Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,25

the scene, it was chaos. Unbridled, unfettered, absolute chaos.

And it had only been four fucking days.

I’d lose it by seven.

“Greystone—move your ass.”

I hopped to, nudging off the wall between my cell and Helen’s, headed for guard Cooper with a scowl. The fucker liked to flick lit matches at any poor bastard within range when he smoked in here, and it took everything in my power to not ram the pack of cigarettes he always carried down his throat. Beyond that, he was a sleezy warlock, one of many who had taken up Constance’s offer for head, which meant there was always the chance he had allied himself with Deimos.

Phillips, the other guard escorting inmates to the showers this morning, was still gone with his female charge, and as I headed for the main door and an awaiting Cooper, who looked bored out of his skull, a quick perusal of those left waiting showed a distinct lack of Katja.

My inner dragon rumbled at the thought of her naked and wet, close enough to touch.

Simmer down, you fuck. There’s a wall between us.

So, not quite close enough to touch, unfortunately. One of the few places not crafted entirely of dusty stone blocks, each cellblock had their own shower area. Much like a gym or a school, the tiled room had a metal showerhead jutting out from the wall—just the one. No partitions for privacy. No curtains. Just a stretch of space with a lone faucet bathed in artificial light. A tiled wall separated the women’s side from the men’s, and while I had never peeked around the divider, I assumed their side was the same as ours: sparse and grimy.

Towel in one hand and a thinning plastic bag hanging from my fingers in the other, I followed Cooper out of the cellblock and walked the familiar path down the hall. Ten paces, turn right. Four paces. Door. Not a thrilling venture, but any chance to stretch your legs was one you had to seize. The plastic bag swung into my knee when I stilled behind Cooper, who was in the process of stabbing his wand into the keyhole—which I assumed had been enchanted to only open the doors for guards.

Or inmates who paid the guards for favors.

I’d picked up a few new soap bars from the shop last week, and the gentleman in me insisted I should have given one to Katja. Unfortunately, I tended to lose my shit around her, which meant I, like her, had kept my distance. We hadn’t even had a proper conversation yet because I was such a fucking mess, but as the door swung open and humidity wafted into the corridor, I wondered if she felt as I did.

As a non-shifter, could she sense our bond? Feel that fate had entwined us together?

Did it frustrate her as well, the lack of self-control?

Rafe had told me she still wept each night, only quieter now, as if not wanting to disturb her neighbors.

That gutted me.

Absolutely destroyed me—that I couldn’t be there for my mate, that she was suffering in what was practically the same room and I had to stay in my cage and do nothing about it.

“You know the drill, Greystone.”

“Fuck off, Cooper,” I muttered, breezing by him through the door. The divider wall greeted me a few paces in, women’s area to the left, men’s to the right, and I veered right, dumping my shit on the floor and undoing the top few buttons of my jumpsuit. Whoever had been in here before me left a mess, water everywhere, and without a hook to hang my towel, it was probably already wet—useless.

From day one, I’d never had a problem stripping in front of anyone. Let them look. I had nothing to hide under my prison-issued attire save for a tattoo across my back—a pair of scaly wings reminiscent of my own that stretched from top to bottom, coiled, ready for flight. Intricate and highly detailed, it had cost me a small fortune from the mage who did it. After all, permanently inking anything into a shifter’s skin, flesh that healed itself in a heartbeat, was a difficult task that required a skilled practitioner to get right.

Otherwise all that expensive ink would leech out of your pores before you even peeled the bandages off.

Beyond that, my cock seemed to have no appeal for any of our wannabe alpha guards. Cooper had already forgotten me before I’d even stepped under the showerhead, my shoes paper-thin at this point.