Kane glanced at the other men’s wrists. He recognized the head of the nest as an eagle. The man with sugar-daddy potential was a hawk. He didn’t study the rest of the men’s marks for long enough to know if he’d recognize them or not.
“My name is Ori,” Mr. White-Hair said. “I’m a swan. Mr. Hamilton,” he indicated the grumpy sod in the big chair. “Is an eagle. Mr. Reynard is a hawk.”
Kane was more than happy to turn his attention toward the hawk. Yes, there were very real possibilities there. Raynard’s eyebrows drew closer together. He looked like the kind of man who’d get off on spanking his lover for being a naughty little boy. There was a shed-load of money to be made from that sort of stuff.
“This is the point where you give your name and confirm your species.” Raynard sounded just as pissed off as he looked, but it suited him far better than Hamilton.
Kane held Raynard’s gaze as he slowly unfurled his arm. He pushed his cuff back far enough to show his tattoo. “And my name is Kane.”
“It’s nice to meet you.”
Kane didn’t look away from Raynard. Ori wasn’t the kind of man who’d pay to screw him, there was no reason to glance in his direction.
“There can be no doubt about your species?” That was Hamilton, and it was a strange enough question to make Kane turn away from Raynard for a moment.
“What?”
“There are no doubts regarding your species? You were born into an established nest, you’ve successfully completed your first shift?”
“Looks like someone’s a bit past his prime.” Kane smirked. “Job getting too much for you,
sir
? Not quite able to keep up with what’s going on?”
Hamilton straightened in his chair. “In that case, there seems very little for us to do here.” He turned to Everet. “I trust there is an empty cage available?”
Kane glanced at Everet too, just in time to see him tense.
“There’s is,” Everet said.
“What are you talking about?” Kane demanded. “What cages?”
A moment of silence drew out, as everyone seemed to wait for another man to offer an answer.
Kane reached out and grabbed hold of Everet’s arm.
Everet’s voice was perfectly unemotional as he gave his answer. “There are traditional bird-cages, built into one of the basements and extending up a column in the center of the nest. Avians who can’t be trusted to conduct themselves in a manner that is a credit to the nest, are housed in them until they’re behavior improves.”
“You’re winding me up. They went out around the time we stopped building nests out of twigs!”
No one laughed. No one said a word.
“Who the hell uses that sort of shit these days?” Kane demanded, growing more anxious by the moment.
“We do,” Hamilton snapped. “We reinstituted them earlier this year. They’re perfectly humane.”
Kane launched himself to his feet. He’d had enough of humanity and its kicking, punching, humaneness. He was fed up with them flittering around the issue. “You’re talking about putting me in prison!”
“What did you expect when you were brought here?” Hamilton said.
Kane gawped at him. Rough sex from a man who was rich enough to pay for the privilege. Some deep survival instinct kicked in and stopped him saying that aloud. He ran a quick, assessing glance over the men around him.
Kane was very much the center of attention. At any other time that would have been fun, but being locked away in a cage…
That couldn’t happen.
The time for messing around and kicking the chairs from beneath stuffy old gits was over. Kane’s mind raced as he quickly weighed his options. He’d been right in his first instinct. There was only one man worth approaching. He caught Raynard’s eye and held it.
“Surely there’s something you can do.” Kane let his voice soften as he spoke, until blatant invitation dripped from each syllable.
“Perhaps we should hear Kane’s side of the story before any firm decisions are made?”
The words should have come from Raynard, but they came from Ori.
Kane continued to stare at Raynard for several seconds, until he realized that the hawk actually had no intention of uttering a damn word to help him. He glanced toward Ori and saw the way that Ori looked toward Raynard for approval.
“It’s well within your remit to ask him any questions you wish to have answered,” Raynard said.
Kane’s gaze flicked quickly from hawk to swan, and back. They were screwing each other. Bloody brilliant. The one man worth renting himself to by the hour, and Kane would have to get rid of the resident boy-toy before he could make any sort of use of him.
“Kane?” That was Ori again.
Kane jerked his attention to the swan.
“Please, sit down. Tell us what happened. You’ve been accused of stealing from a club, a human club,” he specified. “And of bringing avians into disrepute among the outside population. This is your chance to explain yourself.”
Rapidly calculating a new strategy, Kane lowered himself slowly into his seat. Ori would believe anything he was told. Kane knew the type. He was obviously out to “do good”. He’d go for any sob story a guy threw at him. Anyone with half a brain could wrap him around a finger, a toe, or any other part of his body that he desired.
But, Ori was only one man on the committee sitting before him. Damn, Kane knew he’d probably need some sort of majority vote to get out of there.
Hamilton would see him swing if he had half a chance. Raynard wasn’t fool enough to believe any line of bull. The rest would probably follow the birds of prey unless he made a
really
good show of it.
Kane nodded slowly. “Crenshaw. Yes, I’ll admit it. I stole from him.”
“Then there is nothing else to be said,” Hamilton snapped.
“You were asked to tell us what happened,” Raynard said to Kane, before the last of Hamilton’s words had faded from the air. “Finish your story.”
Story.
Kane looked up. Raynard knew he’d lie, but he wanted to hear it anyway. Maybe he was ready to play with a new toy after all.
“I—” Kane let his voice crack. He’d become good at feigning emotion over the years. Now, he dragged his A-game to the fore. “I was just so hungry, sir. Crenshaw was furious with me because one of his friends told him I’d been disrespectful to him. And Crenshaw said I wouldn’t be allowed to have anything to eat until I, until I did what his friend wanted and—” He bowed his head, but not so low that he couldn’t look at the company through his lashes and adapt his performance to suit them.
Ori was on the edge of his seat, quick in his sympathy. Swans were obviously suckers.
Kane pushed his sleeves back and displayed his arms, stopping just short of displaying the track marks. The bruises there were impressive, even by Kane’s standards, and he’d seen plenty of them over the years. “I wasn’t even sure if you’d be able to make out my species mark.”
Hamilton didn’t look impressed. Bastard.
Kane dropped his voice to a whisper. “I thought they were going to kill me, sir. I think they nearly did. If Everet hadn’t arrived when he did…”
“You’re safe now.” Ori reached across the table and took hold of Kane’s hand.
Kane glanced toward Raynard. It was impossible to tell if he bought it or not. More than half his attention still seemed to be on the bloody swan.
Kane snatched back his hand, without considering how it would suit his performance. Ori blinked in surprise. Kane quickly wrapped his arms around his torso, as if that had been his intent the whole time.
“If that’s all you have to say,” Hamilton began.
“Does he really have to go to the cages, sir?” Ori cut in. “I thought we agreed that they’d only be used for a few days at a time, or as a last resort?”
Hamilton seemed to hesitate. For all he sat in the biggest chair, Kane realized in that moment that Hamilton’s leadership of the nest wasn’t as complete as he might like to pretend it was.
“If he’s left to roam freely in the nest at this time, he’ll cause trouble, sire,” the eagle said. “However, he’ll be allowed out as soon as he can be trusted; either to behave well in the nest, or not to bring avians to disrepute among the humans. We’ve lived discreetly among the non-shifters for far too long to risk upsetting the balance just because one magpie can’t control his base instincts.”
Ori looked to Raynard. The hawk didn’t say a word, but something seemed to pass silently between them. “How long do you think it will be before he could be trusted, sir?” Ori asked Hamilton.
Hamilton altered his position in his chair, almost like a schoolboy who’d been caught lying to his teacher. “It is not an inhumane punishment, sire. He’ll have plenty of room to shift and stretch his wings whenever he wishes. He’ll be well fed and warm. He’ll even be given suitable employment if he wishes it.”
Ori dropped his gaze, but Kane had no doubt that the question still stood, the eagle was still obliged to answer.
“It’s a well-established fact that magpies cannot be rehabilitated,” Hamilton finally admitted. “They’re not capable of any sort of self-control, sire. That’s probably what led to him being cast out of his original nest into the humans.”
“He’d have to be kept in the cages forever?” Ori blurted out, his eyes round with shock.
Hamilton said nothing, he didn’t need to. The answer was obvious.
Kane tensed, his fingers clawing at the shirt on either side of his torso. There was no such thing as a cage that could keep him forever. Eventually, he’d be able to screw a guard into letting him out, or perhaps one of the elders would hear about the pretty little prisoner and come to visit him. Either way, it was a chore he could do without. He needed his fix
now
.
“There’s no alternative?” Ori asked, with an insane amount of compassion for someone he hadn’t set eyes on two minutes ago. He couldn’t actually give a damn about Kane, but he put on a good show of it.
“He cannot be trusted if he is free,” Hamilton said again. “He’d have to be guarded twenty-four hours a day.”
Ori nibbled at his bottom lip in concern. “Maybe, we could find someone who would take him on as a…a submissive of sorts?” he offered, tentatively.
Submissive? Kane raised a mental eyebrow. He knew how that game went. He could look pretty in leather twenty-four hours a day if he needed to. Twisting a kinky old man around his little finger couldn’t be that much harder than manipulating a vanilla sugar-daddy.
“I’ll do it.”
All eyes turned toward Everet, including Kane’s. The raven had been still and silent for so long, Kane had almost forgotten he was there, apparently so had everyone else in the room.
“You’ll take charge of him?” Hamilton asked. “Take complete responsibility for him.”
“Yes.”
Kane studied Everet very carefully. The raven showed no emotion. There was no sympathy to be seen. On the other hand, he didn’t look angry because he knew that everything Kane said was a lie, either. Everet didn’t seem to care one way or another.
Sex. That had to be at the root of it. Well, that made everything simple. Everet offered to take charge of him so he could screw him.
Kane mentally played out his future in his mind’s eye. Everet was far lower down the pecking order than he’d have liked, but he was hot. He’d do until Kane got the chance to upgrade to a wealthier model.
“If you take him under your wing, you’ll be responsible for
anything
he does,” Hamilton said, not even trying to hide the fact that he wanted to talk Everet out of it. “The only way we could ever agree to this kind of proposal would be if you took
complete
ownership of him. You’d be eligible to receive any punishments he earned, guilty of every crime he committed. In the eyes of the nest, you’d be one person.”