Page 1 of Cold Foot King

Chapter One

You were right.

Gah, Katrina’s handwriting was atrocious.

Those words were such a hard pill to swallow as she spelled them out carefully in cursive onto the notebook paper her cellmate had given her.

It had been easy enough to address the envelope to Silver of the Fastlander Crew in Laramie, Wyoming, but the insides of the letter had been much more difficult for her to write. Already, she’d erased everything three times and started over. The paper was wearing thin, and her eraser was nothing but a nub.

Silver had been her best friend, once upon a time.

She’d tried to warn her of what was happening in the Holland Pride, but hindsight was 20/20. Now, she could see so clearly what her King had been doing all along. The manipulation was easier to see when she was forced to be away from the Pride. Hell, they were all forced to be away from each other. Most of them had been picked up by the police when they’d been trying to flee the Fastlander War.

Her included.

She’d thought Rook had loved her, but as it turned out, Rook had only loved two things—himself, and revenge.

And now? She was in prison. Cold Foot Prison, to be specific, where everything had gone wrong.

This prison was one of the three big shifter prisons, but the outside world didn’t really know what was going on here. She hadn’t realized the dark secrets of this place until she’d been transported here.

She tried writing the next line again.You were right, and I didn’t listen. The deeper I got into being Queen, the more I realized what a show it was. It wasn’t real.

The alarm in the prison sounded, and Katrina looked up at the flashing red light above the bars of her cell.

“Is that normal?” she asked her cellmate, Raynah.

Raynah, a crocodile shifter, lowered the magazine to her chest from where she laid on the top bunk across the cell, and frowned up at the flashing red light positioned right above the door. “Someone must be trying to make a run for it.”

“Chh. Good luck,” she muttered under her breath. She’d seen the security as she’d been shipped in here on a bus full of other criminals. There were two fences spaced a hundred yards apart with electrified barbed wire around the top. Inside the prison walls were four lookout towers with armed men, who could flip a single switch and electrify the ground, freezing anyone who was walking, or running, across it.

No one would ever escape this hell.

Raynah rolled over on her side, troubled eyes on the flashing light. “I’ve been in here two years, and only seen that thing go off twice.”

Raynah was heavily pregnant, so when she moved to get off the bed, Katrina held her hand out to stop her. “I’ll look. You don’t have to get up.”

She stood and made her way to the door, wrapped her hands around the bars, and peered out of her cell. The cell doors were all closed at this time of day. It was right after mess hall, and the hall on this floor of the prison was eerily empty. “No guards,” she observed softly, knowing Raynah would hear her just fine. Crocodiles had all the senses. More senses even than the wild ones.

Raynah asked in a troubled tone, “Is there anyone in the hallway at all?”

“No one.” Shifters were starting to shout from cell to cell, asking what was happening.

Suddenly, the building shook, and a loud roar deafened Katrina. She knelt down and clapped her hands over her ears as the room shook, cement and dust falling from the walls and ceiling.

When the deafening sound stopped, she looked back at Raynah, fear building in her chest.

“I know that sound,” Raynah uttered, her pretty green eyes wide.

Katrina had never heard fear in the croc shifter’s voice since she’d come here six months ago. Pregnant or not, Raynah was tough as leather, and a boss around here.

“I do too,” Katrina whispered in terror. She’d heard it before.

She had the distinct tone of Damon Daye’s dragon memorized from the sheer trauma from the night of the Fastlander War.

The blue dragon was here.

The cell door swung open automatically, and Katrina gasped at the loud creak of the doors around them opening too.

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