glass was reversed so he could peer through at us. Jai woke with a start, eyes sharpening rapidly as he looked around him, narrowing when he saw the men. But we both went still when we saw the trolleys packed with food.
So we weren’t going to starve then.
“You’ve had some time to settle in,” Hollingsworth announced. “The attempt to keep your tears to yourself was quite sweet, Shannon, but misguided. Jai is your mate.”
Jai’s eyes whipped around to fix on me, the pain there forcing mine down.
“There seems to be a degree of uncertainty about your bond, so for that reason, we will open the cages.”
“What?” Jai growled.
The guards pushed the food trolleys into the central corridor between our cages and then backed out, the glass sliding down to create a uniform wall around all of the cages. Then the internal walls slid down.
“Stay here, love,” Jai said, keeping his hand on me and his eyes on the other shifters, his arm twitching when they moved.
“We mean no harm,” Gaden said, holding out his palms, but he kept on coming. “We’re just hungry.”
“Damn straight we are,” Zane said, pilfering a hunk of sliced meat. “We missed breakfast because of you.”
We just stood and watched, Nero going forward to sniff the food carefully, Caleb doing the same. They looked at each other for a long moment, then took a few small morsels of food before moving to sit down by the wall. Nero kept an eye on us as he ate, nodding slowly.
“Shannon will spend time with each of the specimens until a bond is finalised,” Hollingsworth said, a slight smile on his face. “I have my men watching the CCTV at all times, marking down interactions, sexual or otherwise. I’ll leave you to initiate that yourself for today. Indefinitely, if you can manage it to my satisfaction.”
“You fucking prick!” Jai ran up to the door and slammed his hands down on the glass. “She’s my mate!”
“Well, then, you’d better fuck her with your prick, hadn’t you? Seal the deal, wolf, and then you’ll have no further problems…until the first child is born. Eat well. We have ways of dealing with non-compliant subjects.”
“Jai,” I said as the man turned to go, remembering him jerking on the floor when they electrocuted him. The guard responsible shot us an evil smirk before turning to go as well. “C’mon, let’s eat.”
“Sit on the bed,” he growled. “I’ll bring you food.”
My head snapped up, my eyes narrowing.
“Sorry?”
He spun around to face me, his expression softening rapidly, but I caught that harsh glare, the flash of his night eyes shining silver for a moment.
“I’m sorry, Shan. It’s just…” His eyes darted sideways. “We know nothing about these blokes and…”
“Uh oh. Trouble in paradise already?” Zane asked, snickering when we glared at him. He just shook his head and focussed on his meal before glancing up at us. “Your mate’s pussy might smell sweeter than honey right now…” A rumble of disapproval came from the other shifters. “But we’ve got a common need that overrules the desire to sink our dicks into the witch there. We want to get free. So sit your ass down, grab a bite, and let's start some kinda parley here. You got family on the outside?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s a helluva lot more than what we’ve got. Siddown and fill us in.”
The food was gorgeous. Huge amounts of it and all very high quality, but the fruit I’d selected tasted like ashes. I forced myself to chew it to a pulp, then swallow, something Caleb noted. His eyes flicked away when he caught himself watching me put another slice of apple in my mouth.
“We came here in the late 1700s, and the whole pack settled here. That’s become several more now, ruled by the alphas,” Jai said, then paused to tear a mouthful of sausage. All you could hear was people eating for a moment. “This used to be an old jail. Our people fought the re-purposing of it. Too many of ours ended up in here, but we didn’t have enough sway with the council to stop it. The old fellas, they’d know where we were. I always report in, no matter what. Only way we stay safe is to keep tabs on each other. An attack on one is an attack on all. They’ll come for us.”
“But it was your crew that tried to break in here at the start, wasn’t it?” Caleb asked quietly. “We heard the fuss. Got excited initially.