Unhappily Ever After

Chapter 47 - Breaking and Exiting

"If you shift in there, we'll gas you," one of them warned me.

"Oh, cool," I muttered.

I scanned my surroundings, ignoring all the flockies staring at me from outside the bars. There was a row of cells on each side of the hallway, as you would expect, and most of them were full. There were rogues opposite and to my left, and they were all gawking at the new arrival.

"Oi, Llewellyn," one of them shouted, and I turned just far enough to see a vaguely familiar face — one of Dafydd's guys. "It is you. Shit, dude... What're you doing here?"

"Good question," the Delta interrupted. "Very good question. What are you doing here all by yourself? Or do you have friends nearby?"

I went right up to the bars and gestured to the other rogues. "Yeah, loads of them."

There was a ragged cheer, because even those who didn't know me recognised the name Llewellyn and loved annoying flockies.

"You can all shut up. He's here to be executed, not start a bloody riot."

The cheering only got louder, of course. Some of them started rattling their bars, and soon the noise was loud enough to make anyone with shifter hearing wince. John backed up a step, frowning down the corridor, where even the rogues who couldn't see me were starting to kick off, too.

I just stood there and grinned without making a damn sound, because I didn't have to. I watched the flockies cluster together in the corridor, half of them looking like they wanted to piss their pants and the other half ready to throw a few punches.

"Quiet!" John roared. "Or you're all getting gassed!"

The cheering turns to jeers; they weren't going to listen to him. But it would help me enormously if we were all conscious and functioning for the next half an hour, so I lifted my cuffed hands, pressed a finger to my lips and tugged the mind-link. The effect wasn't instantaneous. The girl opposite me was the first to shut her mouth, followed by the guy who had recognised me. The rest followed suit grudgingly, one by one, until only echoes remained.

Silence fell just as John had reached a sinister-looking lever. He scowled at us all, as if debating whether to pull it anyway. His softer side won out — after a moment, he dropped his hand. My grin only widened.

"If they start it up again, give them two shots of tear gas, no warning necessary," he ordered one his friends.

The pain in my skull hadn't let up yet. I would have to find an alternative to hijacking every single flockie at once. And ... there was one thing that came to mind but, if I screwed it up, they would know I could tap and I would end up sedated forever.

I would wait before I tried anything. Wait and see if any of the flockies left, because that would make things easier. Wait to give Vaughan a chance to call every single Alpha in the north and boast, so it would be all the more embarrassing when I skipped bail.

After a few minutes, Jess opened our link. "Are you okay? Did they hurt you?"

"Nah, all good," I assured her lazily.

"I know your tell, remember?" she sighed, and that was very interesting, because that meant it couldn't be visual or audible. "The truth?"

A moment of radio silence then, with great reluctance, "I'm in a cage and I got beat."

"Shit, Rhodric..."

"Relax, I'm fine. I'll be out of here in twenty minutes tops. How's the situation with Scott?"

"Vaughan shouted at him until he promised not to call the police on us. I've got him in my room now, and we're having the talk."

I felt my heart skip a beat. "The talk ... as in the all-inclusive, we're-mates talk?"