Page 6 of Bought for Blood

“I want to know you’ll hear the rest.” He straightens in the chair. “Tomorrow evening. My terms, my location.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then I leave and find someone else, who’ll probably be less suitable.” He stands, buttons his coat one-handed, already moving for the door.

“You seem very sure I won’t say no.”

He pauses at the door. Turns back, and his eyes drop to the glass in my hand.

“You let me in this late, without a call, and poured a second glass before I’d even sat down. You were preparing yourself tolisten. And you haven’t sat still since I got here, my lord. You’re bored.” He opens the door. “Tomorrow.”

The door closes. His footsteps go down the stairs, steady, same pace out as in.

Nobody’s read me that fast in years.

I don’t know what Faine wants stopped badly enough to send Crowe to my door without calling. Soon, apparently, I will.

Chapter 3

Serenity

The hands close on me before I hear the door. I’m on the cot with my back against the wall, and then I’m in the aisle with a guard on each arm before I know what’s happening.

Nobody tells me anything. Nobody has to. When they come for a draw, they call your number. When they come without a word, you’re not on a schedule anymore. You’re on somebody’s list.

“I can walk,” I say.

The one on my left doesn’t loosen his grip. “Then walk.”

I walk. I let my eyes pass over him while I do it. Heavyset, breathing through his mouth, and he plants his right foot short, favoring the ankle. A year ago, I’d have given myself decent odds against him, cuffs or no cuffs. I may not be big, but my wolf always gives me the edge over a human. She gives me the honest answer now: too weak. Just staying upright is a challenge some days.

The door at the end of the ward opens for me, and the worst part is how ordinary the hallway is on the other side. A year of watching people go through that door and never come back. Behind it: gray paint, pipe runs along the ceiling, a mop bucket parked against the wall. Somebody’s radio is playing somewhere, tinny and cheerful. People clock in here. People eat lunch here. I don’t know what I expected. Something that matched the horror, I guess.

They take me left, through a second door, into white tile and steam. An ablution block, showers lined along one wall. The heavyset guard doesn’t look away as he strips off the gray smock that I’m wearing. I don’t look away either.

Asshole.

If he thinks he’s going to intimidate me, he can think again.

He turns on the faucet. The water is hot; I can feel it from where I’m standing. After twelve months of cold taps and a bucket, they give me water hot enough to redden skin. I try not to recoil.

A woman in a rubber apron walks in and points at the tiles under the spray.

“Stand there. Arms out.”

The first pass of the brush hits between my shoulders, and I flinch before I can stop it. Then I make my arms stay out. I make my feet stay planted.

“I can wash myself,” I say.

“Faster if I do it.” She keeps scrubbing, working down my spine with hard, even strokes.

“I’ve had plenty of practice holding still. You won’t get a complaint.”

She snorts. It’s almost human, that snort, and then she tips my head back to wet my hair, and we’re done being people with each other. She washes my hair twice. Whatever she works through it smells like flowers, but it never grew outside a bottle.

I don’t give her a name. Names are for people I’ll see again.

My wolf is up. She hasn’t got the reserves to surge, so she paces instead, tight circles low in me, hackles dragging the underside of my ribs. The brush, mostly. She wants to take somebody’s wrist off. The cuffs sit hot against my own wrists, water beading on the runes, ready to answer her if she tries.