by Rhea Watson
So not the typical alpha shifter we all heard about.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, peeling the plucky, tacky dough from my fingers and dipping them into the little bowl of flour. A good coating should stop things from sticking—I knew that much, at least.
“What?”
“For how I reacted to you,” I told him, distracted enough by the dough, by trying to match the bit in my hands to his so that the buns would all be uniform, that I didn’t completely notice what had just fallen off the tip of my tongue. “In the…” When I finally did, my mouth dried up, and suddenly the dough between my palms looked more like a flattened penny than a ball. Great. A quick peek his way showed that I’d caught his attention, and I cleared my throat, the fire in my belly exploding across my cheeks. “That day in the shower was mortifying and scary and I just—”
“It’s okay,” Elijah said gruffly, adding a third and fourth ball to the tray, miles ahead of me already. “I get it.”
“No.” I pursed my lips, some of that curious fire sharpening to frustration. “I don’t think you do.”
Elijah’s hands stilled, and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him frowning. Yeah, hadn’t expected that, huh? While I so appreciated him standing up for me in front of Cooper and Phillips, it just wasn’t that simple. I glanced over my shoulder and found the guard studying us, the glare from his phone giving off an unattractive underlighting that made it look like he had a serious double chin. Clamping down on the inside of my cheek, I hurriedly formed a dough ball, nowhere near as neat and smooth as Elijah’s, and plopped it on the tray just to look busy.
“You made people look at me,” I insisted under my breath, knowing that despite the ever-present grumble of the ovens across the room, the spark and hiss of their flames, Elijah could hear every last word. “Deimos, the guards… I’m a woman in a co-ed prison. I’m a witch surrounded by criminals and strangers, and I don’t have my magic or my wand or my familiar.” My throat tightened, breath catching, just the thought of Tully—where he was, what had happened to him, was he still mine—throwing me for a loop. But I steeled myself, getting better at shaking off the panic every day I was stuck in here; show no weakness, not even to Elijah. Just another one of the new rules I had to live by. “Look, I want to fly under the radar. I don’t belong here, and I just want to find a way out, and you drawing attention to—”
Elijah’s snort cut me off, and I found him grinning at me with dead eyes.
“Find a way out?” he said, eyebrows shooting up, hands rolling dough like they were on autopilot. “Good luck with that. Have you seen the ward?”
My cheeks warmed again, and I dropped my second dough ball a little too hard onto the tray between us. Before I could fix its flattened bottom, Elijah scooped it up and rerolled it for me.
“Through the windows, yes,” I told him. The faintest rainbow shimmer stretching over this place, from the horizon to the sky and over, was a given. I’d expected wards from the second they shoved me into a cell, but as a spellcaster myself, someone who had produced a ward or two in her lifetime, I figured that was just one step to work around to freedom.
But…
Wards were impenetrable, and only the caster could break them. Yes, there were certain spells to weaken them, specific sigils designed by the caster that could temporarily open and close a ward like a key, and I’d heard of some witches who could dismantle them like hackers breaching computer security systems…
But I wasn’t one of those witches.
So, the grin that didn’t quite reach Elijah’s eyes, while a touch patronizing, was warranted.
“Well, even if you somehow get outside, past the wolves and the guards with wands, you’re not breaking through that ward,” Elijah remarked. My heart skipped a beat, the pair of us riding an unnervingly similar train of thought. He dipped his hands in the flour bowl, then clapped them to remove the excess dust. “I heard the warden himself cast it… He’s the only one who can break it, and supers here say he’s incorruptible. He can’t be bought—either that or the price is way, way too high.”
Fantastic. Not that I had anything to barter with—Café Crowley did well, but I wasn’t rolling in disposable millions by any means—nor had I considered making a deal with the kingpin of this hellhole, but hearing that… It was another option gone. Zip. Out of the question before I’d even really considered it. Stewing in that new and unsurprising knowledge, I fell into a dough-rolling rhythm in silence. If I focused on making my little balls as perfect as the ones Elijah so effortlessly crafted, I wouldn’t wander down my mind’s more depressing paths. Unfortunately, the penitentiary brought that out in you—all this time alone, locked in your cell, sequestered away from guards and other inmates, there wasn’t much else to do but think.
Well… and work. If I was destined to be here six days a week in the sweltering heat, the dim lighting, standing beneath dead, dangling roots and next to a dragon shifter who made me feel, then the bakery might just be the best distraction around.
“I’m sorry, Katja.”
Every inch of me lit up at the sound of my name coming from his mouth, laced in a gravelly growl that made my heart sing. Katja. So personal. So forward. So mouthwateringly familiar. I braced myself, grabbing another chunk of dough from the mountain and hoping he couldn’t see me blush.
Why did he affect me like this?
Hot guys had said my name before. It didn’t matter then, and it shouldn’t now—but it did. If my body reacted this way, annoyingly consistent around some gorgeous dragon clocking in at, what, six seven, maybe six eight, so tall and broad and powerful and—
And…
Damn it. What was the point of that thought again?
A shiver sliced through me when he glanced my way, his eyes so warm and comforting.
Remorseful, too, something I so rarely saw in supers or shifters. Snooty bunch, our kind. We almost always thought we were right, no matter the reality of the situation, and don’t even get me started on the hierarchy. Each community thought they sat at the top, then the rest were ranked accordingly.
And not always favorably either.
“I’m sorry for drawing attention to you,” he added after a beat. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I glared down at my hands when they trembled, fingers fumbling with their current dough ball. Elijah exhaled sharply and wiped a bit of flour off his cheek with his shoulder. “I know I did it… I knew it in the moment. I didn’t mean to, but I just… I can’t help it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think you already know.”
My hands stilled, squishing my perfect ball flat again. Frankly, I didn’t know what any of it meant—didn’t understand why his mere presence influenced me. Hated the fact that he had a hold on me, so effortless in the way his body made mine react…
In the way his body almost… controlled mine.
Nope. Do not like.
I shook my head. “No, but—”
“Even if you don’t know what it means,” Elijah rumbled, “you feel it.”
He faced me, still planted in place around the corner of the table, and my knees threatened to buckle under the full weight of his stare. All this time, I’d thought it was just me feeling like my insides were on fire; I hadn’t put too much thought into wondering if the sensation was mutual. But when he reached over and nudged my hands open, touching me so briefly with his finger that it hurt, I saw it.
Fire.
Dragons were all fire and brimstone and ash and smoke—but I saw the flames in his eyes. Maybe this prison was driving me insane, something in the air slowly poisoning my mind, but as he plucked my warped dough ball and retreated, I swore an inferno danced in his gaze, turning warm dark chocolate to molten gold.
But then he blinked and looked down, focused on rolling my sad doughball between his palms until it was perfect again. Goose bumps covered me from top to bottom, and I let out a shaky breath—loving and hating every second of this inter
action.
“Just know… I feel it too,” Elijah murmured, pointedly avoiding my stare now that I gave it to him, my eyes wide and open for the first time in days.
“I don’t understand it.”
“Me neither.” He pushed the tray aside and grabbed a new one, somehow having rolled out the twenty required balls despite my paltry offerings. The full tray scraped across the table, dragging flour and chips of hardened dough with it, while the new one clattered like an assault. He paused suddenly, hands gripping the edge of the table, his mouth set 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. While I hadn’t met many alphas in my twenty-nine years, as I understood it, most had beta underlings to do the menial stuff for them.
“So,” he started, his voice clear and booming in what had been a pensive silence for the better part of the last half hour, “what did you do, Katja Fox?”
I smirked, picking off the bits of sticky dough from between my fingers. “Isn’t that a taboo question in prison, Elijah Greystone?”
Not that I had any real-world experience to back that up—just what I’d gathered from TV, honestly.
Elijah chuckled again, the whispery rasps echoing between my thighs. “Only if you did it.”
“Fair.” I pushed my hair over my shoulders with the backs of my hands, the bakery’s heat sweltering, sweat dribbling down my neck, my back, my ass. “Apparently I sold love potions to humans.”
Love potions were iffy in the witch community anyway, but it was absolutely forbidden to brew them for humans who had no idea what kind of forces they were playing with. Even the odd human ushered into the secret supernatural world knew better than to tangle with love—because the results you dreamed of were never a guarantee.
Elijah pressed a hand to his chest with a mock gasp. “My word, Miss Fox, love potions… How utterly scandalous.”
“Very,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “And you?”
“Don’t you know that’s a rude question to ask in a place like this?”
My heart plummeted. If it was only taboo to ask if the prisoner actually committed the crime… Had I read him wrong? Had he tricked me into believing—
“Only joking,” Elijah said with a soft chuckle. He wiggled his brows at me as I scowled, then ducked out of the way when I flicked flour at him.
“Not funny.”
“Right, right, noted.” He fell straight back into his work, grabbing at Dough Mountain with both hands. “I ran the village jeweler’s shop… Buying and selling pieces sort of satiates my hoarding instinct.”
A dragon working in gold and diamonds? Yeah, that sounded about right.
“So, naturally, I’ve been dubbed a jewel thief,” Elijah remarked dryly, tossing two perfectly round balls onto the tray. “Supposedly I swiped some huge ruby from a Russian coven… I dunno, usual nonsense.” His voice dropped as he added, “Like I can’t find a fucking ruby without stealing it.”
I studied him for a moment, wondering how he talked about this without breaking—how he could make light of the injustice.
“How do you do it?” I pressed my lips shut tight; the question had just slipped out. Asking what an inmate had done to send them to Xargi Penitentiary may not have been rude, especially if they were guilty, but asking how they survived in here, the implication that this place didn’t weigh on them as heavily as it did me, felt wrong.
“Hmm?”
But I went with it anyway. “How do you just… accept this? I want to… to… scream at the top of my lungs. I want to freak out and hide in a dark corner, and I want to cry and curse and hit someone as hard as I can. I want to fight and…” My lips wobbled, and I paused for a calming breath, emotion threatening to bubble up and boil over if I didn’t. “And I feel like I can’t do any of those things. You always imagine what you’d do in this situation when you have to fight and be brave, and then it happens… and I feel like a coward.”
I had al
ways thought that when faced with the worst possible circumstances, I would go down swinging—that I would be this badass heroine who took no prisoners, who knocked a guard out and stole his wand, who crept through the shadows and struck like a viper.
Xargi had shone a spotlight on reality: I wasn’t a badass. I was barely a heroine. I was just a witch without her magic who cried a lot—who hadn’t the courage to tell two pervy guards to screw off that day Elijah had stepped in.
Not only did I feel like a coward, but most of the time, I just felt pathetic. After the loss of my brothers, then my dad, mourning all their deaths and coming out the other side a somewhat normal, relatively stable adult, I thought I could handle anything life had to throw at me.
But…
“You’re not a coward, Katja.”
I closed my eyes and sucked down another deep breath. A little voice sneered that I didn’t need his pity, but nothing about Elijah said pity.
And I couldn’t explain why.
Couldn’t understand why.
Again.
“I don’t accept it—this,” Elijah said roughly, smooshing the dough between his palms, then ripping it into two even pieces. “But that doesn’t change anything. I can’t… I can’t even… They’ve taken away one half of me with this fucking collar. I hate it. My inner dragon hates it. I hate them, but I can’t fight magic with might. No matter what the stories say, it doesn’t work that way.”
“So, you’re just going to take it?” I winced: that could have been worded better. Rather than looking offended or wounded, Elijah grinned wryly down at the tray, nudging some of the dough balls farther apart.
“You got any other ideas?”
“No,” I said miserably—honestly. I had approximately zero clue how to get out of this place. Sure, it wasn’t the stuff of nightmares or how humans envisioned Hell, but the guards ran a tight ship and these collars limited funny business. I wasn’t a player in the great political game; I had no interest in joining any of the gangs smuggling contraband and battling for power amongst trapped supers.
I was nothing here.
