Page 73 of Caged Kitten

Katja

“It must have been terrifying,” Lloyd mused, finger slowly circling the rim of his coffee mug, that hawkish grey gaze never once leaving my face, “to be hunted within a lake he knew so well… To feel the predator nipping at his heels with the shoreline so very far away.” He leaned over his obviously-compensating-for-something mahogany desk, fighting to catch my eye. “Did you hear him screaming that fateful day?”

Even though I was almost too aware of him, I focused on the huge windows across his office. Lightning skittered through a black sky, a storm sweeping across the terrain and pounding into Xargi like a battering ram. I’d only just walked back into Cellblock C, trailing along behind a forever grinning Fintan, both of us soaked to the bone, when Cooper grabbed me by the arm and hauled me back out. At the time, I hadn’t bothered to ask where we were going. I knew, dread mounting with each step deeper into corridors stamped with upscale décor and tiled floors.

Today was the story of Ewan’s death. Practically giddy, Lloyd had been waiting for me by his ostentatious hearth as Cooper shoved me into the same chair as last time, even dried me off with a lazy flick of his wand, the rush of hot air wicking away rainwater making my stomach turn.

He had offered the same out: accept the blood contract signed by my mom, acknowledge him as my lord and master, and leave Xargi with him this evening. Biting down hard on my cheeks, bones weary from a full day of harvesting sunflowers, I had planted my elbow on the armrest, my chin on my fist, and tried to lose myself in the storm. Tried to track the fattest rain droplets as they parachuted down the windowpanes, all the while wishing the thunder would drown out his smoker’s rasp, his husky baritone.

Hating that his cologne was so strong, like he had put on more just for me.

Sure, he smelled great—all masculine and spicy and rich—but Lloyd Guthrie was rotten to the core, and no amount of paint on his shiny exterior could change that.

Surprise, surprise: he had orchestrated Ewan’s death. Only a year older than me, the middle child, the second Fox son, my brother had drowned on a hot July afternoon at our family’s cottage. Back then, Jackson had been all about kayaking. Dad had been obsessed with chopping wood and making the best bonfires after sunset. I used to enjoy flitting around between all of them, going wherever the wind would blow me.

And Ewan was usually in the lake from morning until dusk, swimming and leaping off the tire swing and cannonballing from the edge of the dock.

Lloyd had hired a shifter assassin—a seal shifter, different from a selkie in that they could shift from man to beast and back again at will. The assassin chased my brother around the lake, herding him away from the shoreline, exhausting him, then grabbed his ankle, dragged him to the murky, mushy bottom… and drowned him. Just like that, this piece of shit with all his money and his grudge and his bruised ego stole my best friend from me.

I’d been eight at the time.

While I remembered the aftermath, Dad finding Ewan’s pale, limp body washed up on the shore, the hours before were a haze. At some point, I’d been in the lake with him—then climbed on Jackson’s kayak and took a tour of the smaller inlets. Back to the cabin for lunch. Watermelon slices in the hot afternoon. A book in my hands, bathed in sunlight, my hair drying into tight red ringlets that I’d since outgrown.

But beyond that—

“Kitten.” Lloyd snapped his fingers as another bolt of lightning cut over the black, a gust of wind splattering the windows with rain. Seriously, could he have chosen a more ominous day? The warden—gangster, kingpin, villain, bastard—cleared his throat and tapped the mahogany top of his desk. “I asked you a question. It’s rude to ignore a superior.”

My teeth sank into my cheeks, but I unclenched when the pain became too sharp, on the verge of flooding my mouth with a metallic tang. Was he my superior? As far as I was concerned, Lloyd Guthrie was no better than the dirt—a step below the sludge on the shower walls. Slowly, I forced my gaze in his direction, and I let him know precisely what I thought about him with a glare…

Which only seemed to delight him.

“Well?”

Still angled away from him, body language reading loud and clear that if I wasn’t trapped in this chair with thinly veiled threats, I’d be all the way across the room plastered against the windows. Grey light spilled in through the huge panes, the room lit only by Lloyd’s twin desk lamps and the odd blast of lightning. He cocked a greying eyebrow, then fished out a pack of cigarettes from the inside of his jacket.

“No,” I croaked tersely. The first time I sat in this chair, I’d ended our little meeting by vomiting all over the hardwood. Today, I had a better grasp on my anxiety, months of prison time bolstering my confidence—but not enough to quell the churn of my gut and the pounding of my heart. Being in the same room as him, even if Lloyd and I didn’t exchange a single word, made me wish the ground would just open up and swallow me whole. Palms slick with a nervous sweat, adrenaline had been stabbing through me for the last half hour, my body primed to bolt. It left me light-headed and nauseous, all that fight or flight wasted while I was stuck in this damn chair. “I don’t remember hearing his screams.”

Lloyd clucked his tongue at me, then lit his cigarette with the end of his wand. A flicker of flame preceded the pungent waft of burning herbs that only made my queasiness worse.

“Pity,” he murmured after his first puff, easing back in his huge, intimidating chair in that pristine suit, sporting the same perfectly side-swept salt-and-pepper hair, clean-shaven and leering. I attempted to gulp down the lump in my throat again to no avail; while not a single tear had fallen since Cooper marched me into the warden’s den, the floodwaters had been rising ever since he dragged me out of the cellblock and away from the three men who made me brave in Xargi. Frightened as I was of the gangster seated across from me, I refused to let him see me cry this time. Refused to allow him any power over me—refused to give him something that said he had chipped another chink in my armor.

“Now, kitten,” he rasped, the pet name reserved for Dad and Dad alone followed by a cloud of smoke that had me coughing, “I have the same proposition for you—”

“No.” Thunder cracked outside immediately after the last flash of white light, rattling the windows and the bookshelves. The storm had drifted right over us, and what I wouldn’t give to be out there, with the wolves and the tempest, if it meant being far, far away from him. “Same answer.”

Lloyd chuckled, elegant and pompous in the way he tapped his cigarette over an ivory ash tray. “Are you sure?”

My belly roared—traitor—and Lloyd grinned like that was the answer he’d wanted. Rolling my shoulders back, I glanced pointedly at the wall clock.

“You’re going to make me miss dinner, warden,” I insisted. We had another hour before they made us line up and amble down to the cafeteria, but something told me this asshole could waste away much longer than that just listening to himself talk.

“You’ll regret it, little one.” The cigarette’s tip blazed bright orange with his next inhale, the color dancing in his eyes. A tentative glance into them showed the amusement fading—no more teasing and tormenting. My refusal pissed him off, which both terrified and thrilled me. It would probably be my downfall one day, but not today: he still had two more family members to torture me with. Lloyd flicked the ashy tip over the tray, one grey eye narrowing slightly. “I haven’t even begun to apply pressure.”

“Telling me how you murdered my family isn’t pressure?” I demanded, voice cracking despite my best efforts to keep it steady—to sound brave. Lloyd scoffed, his smile cold and cruel.

“Just the tip of the iceberg.” He extinguished his cigarette having only consumed half, as if this particular prop in his theatrical arsenal was no longer needed. “Tip of the fucking iceberg, pet.”

Bring it. I tried to scream it with my eyes, daring him to divulge more horrors from my past. Because Mom and Ewan were out there, floating in the ether, clinging to me like a second skin I would never shed—but I had survived it. With each passing day, Elijah, Rafe, and Fintan made me stronger in their own ways. Knowing they had my back against other inmates was one thing, but our steadily growing bonds, like flowers blooming in the middle of the desert, reminded me that this wasn’t the end. Xargi wasn’t a wasteland, and I hadn’t come here to die. With them, I wasn’t completely alone.

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