Feral Wolf by Caroline Peckham

I was crammed into a cupboard in the back of the kitchens, somehow finding myself all the way back where I’d started this damn mess and no closer to escaping up into the guards’ quarters than I’d been earlier.

I’d been spotted by Sparkle and her gang of drunken Pegasuses downstairs and had been left with no choice but to run for my life back up to the higher levels. Luckily for me, they’d been shit faced and had fallen behind quickly. The few other inmates I’d passed hadn’t recognised me in my stolen orange jumpsuit and as Rosalie Oscura’s voice rang out calling everyone downstairs to help her fight off the guards, I’d managed to lose them.

I’d made it in here while the prisoners all rushed downstairs and had thrown myself into the closest cupboard the moment I’d made it inside the kitchen.

This was it. The end was coming. The guards would take back control and I’d be rescued. Then I was going to head up to the surface, strip off this fucking jumpsuit, hand in my letter of resignation and run for the horizon, never to be seen again.

This life wasn’t for me. And the death I now knew awaited me at the hands of the monsters they kept locked up down here definitely wasn’t either.

The sound of heavy footsteps heading this way made me freeze in my tracks and I held my breath as the kitchen door swung open and an inmate strode into the room. I could just see out into the brightly lit space through the crack at the side of the cupboard door and I tilted my head to get a better look, spotting Gustard there as he came to a halt and turned back towards the door with his arms folded across his chest.

“This had better be good, mutt, or you will find out what happens to my playthings when I grow bored of them,” Gustard drawled and I had to crane my neck to get a look at the inmate he was talking to.

“We have a common enemy. I’m not looking for anything else from you than that. Rosalie Oscura usurped my place at the head of my pack and I refuse to let that bitch ruin everything for me like that. So I figure the enemy of my enemy is my friend and that you might be interested in something I saw downstairs before the guards arrived,” Amira said, raising her chin as she looked at Gustard and my pulse began to race for a whole new reason.

I didn’t like the hungry look that psycho had in his eyes while he mulled that over and as he gave a curt nod, my chest tightened in fear for the sweet Wolf girl they were plotting against.

“She was down on eight before the guards showed up,” Amira said conspiratorially. “And the steel doors they use to keep us locked up down here had been blasted to shit. I think she’s trying to escape, which means that all of her bullshit claims about wanting to lead my pack are just that, because she sure as hell wasn’t bringing all of them with her.”

Gustard’s jaw ticked and I swear I saw so much death in his eyes that it made my asshole clench with nerves and I flinched back away from the door, not wanting to see any more of it, causing a dull thump with my movement.

Oh balls.

“What was that?” Amira growled, whipping around towards my cupboard and I realised with a flare of panic that she’d heard me move. And as she strode towards my hiding place and I tried to dredge up any last sliver of magic in my veins, I knew it was over. I was done for. Finished. Kaput. Dead.

The door was ripped wide and Amira stared in at me in surprise. She took in my orange jumpsuit first and for one single moment I thought she was going to just dismiss me, but then her eyes met mine and recognition filled them which I knew could only equal my end.

“Holy shit - I just found us a rat,” she crowed. “How long have you been hiding in-”

Her words were cut off by a gurgled sputter and my eyes widened as I spotted a wooden blade protruding from her chest, blood coating it and quickly staining her orange jumpsuit red.

I sucked in a sharp breath as the cuffs restraining her magic suddenly fell from her wrists and hit the floor between us. Gustard’s free hand snaked around her throat and with a jolt of horror, I realised his cuffs were absent too. And if their cuffs were missing then that meant every inmate’s cuffs were missing and the guards who I had been so certain were here to rescue me would be facing a prison full of psychotic Fae with full access to their magic instead of the unarmed mob they’d expected to find.

Gustard grinned at me over her shoulder as Amira scrambled to stay on her feet, magic flaring in her palms as she attempted to fight back. But Gustard was faster, vines snapping out to encircle her hands before he wrenched the blade free and stabbed her again. And again. Over and over until her wide eyes turned vacant and her attempts to struggle fell still while her blood stained everything red.

Gustard dropped her to the floor, giving her a shove to make sure that none of her blood stained his spotless jumpsuit before he leaned in close to me with a wicked grin, his blade dripping red droplets all over the floor between us.

“Well look what I just found,” he purred, letting me see my death in his eyes and making it more than clear to me that Amira had just gotten away with that easily. “A new toy to come play with me.”