Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,69

owed Elijah a ton of patience and a lot more leeway.

Two: I needed to figure out what it meant to be a shifter’s fated mate—and thankfully had a rabbit shifter friend in Cellblock B who could lend a hand with that.

Lastly, three: sex with Elijah made me feel alive. Yes, my back and hips were destroyed. My toes ached the longer I stood on them in this hug. My pussy had taken a beating and would be feeling it for days. But I felt like a person again, not just a number, not just an inmate, not just a purple jumpsuit with a godsdamn collar around my neck.

And I intended to chase that feeling.

No matter where it might lead me.

14

Fintan

“You know I’m one of the fae, right? Not a fucking wood elf?”

Honestly—assigning me to the greenhouse for work duty… Like I had any real experience with plants beyond smoking them. Inmates might have been clamoring for the position, desperate to work something cushy outside the main building, but I was a motherfucking prince of the Midnight Court. You’d never find me clamoring for any paid position that didn’t involve judging scantily clad ladies or taste-testing fae wine.

Mind you, I currently had zero access to my vast wealth given it was still my first month, and I was getting sick of begging off Elijah, Rafe, and Katja for goods. They had pennies to spare, which I appreciated whenever they tossed a few my way, but pennies barely bought me a single cigarette from the prison storefront. So, perhaps a job would be temporarily beneficial, but for how long I could endure some uppity warlock fuck telling me to water and fertilize shit was anyone’s guess.

A little over two and a half weeks in this pit and still no rescue. The wards likely put a dampener on my brother’s efforts, but really. Surely someone in our kingdom was adept at breaking them. They were only witch’s wards of this realm, after all. How difficult could it be to crack them? Fae magic was far stronger; the cavalry ought to be charging through by now.

“Did you hear me? I said—”

“Oh my gods, just shut the fuck up, Fintan,” Williams barked, groaning out my name as his grip tightened on my arm. Gravel crunched underfoot as he hauled me across the outer yards of the penitentiary, the sky a hazy blue overhead, the air thick and still inside the confines of the ward, a sea of grasslands stretching out to the horizon beyond it, dotted occasionally by a mountain or six.

Ahead, the greenhouse spanned long and narrow along a bit of unnecessary chain-link fencing—pure aesthetic, the dramatic fucks—its panels opaque glass, two unfamiliar guards stationed in front of the lone door. Xargi Penitentiary soared over my shoulder, looking oddly ancient for its recent construction, an imposing stone structure two levels tall with sentry towers in all the corners, warlocks positioned there to take out any runners.

You know, if the wolves didn’t get them first.

I’d spotted four since Williams had marched me out the doors, the process of stepping foot outside beyond tedious. So many checks, as if I’d had time to shove contraband up my arse from the moment this fucker had dragged me out of the cellblock and shoved me through winding corridors. And now here we were, on a brisk, forced walk to my new work duty.

A grey shadow whizzed along the base of the greenhouse, bypassing the guards and disappearing around the far corner. Five wolves, then. Shifters, most likely, given the militaristic precision with which they patrolled the grounds. A few wore identical leather collars to the inmates, and although Williams wouldn’t even entertain the conversation, I for one suspected that the security pack had a few prisoners of their own, only the collars kept them in their huge wolf forms. Meanwhile, poor bastards like Elijah were in a constant state of blue balls, desperate to shift but unable to let the beast free.

Really. I felt for him. Of all the creatures in this realm, a dragon shifter came closest to my kind in terms of raw, unhinged power.

Cruel, to keep him caged.

“Surely we can come up with something,” I drawled as we neared the greenhouse door, one of the guards unbolting it from the outside. “I mean, if you find a way for me to access my fortune, I’ll pay you what I’d earn here—”

Williams cracked me upside the head with his elbow, the first display of physical violence