Bought for Blood (Dragonblood Dynasty #14)

1. Chapter 1

Serenity

My feet find the concrete before my eyes open.

Cold climbs up through the soles first, same as always.

I fold the blanket—corners squared, the way the morning guard likes it—my fingers stiff at the knuckle, slow to close.

They used to shake after the blood draws.

Now they don’t. I don’t know if that means I’m stronger, or if my body’s just decided to stop fighting it.

The lights buzz on at six, and everyone starts moving—bare feet on concrete, blankets rustling, the shuffle toward the yellow line down the center aisle.

I stand too fast. The room tips left, holds, then levels.

I ride it out with my hand on the cell frame, the warded metal warming under my palm, then quiet again.

Three breaths and my eyes clear. Four and I can walk.

I’m in the middle of the line this morning. Cell six is empty, blanket folded on the cot as if nobody slept in it last night. Nobody did. And I’ve learned not to ask what happened to the one who was in there.

I find my place and count rivets on the beam overhead to keep from thinking about anything else.

Forty-one to the weld.

The line inches toward the steel table at the front.

The Monday nurse is already there, snapping her gloves.

Small, quick, hair scraped back so tight it must pull.

I call her Monday because I’ve never learned her real name; they rarely wear tags around here.

I guess I wouldn’t want to be identified either if I worked in this place.

The boy ahead of me arrived two weeks ago. “Please don’t use the right arm,” he says. Seventeen, maybe less, some kind of hedge-witch blood in him; I can smell it through the bleach if I try, faint and green. My nose used to be better than this. A lot of things used to be better than this.

“Not the right,” he repeats. “Please.”

I can see the infection from where I’m standing, the red running up his arm in threads. Monday finds his vein through it, slides the needle in, tapes it down. The tube fills. His wrist looks too thin for the tubing.

Someone should be treating that arm, not drawing off it.

His shoulders are heaving. He can’t get it to stop. I look at the rivets instead of at him.

My wolf shifts at the sound he makes, a flicker of attention, gone before it settles into anything.

She’s silent again quickly. She conserves now.

Has for months. The runes on my cuffs burn low and constant against both wrists, just enough to keep the shift locked down.

The wards in the cell walls do the rest. Between the cuffs and the wards, she can’t fight back.

The draws weaken what’s left after that.

She’s quiet inside me, breathing slow. Waiting for something worth the cost.

“Does it hurt?” A voice close behind me, quiet. The new girl. Arrived yesterday, still wearing her own shoes, skin holding the smell of outside. Rain. Soap. Something warmer underneath.

“Only if you let them see it does.”

She looks at the inside of my elbow. I know what she’s seeing: scars stacked on scars, the crook so overworked that the newest puncture barely stands out from the rest. My elbow doesn’t straighten all the way anymore. Hasn’t for months.

“How long have you—?”

“Long enough,” I murmur. “Don’t count the days. Doesn’t help.”

She’s not going to last a month like this.

“Okay,” she says. She’s fidgeting behind me, shoes scuffing on the concrete. I know that fidget. I did it too, in the first weeks, before I learned to keep still. Anything that moves draws eyes. Eyes bring attention. Attention here just makes things worse.

I reach around and tug her sleeve down past the crook of her arm, covering the vein, before Monday’s gaze gets that far down the line.

She flinches. “What are you—?”

“Left arm’s harder to hit. She’ll go right instead. Hurts the same. Bruises less.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I pay attention.” I face forward again. “Eat something if they gave you anything. Before the draw, not after. Doesn’t help much. Helps some.”

She’s quiet. Then: “What’s your name?”

“Nineteen.”

“That’s not a name.”

“It is in here.”

I’m six from the front. I roll my shoulders, feel the cuffs shift against my wrist bones. The runes flare brighter, then dim back to a steady burn. Under it, my glamour’s still there; thinner than it’s ever been, but there. I reach for it, just to check. It shifts slightly, but not enough.

Three ahead of me. Then two. The tubes fill dark, capped and racked.

Monday’s rhythm is precise. Snap, swab, stick, tape, fill, cap. Thirty seconds per arm. She spends longer on me—always has. Three tubes where the others get one. Red caps on mine instead of clear. More blood. More of whatever’s in my blood that put me in this ward instead of a worse one.

Worse…

I suppress a shudder, thinking of the place I came from. Where they might have Grace.

Please let her be out of there…

The stool scrapes back, and my wolf lifts her head.

It’s the smell that gets her, not the sound.

The woman ahead of me stands up too fast and sways.

The scent of her blood hits me through the taped cotton, thin and metallic.

My wolf sharpens for one second, then the cuffs flare and push her back down.

Easy. Take it easy.

She settles. She always settles. But she settles slower each time, and I don’t know what that means yet.

One. My turn.

I step up, palm on the steel table. The steel’s cold enough to hurt, and I let it. I don’t flinch. Flinching gets you noticed. I turn my forearm, scars silvery against my skin. Monday positions the needle. The stick hurts, sharp and quick. I don’t let it show.

The first tube fills. I go back to counting rivets.

Forty-one to the weld.

By the second tube, the cold’s climbed past my knees. By the third, my hands have gone numb; I have to look down to make sure they’re there. The count gets harder to hold onto than it was a minute ago.

Monday caps the last tube, presses a cotton square into the crook of my arm, folds my elbow closed over it, and tapes it down. She’s already reaching for the rack before I’m off the stool. Behind me, the new girl takes my place. She doesn’t make a sound.

Quick learner.

I move more slowly this time. I’ve learned that much. The line thins at both ends, those with drawn arms filing back toward the cells. I file with them, one hand close to the wall in case my legs give out.

The young guard falls in step beside me halfway down the aisle. He chews the inside of his cheek, over and over. Bored, same as always.

“Big day for you, princess.” He’s smirking. “Something special lined up for you girls.”

Don’t ask. Don’t give him that.

I don’t look up. “That so?”

“I’m serious.” He leans in, drops his voice. “Real special. You’ll see.”

“Good for me.”

“You could at least look excited.”

“I’ll get right on that.”

He laughs, short and mean, and doesn’t say anything else about it. He waits a beat. Hoping I’ll ask. I don’t.

He peels off toward the station, hands in his pockets, already scanning the line for somebody who’ll flinch.

We pass cell seven, and the air changes. It always does here…a warmth under the disinfectant; something scorched and sweet that the industrial cleaners have never quite reached. My wolf lifts toward it, even at her lowest, even with the cuffs burning. She doesn’t lift toward anything else anymore.

She’s there. Her back against our shared wall, knees drawn up, flame-red hair catching the light that reaches this far corner of the ward.

She’s never in the line. Nobody walks her to the draw table; whatever they take from her, they take behind that door, and the door is thicker than ours.

The guards swing wide around it, boots angling away before they’re even close.

The cuffs and the wards fit her the same as us.

But they reinforced her cell anyway; extra plating over the door, in case the first ones weren’t enough.

Her head comes up as I pass. Gold-ringed eyes, lit from somewhere the fluorescents can’t account for. They go to the cotton taped in my elbow, then to my face. I tip my chin, barely. She tips hers back.

In my cell, I sit on the cot and put my back against the wall between us, where the concrete holds a degree of her warmth. It doesn’t reach the cold in my feet, but I’ll take what I can get.

“Something special,” she says. “I heard.” Her voice comes through low, pitched under the hum of the lights, the way we’ve learned to talk.

“So did half the ward. He wasn’t quiet about it.”

“Hah.” It comes through the wall short and rough. “I’ve been promised ‘special’ before. By better liars than that dickhead.”

“How’d that go?”

“I’m still here.”

Still here. That’s supposed to be a comfort.

Down the aisle, Monday’s gloves snap twice. Another arm hits the table. The lights hum the same note they’ll hum all day.

“Yeah,” I say. “Still here.”

Boots start down the aisle, heavy, slow, stopping at doors instead of passing them. They pause at mine.

I don’t know what “special” means, but it won’t be good. Nothing good ever happens in here.