Fresh Fish

POV: Ricki

New meat got eaten alive in Valhalla. Nobody told you which teeth would leave scars. You found out with your own skin.

Ricki learned that in the shower block on his sixth day. The room ran in a single row of open stalls along one wall, cinderblock dividers chest-high between them, one doorway at the far end serving as the only way in or out, easy to watch, easy to block. He stood with his back against cold tile, half a bar of state-issue soap sweating gray lather into his fist, lukewarm water doing nothing to wash off the feeling that someone stood at the edge of the stalls, not moving, just watching him like meat on a hook in a cooler.

He turned. Water sheeted into his eyes, stinging. A man he'd never seen leaned against the divider two stalls down, wolf-yellow eyes locked on him. No hostility sat in that stare, just a hungry curiosity that crawled worse than any threat could have. His gaze moved the way a hand might, tracing down from Ricki's throat to his hips and back up again.

"You're the unconfirmed," the man said, flat, stating fact rather than asking.

"That a problem?" Ricki shot back, defensive, voice rougher than the water justified.

The man said nothing at first. He peeled off the divider, closed the distance slow, tilted his head the way Griff had that first day in the yard, nostrils working, cataloguing something in the air Ricki couldn't smell on himself. Then he crossed the last of the space entirely, and before Ricki could brace, a hand landed flat against his chest and pinned him to the tile hard enough to crack his shoulder blade against the grout line.

The wolf leaned in, nose grazing the line of his throat, breathing him in like he was reading a page written in a language only his body understood. His other hand found Ricki's hip and gripped hard enough to bruise, fingers spreading wide, testing the give of muscle under skin the way a butcher tests a haunch before he buys it. It wasn't only an animal's inspection. Heat threaded through it, an interest that had nothing to do with pack politics and everything to do with what pack politics could excuse.

"Unconfirmed," he murmured, tone gone soft, almost tender. "You smell like something that hasn't decided what it wants to be yet." He exhaled slow against Ricki's skin, mouth close enough that Ricki felt the words more than heard them. "I like that. Nobody's marked you. Nobody's claimed this."

Water dripped down Ricki's spine, cold rivulets tracking his vertebrae one by one. The tile bit into his shoulder blades, and the hand on his chest didn't so much as twitch when he shoved against it, three hundred pounds of muscle behind that palm and none of it moving an inch. He felt naked in a way that had nothing to do with the absence of clothes, stripped down to something appraised, priced, considered like stock at auction.

"Back off," he warned, low, and his voice held steadier than his gut did.

The man smiled, unbothered, pressing closer instead of pulling away, close enough that Ricki caught the sharp animal musk off his skin, the faint amber ring bleeding into his irises like a struck match. His hips shifted, some small closing of distance that made the threat unmistakably two things at once. Then, without warning, his grip on Ricki's hip twisted, fingers digging deep enough to grind against bone, a single vicious pulse of pressure that would bloom purple by morning. "Or what?" he taunted, grinning around the words like he already knew the answer was nothing.

Ricki bit down on the sound that wanted to climb out of his throat. The pain sat there, bright and specific, a brand instead of a bruise, and some cold part of him understood the man had wanted him to feel it land, wanted him carrying it out of this room as proof nothing here came free.

"Fish is spoken for." Griff's voice cut from the doorway at the far end, blocking the only exit, not directed at the wolf but past him, pitched to carry through the whole room. His voice came flat as a blade laid on a table, and something sharp and territorial ran underneath it that hadn't been there in the yard. This wasn't a stranger defending a stranger. This was a senior wolf drawing a line around what belonged to the Kennel before some other pack member could plant a flag in it first.

The wolf went still, caught between Ricki at the wall and Griff at the door. He didn't let go right away, held the moment a beat longer than he needed to, like relinquishing it fast would cost him something, then peeled his hand off Ricki's chest and stepped back, the other hand dragging free of his hip with a last deliberate scrape of fingernails that left four thin lines behind. The curiosity in his face folded behind something more careful. He looked between the two of them, weighing it, then shrugged the whole thing off like it cost him nothing at all.

"Sure," he said, easy, already backing down. He held Ricki's stare a beat too long, then turned and splashed past Griff through the doorway, footsteps fading down the corridor until the sound of him died out completely.

Griff didn't move from the doorway. He watched the space where the wolf had gone, jaw set like poured concrete. Ricki stood there dripping, one hand pressed instinctively to his hip where the bruise already throbbed in time with his pulse, rattled, putting it together piece by piece: his uncertainty made him a target, and not only for classification. In here, being claimed by someone safe was the only alternative to being claimed by someone who wasn't, and neither option had asked his permission. The mark on his hip would still be there tomorrow, and the day after, a reminder that Griff's rescue hadn't erased the danger, only postponed whoever came looking next.

"Thanks," Ricki managed once his pulse stopped hammering enough to trust his own voice.

Griff crossed the room without answering right away, stopping close enough that Ricki had to tilt his head back to hold his eyes. "You're on my crew now," he said, gruff. "That means you watch my back, you don't ask questions about what you see, and when I need something, you don't make me ask twice." His gaze dropped once to the bruise darkening on Ricki's hip, flat and assessing, then came back up. "That mark's going to remind you why. Don't make me regret walking in when I did." He turned for the door. "You just bought yourself a debt, and it started the second I opened my mouth."

He left it at that, and Ricki stood there working through the shape of the debt he'd just taken on, the bruise already stiffening under his palm, wondering how long Griff would let it sit before calling it due, and what exactly Griff would want when he did.

That evening, in the cafeteria, Ricki got the rest of the lesson.

The wolves claimed two long tables near the serving line, shoulder to shoulder, loud in the way of men who'd already settled who ranked where and had nothing left to prove to each other. The vampires held the far wall, cooler and quieter, conversation moving between them like something rehearsed for an audience that wasn't there. Between those two territories sat a scatter of tables belonging to no one in particular, and that was where Ricki carried his tray, no claim on him solid enough yet to earn him a seat anywhere else.

The human tray held a scoop of something gray and a slice of bread gone stiff at the edges. He ate it anyway, chewing through food with no salt, no fat, nothing his tongue could grab onto, just texture and the dumb animal sense of calories going down because the body needed fuel even when it got nothing for the effort. Every time he shifted his weight, the bruise on his hip pulsed a fresh reminder that lunch wasn't the only unfinished business of the day.

Griff dropped into the seat across from him without asking, tray in hand, and watched him eat with an expression Ricki couldn't name.

"Tastes like cardboard, right?" Griff said, flat, testing him.

"Worse," Ricki admitted, grimacing.

Griff dug into his own tray and slid a foil packet across the table, a ramen seasoning pouch, salt crystals showing through the thin plastic like something smuggled in from another life.

"Here," he said, terse, not meeting his eyes.

"You don't have to," Ricki said.

"I know," Griff answered, already looking away, patient, waiting while Ricki tore the packet open and shook it over what was left of his food.

The first bite hit like a fist to the back of the throat. Salt bloomed across his tongue so sharp his eyes watered. For one second he understood exactly how flat everything else on that tray had been, how flat everything had been for days.

He looked up at Griff and watched something shift in the man's face, a slow, ugly understanding clicking into place. It wasn't kindness. It was the only flavor strong enough to punch through whatever the suppressants had killed in both of them.

"You can't taste anything else either," Ricki said, quiet. "Can you."

Griff didn't answer that. He picked his fork back up and kept eating, jaw working mechanically, and Ricki let the silence sit instead of pushing, understanding without being told that this was the closest thing to a confession he'd get out of the man.

Across the room, a young vampire broke away from Leon Church's table and crossed the floor without hurry, weaving between the wolves' benches like their size meant nothing to him. He stopped at Ricki's shoulder, close enough that the cold coming off his skin raised the hair on Ricki's arm, and set two fingers flat on the table beside his tray.

"Eat fast," he said, low, almost friendly. "Leon doesn't like waiting on his invitations." Then he was gone, unhurried, back across the no-man's-land of empty tables toward the wall the vampires owned, leaving Ricki with his pulse suddenly loud in his own ears and Griff's fork gone still across the table.

"That's Tucker," Griff said, watching the vampire go. "Church's second." He looked back at Ricki, something wary sharpening behind the flatness. "You want to tell me why he knows your name?"

Ricki didn't have an answer for that. He only knew the invitation had already found him twice in one day, and the second time had come with a warning built in.

Back in his cell that night, lying in the dark with salt still ghosting on his tongue and the bruise on his hip aching dull against the thin mattress, he heard paper scrape under the door.

He waited before getting up, half expecting trash blown down the corridor by some draft off the vents. It wasn't trash. A small folded square sat on the concrete, no name on it. He unfolded it and found a string of numbers, a commissary code he didn't recognize, and under that, three words in careful, unhurried handwriting.

Church wants you.

Smaller underneath, almost an afterthought: Tomorrow night. Same stairwell as before.

Ricki sat with it a long time, turning the paper over and over between two fingers, half tempted to crush it into nothing and forget it had ever shown up.

He didn't throw it away.