Royal Pride

by Zelda Knight

  I crashed to the floor and caught a glimpse of Evangeline tumbling down beside me, convulsing against whatever Taser-like weapon they’d used on us.

  Other than twitching against the last of the electricity as it grounded itself out of my body, I couldn’t move. All I could do was watch as two pairs of black boots came to a halt just in front of my face, standing between me and Evangeline.

  “Silver and iron,” the owners of one set of boots said to the man standing next to him. “Only thing you can use to take down fairies and werewolves.”

  The bite of the silver cuffs he slapped onto my wrists as he tugged me around onto my stomach was the last straw, more pain than I could bear.

  The last thing I heard before I passed out was the sound of a man chuckling with an almost evil glee.

  Our human attorney, Caroline Matthews, assured us that we would get only a slap on the wrist.

  “You don’t have any priors, so although you were caught with the jewels in hand, and you tried to escape, you still shouldn’t face anything worse than probation, when all is said and done. No one was hurt, and frankly, juries have a bit of a soft spot for jewel thieves and beautiful women.” She preened a little bit at the end of her statement, so I wasn’t sure if she intended the “beautiful women” comment for us or for herself.

  At any rate, she miscalculated.

  For one thing, I don’t think she expected the prosecutor to do his level best to stuff the jury with fae and shifter jurists.

  Maybe she didn’t have any clear sense of how deep the animus against fae and shifters working together really went in our communities.

  Even worse, the cops’ body-cam footage of our attempted escape through the brick wall of the warehouse terrified the human jurists.

  The prosecutor pounded home what that attempt meant, too.

  “These two have found a way to use their power in an unprecedented manner,” he argued. “And that makes them a danger to all of us.” He turned to face the jurors. “To me, to you, to everyone.” He made eye contact with each of them, especially the humans.

  In the end, the only thing our attorney could do for us was attempt to mitigate the sentencing.

  Even that did little good.

  She was able to make sure we were sentenced together—she even managed a concession that would allow us to remain together once we were in the facility.

  “Not that being together matters all that much in the supernatural prisons,” she muttered at our last meeting, the night before our official sentencing hearing. “As I understand it, the jailers simply try to make sure the supernaturals remain in their designated areas.” She glanced up at us from the notepad she’d been pretending to scribble notes on for the last few minutes. “I’m afraid they’re going to try to make an example out of the two of you.”

  I swallowed involuntarily, fear tightening in my stomach. Had we made a mistake by trusting the justice system rather than working to escape?

  “Does it not matter that all we were trying to do was buy my way out of the Gray fae clan?” Evangeline asked.

  “Probably not at this point. The jury knew all of that before they found you guilty. We’ll know more after the sentencing tomorrow—and I’ll definitely be preparing an appeal for you—but for now, your best bet is to simply accept the court’s decision and let me move it through the appeals process.”

  I glanced at Evangeline. Tears welled up in her big blue eyes, and it was all I could do not to growl.

  Not now, I told my inner wolf. We’ll find a way out of this.

  I wasn’t sure I even believed my own thoughts. By this point, we had been caged for weeks. The human criminal justice system wasn’t fully prepared to deal with supernaturals, so they tended to group us all together. Even in our local jail, where Evangeline and I had been kept, we had been placed in cells next to one another. Specialized cells, of course—hers had iron bars, mine had silver.

  Having that much poisonous metal surrounding us was a drain, physically and mentally.

  I stayed sick at my stomach the entire time, my inner wolf whining to be let out. My shifting abilities were depressed not only by the silver but also by some magical spell they put on the cell, woven into its bars, its walls, maybe even the bedding, for all I knew.

  In some ways, Evangeline dealt with it better than I did. She didn’t miss the outdoors the same way I did. Her clan came from underground, after all.

  I, on the other hand, spent every day inside waiting for the short time we were allowed in the yard.

  My wolf paced back and forth inside me, testing the boundaries of our confinement.

  Still, I had hope. There were a few supernatural prisons that were fairly innocuous. Minimum-security places. Prisons we could either endure or escape from—whichever became most important to us.

  So on the day we were due to be sentenced, I was naïvely, ridiculously, foolishly hopeful.

  Evangeline and I shuffled into the courtroom in our ugly-ass orange jumpsuits, taking our seats at the defendants’ table next to our attorney.

  “All rise for Judge Stephen Wallace,” the bailiff called, and Evangeline and I pushed ourselves up, our chains clanking.

  The judge, a gray-haired man in his late fifties, with a full beard and reading glasses, settled into his seat and we all sank down again.

  He cleared his throat, and I waited, my heart pounding with suspense.

  I kept thinking about everything Caroline had told us about sentences for theft. We hadn’t been armed, we hadn’t gotten away with the goods, so they were all returned, and we didn’t have any history of convictions. As far as anyone in the jury knew, this was our first heist. It was possible that we could get a light sentence.

  When the judge began speaking, however, my hopes that he would go easy on us sank, along with my heart.

  “I thought long and hard about this case,” Judge Wallace said. “I have considered all the ramifications of the evidence and testimony. Although the two women before us have expressed the remorse, I cannot help but be concerned by the potential for violence they showed in their attempt to escape police custody. They may not have been armed in any traditional sense of the word, but their use of their supernatural abilities to wreak havoc cannot be ignored.” He glanced down at the sheet of paper in front of him. “Therefore, I am sentencing the defendants, Mara Blackwood and Evangeline Gray, to the maximum penalty of twenty years, to be served in La Isla Perdida, the supermax-plus prison for supernatural prisoners.”

  Inside me, my wolf howled, and my knees went weak. I caught myself by my hands on the edge of the table before me.

  I knew humans were prone to judging supernaturals harshly. But it still shocked me to see it in action. Evangeline gripped my hand in hers. Moments later, we were led out to the sound of the surprised murmurings of everyone who had come to watch our case.

  I managed to make it out of the courtroom before tears fell down my cheeks.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t spend the next twenty years of my life in prison. I couldn’t believe we had put our trust in the justice system.

  We hadn’t wanted to be part of the supernatural community at all. Evangeline and I had wanted to buy our way out of that community. But the human community didn’t want us either.

  And now, they had all found a way to lock us up.

  I had known that what we did was wrong, at least by all measures of human society. In rejecting the rules of our society, had we somehow brought this on ourselves?

  Even more worrisome, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something else going on here.

  Was someone trying to put us away for some nefarious reason?

  Chapter Two

  GAGE

  A chill wind blew the fog from the bay across the prison island.

  I gave a slight shudder, the kind my wolf would use to shake off the tiny droplets the rolling fog left behind. In my human form, though, it did no good. The minuscule drops shivered, coalesced, and rolled down my skin
.

  Briefly, I clenched my jaw against the discomfort—a minor one, all things considered—and scanned the yard.

  New fish delivery day was always a tough one.

  Inmates reacted to being processed into La Isla Perdida Supermax-Plus Prison for Supernatural Criminals in one of two ways. Either they were scared shitless and trying to be invisible, working hard at not catching anyone’s attention. Or they were scared shitless and trying hard to act tough, working to come across like they were the biggest badass in the yard.

  Neither strategy worked.

  We had seen it all before.

  And we were here first.

  It was best to make a good showing on the new inmates’ first day, nonetheless. You didn’t want them thinking they had an edge over you.

  Especially if they might.

  “Yo, Gage!” Drexel Jones, my second-in-command and the leader of my enforcers, waved to me from a seat at one of the four stone picnic tables lined up near the fence in the yard.

  I gave a nod and strolled toward the tall, barbwire-topped fence that separated us from the dock. When I took my seat, Jade, the alpha bitch of the prison pack—even though technically she was a cat-shifter and not a wolf at all—draped herself over my shoulders. I fought my wolf’s urge to shake her off like I’d tried to shake off the mist.

  Drex took a seat on the bench next to me, one level down from my own tabletop seat, following pack hierarchy protocol exactly. He flexed his tattooed shoulders, the thorny vine images rolling from one side to the other under his white wifebeater shirt as he moved. “Heard anything about this latest crop?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Nothing came through the pipeline this week.”

  “Figures,” Drex muttered.

  I settled in for a long watch. In the distance, I could barely see the outline of the prisoner transport ship through the fog. Around us, the other supes began trailing in and taking their places at the tables they’d claimed.

  Clark, the fae alpha, flicked a glance my direction just long enough to ascertain that I was in place before sauntering to his own stone picnic tabletop. Just before he got there, he sent a swirl of magic across the table, heating the stone and sending the mist that had settled on it steaming up into the air.

  “Showoff,” Jade muttered in my ear. Her fingertips flexed and her claws briefly slipped out of the ends of her fingertips.

  “Not worth it,” I warned her.

  “Hm.” She retracted her claws, but her narrowed gaze stayed on Clark as the prison fae clan gathered around him.

  Rumor had it that in normie prisons, the inmates were kept in line by human guards. Those guards supposedly broke up fights and stopped inmates from killing each other in cold blood. As much as they could, anyway.

  On Isla Perdita, the human guards didn’t give a shit.

  Here, supes were divided by class and race. Everyone knew the rules: Stick to your own kind and let the alphas duke it out.

  The supe alphas were expected to keep their own people in line. The human guards didn’t give a rat’s ass if we killed each other, as long as we didn’t try to take them with us.

  Most of the time, we had the run of the island.

  Except, of course, when the newbies arrived.

  Once a month, we were all required to come in from our various sectors of the island, gather together in the prison yard, and pretend to be mostly civilized for an afternoon.

  Initially, I expected this new fish delivery day to be the same as all the rest. My shifters had made their way in from our sector all morning long. I’d come in the evening before and spent the night in a cell. My wolf hated it when I did that. The iron bars made us both crazy—him because he hated being trapped and me because I could feel him pacing back and forth inside me, even when I pushed him down hard.

  But it was important for me to get here first. I had to keep all the other shifters in check. We were likely to fight amongst ourselves—it was hard to keep those tendencies in check. And we were even more likely to fight with the fae clans.

  Shifters and fae didn’t get along well even under the best of circumstances. We both felt a kinship to the land, an ownership of the woods. But that didn’t draw us together. It forced us apart.

  But here we were, waiting for the next group of inmates to cycle through into the island. Together.

  I ignored the chatter of the other prisoners pouring into the yard all around us, focusing instead on the ship drawing closer and closer.

  Something about this transport held my focus more tightly than usual. Every time I looked away from its gray metal hull, something tugged my attention back to it. As the transport vessel pulled into the dock, I found myself unable to quit staring at it.

  Chapter Three

  MARA

  We started plotting our escape as soon as they put us on a bus to take us to the ship that would deliver us to La Isla Perdida.

  If the system made a mistake, it was agreeing to let us travel together, deciding not to separate us. Because Evangeline and I worked best together.

  There were a few other prisoners on the bus. Evangeline and I sat in a seat together, our heads bent down as we whispered back and forth.

  “Did you notice that the judge didn’t seem to have any idea how we share power?” Evangeline asked.

  “I’m not even certain they realize that we can share it,” I added.

  “That’s got to be something we can use.”

  “For all that our case should have been big news,” I said, my fingers tapping on my knee, “Caroline said that the major newspapers hadn’t picked it up. How much do you think has been included in information sent ahead to prison?”

  Evangeline shrugged. “I don’t think it matters. Ultimately, no one has any real idea of how strong we are together.”

  “I’m worried about making a break for it. Maybe our best bet would be to wait until we got to the island?”

  “Fae can’t really fly, you know,” Evangeline said. “How do you think we will get back to the mainland?”

  I shrugged. Right now, we were still wearing the magic-reducing cuffs that we been in every time they took us out of our cells. I reached over and touched the walls of the bus. A burning sensation flashed through my fingers, and I jerked back. “That’s got silver in it.”

  Eventually nodded. “Iron, too. I can feel it from here.”

  So getting off the bus was unlikely.

  And when we pulled into the parking lot that led to the harbor, my heart sank further. The prison transport ship was a giant, gray metal vessel, and I could feel it pulsing with anti-magical forces even from inside the bus.

  “Not yet,” Evangeline whispered as we stood to file down the steps of the bus and up the ramp leading to the ship.

  I nodded. We would get away. I just didn’t know how, yet.

  The trip to the island itself was short, taking less than an hour.

  I hoped briefly that we might be able to simply jump into the water and swim back to shore at some point. But when I saw the choppy waters below as we were chained together to move from the ship to the prison’s intake building, my stomach clenched.

  I hunkered down into the collar of my shapeless gray uniform stamped with La Isla Perdida, trying to fight against the cool breeze that blew a mist into my face, leaving behind droplets of water that clung to my eyelashes. I wanted to shake it off like my wolf would shake water from her fur, but I didn’t want to give away any weaknesses to my fellow prisoners.

  The guards led us down to a pathway past a high, chain-link fence. Behind it, prisoners sat on stone benches and picnic tables, watching us silently until we got close.

  That’s when they started moving up to the fence itself, banging on it and calling out to us.

  I held my chin high, ignoring the catcalls. The men and women here looked tough—this place might turn out to be rougher than I had anticipated.

  Evangeline and I didn’t belong here. We were not murderers or rapists, had never been viole
nt—except against brick walls.

  A shiver ran down my back.

  That’s when I smelled it. Something new. Enticing. It drew my wolf’s attention. I whipped my head around for just an instant, scanning the people at the fence.

  One prisoner’s intense stare hit me like a punch to the stomach.

  As his gaze met mine, his eyes flashed gold, glowing and sharp.

  He was a shifter. I was certain of it.

  And he was scary as fuck.

  I dragged my gaze away from his by sheer force of will, but I couldn’t scrub the image of him from my mind. He was enormous, well over six feet tall. And possibly almost as broad. He wore a simple T-shirt that stretched across bulging muscles in his arms and chest. Tattoos covered his arms and neck, strange, almost tribal markings.

  I clenched my fists against the desire to reach out and trace them with my fingertips.

  Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself.

  My wolf whimpered, pushing me to go back, to meet him at the fence, reach through those links and caress the ink on his body.

  Shut up, I muttered silently to her.

  Okay. I had to admit it, even if only to myself. With those intriguing tattoos, his dark hair, and those intense, glowing eyes—he was almost as sexy as he was scary.

  I couldn’t admit that to anyone else without compromising my pride, though. Right?

  Anyway, the fact that he was sexy as all get-out didn’t mean the incredibly enticing, spicy scent, like cloves and seawater and the scent of pine trees in summer, belonged to him, too.

  But somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it did.

  Chapter Four

  GAGE

  “What are you thinking?” Jade had whispered as I watched the ship come in, her breath brushing against my ear as she pressed her breasts against my back. Normally, I might have found her attention at least mildly interesting. Today, though, I wanted nothing more than to brush her off.