Who is Magpie?
Chapter 36- Small gifts

Magpie was returned to her cell but, after nearly shifting in front of the counsel, they had voted to keep extra guards watching her. She was still provided her tea, but her wolf was fully awake now and she told her she didn’t need it. She would nurse the cup around her cell until she could dump it down the floor drain or into the sink, sceptical of everyone who came to ‘check on her’.

They had assumed she used her claws to pick her handcuffs and hadn’t found the pins hidden in the waist of her pants. Viewed as too big of a threat to be left unwatched, and Ezekiel refusing to let anyone watch her while she showered, she remained in her same soiled clothes she arrived in until the beginning of her second day in the cells when she couldn’t take it anymore.

She walked right up to the bars in clear view of the camera, knowing this time her feed was closely monitored, and waved at the camera. “Hellooooo!” She beckoned. “I have been wearing the same clothes for disgustingly long. You can tell your alpha either he finds a way that appeases him for me to have a shower, or I’m going to start washing myself and my clothes in this wee sink.”

Only a short wall hid the toilet directly from view of the camera and that wall connected to the half sink on the back, leaving the sink in full view. She had gotten the extra beds and blankets taken away on the first day when she was mischievous and made a fort. She hadn’t seen Ezekiel since her and her wolf had tried to shift in the meeting.

She had wanted to try again, but she had been warned that if she tried, the metal cuffs on her ankles would not break off easily and she’d likely lose her feet. As much as she believed the wolven were above torture, she didn’t think they were beyond critical consequences, and without a keyhole she didn’t know how to get them off.

She waited four minutes before removing her shirt and tossing it into the sink pointedly. Turning on the water, she used the bar soap gingerly over the fabric.

Magpie had believed that not seeing Ezekiel when she woke up was rejection enough, but her wolf had explained that one or the other had to look into each others eyes to officially reject them. Her wolven had to see his wolven there in the gold of his eyes to feel it. Until that happened they would both continue to feel an uneasy lump in their chest while they were apart. She hated the feeling more when she realized she was missing him. She missed Kay too.

Scrubbing her shirt in the sink she finally realized why she had grabbed a second shirt last minute. This shirt was the first one Kay had ever loaned her, the size and washing instructions were still visible on the tags. Kay was her only regret about not being able to return to the Garden. She had become used to seeing her everyday, and now it had been more than a few days in a brand new place alone.

She rang her shirt out over the drain in the floor and flicked it over one of the horizontal bars of the cell. “One down.” She announced, flicking her eyes toward the camera she slowly started pulling her pants off and brought them to the sink. As she washed them she worked the pins out from her waistband and moved them into her bra.

Now she was standing in just her sports bra and her knickers at the sink, smirking away when she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. The bottom door unlocked hurriedly, but the steps sounded too light to be Ezekiel’s. Magpie turned toward where the person would appear, instead of who she expected, seeing a woman.

Magpie pouted but the woman appeared almost entertained by something. “All right, let’s get you to the shower room,” she laughed.

Magpie popped a hand on her hip. “Oh did his highness decide he didn’t want my tits over the closed circuit? Funny how he couldn’t brave me himself!” She growled at the camera, hoping he was watching.

The woman laughed again. “Something like that. I’m Fiona.” She unlocked the door and pointed down the hall. “Shower is at the end of the hall, there is already a bar of soap in there, and by the time you’re done I’ll have a towel and set of clothes ready for you.”

Magpie smirked. “Much appreciated.” She began down the hall, not even feeling snarky enough for a sarcastic response.

The shower was small, a barely opaque piece of plastic separating her from where Fiona stood guard, but the minute the water began all Magpie’s thoughts of possibly using her were gone. The warm water rained over her head and she rubbed the soap over her remaining clothes before rinsing and ringing them out in her hands, removing her pins, and flinging them over the partition. As she continued to bathe she needed to hold the pins in her mouth, and she hoped that Fiona wasn’t talkative. Lathering the soap first into her hands and then working it into the roots of her hair was the most pleasant feeling she could remember with how dry it had felt.

She scrub the soap into her skin, nearly to the point that it was painful before she let the warm water rinse it all off. Closing her eyes under the faucet she focused on the feeling of the droplets hitting her face, all her attention allowing the warmth to seep into her aching muscles. With the five pounds of dirt and sweat she lost, she also shed the layer of stress she had been holding onto. Moving the pins from her mouth to tuck into her hand she turned the water off, and the shake from head to hip that her body gave both felt natural and new.

She squeeze the water from her hair and waited for a towel to appear over the wall. “Clothes will be another minute, you’re too thin for anything I could find down here.”

Magpie found that highly unlikely, and looked around the wall to eye Fiona. “How much do you know?” She asked, Magpie watching her expression as she stepped out, still dripping with water. When she looked away quickly Magpie laughed. “So word got around that I’m his mate in the least. So is the real problem that Ezekiel doesn’t want me in prison pajamas?”

Magpie continued to eye Fiona, as she wrapped her towel around herself tightly. She was curvy and full, someone that Magpie would imagine would be ideal for producing healthy pups. She would also need to be highly trusted by Ezekiel to be allowed down in the prison, off camera, with her. Though she fully expected his rejection after their last conversation, her wolf told her alpha’s were possessive and protective .

Fiona nodded slightly, not returning her look towards Magpie until she spoke again. “He must trust you severely to send you down here with how unruly I am.” Magpie rolled her eyes, knowing she was probably the biggest pain in the ass they’d ever dealt with but also the least violent. She stepped right alongside Fiona before speaking again. “I’m going to go take a jumpsuit from the cupboard, and you can tell my mate that if he wants me to wear something else, he can come ask nicely.”

Magpie opened a nearby door and pulled out one from the highest shelf, and brought it back around the wall to get dressed. As she did, she realized their prison clothes were basically what she had arrived in, but in a bright cyan blue and baggy. She tucked the pins into the inner waist and threw the shirt over her head, wrapped her long hair up in the towel, and collected her undergarments to dry at her own cell.

She went back on her own, more or less ignoring Fiona and proving she didn’t need to be watched so closely with only one exit. She closed the door behind her, sitting down on the bed to dry her hair more thoroughly, but heard Fiona’s steps coming to lock the door.

“Keep your head down and keep drying your hair,” she whispered. “Can you hurry with the towel, I’d like to go.” Fiona said louder, and a quick peak showed she had popped her hip and put her hand up impatiently before speaking lowly again. “Basically everyone knows who you are now, and what you did. People are torn on what should be done, including the counsel. They need to be united on a decision and Ezekiel is furious. They’ve had to threaten to replace him on the trial if he comes to see you.”

Magpie kept her head flipped over, towelling her hair off from the base of her skull down to the tips. “Damn shame I’m sure, looking for a queen and tying up a week of your time with me, but I’m sure the few more days it’ll take for them to settle on the same conclusion won’t kill him. He can reject me and find someone with so much less baggage before long.”

Magpie handed her towel through the bars before leaning her back against them and whispering. “As much as I’d love to feel sorry for the poor Alpha who was given everything he wanted his whole life, I only remember a life under someone’s thumb. Seven years of being kept in a cage like it was part of some trial, to being on trial and kept in a cage…

…. He was kind to me, I’ll give him that.” She remembered his smell, like a garden from her dreams. “And he smells like ‘home’,….” Walking away from the bar she gesture to herself and her new ankle cuffs. “I’ve been through enough.”

Now that she felt better, she wanted the serotonin of returning to some semblance of a workout routine. She also wanted to show off. Grabbing the bars of the prison she raised herself into a flagpole position, parallel to the floor, walking her way in the air up and down.

Fiona sighed heavily. “You just showered and now you’re going to get all sweaty again?”

Magpie chuckled. “If I sweat from this I’m terribly out of shape, besides, if I wanted another I know how to get it.” She winked, cheek filling her attitude where the tea had been.

The doors leading out closed again behind her and Magpie lowered herself from the bars, but a slight gleam caught her eye. On the flat horizontal bar beside her pants where Fiona had been was a shiny hair pin. She had lost a few since she had arrived, beginning with five she had entered the cells this time with two. She assumed others had been left in the medical bay and Ezekiel’s room, but now she was only short two.

She moved over, running her hand along the bar, subtly picking up the pin and sliding it up her sleeve. The steel pins cost her an arm and a leg, but each one was a reminder. She sat on the bed and moved to peak at which pin had been returned when she froze. It smelt like her garden.

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