The Rejected Lonely Mate

Miles's POV

The first punch caught me in the ribs before I even saw who threw it.

I'd been inside Blackgate for exactly six hours. Long enough to learn where my bunk was, long enough to learn the guards didn't bother remembering names, not long enough to learn anything that actually mattered.

I stumbled into the concrete wall, air punched out of my lungs, and by the time I turned around there were three of them. Big. Slow. The kind of slow that meant they'd never had to be fast, because nobody in here ever fought back long enough to make them work for it.

"Fresh meat," the one in front said. He had a shaved head and a scar that split his eyebrow in half. "Ellery's boy."

I didn't answer. My hands were already up.

The second one swung wide, telegraphing it a full second before his fist moved, and I ducked under it and drove my elbow into his gut. He folded, wheezing, and stumbled into the wall behind him. Scarhead came in fast after that, faster than I expected, and his knuckles caught my jaw hard enough that my vision went white at the edges.

I hit the ground. Concrete bit into my palms, tore skin I didn't feel tearing until later.

"Stay down," someone muttered from the crowd that had gathered around us like this was entertainment scheduled between meals. Not a warning. A prediction.

I got up anyway.

Scarhead grinned like that was exactly what he wanted. Like he'd been hoping I wouldn't take the easy way out. He came at me again, and this time I let him get close before I hooked my leg behind his ankle and shoved with everything I had left. He went down hard, cracked his head on the floor with a sound I felt more than heard, and didn't get back up right away.

The third one hesitated.

That hesitation was the only reason I was still standing when the guards finally decided to notice. They took their time about it, strolling over like they had somewhere better to be, and by the time they pulled us apart the fight had already burned itself out.

They wrote something on a clipboard, didn't ask a single question, and walked off like they'd already forgotten what they'd just watched. Nobody got written up. Nobody got punished. In here, apparently, this counted as a Tuesday.

I sat on my bunk that night with my knuckles split open and my jaw throbbing every time I breathed, pressing the heel of my hand against the swelling like that would do anything. Down the row, someone was crying quietly into a pillow. Nobody told them to stop. Nobody seemed to care either way.

Above me, the man in the top bunk hadn't said a word since I'd arrived. He just watched me clean the blood off my hands with the edge of my shirt, then rolled over and faced the wall like there was nothing left worth watching.

I told myself it was over. First test passed. Whatever came next couldn't be worse than the first day.

I was wrong about that within twenty-four hours.

---

The cafeteria was louder than the yard, which I hadn't thought was possible. Trays scraped against metal tables, voices bounced off the low ceiling until they blurred into one continuous roar, and somewhere behind me two men were arguing about a debt in a tone that made it clear the debt wasn't really about money.

I ate alone. That was fine. I preferred it that way.

A guy slid onto the bench across from me anyway, uninvited. Gray in his hair, a calm in his eyes that didn't match the room around him. He didn't introduce himself. He just looked at my jaw, then at my split knuckles, and nodded slowly, like he was confirming something he'd already guessed.

"You held your ground yesterday," he said.

"Wasn't much of a choice."

"There's always a choice." He picked at his tray without actually eating any of it. "Some people choose to go down easy. Saves them a headache. You didn't."

I didn't say anything. I was still trying to work out whether that was a compliment or a warning wrapped up to sound like one.

"You should know something," he said, lower now, like he didn't want the tables around us catching it. "Fighting well doesn't mean much in here. Doesn't buy you protection. Doesn't buy you anything at all."

"Then what does?"

He glanced past me, toward the far end of the cafeteria, and something shifted in his face. Not fear exactly. More like the look you'd give weather rolling in, something you couldn't stop and had long since given up trying to.

"Whether he decides you're worth keeping alive," he said.

"Who?"

His mouth tightened, like he'd already said more than he meant to. He picked up his tray and started to stand.

"Who?" I said again, sharper this time, my hand catching the edge of the table.

He paused just long enough to answer, voice dropping so low I almost missed it over the noise.

"Julian Hayes."

Then he was gone, folded back into the crowd of gray jumpsuits and tired faces, and I sat there with my split knuckles and my half-eaten tray and a name I'd never heard before sitting in my chest like a stone dropped into still water.

Nobody around me had said it loud. A few heads turned anyway, quick glances that slid away just as fast, like even hearing the name spoken in the wrong tone could get you noticed by something you didn't want noticing you back.

I looked around the cafeteria. Same gray walls. Same tired fluorescent lights humming over rows of men who all looked like they'd stopped expecting anything good to happen to them a long time ago. Guards stood near the exits, arms crossed, eyes half closed, uninterested in anything that wasn't already bleeding.

Somewhere in this building was a name that made grown men lower their voices without even thinking about it, drop their eyes to their trays, and find something else to talk about entirely.

I pushed my tray away, stood up, and started asking around.

Nobody wanted to answer me. But I could tell, from the way they wouldn't, that I'd already found the right question.