Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,35

in a thin, harsh line. “I didn’t expect a…” Slowly, his eyes lifted to mine, and he shook his head, the tightness around his mouth and in his shoulders fading. “Never mind. We can talk it over someday. Just know I’m going to look out for you in the meantime.”

Amidst all the excitement, the firestorm raging inside, my lingering self-preservation protested to that. My belly somersaulted in an unpleasant way, a sick feeling cutting through everything else to the point it made me light-headed. Ahhh yes. Hello, crushing anxiety—you pesky bitch.

“I don’t think—”

“And it’s not because I want something,” Elijah said, waving me off with a floury hand, “or I have expectations from you… I can’t help it. If I don’t do something, I’ll explode.”

“Right.” I waited for him to chuckle or grin, but he seemed a little too serious for my liking. Arching an eyebrow, I rolled out my first ball for the new tray. “Figuratively.”

“Yes.” Finally, a glimmer of humor—in his lighter tone, in the way the corner of his mouth kicked up. “Sure.” Elijah tossed his head side to side, cracking his neck, then rolled his shoulders back. Given our height differences, he had to hunch a little just to work at the same table. “Look, I’ll try not to make it so fucking obvious in the future, I swear.”

I set my ball on the tray. “I hear shifters are men of their word.”

“When a dragon makes a vow, he’ll keep it to the end of days.”

And there it was again: super-serious Elijah. I didn’t need or want someone making a blood pact or a binding vow for me—I just needed him to not shine a spotlight on me every time another inmate tried to ruffle my feathers. Not that I doubted his ability to protect someone if he set his mind to it. In fact, the rough tone he took, the sudden shift in his voice, was actually kind of intimidating. Add in the height and the muscle and the grit of his jaw and I wouldn’t want to cross paths with him in a dark alley, wand or not.

“Well, thank you,” I managed, not wanting to sound ungrateful when he sounded so sincere, “for what you did. I’m really sorry it got you put in solitary—”

“I did that to myself.” Elijah shrugged, as if unfazed by a place that Willow had told me was a waking nightmare… if the rumors were to be believed, anyway. “But if you want to help me out, hang with me and Rafe.” He scratched at his neck when I frowned at him, smearing dough and flour across his tanned skin. When my eyes dipped to the stain, he brushed it off with the back of his hand. “Then you look like you’re part of the crew, and it isn’t suspicious for crews to look out for each other in here. Nobody’s forming packs or covens these days. No shifter cliques or demon gangs… It won’t raise eyebrows for a witch to spend her time with a dragon and a vampire.”

Of course, I understood the logic: safety in numbers and all that. I just wasn’t interested in becoming part of a crew. If you had people, someone might try to use them against you.

But I couldn’t say that—couldn’t spit in the face of such a genuine offer. So I licked my lips and pretended my current dough ball was the most fascinating unbaked pastry I’d ever seen.

“You sure Rafe wants that—me worming into your duo?”

Elijah stilled again. “Has he given you reason to think otherwise?”

“I…” Not even a little. Rafe recited poetry that first night to make me stop crying. He didn’t strike me as a bad guy—maybe a bit melancholy, gorgeous features always set in a judgy frown—but he and Elijah were a pair. No telling if he wanted to become a trio with a witch who might ruin that. “Er, no, not really—”

“Then there’s your answer,” the dragon said, sounding very much like that was that, decided, and back to work we both went. We filled up the second tray faster than the first, and after loading both in the pantry, we were on to the third, that mountain of dough seeming untouched—like we’d be at this for hours.

Days, even.

Elijah was good with his hands. Meticulous, careful, skilled, his fingers weathered but his work immaculate. I liked that: an alpha shifter who wasn’t too macho to prep dough, who paid attention to details and did the work himself.