Page 42 of Nope, No Regrets
Faust
Ihated everything about sleeping alone after Rei and I marked each other. I’d never slept as well in my life as I did after we finally collapsed together, with her in my arms. My insomnia was back in full force after I filled my belly with amazing food and found out the king of Hell had a plan to make the Aether Circle pay for every single thing they had ever done.
I never drew it out longer than necessary when I needed to kill someone. I always did it as quickly as possible. Even if they were a particularly repugnant brand of nasty, and I wanted it to hurt, playing with a target gave them a chance to escape, no matter how well you tied them down.
I wasn’t one of those killers that needed to look someone in the eye when I did it, and if I agreed to take a job for someone, I wasn’t delivering a message, no matter how much money they wanted to offer me. I wasn’t stupid. I’d kill for you, but I wasn’t going to jail because you needed to make a point while I was doing it.
Dakarys and Rajack had been good men before they were arrested. Better than I ever was, that was for sure. I could admit when I was wrong about people. They killed when they needed to, but they weren’t like Wren and me. They didn’t have the stomach for some of the methods Hell used to extract information.
I wanted them away from Rei, and back in Silverhold. I wanted to murder both of them when I realized Rei had been roped into their escape plot and gotten her sentence extended. I knew better now. Rei didn’t do a damn thing she didn’t want to. It may have been their idea, but she sure as hell contributed her own to it. Now that I knew she was a Kitsune, she could have known it wouldn’t work and may have joined just to see how far they could get.
It should have gone against every instinct in my body. I was an apex predator, and I should have been preying on every single anxiety they had about how things were run down here. I should have been plotting how to get rid of Wren, too. Especially since she’d spent the night with Rei.
I accepted Skoll’s dinner invitation, partly because I thought he was onto something, and partly because I just wanted something to do that night since I had a feeling Rei already had plans with a sphinx or a gargoyle. I wasn’t exactly happy about that, but I didn’t want to kill any of them anymore.
I didn’t need to ask her to know Wren was happy here. It was plastered all over her face when she met Charley and found out there were other witches here. Dakarys and Rajack seemed excited they weren’t the only representations of their kind either. So, I willingly left pack life behind and became a lone wolf. I liked Skoll. If there were other wolves like him down here, I wouldn’t mind rejoining pack life again.
We could be happy here—all of us. We came here as a team, and we fought as one. Yeah, I could play on the things Dakarys and Rajack didn’t like about Hell until they were begging to go back to Earth. I could do it in ways Rei would never know, and no one would blame me.
I wouldn’t be that kind of wolf though. It felt fuckingamazingwhen Rei’s fox took over in solitary, and she kissed me. I’d never forget our night together, back when we marked each other. Her fox didn’t just choose me, and I’d be a shitty mate if I tried to drive the others from an entire realm just because I didn’t want to share. If Skoll was doing it, then I could.
I knew better than to try to go anywhere near Rei’s bedroom until late in the morning. Now that I didn’thaveto drag her ass out of bed to be counted, she could sleep all day if she wanted. She liked it, and she clearly was never going to magically become a morning person if her mother wasn’t.
I played video games with her dad, and we tried to teach Dakarys and Rajack how to play. Sota seemed amused by the entire thing, and was our cheerleader. My life had never really been typical. My pack wasn’t big on things like this, we were all taken from our parents at a young age and trained to kill without getting caught.
I wasn’t super big on male bonding when I left, either. I thought I liked being alone, but this was fun. I’d been an asshole before about never wanting friends. I thought they were just a liability, who I could never be totally honest with, or that they’d turn on me eventually and cage my wolf.
Everyone here knew, and they didn’t care. The king of Hell knew, and he wasn’t kicking me out. I was pretty sure he didn’t want me picking up that mantle in his domain, but I couldn’t rule out him asking me to use those skills for his benefit later on.
This was… nice. Rei’s dad was extremely cool, and so different from mine. He was actually invested in teaching Dakarys and Rajack how to shoot zombies with the controller, and I don’t think I’d ever laughed that much in my entire life.
A demon came in and interrupted us.
“The princess has awoken and has requested breakfast.”
We didn’t have to say anything. Rei’s dad immediately turned the television off and jumped to his feet. He wanted to spend just as much time with her as we did, and none of us were about to stop that. In fact, he kept saying her adoptive parents were here, too. Once this nonsense with the Aether Circle was done, Rei needed to see them again.
None of us were remotely worried about being embarrassed in this massive palace. Even her dad was in a rush to get there. We didn’t look totally stupid as we spilled through the door and kneeled at the table that was laden with food, though you couldn’t tell that from Wren’s expression. Wren had bite marks along her shoulder, and I wasn’t even mad about it.
Something was wrong though. Rei and I were connected now. She should be happy… the threats to her were over. Wren wasn’t the only one with marks on her. Wren had left some serious hickeys all over Rei. This feeling wasn’t Wren, and it wasn’t her family, or us. Rei was feeling guilty about something.
It wasn’t her brother, I knew that, since she didn’t know him, and not even her parents were mourning him. They were planning a big ass demon party to celebrate that he got exploded. Was it the Aether Circle? She wasn’t at Bael’s, and no one had disturbed her after we left. I’d always love looking at Rei naked, but something told me that Wren’s serial killer instincts would surface if a man so much as glanced at her tits. We all knew that, and none of us were going to risk it. Plus, I'd already gotten to enjoy an entire night with her.
The Aether Circle coming here and killing demons was the only thing I could think of that would explain Rei feeling like that, because she wasn’t the slightest bit sorry for anything she ever stole, the riots at Silverhold, or killing Venus. I needed to make it better somehow, but without calling her out.
“We got intel at Bael’s,” I announced. “The Aether Circle has been killing demons for a while now, because they wanted to take over Hell. I guess they reasoned that since they could summon and kill a few demons, it would be easy to make this place their own realm. Bael has been trying to make them pay for that for ages.”
I’d say this for the sphinx and the gargoyle… they weren’t connected to her in the way I was, not yet at least, but they could tell something was off with her and had clearly decided to follow my lead. In that moment I was so glad I didn’t kill them back at Silverhold, because this would be more likely to succeed with a team effort.
“Kudan tried to cut them a deal,” Dakarys said, while gesturing at an imaginary map, “He’d get this area of Hell, and the Aether Circle would get everything else.”
“That boy was just born wrong,” Rei’s father sniffed. “He was well-loved, and given the best of everything. He didn’t learn from any of it. He didn’t just turn on his family in the end. No, he betrayed every demon in Hell by trying to bring them here.”
Before Rei could say anything, she needed to know the entire story.
“Sabrina jumped the gun,” I said. “The rest of the Aether Circle told her they would give her spells from their grimoire to replace the one you stole. The rest of the Aether Circle didn’t want to come here until they had more information from Kudan to figure out if they could actually pull this off. Sabrina wanted to be a hero and refused to listen to calmer heads, and Bael is going to use it to make them all pay for the demons they killed.”
Rei’s father put his hand over hers.
