Page 2 of Cold Foot King

As one, those doors had swung wide open, and now this entire floor had access to the hallway—with no guard supervision.

Shhhhit.

“Raynah,” Katrina gritted out.

“Yep.” Her cellmate scrambled off the top bunk and shoved the bed to the side with a screech of metal legs on concrete. With shaking hands, she started scrabbling to pry the loose cinderblock free.

Katrina guarded the door, because she knew what was coming. Raynah had a hyena problem, and because her cellmate had a problem with them, by association, so did Katrina. And they were lifers. These hyenas were as close to evil as a shifter could be. They had nothing to lose.

“Faster, Raynah,” Katrina urged as the shifters starting flooding out of their cells.

Was it just here? Or was the technical glitch happening on the male floors also?

Another dragon roar shook the walls, and this was bad. It was really bad! Damon was here to finish what he’d started.

“Raynah, leave it! We have to go!”

“Easy for you to say. I can’t Change, remember?”

Katrina could see the hyenas gathering. The three main ringleaders were talking in the middle of the chaos, and looked over to meet Katrina’s eyes. They had to go!

“Raynah!”

“I’ve got it!” Raynah tossed the cinderblock to the side and pulled out a pair of homemade shivs they’d carved from the ends of toothbrushes.

Katrina hadn’t had access to her lioness since she’d come to Cold Foot, so when Raynah offered her one of the sharp objects, she accepted it. She also grabbed the pencil off the small writing desk and shoved it into the back of her beige, elastic-waist pants.

The hyenas were here, and she knew how they hunted. Their Cackles hunted like lion Prides, so when she only saw two of them filing toward them, she knew there would be a third, or even possibly a fourth, waiting to ambush wherever they herded Raynah.

“This ain’t your fight,” Marble said, her eyes bright gold. “Get out of the way.”

“Mmm, go fuck yourself,” Katrina told her, blocking the doorway. “She’s got a baby in her. Move.”

Marble’s eyebrows arched up high, and she huffed a laugh to her Second, Raquel. “This one is a spicy kitty.”

“Ain’t no spicy kitties here,” Katrina ground out, gripping the shiv. “None of us have animals in these walls.”

Marble’s slow smile turned evil. “Speak for yourself.”

And now she could smell it—the scent of fur, and the musk of her animal.

“Just go,” Raynah said from behind her. “I can take care of myself.”

“No doubt,” Katrina gritted out, grabbing her cellmate’s hand in an iron grip and dragging her out the door with her.

She shoulder-checked Marble, and when Raynah grunted in pain behind her, Katrina turned and slashed upward with her shiv, cutting Marble up the side of her neck.

Marble had grabbed Raynah by the hair, but shrieked in shocked pain and released her to hold her gushing neck.

“I might not have my animal, but I’m fast,” Katrina gritted out, holding out her blade to the two hyenas. “And I’m trained. You want to live? Get out of the way.”

She just needed them to give her a direction, to tell her which way they wanted her to go.

Raquel’s eyes flashed to something behind her and she stepped forward, herding her and Raynah. Yep, that’s exactly what she needed.

A glance behind her and she didn’t see the rest of the hyenas, but they would be there—either around the corner, or down the long corridor the others were filing into.

No thank you.

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