Luna of Rogues

Part 7 - An Old Face

Again, another chapter I wasn't going to write until summer, but then I saw we'd reached a thousand reads and I had to do something to say thank you.

As I've said before, living as rogues was not easy, especially in such a large group. That's probably why autumn always caused a mad panic to get everything ready for the snow and winter weather. We usually moved camp every other month or so, but, come winter, we made a more permanent camp until the spring.

Every year, that camp was in the same valley. Our few hundred shifters set up their tents in the ruins of a castle called Lle o Dristwch, a place with particular significance for our group. It was there that Caradoc died, the only Alpha ever recognised by rogues.

He united all the shifters in the north, west and south; the three divisions of where shifters live in our country. Nowadays, Caradoc was a role model for just about every Alpha, because getting rogues and packs to work together was about as easy as selling ice to Inuits.

The other reason we sheltered there in winter was because Caradoc happened to be Rhodric's great-grandfather, according to every wolf I'd ever asked. Granted, they were all rogues and very biased. They were also fond of saying that Rhodric could shift into a crow, turn off the sun and kill people with his mind — bullshit, of course. So I didn't quite believe the story, but I would have liked to.

That old castle was exactly where I was heading on the dreary Sunday night after our foraging trip. We'd stayed up in the cabin for the rest of the weekend: gathering food, collecting firewood and doing other general chores.

We might have also had a dog sledge race down a steep hill in wolf-form, abseiled into a ravine and completely covered a picnic table in raw fish just to see how much it confused the rangers. Okay, in my defence, the fish were already very dead and rotting when we found them because someone *cough* Rhys *cough* accidently dropped his entire packet of walnuts into a pond, which are toxic to marine animals, as it turned out.

We couldn't exactly just let all those poor fish's deaths go to waste, now could we?

Anyway, back to Sunday night. The sun had long since set and it was drizzling lightly, in accordance with compulsory British weather. We were on the northern edge of New Dawn territory, taking a little bit of a shortcut on our way to Lle o Dristwch.

Fion, having always been a keen plant expert, decided she wanted to take a detour to identify a rare type of berry, which was how we ended up standing at the edge of Riverside territory, while also being on the edge of New Dawn territory. These two packs were the only ones in the whole country who bordered each other so closely, and it caused no end of problems.

Rhys was leaping the river that marked the boundary again and again.

"Trespassing has never been this convenient," he said. "Look, now I'm on Riverside land."

He made another impressive jump considering he was in human form.

"And now I'm on New Dawn's turf. This is far too perfect."

He continued to mess around on the border line, oblivious to the fact that wolves were in the trees on both sides of the river and watching his every move with narrowed eyes.

"Trespassing on New Dawn, trespassing on Riverside," Rhys called out again.

Fion and I began a tactical retreat, leaving Rhys to piss off wolves from two packs simultaneously. When we were a safe distance away, I used my wolf senses to find out what was going on.

Rhys seemed to have finally realised he had an audience. At least eight wolves advanced from both packs, growling and snarling at my brother. As far as I was concerned, he found his way into this mess, and he could damn well find a way to talk his way out of it.