Dangerous Territory

Four

The walk up to the entrance was much shorter this time.

It could have partly been due to the fact that Bateman had been on the property before them, and so they weren't forced to wait around for him, however Mala knew that it was really her nerves that were to blame for warping her perception of time.

For the most part, she had always been level headed. Emotional at times, yes, but when she was working, she understood how to conceal her emotions under a veil of professionalism. On the inside, she could be screaming with the force of a thousand suns, while the outward manifestation would show nothing more than the twitching of an eye.

So maybe that wasn't called being level headed but at the very least she could call it being logical.

It was exactly how she was feeling as she walked back into Irongate Penitentiary for the second time, dealing with the knowledge that she needed to make a decision on what to do with her mate.

She had to think rationally, there were no other means in which to deal with the situation.

There was absolutely no way that she was going to be able to accept her mate, that much she knew.

Unlike many of her other shifter counterparts, she hadn't grown up to her parents reading fairy tales about handsome shifters meeting their utterly perfect mates.

Judging by the circumstances, the fact that her parents hadn't held out for their own mates, whether by fear or otherwise, she assumed neither parent wanted Malandra to go through the pain of waiting for someone who would never show up.

It was a different generation, headed by people who united in favour of the coveted choice, whether their choices were good for them or not.

Consequently, the idea of having a mate had taken a back seat, more of a passing thought than a burning desire- at least to her.

She knew next to nothing about having a mate, except for the fact that the few mated couples she had met were just like any other couple. Madly in love. Slightly annoying to be around for long periods of time. They did tend to stay in the honeymoon stage for most of their lives, and had some weird connection to each other's feelings, but that was pretty minor.

Though after the previous day, a spanner had been thrown in Mala's philosophy.

She had never been told that a giant, luminescent ribbon would fly out of her stomach and attack her mate- or chord, whatever it was.

She hadn't been told that she would feel kind of lost when they were separated.

She hadn't been told about the involuntary happiness that would seize her at the thought of seeing him again.

She had to get herself together.

Before all else, he was a criminal. So criminal that he was locked up in one of the top maximum security prisons in the country. There was no chance he was imprisoned for some petty crime. He had done something bad. So bad that he'd never again step foot outside the front doors of the penitentiary as long as he lived.

She was on the other side of the law, the side of the law that understood how much of a hazard felons were to society. That wasn't a judgement conjured up from some silly form of superstition or bigotry, it was a judgement founded by evidence.

The evidence said that her mate deserved to be in prison.

Anyway, she had always assumed that she would find a nice, normal boyfriend and marry him after she was settled in her job.