Caged Wolf (Darkmore Penitentiary, #1)

by Caroline Peckham

But this job had been too fucking perfect to turn down. And they’d needed the best. Which everyone knew meant me. Besides, I’d been waiting for an opportunity like this for a hell of a long time. There was a debt I needed to pay. A wrong I had to right. And it was long past time that I made good on my promises.

And what a job it was. The vault at the Solarian Bank was said to hold over twenty million auras. If I could do this, my name would go down in history. My entire Clan would howl Rosalie Oscura to the moon and dance naked beneath the stars in celebration.

And no matter what anyone said about the state of things since everything that had happened with the rival gang’s leader, Ryder Draconis, Oscuras were absolutely not welcome here.

“You know what they say about getting too comfortable when you’re married. If you don’t watch out, you might find your wife’s attention wandering…” “My wife’s attention is always wandering,” he joked as we crawled on. “But she’ll never grow tired of me.”

I yelped as he shot me in the ass with a spark of his Storm Dragon electricity and decided not to taunt the only Alpha I knew who was strong enough to rival me. Not that either of us had ever challenged each other. There were more than enough Oscura Clan Werewolves for us to run two packs within the family and I was happy to call him the head of the household, so long as he never actually tried to make me bow. Which he wouldn’t. Because despite what everyone liked to think about our pack having two Alphas, we made it work for the good of our family. And love could overcome our natures all the time we were never faced with a situation where we had to challenge each other.

but I was damn strong after a lifetime of training in every kind of martial art and hand to hand combat I could perfect.

You’re wild, Rosa. And you’d better make sure no one ever tames you.

“When my wife finds out where I went tonight, I’ll need to win her forgiveness,” he said with a shrug. “It won’t hurt to look my best while I’m grovelling at her feet.” I snorted a laugh. “Will the great leader of the Oscura Clan be in the dog house tonight then?” “Only because I didn’t invite her along,” he teased and knowing what I did about his wife, I had to agree with that assessment.

“Three eighteen?”

I glanced over my shoulder and spotted him with his hand pressed flat to the safety deposit box we’d come here for. His brow furrowed in concentration as he worked on cracking the lock and I started pacing to expel a bit of nervous energy from my limbs. “Shit,” he cursed a split second before an alarm sounded. “Did you trip that?” I accused with a frown. “I told you we should have asked Leon to come,” he growled.

We needed the contents of that box. Everything hinged on him getting it. So it was on me to hold these stronzos back while he worked.

“She’s gonna whip your hide until it’s bloody when you break out of there,” he warned, pulling the pouch of stardust from his pocket and holding a generous pinch of it ready. “A morte e ritorno,” I said fiercely, quoting our family motto. To death and back.

Unlike the little shithead, I hadn’t had rich parents to pay my way through one of the prestigious magical training academies. I’d learned to fight on the streets and clawed my way up through society by brute force. After all the shit I’d done in my life, it was a miracle I wasn’t sitting behind these bars instead of looking in.

Killing outside of Council approved Fae on Fae tournaments, magical training accidents, through permitted jobs like mine and marriage pairings contests in Eastern Voldrakia, was strictly against the law. Besides murder, high level theft, bedazzlement, Order suppressing in children, and rape were amongst a few of the reasons the inmates of Darkmore had ended up here. To put it frankly, they were scum. And I was more than happy to drain them dry and make their lives as miserable as Faely possible. Nothing in my contract said I wasn’t allowed to enjoy it either.

It also tasted as sweet as pie to lock them up in isolation or send them down to Dr Quentin for interrogation. They didn’t look so hot when they came back from a visit with him. The guy even gave me the creeps. Magical torture was his speciality. And I particularly relished sending the rapists to him; it wasn’t hard to goad them into infractions.

That was the single way in and out of this prison. There were only four authorised staff in the whole of Darkmore who could open those doors and, as a Commanding Officer, I was one of them.

My jaw tightened as my dick swelled shamelessly for the wild-looking girl in her cage. I was way above fucking inmates, but more than one had tried to seduce me for the sake of a few privileges. I never caved. Was never even tempted by a prisoner before now.

“I don’t have a favourite anything, Twelve,” I said with a sneer. “The last inmate to wear that number got shanked in the night. Forty eight puncture wounds to the lungs. Bled out in less than a minute. You can’t rely on your magic in here, the physically weak and the terminally stupid end up in body bags faster than it takes to process them. So if you’re going to cause me all that paperwork, I suggest you be a doll and slit your throat now to save me the hassle.”

I wonder if her blood is as sweet as her smile.

“Do not test me, inmate.” I coaxed flames into my hands with my fire Element but she didn’t back off, still moving toward me like a seductress, all long lashes and naked perfection. I was hard as stone and furious as hell as she closed the gap between us. She was about to find out exactly what happened to people who tried to bribe me.

“If you refuse a direct order, Twelve, you pay the price. If you try and seduce a single officer in Darkmore again, I’ll have you sent to magical interrogation and perhaps Dr Quentin will stitch you right up so you can’t ever spread your legs for a favour.” “I’d cut your dick off before I ever touched it!” she snapped. A smile pulled at my mouth as I held her in place, wrapping my hand tighter in her hair. I secretly loved a rebel, especially when I got a drink out of them. But I couldn’t do it here with four cameras pointed at me. “Looks like I let the wild animal out of her cage at last. Try to bullshit me again, Twelve, I dare you,” I growled in her ear.

She laughed manically, throwing her head back and resting it against my shoulder to look up at me. “That’s a very professional boner you’re sporting, Officer. What will the Warden think of that?”

“You don’t want to make an enemy out of me. I ran half of Alestria back home. I rose in the ranks faster than any of my siblings or cousins. I’m a queen where I come from, an Alpha of the most powerful Werewolf pack in Solaria.” I smirked down at her. “This is Darkmore Penitentiary, Twelve. Alestria might be the most dangerous city in the kingdom, but it’s not the most dangerous place. You’re about to be locked up with vicious murderers, Fae who take pleasure in cutting off pieces of pretty little Werewolves like you.”

“And if you think I’m employed to protect you, you’re wrong. I’m here to keep you inside these walls. I‘m here to punish you when you break the rules. I’m here to carry your dead body out of your cell piece by piece when a monster crawls into your bed and guts you in the night.”

He’d seemed like a straight up power hungry asshole. A little into rough sex with women he met online and didn’t have to hook up with twice. And a little into the underground hunting scene where he paid other Fae to let him hunt them using his Vampire skills so that he could delve into the darker urges of his Order. But nothing I’d found out about him had suggested he was a full on sadist. Sure, there were plenty of rumours about the guards in this place being rougher than necessary with the inmates, but I hadn’t expected him to flip on me like that.

“Every untested newbie is a pup. You wanna drop that nickname? Then I suggest you prove yourself amongst the big boys in your cell block the moment you arrive. Because if you can’t assert yourself, they’ll eat you alive in there. Literally. We have more than one inmate who’s in for eating another Fae while in their Order form. And a few that just like the taste of Fae flesh even when they’re not shifted.”

Rind and Nichols. Both Minotaurs, both fairly weak magically and as strong as an ox physically. Neither of them held any deep and dark secrets that my research had uncovered, though Rind had a thing for wearing women’s underwear.

His uniform had the name Hastings sewn onto the lapel and I made a mental note of it, wondering if I could mould him into the weak link I needed. “I don’t speak Faetalian,” he replied, raising his chin as he kept a hand on his baton. So the idiota couldn’t figure out what idiota meant? How sad. “Ti farò diventare la mia cagna, ragazzo del coro,” I purred, twisting my fingers through a lock of my ebony hair and widening my eyes seductively. I’m going to make you my bitch, choir boy.

The rest of the guards closed in, the Minotaurs holding their shock batons ready. I’d done a little preparation for those fuckers before coming here in the form of letting Dante hit me with his lightning strikes until I built up a certain level of tolerance to the pain of it.

So Officer Lyle could be taunted without repercussions and Officer Hastings had a sense of humour. Good to know.

The Fate Room was the only place down here where we would be offered access to things like tarot cards, crystals and our horoscopes. Access was granted infrequently and at random so I couldn’t expect to get in there very often, but whenever I did I’d be sure to make the most of any glimpse I could get at my fate.

I had no real interest in what went on in the Psych Unit. That place was for the criminally insane, dangerously unstable and magically fractured souls who were too depraved to be housed within the main prison. And if they were too fucked up for Darkmore then I was more than sure I didn’t want to make their acquaintance.

“You don’t want to go there either,” he replied with a faint smile. “Interrogation and Isolation.” “Fondly known as the hole,” Officer Rind muttered behind me and Officer Nichols guffawed appreciatively. I got the impression they were the tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber of this fine establishment, more brawn than brain. My skin prickled as I craned my neck to get a look down the stairs towards the unit which housed the prisoners who were too dangerous to be allowed to remain in the cell blocks with the general population. My target was waiting for me down there and he didn’t even know his guardian angel had arrived yet.

“I bet you didn’t read about the Belorian in the brochure,”

“She’s hungry,” Lyle said with a bark of laughter. “The Belorian is an entirely Fae made bio-weapon. The only one of its kind. Think T-Rex on steroids with a more bloodthirsty nature and a dollop of magic mixed in.”

“Don’t worry, inmate. We only let her out at night. Just a little extra incentive for you to make sure you head back to your cell block before the count. Because once you’re all locked up tight in your beds, the Belorian here gets let out for walkies. And she’s always hungry.”

Jerome hadn’t mentioned that shit covered nugget of crap when he’d offered me this job. Breaking out of the highest security prison in Solaria with a high profile psychotic inmate? Yeah. Getting past a bio monster bred to hunt and eat runaway convicts? Nope. He hadn’t uttered a word of that. I was damn tempted to ask for a bigger pay cheque.

“Level six, the Correctional Centre and Library. Level five, the Gymnasium – you can work out in there during your free time in the evenings assuming you don’t have your privileges revoked for infractions. Entrance is granted via facial scanner and if you’re not allowed in because you’ve been a prick then the doors won’t open.”

“The shower unit is located centrally and you get access to it in the mornings and evenings, taking turns with the other cell blocks for who gets to wash first.”

“Each cell is designed to hold two Fae. There’s two bunks, a toilet and a nice metal door which locks up tight at night time. There are currently five hundred and fourteen Fae in this cell block and one hundred cells which means two hundred beds. However, not everyone who has claimed a cell chooses to share it. So if you want a bed, you’re going to have to challenge someone for it. If you fail, you sleep in the coop on the lower deck which is basically a big old cage with no mattresses and only four toilets to share. In the open. And we provide blankets but again, there aren’t enough to go around so you’ll need to work hard to keep yours, particularly if you can’t claim a bunk. Obviously sleeping out in the open with a bunch of psychotic assholes isn’t ideal and there is a fairly high rate of overnight incidents for those Fae who can’t secure themselves a cosy cell.”

Beneath the bridge was a magical void which appeared to be made of nothing but black smoke, but I knew what that was. Evernight vapour could knock a Fae out cold for six hours if you inhaled it and all the time you were unconscious, you would feel like you were being burned alive from the inside out. The Void extended for twenty steps, and when the cell block door was closed, the bridge would retract into the wall and none of the inmates would be able to get close to it.

Although I knew from personal experience that there were a few weapons more than capable of causing marks that wouldn’t fully heal. I bit down on my tongue as bile filled my mouth for a moment as those memories tried to press close but I forced them away with an iron will. I refused to face them when I was awake, though they tended to find me in my sleep.

rested my elbows on the railing of the highest floor, gazing down to the bottom of the cell block where Rosalie Oscura had just put a ten ton Dragon on his ass. That’s the feisty little pup I know and love.

Rosalie was bent over her bed, smoothing out the creases of her freshly changed sheets. My gaze shifted over the roundness of her ass before I remembered she was ten years younger than me and my friend’s baby cousin.

The last time I’d seen her outside of visitation had been the night I was arrested. I’d done a job with her and her cousin, Dante at Lionel Acrux’s manor. In hindsight, going up against a Celestial Councillor, one of the rulers of Solaria and most powerful Fae in the world, had been a terrible fucking idea. To say it had been a shitstorm was an understatement of mind-blowing proportions.

“My brother told me you were coming,” I said. “But he didn’t say why…I didn’t peg you for a bank robber, Rosa. But even if you are, why did Leon have so little faith in you pulling off the job, hm?” She stepped closer instead of cowering, lifting her chin and the scent of her washed over me. My little pup never wore perfume, she always smelled like mischief and strawberries. But there was a new scent to her now, something enticing and pure Alpha.

No, when Rosa looked at me I could practically see the blood pumping through her veins, feel the rush of adrenaline that clawed under her skin. She might have been way too young for me, but Rosalie had blossomed into a sinfully beautiful girl and I wasn’t beyond drinking in her attention.

So…you’re in here for a reason.”

I’d missed out on so much during my time in Darkmore. My brother visited weekly, keeping me filled in but it wasn’t the same as being out there in the real world. I’d missed his wedding for fuck’s sake. And I’d missed seeing Rosalie grow up too.

And all because of one fucking cock-up. One job gone wrong. But a part of me couldn’t regret it. Because that night on the Acrux grounds, I’d been torn between a choice to run or go back for Rosa. I’d chosen her. And I’d gotten her out of there, saving her from a stretch in juvie before ending up in this hell hole. Though apparently that had been for nothing, because here she was right beside me anyway. Fuck, she better have known what she was doing by coming here. It was a place where dreams came to die a bloody death.