragged my hair forward and staggered around the armchair that had once felt so claustrophobic, now small and ineffectual as Lloyd leapt out of his seat and raced around the desk. The damn puncture wounds still hadn’t fully healed—not that I wanted them to. In fact, I usually nodded off after our nightly chats stroking the marks, Tully purring by my side, but I couldn’t understand why they were still there.

  Vampire toxin was said to do all sorts of delicious things to their prey’s bodies, and I had experienced that firsthand. Besides the pleasure, the toxin in their saliva was supposed to facilitate healing, especially if their victim’s heart was still beating. Only I’d also had little cuts and burns courtesy of both the bakery and the greenhouse after Rafe bit me that were just distant memories, yet those two perfectly round dots looked so fresh they could have been added to my skin yesterday, not weeks ago.

  “It’s—”

  “Is that a vampire bite? A filthy vampire put his mouth on you?” Lloyd bellowed, catching up to me in no time. He shoved his wand under my chin and snapped his huge hand around my throat, and I squealed when he slammed me up against the door. Since being with Elijah and Fintan, along with experiencing the bloodiest of kisses from Rafe, I realized I had a taste for rough sex and the promise of violence in the bedroom. It should have scared the shit out of me—but it was hot, and with my trio, I felt safe enough to indulge in some dormant fantasies.

  But this wasn’t a fantasy.

  Lloyd wrenched my head to the side, exposing my neck, and then ripped at my jumpsuit collar for a closer look. Wand tip stabbing into the underside of my chin, his breath hit hard and fast, peppering me with the remnants of that herbal cigarette. A good head taller and a shocking amount stronger, he pinned me against the door with his imposing frame and examined me at his leisure—like I was a dog.

  And all I felt was fear.

  No dark desire, no throb of forbidden arousal.

  Just gut-dropping, pulse-pounding, throat-closing terror. Ice sluiced through my veins as he touched me, poked me, prodded at me, and I swallowed down a surge of bile when his lips brushed my ear with each heated word.

  “You have no right to give your body to another, Katja Fox,” he seethed, wand pressing deeper, pushing down on my shoulder, opening me to him, exposing my throat as every muscle protested the strain. I closed my eyes tight to catch the tears before they fell, their prickle sharp and cruel, and then flinched at the first hint of his teeth on my skin. “It belongs to me, in its entirety, and I haven’t given anyone permission to taste you.”

  I chomped down on my lips to hide their shaking, then focused on taking deep, even breaths as my stomach roiled and my mouth flooded with saliva. No anxiety pukes. No anxiety pukes. This gross bastard had already witnessed the humiliation of me emptying my guts out in front of him; he knew exactly what he did to me, and he didn’t get to go on thinking he had that much control over my body.

  Lloyd lingered, really drawing out the indignities, checking the rest of my neck for any additional bites, and when satisfied that there was only the one, he grabbed me by the chin and slammed my head back into the door. Stars exploded behind my tightly clenched eyelids, and I muffled my whimper.

  “Cooper,” he barked, mouth right next to my ear again, voice cracking like a gunshot. I flinched away, slowly and hesitantly opening my eyes, and Lloyd wrenched me off the door when the knob creaked. Sure enough, there was my block’s sleaziest guard waiting on the other side of the door, stinking of smoke just like his boss, the corridor behind him scented with a cloud of charred herbs.

  “Yeah, chief?”

  “Take her on the scenic route,” Lloyd growled as he shoved me into Cooper’s awaiting grasp. The warlock grabbed my arm harder than he needed to, yanking me forward a few paces so roughly that I tripped—much t
o the enjoyment of both men present.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The door slammed shut as soon as Cooper hauled me off on yet another forced march, the corridor suddenly bathed in shadows, illuminated only by the odd flickering fluorescent that made my churning belly even angrier.

  All I wanted in that moment was Elijah. I wanted his protective, possessive gaze sweeping my body, assessing it for injuries, and I wanted the clench of his jaw when he realized I had been with the warden again. I wanted his arm tight around my shoulders in the common area—the only physical contact we dared risk in front of the guards—and his hand on my thigh under the table at dinner. I wanted his brimstone scent. I wanted his eyes like slits, the inner dragon on guard.

  He didn’t need to say a word to make me feel safe.

  He was my fated mate—and I needed him.

  We were still working through the particulars, sure, and there was no telling what kind of relationship we would have had outside of Xargi… But this was what we had now. Comfort in the closeness. Security in nothing more than a glance.

  Cooper dragged me along at a brutal pace, but I kept up, desperate to get back to my mate—to all of them. To Rafe’s furrowed brow, knitted deep with confusion and anger and injustice. To Fintan’s sharp tongue and laughing eyes, always capable of breaking the tension even when the rest of us were miserable.

  Only we didn’t take the usual winding corridors back to the shittier side of the building. As instructed, the warlock with a death grip on my arm led me through unfamiliar hallways, up and down spiral stairwells. I didn’t find my bearings until we passed the prison shop, which always reminded me of a shanty liquor store with its huge open doorway and goods locked behind bars, the teller in a caged dome at the back. We blitzed by it so fast that I couldn’t pick out the faces of the inmates doing a bit of predinner shopping, but the flash of a red jumpsuit made my heart skip a beat.

  Made the marks on my throat tingle like they were fresh and sore.

  We finally stopped—seemingly out of nowhere—just around the corner from the commissary, Cooper jerking me back when I stumbled forward with the momentum of our march. He positioned me in front of an ordinary door with Supplies scratched into the wood, and everything inside me stilled, a cold fear taking root. Because… Well, not exactly the most professional signage, some crude lettering carved into the panels with, what, a knife?

  “Uh, what are we—”

  Cooper shook me hard enough to jostle my neck and make my teeth chatter, then grabbed the brass knob and turned it. Flung open the door to reveal…

  Deimos.

  Constance.

  Avery and Blake.

  A little Cellblock C reunion.

  The four loitered around the tiny closet, a space that really did look like a storage room with cleaning supplies and dingy rags piled on the shelves. I planted my feet, eyes widening, adrenaline soaring, but Cooper still managed to shove me inside.

  Then the bastard closed the door behind me, the click of a lock making my heart sink.

  Okay. I swallowed hard, battling with the lump in my throat. Okay. A high-pitched whine erupted, slicing through my skull and growing louder by the second. Okay, okay. None of them had access to their powers—all the collars were still firmly in place. Okay, okay, okay, don’t panic.

  Back to the door, I looked to Deimos in his black jumpsuit, scenes of grotesque torture tattooed over every bit of exposed flesh, creeping all the way up to his chin. At some point since I’d arrived, someone had carved 666 into his temple—so original.

  No, pleasant thoughts only. He knew I despised him—I never tried to hide it—but right now, I was also at his mercy. All by his lonesome, the demon sprawled across one whole wall of shelves directly in front of me. Constance giggled to my left, the air thick, and swung her legs from her shelf-perch midway up the wall. Avery and Blake, meanwhile, stood to my immediate right, arms crossed, silent and waiting.

  “Deimos,” I started, then staggered back into the door, hitting the wood with a noisy whump, when he pushed off the wall and stalked toward me. I held up my hands, defenseless, every synapse firing as I searched for just the right words to defuse this. Only adrenaline made my mind frantic and scattered—made my limbs shake and my extremities numb. “W-wait—”

  He swiftly closed the gap between us, then gut-punched me with the force of a charging bull. My diaphragm absorbed the hit, all the air whooshing out of my lungs, and, gasping, I folded over without meaning to—I just couldn’t stay upright—and Deimos shoved me the rest of the way down. The tinny whine between my ears rocketed up to deafening when I hit the ground, thrust into the middle of the space on my hands and knees, and a blow to the side from someone’s foot knocked me over.

  It all happened so fast, so furious, that I didn’t have time to lash out or strike back. I’d never been in an actual fight before, and as all four closed in, laughing and jeering, whatever words they hurled at me muffled against the screechy whine, I just curled into a ball. Protect the important bits: face and brain. My fingers crunched when someone stomped down on them. My back arched and bowed at the unrelenting blows. Someone—Constance, based on the scratch of talons up my neck—grabbed a fistful of my hair and spun me around in a circle, the maenad’s cackles girlish and savage.

  To my credit, I didn’t make a sound besides the odd whimper and cry. No screams—I refused to give them that. No begging, either, because it wouldn’t matter.

  “You chose the wrong side, foxy,” Deimos told me in a singsong voice, his words followed by a harsh pounding on my rib cage. Something splintered, and I sucked in a ragged breath, pain exploding through my torso. “I could have put in a good word for you—kept this from happening.”

  Finally, the kicks and stomps stopped, and a hand grabbed me roughly by the shoulder and rolled me onto my back. Deimos loomed over me, grinning, pupils so dilated that his eyes were completely black, full demon mode engaged. Still curled up, locked in this position, I wheezed through the agony of a broken rib, tears falling hot and heavy down my face and into my hair. Everything hurt. Everything. Something equally warm dribbled from my nose, and a bit of blood teased the corner of my trembling lips.

  “You fucked up, witch,” he whispered, sweeping his greasy black hair back with a sneer. Constance crouched beside him, then dipped her finger into the blood oozing from my nose and smeared it over my lips.

  “Red’s your color,” she sneered, and before I could swipe at her, some of the fight weaseling back into my limbs, Deimos grabbed me again and flipped me onto my stomach. This time I screamed, my rib taking a hard hit, snot and blood spattering the stones below, tears making the darkness swim.

  Razor-tipped nails grazed my neck again as Constance gathered my hair with a gentleness that felt almost mocking. As I struggled through every sob, sharpness stabbing outward from my busted rib, she swept it all into one hand, then shoved my face into the stone, cheek-down, and wrapped my hair around her fist.

  Holding it like a dog leash.

  Riiiiip. With Avery and Blake loitering overhead, Deimos must have been the one to tear my jumpsuit clean in two, shredding the back, exposing me.

  “Maybe you should just take his offer, eh?” the demon whispered in my ear, and my eyes widened. Fuck Lloyd Guthrie. Was this what he meant by applying pressure? Fire blasted through me like a nuclear bomb, and I swung back, gritting through the agony to slash at him, at Constance, at anyone within reach. Ineffectual, but as Deimos snapped my underwear’s waistband, then hiked the cotton up between my cheeks, it felt good to fight.

  His knee found my back and drove in hard, forcing another scream from my ragged throat as bone crunched in my chest. He then tore my panties off, elastic groaning, cotton ripping, all my bits squished and twisted in the process.

  Just as his hand smoothed over my ass, as someone stomped on my flailing legs and bruised my calves even more, there was a crash against the door. A snarl that I felt in my bones. The room stilled, Deimos’s fingers
ghosting over my slit. Another crash. Male voices escalating outside.

  The third crash sent chunks of wood and dust raining down on us, and Constance shrieked as footsteps thundered into the tiny space. Deimos’s filthy fingers were wrenched from my body, the knee on my back vanished, and a red jumpsuit flashed overhead as Rafe—my Rafe—tackled Deimos to the ground. Shivering with shock, panic, I dragged my body away from the scuffle as best I could, barely taking in the fact that Rafe had started slamming Deimos’s head into the ground and showed no signs of stopping. Fangs bared, the vampire smashed him into the stone over and over again, a plastic bag from the prison shop abandoned at the open doorway.

  “Cooper… What the fuck is this?”

  A black figure descended on me, but gentle hands found my body this time. Thompson? I blinked up at a familiar and very welcome face, at the one warlock who had always been decent to me.

  “Can you stand, Fox?” he murmured as more uniformed warlocks streamed into the room, several dogpiling on Rafe and Deimos while two others dragged the rest of them out. I gargled some nonsense up at him, throat screamed to ribbons, blood dribbling down and soaking into my jumpsuit, then shook my head. Exhaling softly, he helped me up, then stilled when I wailed, his hand veering too close to my rib cage.

  “Katja!” Rafe thundered my name, features contorted and savage, the bloodthirsty beast lurking beneath a calm veneer suddenly out for all to see. Deimos was gone, but they needed four guards to haul the raging vampire out of the storage closet, and a flash of bright blue beyond the doorway ended it all. Someone had stunned him, his fury subdued, and Thompson waited until the hoard of footsteps shuffled away before helping me limp out.

  “Boss’s orders,” Cooper drawled when we happened upon him leaning against the opposite wall, a cigarette in hand and a smirk on that smarmy mouth. “And no, you can’t take her to the infirmary. He wants her to sit in it and rethink some of her life choices. It’s a teaching moment.”