Page 8 of Okay, I Regret a Little
Chapter 6
Faust
I
t was so fucking typical. The other guards here were bullies that loved abusing their power, but they didn’t know how to think like criminals. If one of the gangs was going to shank someone here, their cellblock would be totally pristine when it came to finding evidence. Everyone knew how the game was played, and the loyalty was to your own. None of the gangs would give a heads up if they were making a move because these shitty witch hunts benefited the actual killers. Murder was always pinned on who had a weapon and who cracked first in solitary.
I knew it was the witches. If the other guards had half a brain, they’d be looking hard at them too. They instead focused all their attention on the eagles. They tossed the rest of the cells also, but not as much as the eagle shifters. In the process, they found a ton of illegal contraband and some weapons that weren’t hidden well enough.
I was glad they found the weapons, but they found some other items that I was dying to know how they made it inside these walls. Vibrators and butt plugs weren’t sold in the commissary and wouldn’t have made it past the mailroom. If someone brought one of these in during visitation, a guard would have taken it away before returning the prisoner to their cell.
I didn’t give a shit about contraband and wasn’t planning on looking too hard at it. We didn’t find any hard drugs, which I was glad of. I didn’t need fucked up criminals in here. I could handle the ones drunk on hooch. Let them have their sex toys and kinky books. If they were fucking, they weren’t starting riots and killing each other.
Until fucking Venus got sent here.
The other guards were going to focus super hard on every single one of the eagle shifters down in solitary that got caught with a weapon. They would break them until they cracked and confessed to something they didn’t do. The justice system was broken on the outside, but it was incredibly fucked up on the inside.
Rei was passed out and sleeping through the alarm again. Honestly, I found it a little adorable the way she’d bury herself under the blanket and pillow to block it out. She’d curse me out every time I tried to wake her. My mate wasdefinitelynot a morning person. Still, she’d need to learn to be one in here.
I could only sign up for so many extra shifts before the warden hopped on my ass and forced me to take my days off. That was another reason I brought Wren in. I could trust that witch to keep her safe. Hopefully, I could trust her to drag my mate out of bed for count, so she didn’t end up in the hole. If she weren’t my mate, I wouldn’t have bothered waking her up and making sure she made it for count.
Wren was sitting on her bed, cackling as I tried to wake the sleeping beast without losing a finger. I already knew she had a history of biting.
“Do you do this every morning?”
“Rei! Get your ass up for count!” I hissed.
Rei just groaned and tried to roll over. Wren was making a racket, and we now had an audience.
“Get back to your fucking cells!” I barked.
“Watch it there,” Wren hooted. “I don’t think witches are the only thing this one bites.”
She wasn’t lying. I could see Rei’s canines were elongated, and this weird red cloud was surrounding her body. What the actual fuck was she? I tried to grab her and shake her. That red shit shocked the hell out of me, and I was pretty sure my beard was standing on end.
I looked up, and thankfully, the rest of the foxes stood at their cells for count. Wren peered over my shoulder.
“Fuck me,” she whispered. “I guessed she wasn’t a fox, and she confirmed it last night, but what the shit is that?”
“I don’t know, but it hurts. We need to stop her before anyone sees.”
“The other foxes know she’s not like them, but how do you plan on doing that without dying, Sparky?”
I got as close to her as I could without getting shocked. The red cloud wasn’t huge. It couldn’t be seen on the CCTV cameras. I had to reason with her before it did. I should have reported her handcuffs weren’t keyed correctly from the start, but now that I was deep down this rabbit hole, I wanted her to have every advantage here when it came to self-defense, even if it worked against me when I needed to get her ass out of bed.
“Rei! You are dangerously close to exposing what you are to every single guard watching the cameras. They will haul your ass to medical and find out your big secret. You’ll be in handcuffs that take away your magic so fast, and you won’t know what hit you.”
The red static along her skin disappeared. She rolled over and stared at me with those enormous violet eyes. Her sharp little fox teeth went back to normal. She sighed, but at least she was finally awake.
“The prison kept the lights on for hours last night. You could at least let us sleep in. And thank you for stopping me. I could have hurt you.”
I should have laughed and corrected her that she could never hurt me. I was the big, bad wolf, and as far as I knew, I’d killed way more people than she had. I still didn’t have a fucking clue what she was, but that red static was no joke.
“Thank me by getting your ass out of bed and standing for count.”
She was a lot less grumpy getting up, and she didn’t call me an asshole this time. Getting her out of bed was getting a lot more complicated since I didn’t know what she was or what kind of powers she might have. Wren brushed by my shoulder as she went to stand for count.
“Are you sure she needs either of us?”
I was seriously considering that question myself.
