Chapter 7: Bound!
Consciousness returned to Jan as a dull throb behind her eyes and a pervasive, metallic taste in her mouth. The cold seeped into her bare skin from the hard infirmary cot. She was naked, save for the hated restraint collar, a band of cool, featureless grey metal that felt heavier than it looked. Its presence was a void where her magic should be, a silent scream in a place that had already stolen sound.
She pushed herself up on her elbows, the movement making her head spin. The other women were stirring on their own cots. JezaBella, the siren, was rubbing her throat, her expressive eyes dark with frustration. Megara’s snake-haired head was bowed, the heavy wrap containing them a visible weight. Juliette the werewolf was pacing the small space allotted to her, a caged animal counting the seconds. Eva the vampire stood perfectly still by the wall, her pale skin almost glowing under the harsh lights, while Lady Eleanor, the ghost, simply floated, her form shimmering with a faint, pearlescent light, a look of sympathetic curiosity on her translucent face.
“The collar,” Jan said, her voice raspy. She touched the cold metal. “It’s like being blindfolded and deafened all at once.”
“It is the Warden’s preferred method of control,” Eva said, her voice a low, hypnotic hum even without her powers. “It does not just block. It consumes. It feeds on the energy it suppresses.”
JezaBella moved first, crossing the space to sit on the edge of Jan’s cot. Her touch was surprisingly gentle. “It leaves an ache, doesn’t it? A hollow space.” Her fingers traced the line of Jan’s shoulder, down her arm. “The body remembers what the mind cannot reach.”
Jan shivered. The contact was warm, human. It was also a spark in the darkness. As Jeza’s hand cupped her breast, thumb stroking over her nipple, Jan felt it—a flicker. Not her power, not the glorious, unruly storm of desire she could conjure, but a ghost of it, an echo from the other woman’s own innate, sensual nature. A siren’s touch was never entirely mundane.
“Yes,” Jan breathed, her eyes fluttering closed. “Oh, god, yes. I can feel… something.”
This was her element. This was what she knew. Pleasure was a language, and its grammar was written on the body. She turned her head and found Jeza’s mouth, kissing her deeply, hungrily. It was a kiss of shared desperation, a search for a weapon in their own flesh.
Megara was there then, her hands, strong from a life of weaving stone, joining Jeza’s. She knelt beside the cot, her mouth finding Jan’s other breast, her tongue laving the nipple before drawing it deep. The dual sensation, Jeza’s skilled fingers pinching and rolling one peak while Megara’s mouth worked the other, sent jolts of raw feeling through Jan’s nervous system. Each jolt seemed to chip away at the collar’s absolute silence.
“Let us help you remember, Red,” Jeza whispered against her lips, her hand sliding down Jan’s flat stomach, through the coppery curls, into the wet heat between her legs.
Jan cried out, her back arching off the cot. Two of Megara’s fingers joined Jeza’s, plunging into her, stretching her, finding a rhythm that was both punishing and perfect. It was a fuck, not love-making, a brutal, necessary reclaiming of sensation. The slap of skin, the wet, filthy sounds of their hands working her cunt, the guttural moans torn from her throat—it was a symphony against the prison’s silence.
Juliette watched, her nostrils flaring, the animal in her stirred by the pheromones saturating the air. “The emptiness… it hurts less when you are full,” she muttered, her French accent thickening. She came to the foot of the cot, her strong hands gripping Jan’s ankles, pushing her legs wider apart, opening her completely to the ministrations of the others. She leaned down, her tongue, rough like a cat’s, licking a long, slow stripe from Jan’s perineum up to her clit.
The shock of it, the utterly feral sensation, made Jan scream. Her hips bucked wildly. “Don’t stop. Don’t you fucking stop!”
Lady Eleanor giggled, a sound like tinkling glass. “Oh, bravo! Such magnificent vigor! Do let me contribute.” The ghost floated lower, her ectoplasmic form passing through Jan’s thigh, a wave of impossible, thrilling cold that contrasted with the heat of the living touches. It was like being touched by winter itself, a shivering, electrifying paradox.
Eva approached last, her movements precise. She didn’t touch Jan’s body directly. Instead, she placed her cool palms on Jeza’s and Megara’s backs, and then on Juliette’s shoulders. A subtle current seemed to flow through her, synchronizing their movements, amplifying the shared sensation, weaving their individual pleasures into a single, focused cord of energy.
Jan was lost in a maelstrom of feeling. Jeza’s mouth on hers, Megara’s teeth on her neck, Juliette’s tongue on her clit, Eleanor’s cold essence mingling with the heat, and Eva’s subtle direction holding it all together. They were using their bodies, their very natures, to brute-force a connection the collar was designed to prevent.
It was working.
A spark, pale green and flickering, danced at the tip of Jan’s finger where it gripped the cot’s frame. It was weak, a dying ember compared to her usual bonfires, but it was there.
“I see it,” Megara gasped, her voice thick with arousal and awe.
Jan focused, pouring all the assembled pleasure, all the raw, animal need, into that single spark. She pictured the collar not as a lock, but as a wall. And she imagined a single, determined vine, fueled by pure, unadulterated lust, creeping through the smallest crack in the mortar.
The green light flickered, grew, and travelled from her finger up her wrist, a faint tracery of power fighting its way up her arm. It was agony and ecstasy. The collar fought back, a vise of nullity tightening around her throat, but the combined will of five other magical beings, channeled through the most primal act there was, was a formidable counterweight.
The vine in her mind pushed, twisted, and broke through.
For a single, crystalline second, the collar’ suppression faltered. It wasn’t freedom, but it was a window. A sliver of a connection to the world outside this sterile, iron hell.
An image flashed in her mind, sharp and clear: her mother, Shiv, her face a mask of terrifying fury, standing in a dimly lit bar. She saw her sister Brigid, naked and glowing with power, writhing between Will and Sarah. She felt their search, a palpable force scouring the city, and she knew, with utter certainty, that they were looking for her.
The connection snapped, the collar reasserting its dominance with a final, painful jolt that left her gasping. The green light on her arm vanished.
But the knowledge remained.
She collapsed back onto the sweaty cot, the other women slowing their touches, their own breathing ragged. Jeza rested her head on Jan’s stomach, Megara leaned against the cot, spent.
Jan stared at the ceiling, a slow, wicked smile spreading across her freckled face. The numbness was gone, replaced by a fierce, burning certainty.
“They’re coming,” she said, her voice raw but steady. She looked at each of her cellmates in turn, her eyes alight with a familiar, mischievous fire. “My family is coming. And when they get here, Warden Liberty is going to learn why nobody in their right mind messes with Shiv O’Connor’s kids.”
The heavy metallic clang of the lock reverberated through the infirmary before the door slid open with a hydraulic hiss. Two robot guards stood there, their featureless chrome faces reflecting the women’s startled expressions. Their movements were a synchronized, jerky ballet of pure function. “Infirmary occupants. To the exercise yard. Now,” one intoned in a flat, synthesized voice.
The other women quickly pulled on their faded orange jumpsuits, the coarse fabric rustling in the tense silence. Jan simply stood, her nakedness a stark contrast to their uniforms. The cold air of the corridor raised goosebumps on her skin as they were marched out. The Warden’s attempt to humiliate her was as transparent as it was pathetic. Her mind was on the green spark of power she’d felt, on the image of her mother’s furious face. This nudity was just skin; her hope was armor.
The exercise yard was a cavernous space of concrete and steel, enclosed by towering walls topped with crackling energy fields. A tall chain-link fence, humming with the same energy, divided the male and female sections. The artificial sunlamps overhead cast harsh, unflattering light. Jan kept her head high, her bare feet slapping against the cold floor, ignoring the stares from both sides of the fence.
Then she saw Juliette freeze beside her. The werewolf’s body went rigid, a low whine escaping her throat. Her gaze was locked on the other side of the fence. “Jean?” she whispered, the name a torn fragment of sound.
A man with kind, tired eyes and disheveled hair rushed forward, his hands gripping the chain links. “Juliette! Mon Dieu, you are here!”
The world narrowed for Jan, her own situation forgotten. Juliette let out a raw, guttural cry and sprinted for the fence, her jumpsuit straining with the force of her movement. Jean mirrored her, their hands desperately trying to touch through the metal diamonds, their fingers weaving together. “The children,” Juliette sobbed, pressing her forehead against the fence. “Jean, where are Camille and Luc? The moon… it’s so soon.”
“I don’t know, my love. I woke up here,” he said, his voice cracking with a panic that was entirely, terrifyingly human. “Camille cannot be alone for her first change. She will be so frightened.”
The raw, parental terror in their voices was a physical thing in the air. Jan’s heart clenched for them. This was the real cruelty of this place—it wasn’t just cages, it was the systematic shredding of bonds. The robot guards turned their blank faces toward the commotion, their internal mechanisms whirring as they began to advance on the frantic couple.
“Hey!” Jan yelled, stepping directly into the path of the nearest guard. Its optical sensor focused on her. “The show’s over here, you piece of scrap. You wanted a naked witch? Well, fucking look your fill.”
She put every ounce of the O’Connor defiance into her stance, her naked body a challenge. The guard stopped, its programming likely conflicted between the disturbance at the fence and the non-compliant prisoner directly in its path. It bought Juliette and Jean a few more precious seconds.
“We will get out,” Jean shouted to his wife, his voice fierce with a hope he couldn’t possibly feel. “We have to. For Camille.”
Juliette’s eyes met Jan’s over the guard’s chrome shoulder, a world of gratitude and shared fury passing between them. The guards closed in, stun batons activating with a menacing buzz. The moment was broken, but the resolve had crystallized. Somewhere out there, a young girl was approaching a terrifying transformation, and her parents were trapped in a cage. Jan knew, with a cold certainty, that her family’s search was now a race against the rising of the moon.