Kitty Kitty (Souls Chapel Revenants MC 5)

She was tough-as-nails. I knew that without being told.

But she was small, like Blaise.

If the men in this prison really wanted to, they could overpower the both of them very easily.

We might not get anything out of it but shot dead, but we could easily take them down had we really wanted to.

Which made my heart lurch.

I didn’t like the idea of Blaise being here.

Not. At. All.

“Watch over yourself, Mackenzie,” I urged.

The other guard took it as a threat. But Mackenzie took it as it was. A worried man needing to make sure that she watched over herself when he couldn’t.

Then, before I could do anything stupid like pull her to me and kiss her, I walked away.

But not before I heard the other guard say, “Was that a threat?”

I slowed to hear Blaise’s reply. “No threat.”

That’s right.

I was never going to be a threat to her.

Even if it made me really goddamned stupid.

CHAPTER 2

I either drink coffee or I say bad words. You choose which one you want.

-Sin’s secret thoughts

SIN

Six months later

“Who’s that?”

I didn’t have to turn around to know who my brother was talking about.

“That’s Blaise,” I said, knowing without looking at her that he could tell that something had changed. “She right behind me?”

Bronx’s eyes flicked up to the woman I could practically feel at my back, then back down to me. “No. But she is leaning against the wall, eating you up with her eyes.”

I felt my stomach dip. “She’s the reason I’m here.”

My brother could probably guess.

I mean, it wasn’t like I’d kept why I’d gone to jail a secret. Then again, anything would be impossible to keep a secret from my overprotective brothers.

I had seven brothers in total, and all of them knew what was wrong and what had gone down within two hours of it happening. One, because most of my brothers were military or former military, meaning they still had enough connections to hear about the shit that went down with me fairly quickly—as I did with them.

Two, because it made national news—me kicking some guy’s ass to the point of near death.

Too bad I hadn’t finished the fuckin’ job.

If anyone deserved to be dead, it was fuckin’ Brees.

The prick.

Now he was off, living and happy and being a dick to other people, while I had to live in this hellhole and Blaise had to live with the knowledge that her attacker was still out there.

Now he lived with a permanent seat in a wheelchair, loss of function in both of his hands, and no military career just like me.

Though, if anyone deserved to be dishonorably discharged, it was that asshole.

“You’re the reason you’re here,” Bronx countered. “You never could deny the pretty little blonde fairies.”

I rolled my eyes. “She’s not a fuckin’ fairy.”

“She is,” Bronx disagreed. “She may be able to hold her own—at least for a small amount of time—but she’s a fairy nonetheless.”

Bronx’s comments might as well have come out of my own damn mouth.

Because that was the exact way I felt.

This place? This penitentiary that held murderers, drug dealers, rapists, pedophiles, and hell, even vengeful innocent people? This place was a hotbed for violence.

People were pissed off that they were in here.

And they weren’t going to go easy on a guard just because she was smaller than them and a woman. They would go just as hard on her as they would any person standing in the way of the thing they wanted.

Which was why, when she was on shift, I always had this sort of… feeling. A feeling that made me nauseous. Scared that I might look away and she might be in some trouble, and I wouldn’t be able to get there fast enough—or at all.

“I’ve been thinking much the same thing,” I admitted. “It terrifies me that she’s going to get hurt one day and I’m going to have a locked goddamn cell door between us and all I’ll be able to do is watch.”

Bronx’s eyes took in my shadow, the one that was there at all times if she was able.

“You know,” Bronx murmured. “She could be anywhere all over the room, yet she’s here, next to you, so she can see you. The only way she’d be able to see you better is to get behind me, but that would put her too close to the douche behind us. So she’s being smart, while also letting you know that she’s not far away.”

I felt my stomach clench because Bronx was right.

That was her way of letting me know that she was close. That she wasn’t going to go anywhere.

I raised my hands and rubbed the palms down the length of my face.

The metal of the handcuffs around my wrists clinked.

I really fucking hated handcuffs.

Like, if I never saw, heard, or felt cold metal clinking against cold metal again, it would be too soon.