Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,127

the thought of my mate going up against that filth alone. My inner dragon and I wanted to incinerate the warden, fry him to a crisp and bathe in his screams.

But this was Xargi—and here, no one ever got what they wanted.

And now the odds were stacked so high against us—

A sharp tap on the shoulder made me fumble as I reloaded the machine, so lost in my thoughts, in the mundanity of my task, that neither I nor my inner dragon had sensed anyone creeping up behind. Fool. My inner dragon bristled, missing his mate and desperate to fight, but we both faltered again when I scented… Fintan?

Elderberries and dewdrops on grass and the subtle smokiness of aged bourbon—Fintan.

Abandoning the reloader, I whirled around and found my fae counterpart standing there with one of the metal shop’s guards—a warlock in his early twenties whose voice still broke when he shouted at us. And… he had a knife to the whelp’s throat. My inner dragon unleashed a war cry that rattled in my bones and set off a stress headache between my eyes. I stabbed a thumb at the sharp twinge, scowling, seconds from asking what the fuck was going on—had I fallen asleep reloading bullets? No surprise if I had… So mind-numbingly boring—

But I scented her first.

Briar rose and candle smoke and a storm raging across a tumultuous sea… Over the crackling flame and seared metal of the shop, my mate reigned supreme.

Katja zipped into the room a second later, out of breath and flushed, sweat glistening across her lovely face. Fire sparked in her big blues, hottest in all the realms, and for the first time since I’d known her, she looked exhilarated. Alive. Stunned, my gaze dipped to the pair of thick gardening scissors clutched in her one hand, the shears bloodless—for now. Had she the courage to use them, to jam them into a guard’s throat just as Fintan tormented the pup in his grasp with the blade’s razor-sharp tip?

Where the fuck had he even found a knife?

A storm of feeling charged through me, clashing, battling to come out on top. Relief and concern and gut-churning confusion that made the room spin as I shot to my feet. My inner dragon had more clarity, snarling, sensing something stupid had happened without me.

“What…?”

“Uh…” Fintan shrugged as Katja fidgeted with her shears, and the fae cleared his throat. “Escape attempt?”

“What?” My temper reached critical mass in a millisecond, and it took every ounce of restraint I had not to throttle Fintan within an inch of his life. Yes, we had agreed to get serious about breaking out of here, but we were nowhere near ready.

“I saw an opening and I ran with it,” he insisted as voices rose from the rest of the shop beyond my little alcove, metal clanging and footsteps pounding. “The greenhouse shift has already breached the main building, and the three guards out there are dead.” Fintan poked the tip of his blade under the warlock’s chin; the boy let out a whimper, squeezing his eyes shut. “This lovely lad will take us through all the locked doors.”

I opened and closed my mouth, fumbling for words. Half of me wanted to take that dagger and slice him from stem to stern—watch him bleed out at my feet. The rest insisted I clap him on the back and embrace him as a brother, because he had done what I couldn’t: he had started a chain of events that might get us all out of here.

Or, you know, might result in our grisly demise.

Struggling, I looked to Katja, who was locked on me, her gaze unfocused as she chased her breath. One blink and she was back—and then she was on top of me, shooting onto her toes to throw her arms around my neck and squeeze tight. Ignoring Fintan’s smug smirk, I wrapped my arms around her lower back and held her, breathed her in, willed her scent to permanently stain my skin so I could carry her everywhere.

My inner dragon purred in her embrace, craving our mate with every fiber of his temperamental being.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out in my ear, fingers toying with the hairs on the nape of my neck. “Elijah, I’m so sorry.”

“You…” I cupped the back of her head with a frown, wishing I could fix whatever made her words so heavy. Was it the escape attempt? The distance? Both? Or had she felt it too—the longing, the same treacherous