Chapter Twenty-Two
Being left alone to rot in a small cage where I couldn’t bring any of my dragon to the surface was a special kind of torture.
It was psychological as well as metaphysical.
My captors…jailers? Whatever. The guys who had locked me up brought unappetizing food to me twice a day and otherwise left me completely alone.
By the end of the second day, I almost begged for one of them to stay, even just to taunt and mock me.
That’s how desperate I was for any kind of contact with the outside world.
From the tiny window, no larger than a brick, above my head, distant city sounds filtered in.
The whoosh of cars on far-away roads, horns occasionally honking faintly at each other, was the only thing that reminded me of where I was.
I clung to those sounds, to the knowledge that I was still alive, still in the city even if on the outskirts.
Other than that, my cell was quiet and still.
My stomach hadn’t stopped churning since I was thrown inside, and I wished I could allay my own anxiety. Brandt had tried to reassure me on the phone that he and Eric would rescue me quickly…but as soon as I’d hung up and handed the guard back the phone, reality had come crashing down on me.
‘Quickly’ could mean anything in dragon years. After all, a year to us was barely a day in human terms. Sure, time passed at the same speed, but when your kind lived a thousand years, one year was hardly a blip on the timeline.
But two days into my incarceration and I was already an emotional wreck.
The slop-masquerading-as-food that I was given turned my stomach even more, sending me scrambling to hurl into the toilet bowl.
On top of that, tears of embarrassment and helplessness streaked my cheeks, my inability to control my own body frustrating me beyond measure.
And then being so upset and not able to eat was leaving me physically drained, too.
By the time the sun rose on the third day stuck in my cell, I felt thoroughly broken.
I smelled disgusting, not having access to clean clothes or even a shower, and my heart ached for my family and my mates.
I hoped Dex was okay: he wasn’t really close to anyone else in Shifters Sanctuary, and with Serge in Europe, I worried about how he was coping with me being gone.
I really hoped Brandt and Eric were being kind to him, at least. I might strangle them if they weren’t.
“Get up,” a voice snapped, startling me out of my musings. I jumped a little on the cot, already unused to hearing other voices. Even when they dropped food off, my guards barely grunted at me. “You’ve got a visitor.”
I practically fell out of the uncomfortable bed and scrambled to my feet. “A visitor?” my throat was dry and a bit scratchy, probably from all the vomiting and crying and not yet from disuse.
A tall man in an expensive-looking gray suit stepped into view from behind my guard. His dark eyes roamed over the cage with distaste…or was that me he was sneering at?
He gave me a small but gentle smile, then turned back to my captor. “You can leave us now,” he drawled dismissively. “Mister Weldman has the right to attorney-client privilege during this meeting.” He glanced towards the ceiling. “No cameras?”
The guard rolled his eyes. “Only way in or out is through that door,” he jerked his head towards the end of the hallway, “so we’ve got cameras down there and not on the cells.”
The lawyer —because that’s who I understood him to be, now— squinted at the…cop? (I still wasn’t sure who the men in black suits were.) “Do you visit regularly to ensure his wellbeing, seeing as you’re not monitoring him?”
The guard scoffed. “If he does something to hurt himself, that’ll be doing us all a favor.”
My lawyer snarled. “Charming.” He shook his head. “I’ll be sure to note that in our case against the State.”
“What case?” the guard laughed, but the sound was more derisive than joyful. He waved his hand in the air, already turning for the door. “Nah, save your breath. If you think he’s getting out of these charges with all the evidence against him, you’re delusional.”
The man in the gray suit tilted his head back, staring the guard down arrogantly and in silence until the door at the end of the hall was closed. Only then did he turn back to face me, stepping up to the bars of my cell, once again looking them over with a curled lip.
“These conditions are barbaric,” he muttered before extending his hand through the bars. “Warwick Barnes. Your brothers hired me as your attorney.”
I shook his hand quickly, not wanting to get my grime all over him. “I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but…”
“Under these circumstances, not so much,” he acknowledged. “I get it.”
I stepped closer, scenting the air beyond the stale scent wafting off my clothes. My nerves settled some when I caught the distinct scent of a cat shifter. No: a lion, if I wasn’t mistaken.
Knowing that he was one of us was a relief.
My relief was short-lived, though, as he tilted his head towards the door and grimaced. “I hate to say it, but he’s not wrong. The evidence against you is…not ideal.”
I fought a wave of despair and nodded. Clearing my throat, because it suddenly felt tight, I managed a croaky, “Yeah.”
Warwick set his briefcase down on the ground and snapped open the clasps.
He reached in and pulled out a manila folder, and stood straight again, resting the folder on his forearm as he flipped it open and started turning pages.
“Your brothers explained the circumstances under which you found yourself alone on the premises, but I’d like to hear it in your own words. ”
Shoulders sagging, I nodded and told him the whole story, starting with why we were looking for the person supplying the town with illegal blockers and finishing with being thrown into the cell.
My cheeks burned when I admitted that I’d been too distracted to hear the real dealer leaving, or the sheriff’s officers pulling up outside, but Warwick assured me that there was nothing to be ashamed of.
I scoffed at him anyway. I had plenty to be ashamed of. The way I had left things with my mates…
“How are, um, how is everyone in the pack?” I asked him once I’d finished telling my story of woe. “Nobody else has come to see me, and…”
Well, I didn’t want to admit how much that hurt. I could understand why Brandt couldn’t come, what with the babies and barely having recovered from giving birth, but I’d hoped that maybe Dex would rush to me. Or Eric, at the very least.
Warwick’s expression softened into sympathy and chagrin.
“It was enough of a fight to get access for myself,” he explained.
“Your brothers and mates are desperate to see you, but the humans are making things difficult. The risk of our kind —particularly dragons or other predators— shifting and bringing the building down to break you out terrifies them, so they petitioned the judge to hold you here with fewer rights than human criminals receive.”
It rankled a little that he seemed to be lumping me in as a criminal, but I let it go.
“You’re a predator, too,” I pointed out, though. “How did you get around that?”
“You have a right to legal counsel. However,” he grimaced and tugged his tie loose, revealing a band of silver glinting off his dark brown skin.
I gasped as he nodded. “I had to agree to wearing the collar. While it can’t prevent me from shifting, it has enough of the same spell as your cell imbued into it that it won’t break if I shift, and then they can shock me into submission with it. ”
Nausea rolled through me at how awful that sounded, but I managed to keep it contained. “That’s awful,” I replied, looking at my feet as I registered how much it was costing him to do this for me.
Putting himself at the humans’ mercy must be terrifying, even if he was on the other side of my cage.
What was preventing these cops from using the collar to subdue him anyway?
There weren’t any cameras; they could claim that he had tried to attack them and the only proof would be my word against theirs.
I knew I was probably just being paranoid, but panic lanced through me as I realized all the things that could go wrong. I didn’t want to be responsible for another shifter being mistreated, especially not when his only crime was trying to help me.
“You should go,” I urged, my heart beating rapidly. “That isn’t…this isn’t safe. They could frame you like I’ve been framed. Lock you up in a matching cell, just for being a shifter. Please don’t put yourself at risk for me.”
Shaking his head, Warwick held up his phone for me to see.
“I’m recording our session. I should have declared that to begin with, I’m sorry.
But this is going straight to the cloud.
If anything should happen, that’s my safety net.
If nothing happens, I will delete the recording as soon as I leave here. ”
I blinked.
“They let you bring your phone down here?” I wasn’t completely up to date with how these things worked, but I was under the impression (from tv shows and movies) that all visitors to jails were searched and had to hand over their phones and things before being allowed to visit with the detainees.
Now my lawyer smirked in a decidedly feline way and shrugged.
“They must have missed it when they searched my briefcase. This is an older facility, and they aren’t really set up upstairs with an x-ray or proper screening facilities.
Additionally, they didn’t ask me if I had any additional phones or devices when they confiscated my main phone, and it just…
slipped my mind that it was there, I suppose. ”
“You don’t think it’s weird that they’ve gone to all the trouble of finding a magic-resistant cell and whatever the fuck that collar is, but they haven’t made the effort to upgrade their security?”
Call me paranoid, but that wasn’t adding up for me.
“I think they’ve put a lot more faith in the security the magic provides them,” Warwick seemed confident in his assessment of the situation and I had to acknowledge that he might be right.
“It’s ironic that they trust that magic,” I couldn’t help but grumble.
“Unfortunately, there are plenty of people —human and shifter— who cherry pick from ideologies and concepts to suit their own agenda. Sadly,” he sighed, “you’ve been caught in the middle of a prime example.”
I let a beat pass, then a second. Eventually, I licked my lips and asked, “So…what’s the plan, then?”
Warwick’s expression turned solemn. “I think you may need to consider a plea deal.”
My stomach churned with anxiety, and I shook my head. “No. No, I can’t. I—”
“Sage. With the evidence they’ve got against you, and nothing but your word and your pack’s word to back you up, they could throw the book at you and hit you with the full forty-year sentence for a first offender.
More if they decide to go for manufacturing charges on top of trafficking.
And that’s only if they don’t petition to change the laws based on your life expectancy. ”
My heart was hammering, and I clamped my mouth shut against the renewed sense of roiling nausea that threatened to overwhelm me.
Warwick continued, “But you’re a dragon. If we could plea you down to five or even ten years, that’s nothing in the grand scheme of your lifetime.”
Five —or ten— years in a cell like this one? My dragon caged deep in my soul, and separated from my mates and loved ones?
I couldn’t do it. I would go mad.
Gods, I’d barely survived three days like this…
And, fuck, how had Dexter managed an entire century of self-imposed exile without his dragon for comfort? I had a much greater understanding about how the past hundred years must have felt for him, too, and I swore that I would grovel at his feet when I was free again.
If I was ever free again.
With my throat tight and eyes burning with unshed tears, I clenched my jaw shut. I couldn’t accept what Warwick was saying. I couldn’t do five years like this. Hell, I couldn’t even do another five days!
He spoke again into the tense silence, keeping his tone calm and gentle. “Just think it over, Sage. Five years is a better alternative to forty, especially when you still have hundreds of years ahead of you.”
But what good would those hundreds of years be if my mates moved on without me?
Still…he had a point. The same point that had hounded my waking hours and my restless nights as well.
I had no way to prove my innocence, and the evidence was stacked against me.
“Would they move me to a bigger cell?” I asked. “Obviously, they’d still use the spell that’s keeping my dragon trapped, but…” I gestured limply to my tiny space, “I’ll atrophy in here. I can’t even stretch out fully on the cot.”
“I’ll be working livable conditions into the deal,” he nodded.
“And,” I almost choked on the next words, “my m-mates? Would they be allowed to visit?”
“I’ll do what I can, Sage, I promise.”
I swallowed roughly, around the lump that now felt permanently stuck in my throat. “Okay,” I eventually agreed quietly. “Okay. I’ll…I’ll take a plea deal.”