Page 13 of Nope, No Regrets
Rajack
I’d lost all hope of ever getting out. When Faust found us I thought we might still get out, but when another guard came in I knew we were fucked. I knew any shot at appealing my sentence was over. But hey, at least they couldn’t extend my sentence any further… they already intended to never let me out.
Faust was mad when he found us, but I could also tell it hurt him that Rei didn’t tell him. I also knew about the mate pull he was feeling. He had to be miserable in here, not being able to touch her. He would have eventually gotten over it and helped us. I knew his wolf reacted when he killed Brody. Every last one of us would have killed that fucker, even if he hadn’t attacked Rei, but Faust was closer.
He might outrank us in the entire prison hierarchy, and so could have made our lives much more difficult for being into his mate, but he didn’t. He wasn’t in on our breakout plan, but he was still one of us. Faust didn’t need to be in jail, he could protect Rei better from where he was.
I happily said I killed Brody before anyone said anything, and I’d do it again. I was prepared for any shit Warden Snow threw at me in solitary to punish me for it. Faust did me a solid and returned the favor by getting himself assigned to solitary, under the guise of breaking and questioning us.
No one liked Brody. The other guards hated him as much as we did. I think if Warden Snow were honest with herself, she’d admit she didn’t like him either, no matter how much she defended him or wanted to have me killed because she thought I snapped his neck.
The guards might hate Brody, but if any one of them were down here, besides Faust, I’d be getting my ass kicked and denied food and water. They’d make me drink from the toilet, so I didn’t die from dehydration. I knew how they operated. They all probably would have lined up to kill him if they knew they could get away with it, but they took offense they thought I did it.
They were all power-hungry dick bags that thought they were better than us because we were inmates. It was different if they killed Brody, or someone got fed up with him outside the prison. We were lesser beings inside, even if some of us were more powerful than they were and everyone knew it would be an entirely different fight with our handcuffs off.
They abused their powers on us all day. They beat and shocked us with their batons. They expected us just to take it. People snapped all the time. They could only take so much. They had it coming, but a prisoner’s life always got a million times worse for fighting back. They’d drag you to solitary until they got tired of starving you and gang beating you.
That would have been my fate, even if no one liked Brody, and if Faust hadn’t stepped in. He owed me his freedom, and I owed him my life. They would have beaten me to death in solitary, and Warden Snow would have made the whole thing disappear because it was Brody.
I wasn’t wild about another man entering this dynamic, especially if we would be in his domain and he was in some position of power if Rei really was that important. But I’d have to get used to it. He might have done everything he could to help Rei get us out, but he probably had conditions. Namely, Rei had to go through with the wedding, whether she wanted to or not.
I’d worry about that later. Faust didn’t even wait for us to leave solitary, and didn’t just unlock our cuffs in a way that gave us our magic back. He completely took them off. I thought he hated the entire sharing thing, and the only reason we weren’t dead was because of Rei. He shocked me. He took our handcuffs, marched into my empty cell, and tossed them in that nasty metal toilet.
He grinned at us on the way out, like he had been the one locked up for all this time.
“You never have to wear those again. I’m not a prisoner here, I can clock out and go home every day, but I still loathe this fucking place. Dakarys and Rajack, you probably should have been released when Scorchwood closed, instead of being transferred here. Personally, I don’t think either of you deserved jail in the first place for what you did, much less life. Wren, you’re a complete psychopath… and if you ever demand I bring you a sandwich again, one of us is getting murdered.”
I think we could all agree Wren was utterly insane. Did Faust even know how to make sandwiches?! He struck me as the kind of wolf that didn’t have a stove and lived entirely off raw meat. The inmates with kitchen duty made the food here, but I wasn’t dumb enough to ask Faust to make a trip there just to get me food.
“You probably make shitty sandwiches, anyway.”
“For your information, I’m an excellent cook, Wren. Ask Rei. Oh, but before you ask, I’mnevercooking for you, bit if Rei wants to share with you what I cooked her, then I won’t stop her.”
“Fuck you, Faust. Let’s get out of here. I want to throw the front doors open and walk out of here, knowing I never have to come back. I’m going to dance on the front lawn.”
“Please, don’t,” Faust said. “I’d hate to see what dance moves were current back when you got busted.”
“He’s pretty fucking stupid when it comes to everything else, but one of the newer warlocks taught us how to twerk.”
Any dance moves I knew were probably horrifically outdated as well. I didn’t know what a twerk was, and there certainly weren’t young gargoyles showing up to teach it to me. Faust seemed to find the entire idea offensive.
“Youare nottwerking on the front lawn in front of Rei’s demon fiancé and a Duke of Hell. You are going to get yourself banned from Hell, and they might give you back to the warden.”
Was it wrong that I wanted to see Wren do this dance move? Faust seemed to hate it. I was dying to see what a Duke of Hell would make of it. Wren was totally safe. Rei threatened to stay in this shit hole unless we left with her. I didn’t know if demons drove the cars I read about, or they had someone drive for them, but Rei would call someone to take us to Hauser’s if they tried to bring Wren back inside over a dance move.
Rei was waiting in the lobby with two men. One was similar in appearance to Rei. His hair wasn’t pure white like hers. It was inky black, but there was a chunky white streak that ran through the front. I’d seen new inmates come in with hair similar to that, but after a time it started growing out, and they looked like a hot mess until they came to us asking for dye to fix it. I had a feeling it was natural on this man.
I didn’t know what kind of demon he was, but he definitely looked like he knew how to kill things. The other demon looked like he was craftier than a warrior, but I was glad he was here. They both helped Rei get us out, and they came for her, eventually.
Rei had changed clothes, but we were all still in our prison jumpsuits. They probably had no idea where the clothes they arrested us in were. My clothes and Dakarys’s clothes probably never made it here from Scorchwood. They probably didn’t even save them, because they had no intention of ever letting us out. Wren didn’t care what she was wearing. She was going to walk out of here with her head high in that ugly orange jumpsuit and do her dance.
“This is Sota and Barbatos,” Rei said. “Sota and I are apparently supposed to get married, even though no one consulted me about that, and Barbatos is a Duke.”
Sota bowed.
“Apologies, Rei had a basket containing her belongings when she was arrested, but they didn’t have anything for any of you. If we had known you were coming with us, we would have bought you something to change into.”
Barbatos just grinned.
