Page 81 of Caged Kitten

Just as I’d plucked another card from the top of my tiny deck, a few rounds away from losing War to either one of them, the cellblock door’s locks thunked undone, and I shot to my feet as soon as the metal panel swung open.

My inner dragon sensed the doom before I did, stretching his wings and rousing his flames, heat and rage and adrenaline swelling in my gut and bubbling up my throat. I scented it a second later: dead blood, maroon and viscous—the blood of a vampire. As the block’s trio of warlock cronies swept aside, a new cluster swarmed in, hauling a limp Rafe between them, dragging his feet, arms dangling, head hanging and bobbing with each step. Katja struggled to her feet with a gasp.

“What did you do to him?” she demanded, her voice soaring several squeaky pitches above normal as Deimos’ gang erupted in fits of chuckles and whispers. Even the shifters who had refused to meet my eye months ago joined in tonight, delighted with my best friend’s humiliation.

Red bled across the cellblock, my vision tinted by rage. My inner dragon clawed at my chest, desperate to get out, more fired up than ever to rip his enemies apart and burn this shithole to the ground. The collar almost seemed to tighten around my throat the more he fumed, and I tugged at it absently—only to rear back when static crackled across my flesh, a warning of a painful, miserable death should I attempt to break my shackles.

Fintan soon joined me and Katja, on his feet and prowling about in front of the table. His eyes, almost neon green in this light, assessed the situation swiftly, and as soon as Katja took off, limping toward the guards and demanding answers, he jogged after her and hooked her around the waist. Her squeal of pain forced my hand, and I stalked toward the pair with a snarl that had the other shifters in the block cowering again—shrinking, as they should, before a true alpha.

Deimos, on the other hand, only laughed harder, the maenad to his right mimicking Katja’s pained wail between her cackles.

At the moment, I wasn’t sure which enemy to eviscerate first.

Had I access to my dragonfire, I could have felled them all in one brutal breath.

Something slammed into me when I pivoted toward Deimos’s table, and I blinked down, stunned to find Fintan there, his shoulder planted in the middle of my chest. The fae shoved back, and I actually almost lost my balance.

Stronger than I thought, this pampered imp.

“Just let it settle,” he hissed. “Don’t give them a reason, Elijah. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

The fucker was right, of course, only we shifters—dragons in particular—weren’t known for our cool heads in the face of a fight. But for Katja’s sake, for Rafe’s, I held back, shaking with white-hot rage, with an anger so foul that when Deimos dared meet my eyes, his expression faltered. Just for a moment, my wrath knocked the wind out of his black sails.

The cellblock guards had their wands trained on me as the strangers hauled Rafe to his cell. Katja trailed after them, wringing her hands, her eyes glittering like diamonds beneath the overhead light—glossy and wet, on the brink of tears. She never let them fall, sniffling and brushing a subtle hand beneath each before glowering at every warlock present.

“Careful,” she barked, but her words fell on deaf ears when the bastards tossed Rafe onto the floor of his cell, barely inside the door, and left him there in a heap. As soon as she had the leeway to get by, my mate was off, charging forward despite her injuries and collapsing to her knees at Rafe’s side. Fintan followed shortly after, yet I stayed still, glaring at all who had wronged us, hurt us, just wishing they would raise a hand to me.

Put the wands away and fight fair, you fucking cowards.

But none of them spared me a backward glance. Now that they’d deposited their cargo, the unfamiliar faces disappeared, and as soon as the cellblock door shut and bolted, our minders were back to nonsense conversations about TV shows and female inmates and possible promotions through the ranks.

My inner dragon flashed his teeth, his pent-up fire threatening to scorch us both to ash. When we had the chance—and maybe one day we would—Deimos would be first, but all the assholes who guarded this block were next on the fucking hit list. Abandoning them, my gaze slid over to Deimos, the world so much sharper now, fine details like dust in the grout between cinder blocks and the shading on the demon’s neck tattoos coming into focus as some of my inner dragon leaked through the collar’s charms. All for shock value, that ink, inexpensive and haphazard. The wings on my back had taken the better part of a year to get right—that was true craftmanship.

Not that Deimos cared about craftsmanship, about honor. Not that he valued hard work.

Some demons did. Some prized it above all else.

This one was an acolyte of chaos—I was sure of it now more than ever, because the gnat had the balls to wink at me when our eyes met.

I lurched forward with a snarl, only to once again be held back. Restrained by fae strength, subtle and unspoken, Fintan cuffed a hand around my forearm, then wrenched me round to face him, totally unfazed by my low warning growl, by my posturing and my size.

“Patience,” he whispered, eyebrows inching up, his mouth slightly quirked. “Give it time and we’ll find a way to gut him when we can’t be blamed.”

With the inferno raging inside, I could have eviscerated the little shit right here and now.

But Fintan was right.

Again.

Katja’s sob from Rafe’s cell had me moving, and I set aside the deepening grudges—for now—to attend to my clan of misfits. What I found inside the vampire’s little room spurred the anger, but just as swiftly came the need to protect—to help. Alphas weren’t all fists and fire. The good ones assessed a situation and took the right action. When I discovered Katja trying and failing to haul Rafe’s lifeless body onto the cot, all thoughts of Deimos and the guards and Xargi itself fell away. I rushed in, sidestepping my struggling mate, her feline familiar weaving around her ankles, and hoisted my friend onto his cot. Fintan, meanwhile, loitered behind, blocking the cell door from the inside this time. When I glanced back, I noted his hand hovering near Katja’s elbow as if to stabilize her; she braced herself on the wall instead, totally unaware of the fae’s attentiveness, cheeks flushed, eyes wet, and massaged her battered ribs with a grimace.

“Rafe?” she whispered as I crouched at the head of the bed, trying to free up what little space these cells offered, my massive frame making that all the more difficult. Katja perched on the side, the cot groaning softly under the added weight, and Tully leapt up out of nowhere, light and swift as a shadow. The familiar padded around as Rafe uttered a weak groan, then settled squarely on top of the vampire’s chest, purring up a storm just as he’d done with his mistress. Bright blue sapphires blinked once, twice, three times at me, slowly, and then the cat closed his eyes—like he was officially settling in to work. The air thickened with a whisper of magic. Katja, meanwhile, watched it all unfold with a frail smile, and, sniffling, she stroked her familiar’s ears, then nudged Rafe’s arm. “Rafe?”

Slowly, he peeled his eyes open, struggling, and let out another groan.

“T-took my f-fangs,” he croaked, his voice scratchy. Katja sucked in a sharp, strangled breath, and this time the tears fell.

“Oh, gods.” She crept up the bed and lifted his lip, then looked to me, hopeless and lost and breaking apart right before my eyes. Because sure enough, two massive holes sat in Rafe’s pale gumline where his fangs ought to be—and there was no harsher punishment for a vampire than the loss of his fangs. The only thing worse was to be strung up outside just before dawn so the sun could fry him to dust, but at least that was a quick death.

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