Unhappily Ever After

Chapter 3 - Kicking Off

100,000 reads on Luna of Rogues? Now that deserves a looooong chapter. And a hug for every single one of you <3

The next day, nobody felt like doing much at all. For one thing, the weather hadn't changed. It was still raining cats and dogs and still miserable. Even for May, I felt cheated of sunshine. Surely it should've begun to dry up for summer at the very least.

And it didn't help that both Eira and I were moderately hungover. My father wasn't in the mood either — I didn't think he had got much sleep. So we lazed around camp until late afternoon, getting the odd jobs done.

The wall we were camped against turned out to be more intact than I had realised, as did the building it belonged to. It wasn't much effort to fix up the roof of the shepherd's hut. With somewhere dry to sit —even though the wind howled around the interior — we all cheered up. It was a good place to leave Dad when we couldn't watch him: remote and secure.

We weren't far enough from Anglesey, not even nearly. I knew that. But I couldn't dredge up the energy to walk miles and relinquish the only base we had in the process. If Gwen found us, we would just have to wriggle our way to freedom all over again.

"I remember mention of a bar..." Eira casually slid into a conversation as the sun started to set.

I groaned but conceded, "And if you can find one in the middle of nowhere, we'll go right in."

But —damn my sister— she had come prepared for this. A road map pointed the way to the nearest human town, which was annoying close. A few miles of forest could be traversed laughably quickly in wolf form.

The only problem was, it could be pack territory. We would have no way of knowing until we got there. I silently resolved to collar a local shifter and bully him into marking down every pack's stomping ground on the road map. Trespassing wasn't punishable by death in those days (although I may be ninety percent of the reason why it eventually did become punishable by death), but the penalty was still harsh: a thrashing at best, losing an eye if you were unlucky enough to cross the patrol on a bad day.

I peered at the ink lines, memorising the way to the town. A grey symbol etched in our path caught my attention. It was in the middle of the forest, far from any roads. What could possibly be so far off the beaten track? "What's that?"

Eira spared it a fleeting glance. "It means ruins, I think."

Interesting. It would be worth a look, and it was only five minutes out of our way —

"Oh, no you don't." She had caught my expression with those sharp hazel eyes. "No exploring today. I'm not tagging along while you investigate. Ruins are boring — just a pile of crumbling rocks."

She would regret those words soon enough.

"Fine," I grumbled under my breath, "I'll go tomorrow."

"You'll go never," Eira corrected. "Why can't you be a normal boy and despise everything except booze and girls?"

"Now you're just using gender stereotypes."

"And you're refusing to live up to them. It's confusing, Ric. I've never even seen you with a girl in that way." She threw an empty tin at me.

I caught and crushed it. "You'd be surprised how much you don't see."

"Well, just for reassurance, how about we find you a girl at the bar? I'd even help."

Now that was plain sneaky. But it wasn't the first time she had tried to pull that trick; I wasn't fooled. "What, so I'll be too distracted to stop you running off with the first man you see?"