Page 48 of The Mobster's Mate

“Understood what?”

“There was no point in getting to know the other prisoners,” Caden said, meeting his eyes. There was something incredibly sad in Caden’s golden eyes, a devastating understanding most people would never have.

Not unless they’d stared death in the face and refused to blink.

“After the first week,” he continued, rubbing at his short hair and leaving it disheveled, “they drugged my food, and I woke up in this room that was… I called it the Gray Room because that was all I could see while strapped to the table.”

Quinten sucked in a breath. Tears glistened in Caden’s eyes, but he kept going.

God, he was so fucking brave. His poor kitten.

“I could never see the faces of the guards when they brought the food, but the people who worked in that room… they didn’t bother hiding.”

“So you would recognize them?” Quinten asked, a thread of steel in his voice.

“Oh yeah,” Caden said, huffing a sad little laugh. “I’ll never forget their faces or scents. Or anything they did to me.”

“Were they human?”

“Some, but the guards were all shifters. There was one Gray Room man who was a witch.”

Quinten nodded, adding to his mental notes.

Sighing, Caden said, “I’m not sure what their goal was, but they were definitely experimenting.”

Quinten’s blood turned ice-cold. “Experimenting?”

“Yeah. They would in-inject me with stuff. Sometimes it would make me sick or make my blood burn so hot I thought I was on fire.” He licked his lips, eyes distant and glassy. “Sometimes they wouldn’t have an effect at all. Other times… Every once in a while, whatever concoction they put in me would force me to shift. But it was… wrong. It’d hurt so bad I’d pass out and then wake back up in my cell.”

“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Quinten said, shaking his head. Some of the rumors he and his brother had been hearing about missing shifters were making more sense though.

Some sick fuckers were taking advantage of the fact there was no Council anymore, no Guardians yet, and no one watching out for parahumans.

Caden smiled sadly. “They weren’t just experimenting on us. I would spend days going into the Gray Room, but then it would stop. The first time, I was so relieved, but I learned very fast I had no reason to be. Some of the guards would come to my cell with these long metal rods. One would have a metal collar attached to it, and they’d… they’d stick the rod through the bars and force it around my neck.” He shook his head, hands fisted in his lap. “The cell was so small I couldn’t get away. If I tried or resisted once it was on, the others would use their rods to electrocute me.”

Quinten sucked in a breath, nostrils flaring. “Where did they take you?”

“The arena,” Caden said, sighing heavily.

“The what?” Quinten leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his knees.

Caden matched his posture and nodded. “Like a gladiator arena. That’s what it looked like anyway. It was, like, this giant pit. The ground was covered in sand, and it was surrounded on all sides with twenty-foot walls that were so smooth not even a shifter could climb them. I-I saw a hawk shifter try to fly out once… She didn’t make it. There was some sort of invisible netting over the whole thing. She got tangled in it and started screeching…”

Caden’s breaths were coming fast, too fast. Quinten slid a hand onto the table between them, palm up, and he latched on, squeezing so tightly Quinten was sure he’d have bruises.

“The, uh, the audience didn’t like it since it robbed them of the show they’d come to see.”

“People were at the arena? Not just the guards?”

Caden shook his head. “The arena was always full of spectators. I couldn’t see them well, and I didn’t… I didn’t like looking at them, but I think it was different people each time I was there.”

Quinten didn’t understand how he hadn’t heard about something like this. Caden had said he’d been taken months ago, and he doubted he was the first one.

Just how long had this been going on? Since before the Council was taken out? Had they known about it? Was it another one of their dirty secrets?

It was too late to ask them, but Quinten had a few other unsavory characters he could apply some pressure to and get some fucking answers.

“So they made you fight each other,” Quinten said, for some reason needing to hear Caden actually say the words to fully believe it.

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