we had anything to do. Or at least I didn’t. I’d worked out that some of the inmates from gen pop were forced to work in the laundry rooms, kitchens and as general dogsbodies to clean the toilets and shower blocks, but the packs all maintained their own wings, they wouldn’t tolerate gen pop being in their territory.
My stomach growled loudly, but I stayed where I was. Breakfast was served in the massive food hall of gen pop and though I was hungry, waiting until the throng of women had dwindled from here and the corridors, was safer. I wasn’t in the mood for another altercation, and neither were my bruised knuckles. I yanked at the damn silver collar around my neck, cursing it for holding back my healing capabilities.
Keeping my head tilted back against the wall, I watched the other women move about. Blankets were a commodity, and those who had them wrapped them around their bodies or waists, clearly not willing to lose them. There were no bunks in the sleeping hall, and the cells along the corridors were all full. It seemed this whole place was overpopulated.
“Don’t worry,” said the woman I’d thumped last night. Her keen hazel eyes rested on me, but they were clear of malice. “They’ll take some of the women away soon, and free up some room. If we’re lucky and don’t get chosen, we can fight for a cell then.”
“What d’you mean? Taken where?”
She shrugged her slim shoulders. “No idea. But it happens every month.”
“Damn. You mean they never come back?”
“Nope.”
I shuddered at the terrifying possibilities. The woman, who looked a bit younger than me, pressed her lips into a thin line. Her hair had clearly been cut spikey and short at one point but there were no salons inside, so I guessed it had just grown out. Utterly wild, it stuck from the sides of her head in a macabre Edward Scissorhands way. She thrust her hand forward. “I’m Charlie. Where’d you learn to fight like you do?” The inmates of this prison were from all over the world. I’d heard all sorts of accents and languages in the last week. Charlie’s was American, east coast, I thought. But what the hell did I know? I grinned. “School of motherfucking life.”
She grinned back, not seeming to mind the bruised cheekbone I’d given her. “Me too, on the streets of Detroit.”
“London.”
She grinned. “Kinda figured, with that weird accent. You coming for food before it’s all gone and we have to fight for everyone else’s scraps?”
I nodded and pushed myself up, keeping a close eye on my new friend as she did her boots up. I’d spent the last week sitting back and watching the interactions and powerplays in gen pop, and I wasn’t stupid enough to think this girl was my new bestie.
This place was a hotbed of betrayal, power plays, gangs, and violence of every conceivable sort. There seemed to be four other wings, in addition to the large gen pop area, that were run by packs. I’d even heard of a Prime who ran the prison on behalf of the guards and kept the primal and vicious nature of the shifters under some kind of control. Except he didn’t seem all that concerned with gen pop. There were hundreds of people here, and many were the kind you did not turn your back on—ever. They would crush you at the first sign of weakness.
The guards watched from above on their network of metal platforms, but obviously didn’t give a shit what happened. I wasn’t even sure why they were up there. Groups of males often dragged the weak off for entertainment, whether they wanted it or not; male or female, it didn’t matter. Even males from the packs came to gen pop to hunt females for fun. Some of the women had formed small packs of their own to try and protect each other, but it seemed women who were caught on their own were fair game. I’d been in five fights so far, freeing women from the unwanted attention of some tosser who thought her body was his for the taking. He didn’t think that so much when his nose was leaking blood or his junk was somewhere in his lower abdomen after my boot had repositioned it.
I smirked and cracked my knuckles as I pictured the male whose face I’d smashed my fist into yesterday. The down side was, I was making enemies, which was not a good