by Rhea Watson
My fated mate?
Like any shifter, I’d heard the stories. We all went through life dreaming about the day we stumbled upon our fated mate, the one soul designed by fate exclusively for us and we for them. Once, it was only acceptable to fate with another shifter, but the times had changed. Given my preference for humans, I had always thought I’d align with one of them. Some gorgeous mortal woman who I would love and cherish and protect for all her short life, then carry on for the rest of my very long one with a piece of my heart missing.
But a witch?
No. That couldn’t be right.
Only… The signs were there. Her scent smacked me upside the head like a lead pipe, stronger than all the smells ripening in this pit. Prisons were a fucking cornucopia of odors and energies, yet without even making eye contact, hers was the most potent. And most pleasant. And most alluring.
And…
And it made me forget, just for a few glorious seconds, that I was trapped in this hellhole.
My inner dragon responded to her immediately, scratching at my chest, bellowing to high heaven, desperate to get out and scent her for himself. To throw her on his back and whisk her away somewhere remote and luxurious. To hoard. The stereotype had merit: we dragons loved to hoard, and I’d satiated that need for decades working as a jeweler, surrounded by gold and gems and diamonds…
But she shone brighter than any pretty stone—and I’d barely glimpsed her face yet, nothing beyond an elegant profile and a flash of bright blue eyes.
Protectiveness lanced through me when one of the processing guards shoved her into the open cell next to Rafe’s. A snarl hummed in my chest, and I pressed my lips together, clenched my jaw, fighting to contain the beast within. I couldn’t shift. The collar wouldn’t allow me—but that didn’t stop my inner dragon from trying. His anxiety spiked when she disappeared, a flood of adrenaline threatening to make me move, to break formation and risk the wrath of the warlock fucks who patrolled the cellblock.
Calm down, you shit.
Across the circular room, Rafe studied me with a deep frown, arms crossed, eyes slightly narrowed. If he’d noticed my agitation, others had too. A warlock named Thompson, one of the cellblock’s permanent guards, glanced my way, and without meaning to, I locked eyes with him. The man was built like a mountain, tall and fierce, the figure of a warrior—but I still surpassed him. Big as he was, I was bigger.
But he had a wand on his hip.
Usually I let the alpha bullshit go—eyes on the ground, look away first, allow the fuckery of this place to roll off my back. No point in making waves.
But the witch did something to me.
Made me want to fight.
My inner dragon bristled, dusting off months of slumber and roaring. My vision sharpened. My nostrils flared. My heart thundered. Instinct kicked in, dragon’s blood scorching through my veins, a lifetime of experience in my bones. Bloodlust and war drums and the smoke of fire-bathed cities—
Thompson squared off with me, his eyes hard, daring me to make a move.
Shifters were a combination of man and beast, and contrary to what the rest of the supernatural world thought, we were in control of which side ruled us. In here, it was best to let the man call the shots, even if I wanted to sprint across the cellblock, clotheslining Thompson in the neck with my arm on the way, then rip into the witch’s cell and massacre the others, keep her all to myself…
I looked down first. Bowed my head, seething, waiting, brimming with the wild energy before a shift. Useless. I’d have to walk it off when I got the chance. Faustus and Helen twitched and fidgeted by their cell doors, sensing my predicament, and I shot them each a glare. Don’t say a fucking word.
The birds yielded to me—the only real alpha in here, no matter what Deimos thought.
Once the guards got the newest inmate of Cellblock C situated, they bailed. Left her to fend for herself. The added muscle vanished through the main door, and eventually we were down to the standard three assholes. Well, two assholes and Thompson, who, for all his posturing, occasionally seemed interested in doing his job. The other two fuckers let Deimos do what he pleased and put bets on inmates during fights.
As soon as we were given the all clear to move freely again, I charged straight for her, following her scent—such a strange scent, at that. Floral with the briar rose, yet that candle smoke was so alluring to a dragon. An unpredictable woman, perhaps, in the way her scent had me picturing a dark shoreline with choppy waters, the air tense, on the verge of a tempest. Had to see her. Had to meet her. Know her. Smell her—
“What are you doing?” Rafe intercepted me just before I reached her cell. Inside, I could hear her settling on the prison-issued bed, those cruel springs groaning beneath her. The vampire refused to let me ignore him, however, even when I tried to barrel by; he snagged my arm, grasp tight as steel, and yanked me toward his cell.
“Elijah,” he growled, low enough for only a shifter to hear, “what the hell is wrong with you?”
“She… I…” I blinked hard, then shook my head. All the stories said we lost ourselves the first time we scented our mate—lost ourselves to the beast, driven by pure, uncut animal need. Risky, that. Dangerous for a creature who needed restraint and self-control to survive in this world.
“You look a mess,” Rafe muttered. The collar also muted a vampire’s unparalleled strength, their ability to snap bone with the slightest touch, but he was still strong. A worthy match for a dragon shifter—certainly. He held firm, forcing me to focus on his green-blue stare, intense in a way only Rafe could pull off without triggering my fight instinct. “Come on… Before the brat sees you like this.”
The brat. Yeah. Right. Couldn’t let Deimos spot a crack.
While the rest of our block meandered over to the center table, Deimos leading the way, Rafe marched me to the two-seater on the outer rim. Positioned in front of warlock Avery’s cell, he sat me down—and I just went, like I was in some fucking trance, all from a little witch’s scent.
Fated mates was serious business—and a weakness of epic proportions, especially in here.
Rafe left for a moment to fetch our deck of cards, and as soon as he settled across from me, he resumed dealing in silence, like we were actually going to play gin. I humored him because I felt like I had to, going through the motions, throwing down cards and picking new ones up, reorganizing my hand, all the while staring at her open cell door. Located on the southeastern side of the block, sunlight beamed into it for the better part of the afternoon, which meant she could see how depressing our holes were while also feeling what little warmth Xargi Penitentiary had to offer on her skin.
A blessing and a curse, the sun.
Nearly an hour later, supper on the horizon, she finally padded out of her cell—and I lost it. Again. Even seated, I struggled for control, my inner dragon snarling and huffing and clomping about inside, desperate to get at her, this diminutive witch with hair like copper flames. Long and wavy, it rolled down her back for the most part, the staticky pieces on top like a messy bird’s nest. Somehow, she made her purple jumpsuit look good; it clung to her curves, to the swell of her breasts and the roll of her hips. Perfection. Sheer, untainted perfection. While the point of her chin and the high sharpness of her cheekbones suggested a heart-shaped face, her cheeks had a nice roundness that this gutter would trim off in a matter of days.
I mean, the food here was mediocre at its best and literal gruel at its worst. Most lost their appetite the first few weeks. Goodbye, adorable chubby cheeks. Hello, severe lines and sharp angles.
Her eyes were such a startling shade of blue, bright and electric as they danced around the cellblock. She lingered in the door, hands clutching at either side, timid and hesitant to join any of us—
And then there was Deimos, right on cue, gliding to her side like he fancied himself her savior.
I tossed my cards on the table, ignoring Rafe’s curt exhale and glaring openly at the pair. Vision tinged red, blood pounded between m
y ears, every sense heightened when the demon swept my witch under his wing.
“There, there, sweetheart,” he murmured, gently guiding her out of the cell. “I know this must be terribly overwhelming for you.”
Fucker. He had the faintest of English accents most of the time, but he really hammed it up, from Cornish to Received Pronunciation, all posh and proper, when he seduced a newbie into his ranks.
Jaw clenched, hands in fists, I tracked the pair as they drifted toward the middle table, her mouth moving like she was actually giving that shit the time of day. I tensed, about to stand, when Rafe shot me a look—and then kicked me hard in the shin.
“Elijah, don’t,” he remarked when I turned my fury on him.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t pick up strays,” the vampire said with a sigh, as if my behavior was just so tedious. “We don’t need any extra—”
“She’s not a stray.”
My friend faltered at my tone, at the way my glare burned hot as blue fire. I never turned my ire on him, but if he called her a stray one more time, he’d see what everyone else assumed about my kind: Rafe would experience a dragon unhinged.
“Elijah, I didn’t mean—”
But I was already gone, shooting up and beelining for Deimos—who still had his fucking arm around my mate. Rafe stayed at the table, perhaps waiting to see the situation unfold from a distance; while we both ascribed to the don’t-make-waves philosophy, we were willing to draw arms for each other.
True to form, maenad Constance was there in a heartbeat to block my path as her gang leader worked his magic on the new arrival. Amazonian in size, olive-skinned and pink-haired, the woman was straight-up batty. Deimos had promised Rafe and me a blowjob each if we joined his crew, like her mouth on our dicks was a perk that came with letting him order us around. Back then we’d refused, but not everyone could go six months with nothing but their hand to get off with. Her charms had worked on Avery and Blake, at the very least.
Statuesque as she was, I shouldered around her, physically stronger than some psychotic worshipper of an old Greek god, and marched right up to Deimos’s usual table. He’d already sat the witch down on one of the stools, and he leaned over her, whispering in her ear with a wicked smile—
“Deimos,” I barked, fighting with my inner dragon for control. He wanted to flay Deimos alive, and normally I did too—but I wasn’t about to spend a month in solitary now that my fated mate slept fifty feet away from me. “None of your games. Leave her be.”
The demon straightened, his grin cruel and his hand lingering on her shoulder. “Oh, now you want to say something? Where’s this fire been all along, dragon?”
“Miss, don’t involve yourself in his bullshit,” I said, locking eyes fleetingly with the witch. She licked her full lips, the flick of her tongue a fucking tease, and before I could get another word out, Deimos scoffed.
“Her name’s Katja,” he sneered, purring her name in a way that made my blood boil. “She told me—practically handed it over.”
Darkness glimmered in his black gaze, malice burning bright, and, as if realizing her mistake, my fated blushed crimson. Names had such power in supernatural communities, fae most of all, but demons could work twisted wonders with them too. Mercifully, our collars would put a stop to that. Deimos was just another asshole in here, though I couldn’t imagine Katja relished the fact that he knew her name—that he crooned it like he already owned it.
“Right.” She planted her hands on the table and stood. “I’m out.”
What a voice. Sweet and clear but strong. It lulled my inner dragon, quieting his rage over Deimos, and I watched her helplessly as she strode back to her cell and left us all in her dust. At the door, she glanced over her shoulder, eyes catching mine again. My cock twitched with interest when her cheeks darkened, but in a flash, she was gone.
Her scent lingered in the air, and I resisted the urge to suck down a lungful—especially with Deimos grinning at me like that, toothily, the gap between his fake front teeth purposeful. I mean, those were the two I’d knocked out months ago, and he must have requested medical to recreate it when he got the new pair. I cocked my head to the side, refusing to let him get to me, and then glanced pointedly at his mouth.
“You sure you wanna show me those teeth, boy?”
His smile died in an instant. Good. Fucker.
“I’ll be watching you,” I growled—and then caught my mistake a second later. Deimos smirked, his expression oozing a casual cruelty that made my inner dragon seethe.
“Oh, please do watch me,” the demon insisted, grabbing at his dick for good measure. “You can watch me take her, dragon.”
A steely grip snapped around my bicep when I lurched forward, animal instinct on hyperdrive. Rafe wrenched me back just as one of the asshole guards sighed and pushed off the wall, like doing his job was such a fucking chore. The end of his wand glowed when he drew it, but the fight was over before it began, Rafe and I back at our table and Deimos chortling at his.
“You fucked that up,” the vampire muttered, fixing me with a narrowed look as he reshuffled our deck. I gritted my teeth and said nothing, my inner dragon unleashing a hellfire that scorched up my windpipe and burned straight to the tip of my tongue.
He was right, of course. By overreacting, I’d encouraged Deimos to go for Katja—I’d stoked his interest in her.
But that didn’t matter. If he tried anything, I would rip him into bite-sized pieces and feed him to the wolves that patrolled the prison grounds.
We were all in here together. I could watch her day and night. Even if my fated was a witch and not the fragile human I had always envisioned, I wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
That was a promise.
Dragons kept their promises.
And if Deimos didn’t back the fuck off, he was going to learn that the hard way.
4
Rafe
What a day.
Ordinarily that phrase never crossed my mind—what a day—because I slept all day, like any regular vampire. But in this hellhole, the bastards in charge were trying to change my base programming, turning the few of us in red jumpsuits diurnal rather than nocturnal. Up all day, locked in all night. At first, I hadn’t been able to sleep a wink come nightfall, body alert after a day of hiding in the shadows, determined to avoid every sunbeam possible throughout the penitentiary. Elijah assisted with that, of course, using his massive shifter body to shield me if I couldn’t scamper into a corner fast enough.
Contrary to popular belief, vampires did, in fact, need sleep. Not much, but if blood was in short supply or we hadn’t fed in a few weeks, our bodies started to shut down. After all, fueling such a powerful machine came at a cost, and sometimes sleep was the only way to top up the battery. The first few months in prison had been a never-ending nightmare while I’d adjusted to the new sleep schedule—and never mind the new feeding regime. Vampires were allotted five tablespoons of blood a day. No choice in the type. Always served cold. Utterly ridiculous.
Just another tactic to control us. The collars around our necks were designed to cull magical ability. Specific runes stopped shifters from shifting, ensured gargoyles didn’t turn to stone come sunrise, and kept that one phoenix in Cellblock A from bursting into flame and regenerating. But vampires weren’t magical beings. We were organic—blood and bone and teeth, we were animals, much like humans. The collar around my neck dulled my strength to a degree, and I couldn’t zip around at lightning speed anymore, but otherwise I was a fully intact being—more so than any other inmate in here.
They couldn’t fully control me with this ridiculous strip of leather, no matter how many runes they carved into it.
Probably why there were so few red jumpsuits roaming the halls.
But that meant the twats running this facility relied on other means of control—cue the sleep and blood deprivation. Fortunately, by month six, halfway through year one of twelve, I’d figured out how to doze off once
the sun dipped below the horizon. By keeping to myself, by sticking with Elijah, the least confrontational super I’d ever met despite his alpha status, I kept my energy reserves in check. At this point, I was practically in hibernation mode. Twelve years was just a blip to an immortal, but if I wanted to survive, if I wanted to walk out of here one day a fully formed man and not a shuffling corpse, then I had to lie low and conserve.
And sleep.
Sleep as often as I could, for as long as I could.
A task made infinitely more difficult tonight—because my new neighbor wouldn’t stop crying. The witch was on hour two at this point after the guards had bolted us in our cells at curfew, and I was surprised she had any tears left to shed.
Her breath suddenly hitched, and my eyebrows shot up in the snippet of silence that followed, but I sighed curtly at the sound of her hand clapping to her mouth, followed by muffled sobs that, to my sensitive hearing, especially when I had nothing better to concentrate on, weren’t really all that muffled.
For God’s sake.
Lying flat on my back on the slip of paper the prison dared label a bed, I recrossed my ankles and picked at nonexistent cuticles. With the blackout window covering removed, starlight filtered into my private cell, no more than a six-by-twelve rectangle with a single bed, a wooden table to hold any supplies the guards hadn’t swiped yet, and a toilet by its most basic definition in the corner. Not much to look at in here, the walls, floor, and ceiling constructed of dusty stones—it would have made me sob uncontrollably too, I suppose, if I hadn’t slept in something worse below deck during my human years.
Through the two-foot-thick wall separating us, the witch’s breath came faster suddenly, descending into panic, perhaps even hyperventilation. I scrubbed my face with a groan, both hands fluffing, then smoothing my coarse black scruff.
This was supposed to be a dragon’s fated mate? Her?
I rolled my eyes when she sniffed, long and deep, sucking back two full nostrils of snot.
