Caged Kitten

by Rhea Watson

  “You should be honored, Rafe O’Dwyer.” A face suddenly blocked the piercing whiteness. I blinked hard to shirk the spots dancing through my field of vision, only to wince at the waft of garlic that came with the new arrival’s breath. One of the myths that wasn’t true: garlic had no effect on a vamp, but it was an absolutely pungent odor that fused up your nostrils for weeks. Not detrimental—just a nuisance.

  Slate-grey eyes peered down at me, cold and assessing, flitting about my face like they were trying desperately to see the value in it. The voice was familiar, even to my sleepy mind, my fading senses, and soon, each blink became a fight, my lids like lead.

  “W-warden Guthrie?”

  He offered a barbed grin, looming over me in a fine suit, hair perfectly coifed. His pocket square was silk—a deep maroon patterned with white crosses. Really going for the pop culture jugular, eh? While his mouth twisted in a smile, his steely gaze raged.

  “You’ve been selected as the first inmate volunteer in our experimental partnership with—”

  “Fuck you,” I hissed, clinging to consciousness just enough to remember that I hated him. This piece of shit had put me here. He trapped Elijah’s inner dragon. He dragged Katja out for meetings that always made her cry. He bled Fintan’s accounts dry, taking more than half already to fund the fae’s illegal detainment.

  If I could just move my arms, I’d snap his neck.

  I knew it. He knew. And the gobshite with all the power just grinned down at me, exhaling that garlicky carbon dioxide all over my face. Slowly, as the clamor around the room picked up, he lowered himself just enough that his breath warmed my ear, leaving me at the mercy of the overhead light’s relentless glare.

  “You bit her,” the warden sneered, his rasp bone-chillingly pleasant, “and I understand. My kitten is so lovely… But after tonight, you’ll never be able to taste her again—or anyone else for that matter.”

  He withdrew and patted my chest, the edges of my vision slowly fading to black, my body paralyzed from the neck down.

  “He’s all yours, boys.”

  Then the darkness spread, muffling the clinking surgical tools and the beeping machines, blocking out the white light and the masked men, my facial muscles slack.

  And a heartbeat later, I was gone.

  21

  Elijah

  Where the fuck was Rafe?

  A full twenty-four hours had crawled by since they took him, and, having just returned from supper with Fintan and Katja, his cell remained empty. Tully had taken up the head of his cot in our absence, seated on his pillow in the shadows, waiting. Even Katja’s reappearance hadn’t inspired movement out of him; her familiar seemed infatuated with the vampire—not that I could blame him. This was the longest I had gone without talking to my best friend in months, and it didn’t help that they had dragged him out of here for fuck knows what.

  Hell, he could have been permanently relocated to solitary—or another cellblock. That was Fintan’s working theory, that they had decided to punish us further for reasons unknown by splitting us up. Deimos’s group, meanwhile, remained strong, outnumbering us by one extra today. The demon had goaded me from the moment we left our cells for showers and breakfast this morning, all the way to now, some fifteen minutes after supper. He wanted a fight. He wanted a reason to get me chucked out so only Fintan stood in his way.

  Not a chance.

  My inner dragon had been fuming for days. Just pure, blinding rage that we hadn’t been there to stop Katja’s attack—that it had even happened in the first place. Thankfully, Tully had mended the worst of it, and she hobbled out of her cell today on shaky legs, hunched and quiet but relatively functional.

  Tensed and tight, I tossed a card into the middle of our table without even looking at it, my gaze stuck on the cellblock’s bolted door. Where was he? Fintan swept the three cards away, his ten of spades beating out mine and Katja’s offering. To his credit, the fae had kept his smart mouth in check since they’d dragged Rafe away, as if sensing no one was in the mood for his snark.

  The tip of flimsy prison-issued shoes nudged my calf under the table, and my inner dragon uttered an approving rumble when Katja’s foot settled on top of mine. Seated in Rafe’s usual spot, my mate sought out my gaze, not setting her card down until I met her big blues. The downward arc of her lips, the slight lift of one brow, the shimmer in her eyes—so much was said in the subtleties. She feared for him, but she was here for me.

  Only I couldn’t look at her… Not like this.

  Sure, I had stood guard for as long as I could yesterday. I had counted down the hours in the metal shop today, my work halfhearted and incomplete by the end of my shift. With no one to take her hours, she had been forced out to the greenhouse, but at least Fintan had picked up the slack.

  Or… I hoped he had.

  He’d been getting better lately, coming back with dirt under his nails and the odd leaf in his mussed mop of light brown waves.

  But now that Katja was awake and just healed enough to putter around, I struggled to meet her eye.

  I had failed her.

  Failed to protect my mate.

  For a shifter, an alpha, there was no fouler sin, no greater crime.

  While we had continued working out the nuances of our fated bond, slowly getting to know each other, not rushing anything—letting whatever we felt develop as organically as we could in a hellscape like Xargi—she was still my mate. Even if Rafe had marked her first, she was mine. Possibly ours, given my dragon’s acceptance of the other two males in her orbit. And I had failed her.

  Miserably.

  Black and blue bruises dotted her face like a fucking abstract painting. Tully’s healing purrs had mended her lower lip and taken some of the puffiness out of it, but it still looked ravaged. Shadowy rings rimmed her eyes, heavy from a fitful sleep and trauma that might just haunt her for years to come. Her ribs might not be broken anymore, but certain movements still hurt her, agony and alarm flashing across her battered features if she turned too quickly.

  She was a mess—physically. I was a mess emotionally, drowning in messy feelings, suffocating through my every waking moment. Guilt and fury and panic over what had happened to her—what could still happen in the future. Concern for Rafe, for what they were doing to him behind closed doors, how they might be punishing him for intervening in what was clearly a planned hit. Apprehension for Fintan if he needed to step up in my possible absence—handsome and clearly pampered, born with a silver spoon in his mouth whether he was a fae prince or not, had he the courage to throw himself on the grenade for her?

  Without her magic, Katja was just so… small.

  And I—we—had let her down.

  I’d never forgive myself.

  Never forget what had happened, how I hadn’t been there to protect her.

  How I had worn this collar for almost a year…

  How I let them cage me without a fight.

  Rafe and I planned to just serve our time.

  Where had all this fire been then?

  Back when we had nothing to lose—

  “Elijah…” Fintan swiped at my arm. “Go.”

  Just as I’d plucked another card from the top of my tiny deck, a few rounds away from losing War to either one of them, the cellblock door’s locks thunked undone, and I shot to my feet as soon as the metal panel swung open.

  My inner dragon sensed the doom before I did, stretching his wings and rousing his flames, heat and rage and adrenaline swelling in my gut and bubbling up my throat. I scented it a second later: dead blood, maroon and viscous—the blood of a vampire. As the block’s trio of warlock cronies swept aside, a new cluster swarmed in, hauling a limp Rafe between them, dragging his feet, arms dangling, head hanging and bobbing with each step. Katja struggled to her feet with a gasp.

  “What did you do to him?” she demanded, her voice soaring several squeaky pitches above normal as Deimos’ gang erupted in fits of chuckles and whispers. Even the shifters who had re
fused to meet my eye months ago joined in tonight, delighted with my best friend’s humiliation.

  Red bled across the cellblock, my vision tinted by rage. My inner dragon clawed at my chest, desperate to get out, more fired up than ever to rip his enemies apart and burn this shithole to the ground. The collar almost seemed to tighten around my throat the more he fumed, and I tugged at it absently—only to rear back when static crackled across my flesh, a warning of a painful, miserable death should I attempt to break my shackles.

  Fintan soon joined me and Katja, on his feet and prowling about in front of the table. His eyes, almost neon green in this light, assessed the situation swiftly, and as soon as Katja took off, limping toward the guards and demanding answers, he jogged after her and hooked her around the waist. Her squeal of pain forced my hand, and I stalked toward the pair with a snarl that had the other shifters in the block cowering again—shrinking, as they should, before a true alpha.

  Deimos, on the other hand, only laughed harder, the maenad to his right mimicking Katja’s pained wail between her cackles.

  At the moment, I wasn’t sure which enemy to eviscerate first.

  Had I access to my dragonfire, I could have felled them all in one brutal breath.

  Something slammed into me when I pivoted toward Deimos’s table, and I blinked down, stunned to find Fintan there, his shoulder planted in the middle of my chest. The fae shoved back, and I actually almost lost my balance.

  Stronger than I thought, this pampered imp.

  “Just let it settle,” he hissed. “Don’t give them a reason, Elijah. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

  The fucker was right, of course, only we shifters—dragons in particular—weren’t known for our cool heads in the face of a fight. But for Katja’s sake, for Rafe’s, I held back, shaking with white-hot rage, with an anger so foul that when Deimos dared meet my eyes, his expression faltered. Just for a moment, my wrath knocked the wind out of his black sails.

  The cellblock guards had their wands trained on me as the strangers hauled Rafe to his cell. Katja trailed after them, wringing her hands, her eyes glittering like diamonds beneath the overhead light—glossy and wet, on the brink of tears. She never let them fall, sniffling and brushing a subtle hand beneath each before glowering at every warlock present.

  “Careful,” she barked, but her words fell on deaf ears when the bastards tossed Rafe onto the floor of his cell, barely inside the door, and left him there in a heap. As soon as she had the leeway to get by, my mate was off, charging forward despite her injuries and collapsing to her knees at Rafe’s side. Fintan followed shortly after, yet I stayed still, glaring at all who had wronged us, hurt us, just wishing they would raise a hand to me.

  Put the wands away and fight fair, you fucking cowards.

  But none of them spared me a backward glance. Now that they’d deposited their cargo, the unfamiliar faces disappeared, and as soon as the cellblock door shut and bolted, our minders were back to nonsense conversations about TV shows and female inmates and possible promotions through the ranks.

  My inner dragon flashed his teeth, his pent-up fire threatening to scorch us both to ash. When we had the chance—and maybe one day we would—Deimos would be first, but all the assholes who guarded this block were next on the fucking hit list. Abandoning them, my gaze slid over to Deimos, the world so much sharper now, fine details like dust in the grout between cinder blocks and the shading on the demon’s neck tattoos coming into focus as some of my inner dragon leaked through the collar’s charms. All for shock value, that ink, inexpensive and haphazard. The wings on my back had taken the better part of a year to get right—that was true craftmanship.

  Not that Deimos cared about craftsmanship, about honor. Not that he valued hard work.

  Some demons did. Some prized it above all else.

  This one was an acolyte of chaos—I was sure of it now more than ever, because the gnat had the balls to wink at me when our eyes met.

  I lurched forward with a snarl, only to once again be held back. Restrained by fae strength, subtle and unspoken, Fintan cuffed a hand around my forearm, then wrenched me round to face him, totally unfazed by my low warning growl, by my posturing and my size.

  “Patience,” he whispered, eyebrows inching up, his mouth slightly quirked. “Give it time and we’ll find a way to gut him when we can’t be blamed.”

  With the inferno raging inside, I could have eviscerated the little shit right here and now.

  But Fintan was right.

  Again.

  Katja’s sob from Rafe’s cell had me moving, and I set aside the deepening grudges—for now—to attend to my clan of misfits. What I found inside the vampire’s little room spurred the anger, but just as swiftly came the need to protect—to help. Alphas weren’t all fists and fire. The good ones assessed a situation and took the right action. When I discovered Katja trying and failing to haul Rafe’s lifeless body onto the cot, all thoughts of Deimos and the guards and Xargi itself fell away. I rushed in, sidestepping my struggling mate, her feline familiar weaving around her ankles, and hoisted my friend onto his cot. Fintan, meanwhile, loitered behind, blocking the cell door from the inside this time. When I glanced back, I noted his hand hovering near Katja’s elbow as if to stabilize her; she braced herself on the wall instead, totally unaware of the fae’s attentiveness, cheeks flushed, eyes wet, and massaged her battered ribs with a grimace.

  “Rafe?” she whispered as I crouched at the head of the bed, trying to free up what little space these cells offered, my massive frame making that all the more difficult. Katja perched on the side, the cot groaning softly under the added weight, and Tully leapt up out of nowhere, light and swift as a shadow. The familiar padded around as Rafe uttered a weak groan, then settled squarely on top of the vampire’s chest, purring up a storm just as he’d done with his mistress. Bright blue sapphires blinked once, twice, three times at me, slowly, and then the cat closed his eyes—like he was officially settling in to work. The air thickened with a whisper of magic. Katja, meanwhile, watched it all unfold with a frail smile, and, sniffling, she stroked her familiar’s ears, then nudged Rafe’s arm. “Rafe?”

  Slowly, he peeled his eyes open, struggling, and let out another groan.

  “T-took my f-fangs,” he croaked, his voice scratchy. Katja sucked in a sharp, strangled breath, and this time the tears fell.

  “Oh, gods.” She crept up the bed and lifted his lip, then looked to me, hopeless and lost and breaking apart right before my eyes. Because sure enough, two massive holes sat in Rafe’s pale gumline where his fangs ought to be—and there was no harsher punishment for a vampire than the loss of his fangs. The only thing worse was to be strung up outside just before dawn so the sun could fry him to dust, but at least that was a quick death.

  For all his healing capabilities, his immunity to most elements in this world, the two things my old friend couldn’t regrow were a fine set of canines.

  “I’ll fucking kill them,” I snarled, the fire back and raring to go. Only before the flames consumed me, there was Fintan, popping his elbows up and bracing on either side of the cell doorway. Blocking me. Barricading all of us inside. My inner dragon fumed at the insinuation, but with a few calm, centering breaths, the man won out—saw the logic in patience and control. After all, half my clan was broken: Katja and Rafe had finally met the horrors of Xargi Penitentiary head-on, tortured by inmates and guards alike, and I couldn’t abandon them. Couldn’t even risk it.

  So I stayed put, painfully still and biding my time—but if some piece of shit tried to wriggle into this tiny cell, all bets were off.

  Katja’s anguished sob still had me pounding a fist into the wall, if only to release some of the pent-up aggression I hadn’t been able to fly off all this time. Dust and rocky shards trickled down the dented brick; Tully’s purrs stopped for a beat, then resumed seconds later, louder than ever.

  “I’m so sorry,” my mate whispered, threading her fingers through Rafe’s and clu
tching his hand with both of hers. “I don’t know why they—”

  “Because I bit you,” he said roughly. His throat bobbed with a harsh gulp, pain flickering over his features, and he pushed up onto his elbows. While Rafe spared me a quick glance over his shoulder, he didn’t seem to notice—or even mind—Tully hooking his claws in to stay stuck to his chest. He did, however, retract his hand from Katja, and the rejection read plain as day across her face. Head cocked, the vampire shifted about, searching for comfort on a bed that offered none, and then frowned at her—at a woman we both felt for, who he had protected and coveted.

  Who he now seemed to question.

  “Katja, what’s w-with you and the warden?”

  I opened and closed my mouth, floundering. What? Of course we all knew that she had been pulled into Guthrie’s office a few times, but as of this moment, she hadn’t—

  “There are loads of vamps in Xargi,” Rafe remarked, all raspy and hoarse—like he’d been screaming. Fintan’s bright greens glittered with interest, the fae suddenly hyperfocused on Katja, me and my rage barely even an afterthought as Rafe struggled for every word. “But he chose m-me. Came in all garlicky and wearing crosses. It f-felt personal.”

  Cheeks sunken and eyes distant, Katja confirmed the rising suspicions with her silence. This was the Katja of months ago, the one who kept to herself, who guarded her space as viciously as we dragons hoarded our gold. Quiet, calculating with the information she shared—this wasn’t a welcome throwback.

  “So, what is it?” Like the weight of holding himself up was too much, Rafe collapsed back onto the bed, and in Katja’s continued silence, I caught him cautiously steering his tongue around his mouth, probing the gaping wounds. His jaw suddenly hardened, resolve settling in, and he propped himself up again. “He called you his kitten—”

  “It’s… I… It’s nothing,” my mate muttered with a slight shake of her head, refusing to meet his eyes—and mine.