Page 13 of Okay, I Regret a Little
Chapter 10
Faust
R
ei was hiding something. I got that what she was had to be this big secret. I thought she was about to tell me right when the alarm went off when they found Astrid. She was about to tell me something, that much I was sure about. Something made her retreat, and it was more than just that she found out about the whole mate thing.
I thought we got past that. Even though she knew now, I didn’t intend to press her on it or demand anything from her. Whatever she was, it wasn’t a shifter like me. She wasn’t feeling the pull of the moon. If I fucked this up, this would be it for me. I wouldn’t get another mate, and I’d never see another woman again.
As far as the moon getting involved in your love life, Rei wasn’t a bad pick for me. Even after everything I did to her when we first met, she’d never been scared to call me an asshole right to my face. I needed that in a partner. Iwasan asshole most of the time. Sometimes I did it without realizing it. It was just my factory settings. I’d cherish her, but I needed her to call me out on it when we were out in public, or I’d ruin all our dates.
And I just found her funny and easy to talk to most of the time. Now that she knew, we would just have to get past the initial awkwardness. I wouldn’t demand she tell me what she was now that I had gotten a small peek at her powers. She had another secret she was keeping, however, and it bothered me way more than what she was.
It had to do with the mailroom. That was where she wanted to go before I moved her into my office. It was what she suggested for Wren. They put the stragglers and outcasts in the mailroom. No one ever wanted to work in the mailroom.
If you got assigned to work there, it was because there was no one like you or your gang didn’t want you in their presence anymore. It happened when you got banished, but they didn’t want you dead yet. It wasn’t just the stink of shame that made people want to avoid it. People got super racist in prison. They didn’t want to be seen with anyone who wasn’t like them. It was like they thought if they associated with someone who wasn’t their species, it would somehow taint them.
Every gang had some beef with another gang, even if they were at peace now. They all thought they were superior and couldn’t even be civil, even if they weren’t like that before they got arrested.
The sphinx and the gargoyle were different. I knew they were cellmates in Scorchwood and the only representations of their kind here. I understood why they were friends. I even got why Rei was so desperate to hang out with them. There was no one else like her in here either.
I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before. A lone wolf in here would get picked off quickly. A sphinx or a gargoyle would have threatened someone. Someone would have viewed them as a threat and come after them. They had yard time with the foxes. Foxes were cunning and clever.
I hated most fox shifters, but I could respect Whisper for how she ran things in here. Whisper would have assessed both of them when they had the cuffs off in the yard. I hardly knew her, but I wouldn’t peg her for wanting them in the same yard as her foxes when they had access to their magic.
No onein Silverhold had come after them. And they broke their significant rule about sticking to your own kind. Everyone was downright friendly with those two, and they let them skip to the front of the line in the mess hall. I didn’t question that before because I thought it was some sort of prison politics.
Now that I was looking at it harder, this didn’t fall into any type of prison politics that naturally went down here. The sphinx and the gargoyle had challenged no one. They hadn’t been in a single fistfight since they got here. That wasn’t how things worked in here. So, what the actual fuck was going on?
The individual gangs let their leaders go to the front, but there wasn’t a single gang leader here that the entire prison let go first. Except for the sphinx and gargoyle. What had they done to get that kind of respect? Everything in here had to be earned, no matter what fucked up thing was required to do it. And as far as I knew, those two kept their heads down and didn’t start shit.
So, clearly, they were up to something, and now they had befriended my fucking mate. She had seven years in here. Keeping her safe from the resident witches and the Aether Circle was going to be hard, but this? Prison loyalty shifted on a dime. Gang leaders could hold on to power for a long time, but one mistake or one new inmate with swagger and that could come toppling down.
Whatever those two were up to so they could get respect and prison perks, someone was going to want it. They would try to take it, like everything else in here.
And I didn’t want Rei anywhere near them when that happened.
