Darkmore Penitentiary 2 - Caroline Peckham Page 0,1

now.

Harper made it to me first and I wrapped her in my arms, nuzzling into my Beta as more of my pack surrounded me, running their hands over any part of me they could reach as they tried to comfort me.

“I’m so sorry, Alpha,” Harper said, the words choked and I brushed my fingers over her dreadlocks.

“It’s not your fault,” I said in a dark tone.

“How long did they give you?” she asked, leaning back to search my expression.

“Fifteen years,” I said a little hoarsely and her eyes widened in horror before she wrapped herself around me again with a mournful howl.

My gaze locked on Roary Night across the room where he sat alone, but there were plenty of his Shades lurking close by. He surveyed me coolly and I scowled back at him. He was going to fight me over stealing that key then losing it. I knew it. I just didn’t know when.

I turned away from him, instinctively hunting the room for Rosalie. It was too much to hope that she’d be out of the hole already, but my gut still sank in disappointment. I was just lucky I hadn’t ended up down there myself. But as I’d just been told that my youth was going to be well and truly stolen from me in this place, I wasn’t going to be too grateful about it.

“Any word on the Oscura leader returning?” I muttered to Harper, a knife’s edge to my voice keeping my concern over Rosalie concealed.

“I heard Cain gave her a month in the hole,” Harper said excitedly, glancing up at me with joy in her gaze and I hitched on a smile to match hers.

“Perfect.” Fuck. My. Life.

I was a ball of testosterone, ready to be unleashed. The Order Suppressant may have kept my Wolf buried in me, but it couldn’t keep my instincts at bay. And the mate bond was a power of its own, driving me to be with her, find her, free her. I didn’t know where it ended and I began. But I was a slave to it. A slave to her. A month in this place without her sounded almost as bad as the extra years on my sentence right now.

My eyes wheeled onto Cain across the room, his muscular arms locked across his chest as he glared at everyone like he’d happily douse us in Faesine and set us all alight. It was a miracle they didn’t do that sometimes. But official executions in this place weren’t as common as they used to be. Not since new laws had been brought in to protect the scum of the earth. All because of some fancy ass inmate who someone with power had wanted to protect – but I wasn’t going to sneer at that blatant use of influence if it helped me out. Not so long ago I could have earned myself a death sentence for stealing that key.

It was all such a fucking joke. I was innocent to the core – of my convicted crime at least. And I’d tried to keep my hands clean to ensure I lived out my sentence and not a day more. My pack were hand chosen by me, most of them in here for gang related crimes against the Oscuras. You didn’t get away with that shit in Alestria these days. But some of them were bad people plain and simple. There was no avoiding that in a place like this.

I swept a hand over my hair, pulling away from my pack and moving to sit at a bench while my Wolves brought me offerings of the best breakfast foods available today. I tucked into a bowl of oatmeal with honey and fruit, sullen as I thought of my girl trapped in the hole again. She was probably losing her mind missing me, touching herself ten times a day as she dreamed of my cock.

Now that my sentence is longer, we have all the time in the world to be together.

I jerked at the thought, rejecting it with all my being. I might have been a positive kind of guy, but I wasn’t going to find reasons to be happy about staying here for another fifteen fucking years. Ergh. As I processed it, the reality sank in a little deeper and I dropped my spoon into my bowl, my jaw clenching as I tried to think of a way out of this. I needed to appeal. Which meant I needed lawyers. But I