High. Raw. The kind of scream that shreds a throat—not the controlled cry of someone bracing for impact but the wild, animal shriek of someone being hurt in a way they didn't know was possible. It goes on. And on. Rising in pitch until it splinters into something breathless, then drops into a wail that I feel in my teeth.
I'm on my feet. Palms flat against the concrete. "WREN—"
The screaming stops. Not tapered. Cut. The way it was cut that first morning—mid-sound, severed, like someone pressed a button or put a hand over a mouth.
Then crying. Faint. Muffled. The sound of someone trying to be quiet about it, trying to swallow it down, trying to make herself small enough that whatever just happened won't happen again.
“Wren?” I call out again, my hand against the concrete.
More crying, whimpering. Jagged starts and stops and then a grunt and my heart sinks.
Oh God.
Finally a door closes. The lock buzzes. Footsteps retreating down the corridor.
I stand against the wall with my hands flat on the concrete and my forehead pressed into the cold surface and I can't breathe. The crying drifts through the wall—thin, broken,punctuated by wet hiccups that sound like a child trying not to wake a parent.
Fuck this is so fucked up.
"Wren." I keep my voice low. Steady. Even though nothing inside me is steady. "Wren, can you hear me?"
Nothing. Just the crying. Quieter now. Fading into whimpers.
"I'm right here. I'm right here, okay? I'm not going anywhere."
But she doesn’t respond. And I don’t hear the lullaby again.
The hours drag.
I'm sitting on the floor against the wall when I hear more boots.
Two sets. Heavy. The rhythm wrong—not the measured pace of a shift change or a medical round. Faster. Looser. The cadence of men who aren't on the clock. Men who are here for themselves.
My body goes cold.
The lock buzzes.
The door opens and I know him immediately. The guard from last night—the one who pocketed the suppressant syringe, who winked at the camera. Thick neck. Nasty smirk. He fills the doorframe the same way he filled it before—with the casual ownership of a man who's spent so long controlling bodies that he's forgotten they belong to anyone.
The second guard is new. Shorter, broader, a face like a shovel blade. He's carrying something—a small bag, nylon, like a packed lunch. Except the shape is wrong. Too many angles. Too many hard edges.
"Evening," the first guard says. Steps inside. The smirk is wider tonight. Hungrier. His eyes move across the cell—Baneunconscious on the mattress, me on the floor—and something in his expression shifts from amusement to appetite.
I stand. My legs shake but they hold.
"The cameras caught quite a show last night," he says. Conversational. Like we're discussing the weather. "You and your boyfriend. The whole control room was watching. Honestly?" He tilts his head. "Best thing on the monitors in months."
My face burns. The shame hits like a physical blow—everything from last night, everything tender, everything chosen, stripped down to surveillance footage and passed around a control room for entertainment. Men in chairs watching me get deep fucked by Bane on a prison mattress.
Watching me come. Watching him knot me. Watching us hold each other after, foreheads touching, breathing the same air.
They saw all of it.
"But here's the thing." He steps closer. The bag guard flanks left, positioning himself between me and the mattress. Between me and Bane. "Watching's one thing. And we've been watching you for days—the heat, the slick, those pretty sounds you make. But watching only goes so far."
My back hits the wall. I didn't realize I was retreating.
"Don't touch me."
