Dreams of a Dark Warrior

hung on his lanky frame, his build morphing from football player to marathon runner.
    Ultimately, Regin had concluded that he was part leech, a halfling vamp, because while Natalya had been busy monitoring Thad’s sleep woodies
—“Two words, Valkyrie: nocturnal emission. Just kidding, but I got you to look!”
—Regin had been noticing another part of him giving a salute.
    His fangs had lengthened and retracted at intervals. The sweet kid who’d barely been broken of calling them Ms. Natalya and Ms. Regin was a leech, or part one?
    Regin’s beloved niece Emma was half vamp, half Valk, but Emma could never go out in the sun as Thad obviously could. So what was the kid’s other half?
    And why do I still like him?
    First Emma. Now Thad. Regin was sick and tired of non-evil vampiric creatures messing with her millennium’s worth of scathing animosity for their species. …
    “A truth, then?” Thad asked Nat. “So how many guys, uh, you know—”
    “Have I bedded? I’m centuries old, you remember, so if I ‘went steady’ with one guy every six months, well … you get the picture. I wouldn’t say an army’s worth, but definitely several battalions. Care to enlist?” Over Thad’s embarrassed stammering, she said, “And how many girls have you enjoyed, Tiger?”
    Regin could
hear
him blushing.
    “I’ve had tons of girlfriends,” he said. “I
am
a quarterback, you know. I chase tail all the time.”
    “You didn’t answer the question.”
    In a low tone, he admitted, “Between football and Eagle Scouts, I haven’t had time to find, you know, the
right
girl.”
    Natalya sighed. “How utterly irresistible of you. Now that you’ve found her, I dare you to lose the jeans.”
    He choked out, “Ma’am?”
    Thaddeus Brayden, worshipped as a football god in his small Texas town of Harley, had obviously never encountered a female like Natalya. “Of course we should share a bunk,” the fey had purred this morning. “I’m nothing more than a fairy godmother. If we share a bed, I can make
all
your wishes come true.”
    Regin turned a blind eye—because everyone in this cell might be executed at any time. And because she’d forgotten she wasn’t a moral person who wouldn’t give a shit if the virginal Thad got it on with Natalya.
    Just wait till I’m asleep.
In the meantime, she stared at the ceiling, mulling over her own situation with Chase.
    After their fight last week, Chase had ignored her, letting her languish in her cell. She had no idea where she stood with him or how close he was to remembering her, to kissing her.
    This mulling sucked. Regin didn’t introspect; she acted. Sometimes she got it right, oftentimes she didn’t, and she’d never really figured out how to differentiate between the two.
    Because she didn’t fucking introspect.
    Now apparently she was going to contend with some kind of
internal struggle.
Some kind of on-the-one-hand type crisis. Like the ones her sisters routinely went through.
    The ones Regin mocked.
    She simply didn’t
have
them. She did whatever she wanted to do, and she slept well at night.
    Regin muttered, “
Balls
.” Then she finally surrendered to it:
    On the one hand, her big berserker had returned to her, and her memories of their times together were burning hot.
Each day I’ll love you more than the one before…
    On the other hand, how could she let this misery go on? Her friends, old and new, were suffering.
Like Carrow.
    The grapevine had been abuzz with gossip about her, rumors that Regin prayed were untrue. Word held that Chase had forced the witch to travel to the demon plane of Oblivion—a.k.a., hell—to use her wiles and trap a brutal vampire demon. Or else Chase would kill another prisoner.
    Carrow’s seven-year-old cousin, a little girl named Ruby.
    The Order had captured Ruby—after murdering the child’s mother. At that news, Regin had heaved, nearly vomiting energy—
    She tensed when she heard Dixon’s heels clacking down the corridor.
Evil Order employees going about their evil daily business.
    Regin hadn’t thought anything could be worse thanFegley’s belligerent visits, but Dixon had edged him out for prize asshole.
    Watching the woman pine for Chase made Regin ill. As if those two would ever have a shot.
    Even worse was when Dixon gazed
at Regin
. Like the woman hungered to examine her.
    It gave Regin the creeps. She wasn’t a puss by any means, but the threat of vivisection was really starting to get to her.