Page 56 of Caged Kitten

Katja

Everything hurt.

My back, my feet, my hips, my thighs, my arms, my neck, my head—every-damn-thing.

The new work regime at Xargi Penitentiary had kicked off right around the start of my second month inside. Non-shifters had a schedule of one week on, one day off, whereas shifters had work assignments each and every day. Apparently, the higher-ups thought shifters could withstand the daily grind, but I knew the higher-ups a little too intimately; Lloyd did it because he was a bastard, a sadist who lived for the suffering of others.

Wincing, I rolled onto my back, my shoulder and hip unable to take my body’s weight a second longer. Sixty-six days in prison and at no point was there even a whiff of an offer to replace the paper-thin mattress that covered my wire cot. After a week of work either in the bakery with Elijah—or totally alone for nine hours, like yesterday—or out in the greenhouse with Fintan, all I wanted was a real bed. Nothing fancy. No foam topper three inches thick. Just a plain old box spring mattress—just something to support my aching body with a little more structural integrity than this.

But even if the prison did somehow find it in their budget to shell out for cot replacements every six months or so, I wouldn’t get one. Lloyd Guthrie had made that perfectly clear when we met for coffee last week. He drank his—three cups’ worth, actually, like they were fueling his mania. I had let mine go cold, then “accidentally” spilled it across his desk when I got up to leave. How I’d managed that was beyond me, especially after being forced to sit there and listen to him rant about how brilliantly he had orchestrated my mom’s death.

How he had ensured a witch died in childbirth.

Witches didn’t die in childbirth. Not only were we physically stronger than humans, our bones denser, our bodies tougher, but we had magic at our disposal. We had midwives with a good century or so of experience behind them, all our lives prolonged with a touch of ancient power.

Some stretched theirs on even longer with potions way too complicated for me to consider.

But Lloyd had found a way. Furious at her betrayal, he had made his own fetish doll, complete with a chunk of her hair that he ripped out during their last meeting and the necklace he had torn from her neck. Then, as she gave birth to me, he had stuck pins in the doll. One by one, starting with the least vital spots and working his way inward. Unaware that an effigy was in place, Mom’s midwives had set charms and fed her potions to ease the pain—but they couldn’t save her.

The last pin had pierced her heart.

And then it was done.

He had stolen her from me seconds after I drew my first breath, as I wailed in my sobbing dad’s arms.

The sole victory I could claim from that session was that I hadn’t anxiety-vomited—not in front of him, at least. Had I sprinted to my cell as soon as Thompson delivered me back to the block to empty my guts into the pathetic metal toilet? Yup. Was said toilet so small that I missed during one heave, splashing the floor and myself? Yup.

We had three more scheduled meetings—with no set date, all at random so that I was always at peak anxiety if a guard called my name—where Lloyd Guthrie would share in excruciating detail how he orchestrated the death of my entire family. Up next was Ewan, the middle child and my best friend until he drowned at our lake cottage when I was eight. Then Jackson, my oldest brother, my protector, who had died instantly when his wand somehow backfired at school. Lloyd had promised to save my dad for last, the freshest tragedy in my mind.

Or I could accept his offer.

Leave Xargi with him. Acknowledge the contract. Recognize that he owned me.

Screw him.

I could take it—all his talk. Pigs would grow wings and dive-bomb this prison like kamikaze pilots before I went anywhere with him.

Eyes shut, I wriggled around on the half inch of bedding at my back, trying to find the comfy groove I’d worn into it over the weeks. Everyone else would get a replacement before me; Lloyd seemed determined to make my experience here both horrendously uncomfortable—cue the mattress—and backbreakingly exhausting. He had, however, insisted that he assigned me to the greenhouse personally, that he figured I would find joy in the flowers, like he had done me a favor.

I hated that I liked greenhouse duty. Absolutely despised the fact that I did find peace in the natural world, but I was a witch… I couldn’t help that.

What the bastard probably hadn’t anticipated was that putting Fintan in there with me meant Lloyd Guthrie and his disgusting history lessons were the furthest things from my mind. Not only was the fae eye candy beyond belief, but he occasionally made me laugh.

In a hellhole like this, that counted for a lot.

And then there was Elijah. Lloyd had insisted he put me in the bakery to appease my love of baking, as if running a café involved spending a lot of time in the kitchen slaving away over proofed dough. I enjoyed potions, which could equate to cooking in some respects, so the bakery wasn’t the worst work option out there, but it was Elijah who got me through those shifts—when he was there, of course. Lately our overlords had been shoving him in the metal shop most of the week, which meant I was on my own more often than not.

But we had plenty of time to ourselves. Two weeks after the discovery that I was supposedly fated to a dragon shifter and the world felt a whole lot clearer. Things had become much easier between us now that I understood why my body responded as it did—why my heart yearned to be near him. In a sense, it was biological, just a quirk of the supernatural world. That didn’t mean I liked that an unseen deity had chosen someone for me, prearranged my love story in the stars, took away my right to choose—our right to choose. Fortunately, Elijah was a gem, and now that we were both on the same page, it was just easier to breathe around him. We were less combative with each other, the group dynamic noticeably calmer now that our mounting sexual tension had finally exploded, and the fallout was good.

Because it could have been bad. Sex could have ruined everything, but it only made us stronger—more in sync. Not that that made the guilt inside me any less prickly. I mean, if I was fated to one man, why was I still interested—to varying degrees—in two others? Elijah hadn’t once commented on the fact that I blushed around Fintan, or that Rafe and I connected in a way I hadn’t with him. Still, I was desperate for another round with the dragon, starving for the best sex I’d ever had, but finding time alone in a prison was next to impossible with a legion of warlocks eyeing your every move.

Under the table, we struggled to not touch—feet, thighs, hands. Now that we’d had a taste, physical distance was torture.

Speaking of torture… Poor Rafe. Even though work kicked the absolute crap out of me for seven days straight, it was better than waiting around in the cellblock, twiddling your thumbs, because you couldn’t risk going out in the sunlight. While the rest of us left most days, able to stretch our legs and breathe some fresh air, Rafe and the other vampires were trapped in the cellblocks, hiding in shadows, only taking the risk to venture out to the cafeteria for meals. At the very least, our cellblock guards marched us down windowless corridors, but not every hallway was without. No telling if they did it for Rafe’s sake, or if that was just the established route for Cellblock C.

Besides my ever-present physical attraction, I just felt bad for the guy, which explained why, despite the ever-present exhaustion, I made myself to stay awake as late as I could for our nightly chats.

They were a staple now, our usual routine excluding the day Elijah and I had first, er, mated. Rafe had been silent that night, distant, but he’d whispered an apology as we lined up for breakfast the following morning, and I had let it slide. I refused to admit that I got it, his mood, his refusal to talk, but I maybe, sort of, almost did.

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