Sing, Canary - Ashley Amy Page 0,1

most notorious prison because it held the vilest villains here. Though there had never been a breakout, many deaths happened inside. These walls were lined with the blood of other gangs. Those gangs would all want my blood to join it.

It also stunned everyone that the next generation leaders of the city’s drug ring were right behind me. All the heads of our elite group had been arrested. The elite group was made from my family line and close friends.

This included the only ally I'd have for this duration of time in this Hell. My father's right hand man, Augustine, would be my only saving grace.

Still, a murderer stood among those of us who had been detained. Someone in this group killed my father. Until the police proved who was innocent, we were all considered a guilty party.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't the sheltered princess," a man snickered, saying the nickname I had grown accustomed to. More jeers were tossed around about me being the sweet little virgin they couldn't wait to toy with.

They had no idea the group of men that stood with me, had always been my biggest bullies. The last few years with them, showed me how well I could hide my emotions.

Speaking of the men who loved to torment me, my stepbrother stepped on the back of my foot, causing me to fall on my face. Of course, the guard holding my restraints, allowed the fall.

Slamming the pavement of the floor beneath me, my nose hit first. I scented the old blood that had been shed and cleaned with bleach below me before my own blood mixed with it. The sting of the fall settled along the roof of my mouth.

Still, my heart beat evenly. I knew what was to come from getting a warning from the creator of men in my dream. I couldn't call him by name without opening up a direct line to him. He knew my struggles. He knew my promises to those he didn't agree with.

It wasn't a surprise I still chose my family that dabbled on the darker side. I might appear squeaky clean, but I had hidden ways of my own.

"Oops," Caine spoke then hissed when he saw the blood trickling from my nose. "Oh, that doesn't look too good, sis. You might need to be babied here too."

His darkness called everyone to recognize him as an angel—no longer of the light. He oozed evil, not having a single remaining white feather. He didn’t want to atone for his sins, loving the darkness.

That's why he hated me so much. It was why all of these heinous men mocked me in our world.

"Leave her alone, boys," Augustine defended me. Aside from my father, he was the only other person who knew my secrets. The things no one could ever know. It was that very darkness of my past that made me crave being hurt now.

As an angel who stayed in the light, I only had one grey feather. To the men in the underground ring my father once ran, it meant I was too innocent to run things. I was too pure for what needed to be done.

None of them knew my darkest secret. The one that marked my heavenly wings. I remember when I got my first grey feather. It stood out among the white and pure.

Every time I plucked it, I remembered the pain of receiving it. So, I kept pulling it out, reliving that tormented side of my brain.

They called me the sheltered princess...

They had no idea I had already burned in hell.

They had no idea that the sating agony of pulling that single feather, helped me relieve the suffering of my everyday life. For an angel, pulling feathers was like slicing flesh.

I needed that moment of intense discomfort to remind me I was still here. That I had already survived the most brutal trial of my past. In moments, after ripping the feather from my flesh, the grey feather would grow back, but I had seconds of feeling real after being void for so long.

"Leave her on the floor, Caine. These boys are going to eat her alive anyway," Axel, mine and Caine's adoptive cousin, grumbled after August's warning. As a lion shifter, he would take the place over his kind at the head table of power.

He lived among the angels because the shifter line hadn't made an heir to rise with our generation. My father ordered Axel to take that seat, and so it