Page 20 of Caged Kitten

7

Rafe

After our first week inside Xargi Penitentiary, Elijah and I made a number of rules to ensure our survival, though they all had a central theme.

Don’tget thrown into solitary. Don’t look at a guard funny so that they put you in solitary. Don’t pick fights with other inmates. Don’t slack on work duty—Elijah, not me—and don’t give any bastard out there an excuse to lock you in the hole.

Because that was what solitary was: a hole. A pit in the ground, quite literally, two floors beneath the cafeteria. From what I’d heard, each hole was twelve feet deep, all twenty of them, with barred tops where guards would drop slop through for your once-a-day feeding.

Having spent the last four days in solitary, the dragon shifter moron across the table from me could confirm all of that was true. The holes dug into the earth. The bugs. The manhole coverings. The food that dripped down the dirt walls. The guards patrolling, stomping over your cell. One had even pissed into Elijah’s pit on the third night—Phillips, of course, just to even things out. The guard Elijah had nearly throttled to death had been reassigned to a new cellblock in the wake of my friend’s bathroom heroics; everyone knew the story within an hour of it happening, gossip carrying like wildfire through this place. Naturally, the warlock had to reassert his dominance, and now patrolling Cellblock E, he had apparently been the biggest gobshite out there.

Inmate beatings.

Unlawful use of magic to subdue supers who, as far as I could tell when I saw it, were just going about their business.

A lot of barking and shouting, throwing his weight around like he had a cock the size of the Empire State Building. Downright ridiculous, but hardly surprising: all the guards were petty. At least Cooper had been unconscious for most of Elijah’s ranting, which meant he was still in our cellblock, totally unaware of the specifics of what happened.

Yet he bore the scar on his forehead from where Elijah had slammed it into a corner like a badge of honor. Like he had fought in an actual war when shifters in here had been fighting amongst themselves, against other packs or clans, for centuries.

“So, I assume that garbage doesn’t seem too bad now by comparison,” I mused, thrusting my chin toward Elijah’s dinner tray with a smirk. Stringy green beans. Overcooked steak strips. Watery mashed potatoes. A pathetic effort, sure, but a step above licking blended sludge off a dirt wall—definitely. The dragon shot me a look, his heavy eyes the one giveaway that said he had spent the last four days suffering.

It didn’t surprise me one bit that he’d been beaten every night of his stay in solitary; he had attacked two guards, and the goons who patrolled this place took quite the offense to that. My friend might have been physically stronger than just about anyone in here, but he was no match for eight wands and the sixteen fists and steel-toed boots that went with them. Not with the collar on, anyway. Let him shift and then attack—that was a fight I’d pay to watch. Rumor had it magic bounced clean off dragon scales, just like everything else.

Dark golden hair thick and noticeably greasy, Elijah stabbed his spork into his mash, then scooped a giant heaping into his mouth before the watery potatoes spilled over the sides. He’d only been back in the block an hour, spending most of it resting in his cell before we had been lined up for dinner. Not a bruise in sight. No split lips or eyebrows. No broken nose. No fingernails missing.

All of that would have healed in an instant for him, same as me.

Vampires and shifters really were the ideal targets of torture. We could suffer a lot, endure the unspeakable, heal up over the course of an hour or two, and then the sadist holding the whip could get right back to it.

But what didn’t heal was the soul. I’d always assumed mine had gone as soon as my maker turned me, but I saw the stain of four long days and nights in solitary in Elijah’s tawny gaze, in the sluggish way he moved. That would cling to him, possibly well into his afterlife. We hadn’t touched on it, but I assumed any future heroics were out of the question after this little stint, even for the witch who was supposed to be his fated mate.

Speaking of which…

My eyebrows shot up when I spotted a familiar mop of red hair weaving through the cafeteria crowd toward us. Lovely as ever, Katja strode about a half inch taller than when she’d arrived courtesy of the standard-issue shoes that had magically appeared in her cell yesterday. They had cost me a fortune from the shop, but I just couldn’t stand to see her shuffling about barefoot anymore.

Strange that she might approach Elijah and me; she usually spent her meals with the scarred rabbit shifter from Cellblock B, pointedly avoiding anyone from our block. Not that I could blame her… Everyone else was a sociopath. Still, I wasn’t all that bad, and I’d spent four days alone without Elijah. While I might have soothed her that first night, Katja and I weren’t exactly on casual conversation terms. If she wasn’t forced to interact with anyone during mealtimes, the witch was hiding away in her cell. She hadn’t been assigned a work duty yet either, which meant when everyone else was whisked off for their shifts, it was just her and me and whoever had the day off left in the block. Bit awkward, both of us knowing the other was there, literally right next door, and not doing a damn thing about it.

Shockingly, tonight she strode right up to our table, white-knuckling her plastic tray, shoulders back and chin lifted. Elijah straightened as soon as he caught her scent, nostrils flared, though he scoped the dining hall with less intensity now than when she’d first arrived.

Katja stopped at our table, practically right on top of it, loitering by the vacant stools, me and Elijah seated opposite each other. She cast me a fleeting glance, her cheeks pink, before focusing solely on Elijah. His inner dragon must have loved that. The man, however, just stared back, exhausted but alive.

Rolling the empty glass blood vial between my hands, I waited for something to happen. Anything. What I got was a whole load of staring, the pair locked in each other’s gazes like the rest of this shithole had disappeared. My eyebrows shot up. Fuck me, fated mates had to be draining. I’d never been happier to be a vampire than right this second. You would never catch a vampire going all googly-eyed over a mate. Never.

Still, she had the loveliest mouth—supple lips that were a lush rouge-pink, always slightly downturned and sultry, fetching even without a speck of makeup. Her lower lip suddenly quivered, snagging my attention with more ease than I cared to admit, and then she cleared her throat, rolling her shoulders back.

“I didn’t ask you to protect me,” Katja remarked, calm and firm, oddly self-assured for someone who still cried herself to sleep after lights-out. Elijah set his spork aside and smoothed his hands down his thighs beneath the table, wiping them clean, then gave her a one-shouldered shrug.

“You didn’t have to.”

The pair descended into silence again, just staring at each other, unflinching and unblinking and Jesus Christ how dreadfully dull. I ought to feel like the world’s biggest third wheel, but I didn’t. In fact, despite my usual aversion to most social situations, especially when supernatural dynamics came into play, I felt oddly at home. Like this was where I was supposed to be, watching the two of them sort out their nonsense, communicating without saying a word—waiting for it to be over.

Strange.

Strange that the ease I felt with whatever the hell this was didn’t bother me. Smirking, I tapped the glass tube on the table, the red smear pooling in the bottom all that was left of my paltry supper.

“So, you going to sit anytime soon?” I gestured to one of the many empty metal stools around our table. “Or just continue to stare? I’m fine either way, but—”

Katja turned on her heel and left without a word. I snorted, watching her go, wondering if she could feel my gaze burning holes into her back—into the barely there sway of her ass beneath her slouchy purple jumpsuit.

---