Page 11 of Caged Kitten

4

Rafe

What a day.

Ordinarily that phrase never crossed my mind—what a day—because I slept all day, like any regular vampire. But in this hellhole, the bastards in charge were trying to change my base programming, turning the few of us in red jumpsuits diurnal rather than nocturnal. Up all day, locked in all night. At first, I hadn’t been able to sleep a wink come nightfall, body alert after a day of hiding in the shadows, determined to avoid every sunbeam possible throughout the penitentiary. Elijah assisted with that, of course, using his massive shifter body to shield me if I couldn’t scamper into a corner fast enough.

Contrary to popular belief, vampires did, in fact, need sleep. Not much, but if blood was in short supply or we hadn’t fed in a few weeks, our bodies started to shut down. After all, fueling such a powerful machine came at a cost, and sometimes sleep was the only way to top up the battery. The first few months in prison had been a never-ending nightmare while I’d adjusted to the new sleep schedule—and never mind the new feeding regime. Vampires were allotted five tablespoons of blood a day. No choice in the type. Always served cold. Utterly ridiculous.

Just another tactic to control us. The collars around our necks were designed to cull magical ability. Specific runes stopped shifters from shifting, ensured gargoyles didn’t turn to stone come sunrise, and kept that one phoenix in Cellblock A from bursting into flame and regenerating. But vampires weren’t magical beings. We were organic—blood and bone and teeth, we were animals, much like humans. The collar around my neck dulled my strength to a degree, and I couldn’t zip around at lightning speed anymore, but otherwise I was a fully intact being—more so than any other inmate in here.

They couldn’t fully control me with this ridiculous strip of leather, no matter how many runes they carved into it.

Probably why there were so few red jumpsuits roaming the halls.

But that meant the twats running this facility relied on other means of control—cue the sleep and blood deprivation. Fortunately, by month six, halfway through year one of twelve, I’d figured out how to doze off once the sun dipped below the horizon. By keeping to myself, by sticking with Elijah, the least confrontational super I’d ever met despite his alpha status, I kept my energy reserves in check. At this point, I was practically in hibernation mode. Twelve years was just a blip to an immortal, but if I wanted to survive, if I wanted to walk out of here one day a fully formed man and not a shuffling corpse, then I had to lie low and conserve.

And sleep.

Sleep as often as I could, for as long as I could.

A task made infinitely more difficult tonight—because my new neighbor wouldn’t stop crying. The witch was on hour two at this point after the guards had bolted us in our cells at curfew, and I was surprised she had any tears left to shed.

Her breath suddenly hitched, and my eyebrows shot up in the snippet of silence that followed, but I sighed curtly at the sound of her hand clapping to her mouth, followed by muffled sobs that, to my sensitive hearing, especially when I had nothing better to concentrate on, weren’t really all that muffled.

For God’s sake.

Lying flat on my back on the slip of paper the prison dared label a bed, I recrossed my ankles and picked at nonexistent cuticles. With the blackout window covering removed, starlight filtered into my private cell, no more than a six-by-twelve rectangle with a single bed, a wooden table to hold any supplies the guards hadn’t swiped yet, and a toilet by its most basic definition in the corner. Not much to look at in here, the walls, floor, and ceiling constructed of dusty stones—it would have made me sob uncontrollably too, I suppose, if I hadn’t slept in something worse below deck during my human years.

Through the two-foot-thick wall separating us, the witch’s breath came faster suddenly, descending into panic, perhaps even hyperventilation. I scrubbed my face with a groan, both hands fluffing, then smoothing my coarse black scruff.

Thiswas supposed to be a dragon’s fated mate? Her?

I rolled my eyes when she sniffed, long and deep, sucking back two full nostrils of snot.

Yeah, she was beautiful, all petite and porcelain and freckled, her hair like fire and her eyes like sapphires. That fit the mental image of a dragon’s mate, what with their penchant for all things shiny. Back in Britain, Elijah’s countryside manor dripped with wealth courtesy of his innate urge to hoard treasures, and witch Katja was pretty enough to warrant a place on his wall.

Yet from what I’d seen today, both in the cellblock and the dining hall, she was also quiet and standoffish, distant and dour. And now she was sobbing, probably on the verge of passing out if she didn’t get her breathing under control.

Honestly. Her? Fated to Elijah?

I just couldn’t see it.

But he was one hundred percent certain—and he should know. Shifters just felt… so… deeply. I couldn’t imagine existing with so much swirling around inside me, all this feeling—both human and animal—and never mind that literal other creature, not metaphorical in the slightest, always desperate to get out. Even during my moodiest stint as a starving human poet, I had never gone that deep. What a nightmare.

But Elijah was a nightmare I had put up with for eight years—my first and only real friend in six centuries. When he’d told me over supper that he and this Katja woman were fated, I’d believed him because I owed him that much, but my God did it piss me off, because now I would have to babysit him. His reaction anytime they were in the same space, anytime he could see or smell her, was totally unacceptable in our current environment. If he acted out, a guard would notice.

And they’d have a grand old time making him pay for it.

Sadistic cunts.

For six long months, he and I had flown under the radar. We didn’t get involved with other inmates. We let bad shit happen because it wasn’t our job to stop it. Trapped inside a highly warded prison, with warlock guards strutting about flashing their wands—compensation for the smallest cocks on the planet, probably—every two seconds, wearing collars that kept Elijah from shifting into the magnificent and downright brutal dragon he could be—we were fucked. No sense in making a bad situation worse by involving ourselves in drama.

Katja brought drama.

A lot of it.

Because Elijah couldn’t keep his shit together, and after eight years of living in a cottage on his property, writing and thriving and living my best life with a friend, I gave a damn about him. Unfortunately.

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