Chapter 5 5

Fresh out of Silverlake High School, tuition paid in full, diploma probably framed somewhere back home. I came up different alleys, split knuckles, nothing handed to me. Everything I had, I built with my own hands, one fight at a time.

Given what it cost me to get here, it's a small miracle I ended up standing on this side of the bars.

Power runs everything in this world. Get enough of it and people stop asking questions. But even power has a ceiling  kill outside a sanctioned duel, outside training, outside approved work like mine, and it's still a crime. Same goes for whatever happens at the marriage trials out in Eastern Oakland. Murder. Grand theft. Compulsion. Stripping a kid's magic before it even develops. Rape. That's the guest list that fills Phoenix's wings.

In short,  they're garbage, every last one, and making their time here miserable never bothered my conscience. Feeding on the way just made it profitable. Nothing in my contract said I had to feel bad about enjoying it.

Bennett was still laughing when I killed the radio. I didn't waste breath telling him what I thought of him, I just clipped it back to my belt and said it to the empty room instead.

Every rookie thinks they'll be the one who lasts. Most don't make it past week five. And out of every officer working this place, Foster keeps handing me the green ones like it's a personal joke. Took me a while to realize it wasn't about me at all; she does it to every Shifter on staff. Structural, not personal.

Two scanners, two doors, and I was through the barracks. The elevator to my right runs straight to Processing, level eight, mirrored on every wall so there's nowhere to look except at myself. Dark hair. Black eyes. A face built for exactly one expression. I'm not subtle, and subtle was never the job description; the job is speed and force, vampire-grade, pointed at the few inmates in this building actually capable of ruining my night. Most stay capped around the clock, so really I only earn that paycheck one day out of ten. Suits me fine. Especially the days a repeat offender gets walked down to Victoria's wing. Whatever that man does behind his door, it leaves something in people that doesn't grow back right. Even I keep my distance from him. But the ones who come in on assault charges  I send those his way myself. Doesn't take much of an excuse.

Past the elevator, down a corridor of bare metal, past the turnoff for the Fate Room, past medical, to the last door standing between me and the block.

Beyond it: a booth on the left with a guard behind glass, and on the right, the only way in or out of the entire prison. Four of us have clearance for those doors. Wards, scanners, a master key that never leaves the booth unless someone signs it out. People move during shift change, sure, but every single pass through those doors gets logged somewhere permanent. That's the whole point of Phoenix  you come in, and you don't leave again until the Warden decides you can.

"Evening." Leah had one eye on his monitor, one hand working on his beard, and something about how carefully he wasn't looking at me made me slow my steps.

"Rough intake tonight. The officer nearly didn't bother patching her up on the ride over  burns that were that bad." He slid a form across the counter, then set a lightning taser down next to it without a word.

"Not gonna need it."

Those tasers don't exist for ordinary trouble. Ten thousand volts, enough to strip the magic out through someone's skin and leave them face-down for half a day. Usually they come back groggy and manageable. Usually it isn't great odds when a dead inmate means a month of paperwork explaining why.

"Warden wants you to carry it regardless." Leah shrugged  not his call, never was. "Word is she bites."

I took it anyway and went through the sequence: seal, buzz, door.

She was already caged  a column barely wider than her own shoulders, standing under a wash of blue light with nothing on. That size of cell only comes out for inmates who'd been throwing themselves at walls before someone finally caught them. Her wrists glowed under cuffs holding her magic down, and her fingers kept flexing anyway, like her body hadn't caught up to the fact that the fight was already over.

Long muscles. Skin browned dark from actual sun, not a tanning bed. Ink of climbing roses running the length of one side, thigh to throat. Her hair didn't do much to cover any of it, and I felt something in my chest react before I could stop it. I hated myself a little for that. Inmates try this on staff constantly, offering their bodies up like currency. None of them had ever actually landed a hit.

Not until her.

"Order." I already had my Atlas out, ready to log her in.

"Werewolf." Low, almost a growl. I'd have guessed Siren from how hard she was pulling at me without even trying. "Oliver Carter. Alpha of the"

"Don't care who you used to guard or who you climbed to get that title. You've got a number now. Twelve. Curious why that one's open?"

"Lucky number?" Sweet as sugar.

"I don't do lucky, Twelve. The last woman who wore that number bled out in her own cell  forty-eight stab wounds, gone before the minute was up. Magic's dead weight here. Slow, stupid, whichever one you are  you end up zipped in a bag before your intake paperwork even clears. Do yourself a favor. Skip the part where you find that out the hard way."

She didn't flinch. "Guess I'll need a new uniform, then. Sounds like this one's ruined."

Wonder if she bleeds as sweet as she talks. "Element."

"Earth."

Flat. Certain. Not an answer, a warning, if I'd been smart enough to hear it that way.

Behind her, inside the cell she'd just been shoved into, the blue light flickered once on its own.

Like something in that cage already knew her name.

The cage died in a flicker. Her jumpsuit dropped through the chute with her feet 'name already stitched into the collar  and I didn't wait for her to pick it up before I gave the order.

"Get dressed."

She had other ideas. Thirst, apparently, mattered more than clothing, and she made that clear by walking straight at me instead, unhurried, letting her hair slide off her shoulders as she came.

Here's the thing about inmates who try this: it works often enough that they keep doing it. Enough guards fold, enough favors get traded, that a naked woman walking slow toward a man with a badge has learned exactly what that does to most people.

I'm not most people.

I let her close the distance anyway. Let her get her weight against my chest. I watched her mouth form the words  just a little water  in the exact tone that had probably worked on every man who came before me.

Then I had her by the throat and against the wall before she'd finished the sentence.

Chest pinning hers. Fist in her hair, holding her skull exactly where I wanted it. She went rigid, testing whether fighting was an option. I leaned my weight in until she understood it wasn't.

"Fight me, you spend a month in the box. Disobey another order, you pay for it. Try that trick on anyone else in this building, and I walk you down to Victoria myself to see how well that mouth performs once he's finished with it."

She told me she'd bite her own tongue out before she'd let me touch it.

That, I liked. Something about a prisoner who still had teeth left in her got under my skin faster than the seduction attempt had  normally been an invitation, except for the four cameras currently recording every inch of this room.

"There's the real one," I said against her ear. "Test me again. I dare you."

My body had already stopped taking orders from my brain by that point, and she felt exactly how hard I was, pressed against her, and didn't buy the lie that it was my baton for even a second.

She laughed instead, head falling back onto my shoulder. "Very professional, Officer. Does the Warden know you get like this on shift?" Her eyes cut to the corner camera, calculating.

Wasted math. Leah was the only one watching that feed, and Leah never crossed me  probably had some romance audiobook running in one ear right now, muting the audio entirely while he took notes for his boyfriend.

I ended it there. One shove, vampire-strength, sent her stumbling into the table across the room.

"Dressed. Now."

She didn't fight that order. Pulled the jumpsuit on while I stood arms-crossed, watching until the last button closed and her hair came free of the collar.

"Happy?" Still smiling. I had a feeling that smile wasn't going anywhere for the length of her sentence.

I made myself breathe normally. Made myself stop replaying how close she'd just gotten. It didn't matter, inmates like her rarely survived month one in Phoenix. Half this block would kill for a decent cell, and she'd have to take one by force before she even had somewhere to sleep tonight.

"Learn this fast. Mouth shut, eyes down, whenever I'm in the room. Cross me, you regret it."

Every trace of sweet dropped out of her voice at once.

"You're the one who should worry about crossing me." She came toward me now, something colder behind her eyes. "I ran half of Berlin. Nobody in my bloodline climbed faster. I'm not just anybody, Officer. I'm an Alpha. My pack is the strongest thing walking in Denver."

"Cute story." I smirked. "You're not in Berlin. You're in Phoenix, surrounded by things that would skin a pretty werewolf just to kill an hour." Her color drained  small, ugly satisfaction, watching that crack open. I leaned in. "And don't confuse me with a bodyguard. I'm not paid to keep you alive. I'm paid to keep you caged, hurt you when you break a rule, and carry out whatever's left of you if somebody opens your throat while you sleep."

Chin up anyway, tongue wetting her lips. "Not if I open theirs first." Her eyes found my badge. "Isn't that right, Officer Liam?" She turned from me, rolling her neck loose, shaking out her arms like a fight hadn't already started.

I pulled her file instead of answering. Mostly fines on record  bribes, more likely, if the Carter name meant what I thought it did. Her family had probably kept half the local badges paid off for years.

Not tonight's charge, though. Tonight was twenty million auras out of a Denver vault, and a guard left dead on the floor to pay for it.

Killer. Not just thieves.

She was already leaning in to read the screen over my shoulder when I caught her.

"Back off, inmate."

"I only wanted"

"Back off."

She laughed and pulled the Atlas straight out of my hands.

I don't do second warnings with Shifters who think defiance is a game. I caught both her wrists and let the fire come, searing into her skin until she screamed and the tablet hit the floor and my fangs dropped on instinct.

"Obey," I snarled, "or keep paying for it."

"Stop  please, stop!" Real fear, finally, cutting through everything she'd performed since the cage opened. And something in me wanted more of that  wanted every wall she had left stripped down to nothing.

Leah's air magic hit me first, a wall of force tearing me sideways off her before I got the chance. I recovered fast, squared up  and found her already watching me, blistered arms cradled to her chest, not one flicker of fear left in her face.

Just math. She was already calculating something.

"Cross me again in this place, Twelve, you'll learn fire's the gentle option." I was gone before Leah finished checking on her, vampire-fast, out the door.

She'd made her choice tonight. What she didn't know yet  what nobody walking Phoenix's halls knew yet  was that the guard she'd killed to get here wasn't the only debt her family owed this building.

Three floors down, in a cell that had been empty for exactly six days, someone had just started counting.