Page 78 of Caged Kitten

Chuckling, Fintan shifted his weight between his legs, then leaned against the stone doorway with a huff. How he managed to get away with telling an alpha shifter what to do was beyond me, but at some point Elijah and I had just accepted him as a part of our group, this snarky, teasing, carefree fae who delighted in poking the bear time and time again, then hiding behind Elijah or me in the fallout. For his obscene age, he sometimes reminded me of a teenager, both in maturity and foresight, but here and there he had proven his worth to this…

Pack.

Clan?

Clique?

We were something, we four, and everyone—everyone—seemed to sense our bond stretched beyond that of a found family.

Besides, even if Fintan hadn’t proven himself, his comment was fair. In a place of shifting schedules and guards ready to fuck us over at the drop of a hat, Katja needed all of us to recover. It did her no good if we ended up in a hole for the next week.

So, we stood guard. No one would touch her under our watch—no one had access to her in this state. Hell, she was still waiting on a new jumpsuit to replace the one splattered with blood that Deimos had torn right down the back.

Just the memory of the fabric cleaved in two ignited a fury deep inside. My fangs sunk into my lower lip and my hands coiled to impossibly tight fists. Because with that mental picture came Katja herself—the position I found her in, beaten and bloodied, on her belly, vulnerable and exposed.

Although I envied Elijah’s innate connection with the witch, I wasn’t jealous of him, per se, and I didn’t want him to bow out of our dynamic. Nor had I felt inclined to attack Fintan the moment he and Katja were escorted back into the cellblock after their alone time in the shower, back when I had felt her numerous, pungent climaxes all the way in my cell, pleasure ripping through me like a tsunami.

But Deimos?

With his hand between her thighs? Knee on her back? That fucking smile?

Then to add insult to injury: Blake and Avery loitering around like they were waiting their fucking turn to have at her.

No.

Fintan and Elijah had never once set me off over their separate and developing connections with Katja, but yesterday…

Yesterday I had been this close to painting the walls with blood and guts. Had the guards not literally stunned me into submission, I would have torn all three of those twisted bastards limb from limb and accepted my fate. Simple as that.

“O’Dwyer.”

I started at the sound of my name barked by an unfamiliar guard. A trio loitered in the open main door to Cellblock C, and, so unaccustomed to being addressed, I just stared back. Most of the vampires in Xargi were shadows, shells of their former selves, unable to work and barely surviving on the pitiful daily dose of blood. We weren’t threats; the guards seldom paid us any attention.

But now here was some beefy warlock beckoning me to him with his wand, and my eyes narrowed when he called for me again.

“Come on,” his companion snapped, a second wand raised in my direction. “You’ve got an appointment.”

A what? Appointments were coveted by inmates, as there was this secret universal hope that we were about to meet with a lawyer. Rarely were we so fortunate.

If anything, appointment was code for solitary.

Still as stone, I glanced at Fintan—which must have been laughable to the newcomers. After all, it wasn’t like the fae could do anything. Whether I wanted to leave the cellblock or not, I was going.

“Stay on your toes,” he muttered under his breath, lips barely moving as he picked crusty bits of dough from his nails. Meanwhile, the rest of the cellblock cunts smirked and whispered to each other, guards and inmates included. Christ. None of it made me want to leave Katja, but so long as Elijah was still here, his strength unmatched and his resolution like steel, I could breathe a little easier.

If I needed to breathe, of course.

And Fintan had a few qualities I came to admire with each passing day. Tonight, when I reluctantly abandoned my post in front of her door, the fae shifted his stance so that his body—lean and wiry, made for swift movements, a warrior’s frame that delivered the killing blow like a dance—blocked the majority of the opening.

As I marched over to the awaiting trio, three unnecessary wands trained on me, I couldn’t help but wonder if they had finally found me a work assignment. Sure, solitary seemed more likely given recent events, but Xargi Penitentiary worked its inmates to the bone. With vampires sequestered away from the sun, the small population in red jumpsuits were essentially useless—a drain on resources and manpower. They should have been looking for ways to put our strength, speed, and manual dexterity to work ages ago.

Hands clasped in front of me, I let the warlocks lead me out. Through dim stony corridors, they marched me on a familiar path to the stairwell that brought us to the cafeteria. Intense fluorescents haunted my every step, bright and offensive to eyes so accustomed to the shadows. When we bypassed the dining hall and continued lower underground, my suspicions spiked, my hands gripped each other tighter, and the warlocks suddenly moved faster.

Five floors beneath the earth we descended, going deeper than solitary; each guard had the nerve to point it out, to show me the door and tell me to consider myself fortunate that I wasn’t headed in there. Please. I spent just about all my time in solitary while the others worked. I was a creature of the night, an orphan vampire without the protection of a coven; I was accustomed to pits and holes and dark, depressing places.

Until Elijah.

Until his cottage and his company.

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