Chapter Five
The destruction in the hallway was almost as bad as in the indoor garden. A lot of the crystals used to illuminate the corridor had been broken during the explosion, so the hallway was filled with flickering lights and shadows.
One side of the corridor was completely blocked by debris, while the other end was only partially obstructed.
That made the decision not to return to his cell just yet simple since he would have to crawl through the wreckage to take that route.
There was no chance in hellfire he was going to do that if he didn’t have to, especially when he could move around the prison freely at the moment.
Even though there was a huge hole in the ceiling, the next floor up was too far up to reach by normal means. That meant trying to climb up from where he was located on sublevel three all the way to the entrance on the main level was still fucking impossible.
Giving up on that idea, Mordecai started to make his way around the rubble in the opposite direction from where his cellblock was located.
Whenever a riot broke out or the prison went into lockdown for any reason, alarms usually blared through the corridors, followed by an announcement ordering every inmate back to their cells immediately.
The guards were strict about procedures, and even the smallest disturbance rarely went unaddressed.
But this time, there was nothing.
No warning sirens, no voice issuing commands, no pounding footsteps of prisoners fleeing back to their cages.
No legion of guards ready to do battle. That unsettled him more than any alarm ever could.
It could only mean the prison had suffered catastrophic damage, enough to leave the entire staff overwhelmed and scrambling to contain the chaos elsewhere.
Fewer eyes watching meant greater freedom to move around unnoticed.
But it also meant the same for everyone else.
Wanting to avoid the crowds and whatever violence might be erupting throughout the prison blocks, he decided to make his way toward the library since it was fairly close by.
The old library was almost always deserted.
Hellfire, most inmates had probably forgotten it even existed.
They had little interest in dusty shelves, crumbling books, and old scrolls, especially when survival inside the prison depended more on physical strength rather than quiet reflection.
For him, the emptiness of the library made it one of the safest places in the entire prison. If he needed privacy, time to think, or simply a quiet place where no one would bother looking for him, the library never failed him.
Before he reached the hallway where the entrance was located, his steps slowed to a stop.
Instincts warned him before he caught the low murmur of voices drifting from somewhere beyond the next corner.
The sounds echoed faintly through the corridor, far too close to ignore and too deliberate to dismiss as casual conversation.
He slowly crept through the shadows, remaining hidden from view as he listened.
“Is she dead?” a male voice asked.
“Naw, she’s still breathing,” a second male pointed out. “She’s got a nice rack. And look at that face, she is fucking gorgeous.”
A third male said, “She’s not an inmate. See the uniform she is wearing? I think she’s a visitor or something. She must have fallen through that hole with that guard during the explosion.”
“The guard is dead. I already checked,” the first male reported. “She’s lucky she survived if they fell all the way down here from the main level.”
“Lucky for us.” The second male snickered. “Her skin is so soft and smooth, it feels like silk. It’s been so damn long since I’ve enjoyed a female. Let’s move her somewhere more private so we can have some fun with her.”
“We’ll have to kill her and hide the body after we are done with her.”
That got Mordecai moving.
Usually, he was all for minding his own business when it came to conflicts between prisoners, but this was different.
He had no clue who the visitor was, but he wasn’t going to let those assholes hurt her.
But there was something else that seemed to be driving his actions.
Something more than old-fashioned gallantry.
Something indescribable.
As he rounded the corner, he instantly recognized the three inmates leaning over the fallen woman.
Two were shifters with bad attitudes who often took advantage of those smaller and weaker than they were.
They were from a different unit, but he’d seen them in passing enough to know who they were.
He always made a point to figure out who the potential problems were within the prison, even the inmates in units that were located topside.
The third prisoner standing before him was a newly incarcerated mage.
He had recently been convicted of selling and distributing date-rape potions and other drugs on the black market.
That type of shit sickened him, and Mordecai had vowed to personally teach the asshole a lesson if they ever crossed paths.
Fortunately for him, he finally had that chance.
From the pile of supplies scattered on the ground a few feet away, the trio had probably been in the hallway on cleaning duty as punishment for some sort of infraction.
The three males froze in place as soon as they realized he was towering over them.
He had no doubt they knew who he was. Almost everyone in the lower levels did, so their fear didn’t surprise him.
It had taken them much longer to notice his presence than it should have. To be fair, he did have the ability to move without making a sound. The three males’ eyes widened in horror. They slowly got to their feet and backed away, as if putting some distance between them made any difference.
Spoiler alert, it didn’t.
Others might have considered simply teaching them a hard lesson and leaving them broken and bleeding, but the vicious glee he’d heard in their voices when they had spoken about the female made showing them any mercy impossible.
In the blink of an eye, Mordecai crossed the distance and slammed his fist into the biggest shifter’s throat before the male could even raise his hands in defense.
The impact crushed his windpipe and hurled him backward into the wall with enough force to crack the stone.
Unable to breathe, he was no longer a threat.
The second shifter lunged, hands curled into claws as he swiped at Mordecai’s face. Since he couldn’t shift due to the magical restrictions inside the prison, the attack lacked the lethal power and speed of his animal form, but brute force and sheer desperation still made him dangerous.
He caught the shifter’s wrist mid-strike and twisted hard, snapping the bone like it was nothing more than a brittle twig.
He howled in pain, and Mordecai used the momentum to send him flying into the debris littering the corridor floor.
The shifter landed on a massive slab of the collapsed ceiling.
He let out a strangled gasp as his body was pierced by jagged pieces of metal sticking out of the stone.
A few seconds later, death claimed him, and he went limp.
The mage was smarter than the others since he had tried to run while Mordecai was occupied dealing with the others.
Still, it was no use. There was no escape for a male like him.
He let out a shrill, panicked scream as Mordecai easily caught up with him.
He lifted the human off his feet and slammed him against the wall.
The air left the mage in a ragged grunt.
Blood splattered across the stone as Mordecai methodically smashed him against the wall once, twice more with savage efficiency, then he dropped the mage’s broken body on the ground.
With that done, Mordecai hurried back over to the female lying on the ground.
Anger still throbbed through him like a second heartbeat, hot and violent, but some of it eased the moment he finally got a good look at her.
Death’s arrival, the wreckage, the broken males at his feet, none of it mattered as much as the fact that she was still alive.
Relief swept through him when he realized her eyes were still closed.
He was grateful she hadn’t witnessed his brutality.
The violence had been unavoidable, even necessary, given the current situation.
Those within the prison system lived by a different set of rules.
Still, that didn’t mean he wanted her first impression of him to be tainted by blood and terror.
Staring down at her, Mordecai felt completely enthralled.
With her pale blonde hair pulled back into a long braid and a face that looked like it had been blessed by the Goddess of Beauty herself, she was a gorgeous specimen of femininity.
Every delicate feature of her beautiful face was impossibly refined.
From her high, sculpted cheekbones to the graceful curve of her perfect lips, there was something almost unreal about her appearance.
She had the kind of beauty that made people covet her.
The kind that people fought wars over.
And the very thought of that filled him with rage. This perfect female had been out in the world without him by her side. Protecting her. Caring for her. Guarding her so that no one or nothing could ever touch her or hurt her.
The silver uniform she wore clung to her slender frame, its sleek, form-fitting design accentuating the graceful proportions of her petite body.
While he was grateful the material protected her from getting too bruised and bloody during the fall, he wanted to rip the offensive cover off of her so he could run his hands over every inch of her glorious body.
Partly so that he could personally check every inch of her for injuries, while the rest was pure atavistic lust.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the time for that, nor was it the proper place.
Her survival was more important than his desire for her. He forced himself to be content with watching the way the metallic fabric shimmered faintly in the dim light as her chest rose and fell with each breath she took. It gave him an acute sense of comfort watching that visible proof of life.
If she had died in that fall, she wouldn’t have been the only one to perish.
The aftermath would have been catastrophic since he would have made everyone pay.
Not with a riot, and not with some brief outburst of rage that the guards could stamp out and contain.
But with a reckoning the likes of which the prison had never seen before.
No one would have been spared from his wrath, not even Death. Because the female lying before him wasn’t just some nameless visitor caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She was his mate.
And if she died, he had no reason to live.
She was the one being in all existence who could reach the part of him prison had not quite managed to kill. The one female with the power to tame the beast raging within him. Only she could pull him back from the brink of insanity and still find something worth saving.
Somewhere beneath the brutality and the primal instincts that had kept him alive, there was a real person.
He had once been a demon with a heart and soul, not just a weapon forged by confinement and survival.
And he knew without a doubt that she was the only one who could ever bring that version of him back.
He crouched beside her and reached out with hesitant fingers, softly brushing them along her cheek.
Her skin was warm despite their cold surroundings, and impossibly soft against the roughness of his own.
His chest tightened with a strange, painful anticipation as her long lashes fluttered before revealing the most beautiful pair of bright blue eyes.
At first, her eyes were unfocused, clouded with confusion.
But then her gaze met his and held in one beautiful moment of clarity.
She felt the mating pull between them.
He could see it. Sense it.
It was in the way her pupils dilated, in the faint hitch of her breath, in the fragile warmth that tinted her cheeks despite the horror of their surroundings.
For a moment, her composure seemed to falter.
A storm of emotions flickered across her face, and her eyes glistened with unshed tears, making them shimmer like twin sapphires.
Then, her lips curved into a smile, like she was happy to see him.
The sight made his chest tighten painfully.
It should have been impossible, but it seemed like she saw the real him, not just some prisoner. He wasn’t just some chained-up creature, broken beyond redemption. She looked at him as though he were someone precious to her.
That realization shot through him, making his throat tighten with unfamiliar emotion.
For so long, he’d existed in a state of numb indifference, his feelings buried beneath years of bitterness and isolation.
But now, his own carefully suppressed emotions stirred to life for the first time in what felt like an eternity.
The sensation was unsettling.
And yet, strangely, it felt good. Right.
He might be the beast to her beauty, the darkness to her light, but he would gladly be whatever she needed if it meant she would keep looking at him like that.
With her, he finally had an identity again.
He was her mate, and that was all that mattered.