I woke to the sense of weight above me—three shapes standing too close, their shadows leaning over my body like they were deciding something about me I wasn't awake enough to understand. My eyelids cracked open, caught the blur of uniforms and Tucker's outline, then slammed shut again out of instinct.
"Hollands." A pen tapped a clipboard. "Eyes open."
Another voice followed immediately, irritated and already tired of being here. "Tucker, I swear to God, I'm not writing only one report. I'll write three."
"I didn't do anything!" Tucker protested. "He fainted out of nowhere. Dropped like a bitch."
A rough hand touched my neck—two fingers pressing gently, checking for a pulse. The contact jolted something in me, and my eyes fluttered open again. The ceiling spun slightly, then steadied as two officers came into focus, Tucker standing behind them with his arms crossed like he'd been caught holding stolen goods.
"Log it 'near-syncope,'" the second said, already bored. "Hydration check at yard. No clinic."
"Oh my God," I muttered, the words dragging out of me before I could stop them.
"If you're gonna throw up," the first officer said, "do it in the toilet."
I pushed myself up slowly, my stomach churning but staying still enough that I could sit without collapsing again. My back met the wall, cold against my skin through the thin uniform.
"I want to change the cell," I said, voice cracking. "I can't stay with him."
Tucker let out a laugh—a sharp, amused bark—but the officer turned so quickly that Tucker stopped mid-sound, his smirk fading.
"I just wanted to know his name," Tucker said, lifting both hands in mock innocence. "He fainted, and once he hit the floor I called for you, sir. You can check the cameras."
"Tucker," the officer snapped, "don't fuck with me. I know how you are."
He turned back to me. ""This isn't a hotel," the officer said. "You're logged where you're logged. Are you feeling alright? You want the clinic?"
Tucker added, "He looks better than when he was on the ground a minute ago."
The second officer shouted, "Shut the fuck up, Tucker!"
"I need water," I whispered.
The first officer huffed, exhausted already. "Yeah, right. We'll see."
They turned and walked out, closing the cell door with a heavy slide that made something tighten inside my chest. Their footsteps faded down the landing.
Silence settled for a few seconds.
Then Tucker said, "Damn. You scared me, dude."
I didn't look at him. The tears came without warning, without permission—hot, heavy, falling before I could hide my face. My shoulders shook as a sound broke from my throat, something between a breath and a sob. I pressed my hand against my mouth to quiet it, but it spilled through anyway.
"I should've stayed down," I said. "Waking up to you is a mistake."
"Oh wow," Tucker said, raising his brows. "Princess, easy. You'll get used to it. This is the nicest welcome you're gonna get, by the way. You have no idea how other guys greet pretty girls like you."
The tears kept falling. It embarrassed me more than anything he'd said.
"Oh, fuck," Tucker muttered, uneasy now. "Don't—look, I didn't… Why are you here anyway?"
"I didn't do anything," I said. My breathing stuttered as I tried to swallow it all down.
Tucker scoffed. "Yeah, and I'm a qualified surgeon."
I glared at him through wet lashes, brows pulled together. My chest ached, my throat thick.
"Damn," he said, "tough crowd."
He squatted down in front of me, lowering himself slowly until we were at eye level. I tried to lean away, but the wall behind me didn't give. He reached out, two fingers under my jaw, turning my face toward him with a gentleness that didn't match anything else he'd done.
"Your eyes are… weird," he said.
I swallowed, my voice soft, muffled. "I can say the same about yours."
Tucker chuckled under his breath. Not cruel—surprised, almost.
"You know how they say the eyes tell you everything about a person?" he went on. "Like that video we watched in the entertainment room. Some doctor saying you can tell if someone's deranged from how they look at you."
He dropped his hand from my chin.
"I can't tell from yours," he said quietly. "If you're kind… or psychotic."
His words hung between us, not mocking, not soft, just painfully honest.
And I didn't know what answer my eyes gave back.
Something shifted inside me as Tucker watched from his crouch, that strange scrutiny lingering in his eyes. It wasn't bravery, not exactly. It was more like a slow realization curling through my spine, threading itself between the panic and the humiliation until it took shape.
I wasn't weak. Not really. Not compared to what lived beneath my ribs.
The mark was still there. I could feel it like a quiet ache. A bruise pressed into my soul, humming with power I didn't understand but had tasted enough to know its strength.
So why was I letting someone like Tucker make me small?
The thought rose like a tide, cold and steady. I drew in a breath that didn't shake as much as the ones before it.
I pushed myself off the floor.
Slowly.
Tucker's brows lifted as he rose with me, unfolding all that height and muscle until he stood full in the room. The difference between us was obvious — he towered, broad and scar-lined, built from violence and survival. But I didn't shrink this time. The ground felt steadier under my feet. The air didn't choke me.
I wiped my eyes and nose with my sleeve, the gesture clumsy but deliberate, clearing my vision enough to meet his gaze head-on.
"Your eyes? Pure performance," I said quietly, "you cheap-seat motherfucker."
The words surprised even me.
Tucker barked out a laugh — loud, sharp — then cut it off as if something tugged on his spine. His face shifted, not angry, not offended, just alert.
"I don't want to harm you, princess," he said.
Then he grinned, wide enough to show a canine chipped at the edge. "But damn," he added, amused, "you're like a kitten suddenly arching its back. That little Halloween pose they do. Cute."
He started moving around me in a slow circle, steps light for someone his size, as though he was measuring the air between us. The rhythm of his movement tightened the room. His breath brushed my shoulder once when he passed behind me, and a tremor crawled up the back of my neck.
"We can be good," he murmured as he circled, "or I can show you worse. Way worse than anything earlier."
He paused, angling his head to study my stance, my breath, my fists hidden inside the sleeves of the too-large uniform.
"Your choice, kitty. But be careful."
His voice dropped, low and almost intimate.
"My worse is terrible. Awful."
I kept my eyes fixed on him, but my thoughts spiraled inward, down to the mark carved into my being, the theft of breath, the unnatural rhythm he had taught me to depend on. I pressed my tongue against the back of my teeth, trying to taste if the power still lingered.
I couldn't stay with this man. I needed to be moved. I needed to be alone, caged away from him and everyone else.
My gaze flicked to Tucker's hands — the way the veins lifted along his knuckles, the strength wound into his arms. Could I overpower him? Physically? Probably not. But there was something else under my skin, something silent, something that had once bent the world around me.
What if I used it?
What if I pushed the mark just a little — a spark, a breath, a ripple?
Corvian wasn't here. But his echo was.
The thought tightened around my heart. My body hummed with possibility. A kind of warmth crawled into my chest, not comforting — dangerous.
Tucker smirked, unaware of the shift happening inches away.
I swallowed, my breath unsteady now for an entirely different reason.
I didn't know if I could take him down.
But for the first time since stepping into this prison, the idea didn't feel impossible. Not with what lived inside me.
The room felt tight around us, the air stretched thin between Tucker's circling footsteps and the thrum still creeping through my chest. I didn't know if it was fear or the mark or something caught somewhere between the two, but I felt it—an alertness that refused to sit still.
I took a slow breath, leveled my gaze on him, and said, "You know what… I could use company."
Tucker's grin sharpened, the scar tugging slightly with the movement. "Wise choice, kitty."
Before I could step back, he leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to my temple, the contact startling and warm and deeply wrong. My whole body recoiled. I wiped the spot with the back of my sleeve immediately, scrubbing harder than necessary, as if I could erase the feeling from my skin.
Tucker laughed under his breath, low and satisfied, then wandered toward his side of the cell as though nothing unusual had happened.
I moved fast to put distance between us, climbing onto my bunk. The springs groaned as I sank down, pulling my legs up until my knees touched my chest. The air still tasted strange, like it had shifted textures during the moment Tucker's lips brushed my skin.
I pressed my forehead against my arms, trying to breathe slowly, trying to keep the panic from clawing up my throat.
It was strange—the disgust sat so close to the surface, so immediate, a reflex I couldn't swallow down. His kiss felt like being handled, like someone marking a space I didn't want touched.
But when Corvian kissed me… even when the world blurred, even when I didn't understand him, even when his intentions were wrong or twisted or selfish, I never felt sick.
It didn't feel like being claimed. It felt like being… noticed. Chosen.
He was cold and sharp and sometimes cruel in ways he didn't recognize himself, but I never flinched from him. Not once. Even during the first kiss—strange as it was—my body leaned into it before my mind caught up.
I pulled the sleeve over my knuckles and rubbed the place Tucker had touched again, as if Corvian might feel the insult through the mark.
God, I missed him.
I missed the weight of his arm around me, the steadiness of his presence when he decided to stay close. I missed the way he looked bored even while paying attention, the way his eyes lifted to mine with a patience he pretended he didn't have. The way his voice shifted when we were alone—still calm, still deliberate, but softer in a way devils weren't meant to be.
I curled onto my side, the mattress unforgiving beneath my shoulder. The corner of the blanket scratched my cheek, and the cell's cold light flickered slightly, making the ceiling blur.
He wanted me back. He said that. He meant it the way only a devil could mean something—twisted, possessive, ancient, but honest in its own distorted language.
Did he feel this ache too? This emptiness between breaths? This pull under the ribs?
Was he looking for me? Or was he simply waiting, knowing I had nowhere else to go?
My eyes burned, exhaustion dragging at them with heavy fingers. Every noise in the wing felt distant now, like the world outside the cell had slipped behind a thick pane of glass.
"I'm tired," I whispered into my sleeve. "So tired."
The mattress didn't soften, but my body did. It sagged into the hardness beneath it, surrendering to gravity, to fear, to the cloud of longing thick enough to make me dizzy.
Somewhere beyond the walls, beyond the rows of cells, beyond the city, I hoped Corvian felt even a fraction of what was tearing through me.
Because I could still feel him.
And that was almost worse.
The announcement split the morning open like a shout through a nightmare.
A crackling speaker overhead jerked to life, the static tearing through the thin veil of sleep before the voice boomed down the landing:
"B-Block! Morning chow. Move."
I shot upright, breath lodging hard in my throat. My heart hammered against my ribs, confused and frantic, as if I'd been yanked from drowning only to discover the shore was worse. The cell was washed in early light leaking through the barred slit near the ceiling. Everything inside it looked unfamiliar, as if the night had rearranged the world into sharper edges.
Tucker groaned from the lower bunk. "Jesus, they could whisper for once."
He rubbed his face, swung his legs over the side, and stood with a stretch that made his shoulders crack. I didn't move at first. My body remained curled, arms wound around myself, trying to remember where I was and why.
Then it all came back.
The arrest. The judge. The cell. Tucker's threat circling me like a wolf assessing angles.
Tucker looked up at me. "Come on, kitty. Food before the animals eat everything."
I climbed down slowly, trying not to let my knees buckle. The air in the hallway outside was colder, carrying the scent of disinfectant layered over sweat and whatever breakfast the kitchen managed to produce this morning. Doors opened along the landing in staggered clanks as guards released us in rows.
We joined the line.
Men filtered out of their cells, some already laughing, some silent, some wearing the dead-eyed look of people who had been here too long to care. The corridor pulsed with movement—shoving, muttered greetings, the scrape of shoes on concrete floors.
Tucker walked slightly ahead, throwing glances back to make sure I didn't fall behind, though I couldn't tell if it was concern or curiosity. Maybe both. With him, everything felt layered, a language I hadn't yet learned.
The cafeteria door opened and the smell hit us—stale bread, powdered eggs, burnt coffee, and something warm that might've been oatmeal or glue. Voices rose immediately, a constant roar of bodies packed too tightly into one room.
We stepped inside.
The sound swallowed me.
The tables were bolted to the floor in long rows, each one crowded with men hunched over trays. Guards stood at the edges, watching with an impatience so practiced it looked like boredom.
Tucker walked toward the line. I followed.
Trays slid down the metal counter. A worker dropped food onto each with mechanical rhythm: scoop, thud, drop. My tray received grayish eggs, a slice of toast that crackled like paper, and a mug of something brown.
I held it with both hands, trying to keep them from shaking.
As we walked toward an empty table, someone stuck out a foot.
My shin collided with it. My body pitched forward. The tray flew from my hands, clattering onto the floor, food scattering under neighboring tables.
A roar of laughter burst from the men nearby.
"Well, look at that," someone said. "Princess can't walk."
Another voice chimed in, higher pitched, gleeful. "Pick it up, sweetheart. Don't be shy."
Heat flooded my face. Shame crawled up my neck. I knelt to gather the pieces of bread and eggs, my fingers trembling, the floor cold against my palms. The laughter grew louder. Boots thudded near my hands, close enough to threaten stepping on them.
"Leave it," someone taunted. "Let him eat from the floor since he likes being on his knees so much."
My body tightened. My breath stuttered. For a second, the mark inside my chest stirred—subtle, like static under skin. A memory of power flickered along my spine.
Then a shadow fell over me.
Tucker.
His tray hit the table with a loud crack, loud enough to make two men nearby jump. He stepped between me and the others, blocking their view as though he owned the space.
"Pick a lane," Tucker said. "Him or your food." Not raised, not shouted—just a flat question that made the air around us change shape.
The man who'd tripped me leaned back in his seat, smirking. "Relax, Tuck. We're welcoming the new girl."
"I didn't ask," Tucker replied.
He didn't smile. His scar drew tight across his cheek. His stare cut through the noise of the room. Something about him—his posture, his silence, the coiled way he held himself—made the man's grin falter.
"Chill," the guy muttered, looking away.
Tucker didn't answer. He crouched down beside me and picked up the last piece of toast from under the table. His fingers brushed mine.
"Stand up," he said quietly.
I did.
He handed me the tray, what little remained of it. "Get another," he added, nodding toward the counter.
As I started to turn, Tucker called after me:
"And hey—keep your eyes forward. Don't look at them unless you want trouble."
I swallowed hard, nodding once.
When I reached the food line again, the worker behind the counter raised an eyebrow. "Drop it?"
I couldn't answer.
He sighed and slid another tray toward me.
On my way back, heads followed me like tracking prey. A few snickered. A few didn't bother hiding their stares. My chest tightened with every step. But Tucker was waiting at a table, eating in slow, methodical bites, leaving an empty seat beside him.
He didn't look up when I sat down.
But he didn't move away either.
The cafeteria roared on around us. Conversations clashed like distant thunder, trays clanged, boots shuffled on concrete. It all felt too big, too loud, too alive.
I clutched the edge of the tray, breathing in shallow, unsteady patterns, trying to ground myself in the simplest motion: swallow, don't choke, don't shake.
Somewhere deep in my chest, the mark pulsed again—soft, like a whisper under skin.
I didn't know if it was Corvian reaching for me…
or my body reaching for him.
But I knew one thing: I was not going to survive this place alone.
I carried the new tray back through the maze of bodies and noise, every step a negotiation between fear and the instinct to make myself invisible. Tucker didn't look at me as I approached. He just kept eating, jaw working slowly, the scar along his cheek shifting each time he swallowed.
I sat across from him. The plastic bench felt sticky and cold beneath me.
Tucker glanced up once, eyes sweeping over my face with the same bored precision he'd used last night when assessing whether I was prey, threat, or something in between.
"Protection costs," he said.
The words dropped between us like an object I didn't want to pick up.
"What?" My voice came out thinner than I wanted.
"Not that kind," he said. "Commissary. Favors. Eyes. You pay or you pay." He motioned to my tray with his fork. "Eat first."
"I'm not hungry."
Tucker snorted softly. "Lunch is in five hours. You should eat something."
His tone wasn't kind. It wasn't cruel either. It was pragmatic, almost clinical— the voice of someone who'd spent too long in places where weakness made you visible.
I picked up the slice of toast, but my hand trembled so much the corner broke off. I stared at it, my throat tightening. The cafeteria was too loud, the lights too sharp, and everything in the room felt designed to crush anything soft left in a person.
Tucker looked at me the way one studies a wounded animal.
Then he returned to his food.
And that's when Eddie's voice rushed back— the scraps of conversation that had once sounded like rambling, now unfolding with a hard, perfect clarity.
Humans are worse than animals… They dress it up, but they think the same way.
I could see Eddie again, sitting across from me at some cracked table in South Ebonreach, smoke twisting around his hand, eyes half-lidded but sharp beneath it.
Everyone's pretending to be some kind of beast.He said humans are the same. Wolves, snakes, bulls… whatever they need to be.And you, Hugo… you're a duck in all this. Floating around. No teeth, no claws… thinking the water won't swallow you.
Eddie had been right.
The cafeteria was a jungle— stripped of pretense, full of creatures who pretended to be men. Every table had its own predators, scavengers, opportunists. Hunger clung to them, not for food but for the hierarchy, the game, the moment-to-moment survival.
And me? I'd walked straight into their habitat without armor.
A duck. Floating. Waiting to drown.
I chewed a corner of the toast, though it tasted like dust against my tongue. The eggs on the tray had gone cold. My stomach twisted at the thought of swallowing them.
Tucker watched me for a moment, eyes narrowing like he could hear the thoughts running through my skull.
"You thinking too much," he said, tapping his fork against his tray. "Thinking gets you chewed up in here."
I didn't answer.
He leaned back, studying me as if deciding something important, something that wasn't about kindness or cruelty but practicality — as though he were mapping out what animal he believed I was.
"You'll learn," Tucker said, voice low. "Everybody learns."
His gaze flicked briefly to the corner where the men who'd tripped me were eating. Then back to me.
"And if you want to stay alive," he said quietly, "you better learn fast."
The mark inside my chest pulsed once — subtle, like a whisper or a reminder.
I swallowed hard and forced myself to take another bite, because Eddie's voice would not stop repeating the sentence that came after all his warnings:
Money protects you… power does too… if you're lucky.
And right now, luck felt as thin as the toast in my hand.