"I saw what happened with the ferals," Rhodric began. "You did the right thing, as far as I'm concerned. They were already dead in all the ways that matter."
"And the hunters?" I asked.
"Dead, too. Mostly. Their leader got away," Rhodric said, quiet enough to betray his frustration. As soon as he noticed me staring, he buried it all beneath a shrug. "Hunting him down shouldn't take too long."
Rhys watched him with a half-clenched jaw. "That's why you left so soon after the police station, isn't it?"
"I left a rather delicate situation when I'd heard you'd been arrested," he explained. "Because I knew that certain other people would have heard, too. Turns out I was hardly needed."
"We were in deep shit when you turned up, actually," I muttered. My legs were starting to ache, so I sat myself down on the bed and let them have a rest. It was looking like I wouldn't get my nice, warm bath after all.
"You would have been fine," he said dismissively.
"Are you going to have to leave again now?" Rhys demanded with a hint of a challenge.
The look Rhodric gave his son was the same as I had seen him use with many unruly rogues over the years. It was the type of withering stare that would make normal wolves run away with their tails between their legs. "No, I think I'll stick around for a bit."
Rhys didn't drop his stare, an accusation burning in his eyes. It was true that we had been abandoned twice already, and personally, I felt like I was mostly over it, but Rhys was another story. It fell to Fion, as usual, to diffuse the tension. "Hey guys? I could really use something to eat."
"Leo can bring us something back," Rhodric said. "Do you want anything in particular? I'm guessing the cravings have already started."
Cravings...
Oh, hell. He knew. How the hell did he know? It was still very faint in her scent — almost indistinguishable, in fact, unless you knew what to look for. One of these days I was going to make him teach me all his secret ways of getting information.
Fion's eyes went wide, and she avoided his gaze, but she shook her head. "Any food is okay."
"Well, it can't be too much longer. You must be what — a month along? Whenever I got Jess pregnant, she needed fish and chips on tap."
Rhys stiffened, as he always did when his mother was mentioned. It may have also been something to do with him still being sensitive about the whole Fion situation. Although they were talking to each other now, I could almost taste the tension in the air.
"Two weeks," Fion corrected very quietly. I was sure it was only for Rhys's benefit. Rhodric wouldn't have pinpointed a timeline if he didn't already know who the father was.
Leo ducked through the entrance to the tent with four plates balanced carefully on his arms. He must have been summoned through the link. I seized my plate with a nod of thanks and began devouring the shepherd's pie at an alarming rate.
Emma and Kara were standing shyly in the entrance, not sure quite what to make of Rhodric. Apparently, he was intimidating even to Lunas. He smiled at Emma, though, as if he recognised her.
"Hello again, Emma," he said.
"Do you know everybody?" I demanded.
"Not everyone, no. Emma's a special case," he said. "She should be a rogue, really. She would be happier that way — her brother certainly was."
"Don't be so sure," she said. They were slow and strangely careful words. "I'm happy and loved where I am."
Rhodric gave her a slow nod. "Good. You know where to find us if that ever changes."
Emma smiled down at her plate. She had some of the mashed potato topping and a handful of vegetables and nothing else. I wondered idly if she was a vegetarian, because I had never met a vegetarian werewolf before. It was hard to avoid meat when half of your brain adored it.
I had been ignoring Kara mostly, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. But Rhodric was now staring at her with a troubled expression on his face. "Have we met?"
She shook her head hesitantly. "I don't think so."
His eyes narrowed, and his gaze slid from her to me and back again. He must have seen the similarities, too. He shook his head ever so slightly, as if trying to dismiss a disturbing thought. The next second he was smiling as normal, and I almost thought I had imagined it.
"So," he said. "Is there a reason why the Luna of New Dawn seems to be here against her will?"
"Her mate was being a douchebag," I said. No other explanation was necessary.
Emma gave me a flat stare. "You can't really blame him. You killed one of his oldest friends with your little poisoning trick."
"One of his friends was a feral?" I demanded. Emma nodded to confirm my words. "Well, he should have mentioned that earlier. A lot earlier. I sympathise and all — had a few feral friends myself, actually — but it doesn't change anything. You're staying with us until he does what he's supposed to."
Rhodric nodded amiably. "Then we'll make her feel a little more at home. Come inside — all of you."
He sat down on my bed again, making room for everyone else to enter the tent. I sat by him, Rhys sat by Fion, and Leo squeezed in beside me. That left the camp stools for Emma and Kara to perch on. Seven people in a two-man tent. Very cosy.
"So ... now that it's all over, what are you going to do?" Emma asked us. I suspected it was just an attempt to make conversation so the next hour would be slightly less awkward.
"I was thinking I would spend some quality time with my mate," I smiled at Leo. "As long as he's okay with that, of course..."
"I'm not okay with that." Rhys interrupted before Leo could answer. "You two will not be left alone in a room together."
"Rhys," Rhodric began sternly. "Shut up."
"She's my little sister," he complained. "How would you feel?"
Rhodric just shrugged. "I felt like it was none of my business. Especially not with Gwen. You should give it a go, boy."
"I actually meant what are you going to do about the feral prisoners, but never mind, this is also—" Emma was saying in a very small voice. She trailed off when she realised absolutely no one cared.
"Um. Hang on. Who's Gwen?" I demanded.
He shrugged at me. "My older sister. Lives on Anglesey, so you probably won't ever meet her, Skye. She's in charge there. They call her a queen, not a Luna, but it's essentially the same thing."
Maybe it wasn't so bad that everyone kept calling me the Luna of Rogues. If they had tried calling me the 'Queen of Rogues' instead, I would have probably just burst out laughing. And living in a castle like I was, I was almost asking for it.
"Why are we only just hearing about this?" Fion frowned. "If your sister is a queen, does that mean you're royalty, too?"
"Yeah, Dad," Rhys muttered. "Could've said something, couldn't you?"
"You've met her, pup. I guess you were too young to remember it."
"Why did you leave the island?" was Fion's next question. "If you were so highly ranked?"
Rhodric shrugged wearily. "I couldn't stay there ... but I'm not sorry I left."
"And Eira came with you, right?" I checked, trying to remember the history lesson Leo had given me. It would be good to get confirmation now, while Rhodric was in a sharing mode, or I would probably never know.
"Who told you about Eira?" he asked. The tone was casual enough, but the way he was staring at me told another story.
I shrugged at him, unwilling to snitch so easily, and he didn't press the issue.
"Yes. Eira came with me. She wanted out, too." Rhodric was suddenly quiet. "You've got to understand that Anglesey is very different to here. You can only shift when the moon is up. There are no soulmates, the politics are unbelievably messy, and there are other shifters with a better claim to the island than we do."
Six pairs of wide and startled eyes turned towards him in unison. It was safe to say none of us had ever heard of any other kind of shifter. Rhodric looked like he would rather talk about anything else, but he did explain himself.
"Shadowcats. If you can imagine a lynx crossed with a panther, you wouldn't be far off."
I wanted to know more about that — a lot more, in fact. But Rhys was thinking along different lines.
"If you don't have mates there, how did you find yours when you came here?"
"Ah." Rhodric sighed. "Good question. Honestly, I don't think we have soulmates assigned from the moment we're born. It's a fanciful notion, but it doesn't make a lot of sense."
"How do you mean?" Fion asked, ever the curious one.
"What happens if your mate dies before you meet them?" he asked. "Are you just alone forever? Never seen that happen before. And chances are, most of our mates would be in distant countries — not scattered around Snowdonia. I think that if you meet someone at the right age, and you happen to be compatible on a genetic level, a bond is formed. Why it doesn't happen on Anglesey ... that's anyone's guess."
I took that in a stunned silence. The more I thought about it, the more it started to sound like a reasonable explanation. Is that what happened the day I met Leo in the cave? We were compatible, so a bond was created? Would I have had an entirely different mate, had I not happened to meet him?
"You know, I've never heard of Shadowcats. They don't appear in any lore or history," Fion muttered. It was obvious she was still a little hung up on the whole new type of shifter thing.
"I thought you knew everything," I muttered.
"Yeah, well, that's not physically possible," she retorted. "I know everything I need to know."
"Except about the race of superior shifters who live only fifty miles away from us." I grinned.
"Well, I know now," Fion harrumphed, obviously not amused by my teasing.
"Kids, kids," Rhodric sighed. "No squabbling."
Rhys, who was the only 'child' here, folded his arms smugly. "You heard him, kids."
"You can shut up too, boy," Rhodric grunted.
I tried my best not to laugh. I'd missed this — our strange, mismatched little family. Things had been so quiet. Emma had sat down, looking a little bit more comfortable in the knowledge that we bickered just like any other family did. I wasn't sure about Kara's expression — my best guess was that she was wistful. I wondered if she had any family at all.
"It isn't long until my birthday," Rhys realised after a short pause. "Then we'll all be adults."
Rhodric rubbed his jaw. "Goddess. What am I going to do when you all leave home?"
Bold of him to assume we'd be leaving home. A lot of rogues moved to other raiding teams when they were grown — either to join their mates or to be with their friends — but we were hardly 'normal.' I had no plans to go anywhere.
"You can find another pair of filthy orphans and adopt them," I suggested cheekily.
"Just make sure they're orphans first," Leo advised. "I wasn't when you took me in."
"I wasn't either," Fion added dryly. "Are we sure that this adoption process isn't actually kidnapping?"
"It's not kidnapping if the child comes willingly." Rhodric shrugged. "Your parents were abusive assholes and Leo's were stuck-up pack wolves. I don't remember either of you complaining."
"I reckon that the police might have a thing or two to say about that definition," I laughed.
"Well, around here, we don't really care what the police think. Do we, Skye?" he said. I had to nod — he wasn't wrong. "If you'd rather go back to your pack, just say the word. Otherwise, you can all shut your ungrateful little mouths. Mm?"
I exchanged a look with the others.
"Mm," I said.
"That's what I thought," Rhodric replied. He stood up abruptly. "I'll find you all later. Got some people to talk to."
"When's later?" Rhys asked. "A week? Two? Think it's best I ask now — you know, in case you start deliberately blocking the link the moment you leave."
Rhodric didn't rise to it ... or even blink. But his voice was quiet. "Twenty minutes, Rhys."
Once Rhodric was gone, I made a quizzical face at Rhys. He just shrugged at me. No, he wasn't over it yet, and no, he probably wouldn't be over it tomorrow either. That was fine. They would make up properly at some point — they always did.
"Did he really take you away from your parents?" Emma asked Leo and Fion with genuine concern. It seemed to me like she'd been waiting for a chance to ask, and I resisted the urge to snort.
"Oh, yeah, but we don't give a damn," Leo assured her.
"We were only winding him up," Fion explained.
We were interrupted by a serious of yells in the camps. It sounded a lot like Jace had just returned with the feral prisoners. I stood up with a yawn and forced myself to start walking. I had been almost ready to drift off on the bed, considering it was well after midnight.
Of course, when we reached the returning fighters, we found that Rhodric had got there first. He was chatting quietly with Alpha Jace, who had a long scratch down one cheek and a nasty looking gash in his left side. Most of the fighters were injured in one way or another. The ferals hadn't come quietly.
I counted nearly fifty prisoners being led past me. That was more than I expected, at least. Now all we needed to do was find their mates. I wondered exactly what Jace and Rhodric were discussing. As far as I knew, they had never met. Was Jace even aware of who he was talking to? Seeing a blurry picture of a wanted criminal and having him come up to you to make small-talk were too very different things. From the amused half-smile on Rhodric's lips, I thought it best to assume that Jace did not know.
"Here's Emma," I said, giving the girl a slight nudge forwards. "Unharmed as promised."
Jace wrapped an arm around Emma, who started fussing over his injuries. "I got a message a few minutes ago. The first females from the packs arrived. We've already had three of them recognise their mate — and one was a rogue."
"Who was it?" I demanded.
He gave me a hard stare. "That boy who acts like your Beta."
"Ollie?" I prompted. The Alpha nodded slightly in confirmation.
A huge weight lifted off my shoulders. Ollie would be okay.
"Ollie Jenkins?" Rhodric demanded. "He's— What?"
It was my turn to nod. Evidently, he didn't know about this. And I wasn't surprised by the alarm on his face, given that Ollie had been the unofficial fourth child in our little family.
"They drugged the food," I said by way of explanation. "He's full-blown feral at the moment."
Rhodric swore filthily. Since we had arrived, Jace hadn't bothered giving him a second glance. In his exhaustion, he wasn't seeing the obvious. I could have promised him a conversation, after all, I reflected. And then it was an effort not to laugh.
"Has she marked him yet?" Rhys interjected.
"Not yet. I told them to wait for you. Skye and Leo worked it out, so I figured they should get to witness it."
"That's unusually thoughtful of you," I muttered. "But tell them to go ahead. Poor girl is probably finding it distressing enough without people staring at her while she marks her mate."
He got the frozen look of someone mind-linking. I reflected that we had saved Ember from the ferals, so that one of Ember Pack could save our friend from being a feral. One of life's few justices.
"Any chance of some directions? Please?" I requested in my polite voice. It seemed my manners were making a rare appearance.
"Left. Walk a hundred metres. Turn left again at the red tent, and you'll be close enough," Jace said. His voice was slower and more strained than usual. I didn't know if he was tired or if a little too much of his blood had leaked out, but either way, it made him less arrogant than usual. I could get used to this new, subdued version of Jace.
"You should probably get that looked at," I told him as I was leaving. Even with my back turned, I could practically feel him rolling his eyes at me.
***
When we finally did reach the prisoners, it wasn't hard to identify Ollie. Several guards were crowded around, watching him carefully. To be perfectly honest, Ollie looked like he had been dragged backwards through hell several times. And ... for some reason, he was still wrenching at his chains, trying to kill the closest guard.
A teenaged girl stood nearby, sobbing into her hands. The worst part was, I recognised her. She was from Ember — I remembered because we had borrowed her phone, and she'd been weird about it, staring at us the entire time and making faces.
"Did you mark him?" I demanded. If that hadn't worked, I didn't have the slightest clue what to do. Kill another friend?
"No," she said hysterically. "I'm not going to mark him. I won't do it. I don't want a feral for a mate."
As I opened my mouth furiously, Fion squeezed my arm and spoke instead, "The mark will cure him."
Of course, we weren't totally sure about that, but now didn't feel like the best time to point it out.
"He'll still be a rogue. Rogues are evil," she wailed. "I've got a boy I like at home. I'd rather be with him than this animal, mates or not."
Stupid, self-absorbed bitch. Suddenly, I didn't want her anywhere near Ollie. The rogue hatred had struck again, exactly where it was most inconvenient. I growled at her, and she scampered away, heading for the noisy group of flockie females.
"She'll have to do it," Rhys insisted. "I'll talk to her —"
"Won't work, kiddo," Rhodric muttered. "Some people are so busy looking for perfect that they can't see what's right in front of them."
"I'm not giving up that easy. Worth a bloody try, isn't it?"
Fion cleared her throat before the two of them could start a real argument. "There might be another way. See, I think — and this is just a theory — it doesn't have a damn thing to do with mates. To mark someone, you release a special chemical into your saliva. That's what stops the wound from healing properly, and a trace remains in your blood afterwards."
"Okay..." I began. I should have been paying more attention, but all I wanted to know was whether Ollie would be okay, and how the hell we were supposed to fix him without his mate.
Excitement crept into her voice. "Now, the drug which turns you feral ... I've been studying it, and it's chemically similar, with some properties inversed. My theory? One connects your wolf with your human, the other separates them. Understand? Ferals aren't crazy because their human half is dead. They're crazy because there are suddenly two entirely separate minds in the same body. So they try to destroy each other. And the wolf wins. The wolf always wins."
I blinked. Most of Fion's logic went straight over my head, but the last part stuck in my brain. Ferals went crazy for a while after turning: it was why I'd had to kill Owen. Could that be because their wolf and human were at each other's throats? Rhodric was nodding along: he certainly thought so.
"So..." I took a long look at Ollie, thrashing like a caged animal. "He's not dead yet? They're still fighting?"
"If I'm right, yes. We've got a few days to put a mark on him." Fion said and took a deep breath. One hand slipped to her swollen stomach. "And if his mate won't do it, I will."
My jaw dropped open. Rhys looked like someone had punched him. Only Rhodric nodded at Fion. "Brave girl."
It was my turn to squeeze her arm. "Fion, are you sure?"
I had absolutely no idea what the mark would do between two people without romantic feelings.
"My mate's dead — and good riddance. You can't do it. Rhys certainly can't do it. He should be able to ignore the mark, so it's not like I'm signing up for anything ... else."
Rhys looked so torn. I could see the emotions blurring in his eyes. Hope that Ollie might be okay. Hurt that Fion was marking another male. Guilt for feeling hurt. And — the tiniest drop of suspicion, because his gaze moved very slowly from the slight swell of Fion's stomach to Ollie and back again.
"No," I told him through the link. "Not him."
He raised his eyebrows. "You know, then?"
Dangerous territory, that. I looked away very quickly, refusing an answer of any kind. Rhys didn't push, but he ran a hand through his tousled hair, trying to smooth it. Finally, he said aloud, "We'd better hold him down."
No way any of us would let Fion near a feral lightly — whoever that feral may be. She was starting to smell of the pregnancy now, and it sent my wolf into permanent overdrive.
We spent a minute arguing with Jace's guards. They didn't want to release him, repeating something about orders over and over. Before we could get to punches, Rhodric stepped in, said about five words, and succeeded where we'd failed. I didn't reckon the guards had any idea who he was, so they must've mistaken him for an Alpha. It wouldn't be the first time.
Without the chains, Ollie tried to shift. We probably should have seen that coming, but instead the situation disintegrated into a struggle to get him onto the floor and pin him down. Rhys and Leo took a shoulder each, I sat on his legs, and Rhodric got an arm around his throat. In the span of a few seconds, he could thrash and growl all he wanted, but he couldn't shift without dislocating all of his limbs, and he knew it.
But of course, being feral and unable to understand self-preservation, Ollie tried to shift anyway. When I felt a bone pop under my hand, I leaned over, drew my knife and clouted him with the hilt — all without thinking much. Ollie sagged as he sank into the realm of blissful subconscious.
"Should've done that in the first place," I muttered under my breath.
Nobody bothered to agree. The boys hauled him to his knees and held him there. Seconds later, Rhodric covered Ollie's head with a jacket — unconscious or not, it wasn't a risk worth taking — and beckoned Fion.
"Quickly, kiddo," Dad said. It was hard to judge how long we had, of course. Less than a minute, probably. I hadn't hit him that hard.
The first thing she did was remove the jacket. The four of us twitched, but Ollie didn't stir. Fion just looked at him for a moment, scanning his gaunt, pale face and the mess of mud-brown hair. His shirt was soaked with blood. His or somebody else's — it was better not to know.
Things were so much more peaceful now that he was out cold. Sure, we could still hear plenty of growling from the other ferals, but those sounds didn't drive knives through my heart.
She pressed a swift kiss to his forehead and brushed the hair from his eyes.
"This had better work," she murmured.
It was awkward to watch because marking was such an inherently private thing. When Fion pulled his shirt out of the way, I fixed my eyes on the sky above my head. By the time I next looked, there was blood on his shoulder, and Fion was retreating to stand beside me, looking more than a little uncomfortable. She rubbed at her arm and chewed the inside of her cheek. I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.
It was a waiting game after that. Ollie came around, writhed some more, and they had to put him on the ground to keep hold of him. I doubted he could breathe properly with two knees on his back, but it was better than him escaping and murdering someone.
While we watched on, he stopped writhing. He went dead still. And then, after a minute or two, when I'd started to give up hope, he started moving again. It was just twitches at first, but I felt my heart skip a beat when he lifted his head from the earth and peered at us all blearily.
"Mm," he breathed. "Why am I on the floor? Rhys? Ow?"
Rhys let go of him instantly. Rhodric followed his example a moment later. And then the two of them stood back and watched him carefully. Yes, he was talking, but for all we knew, we'd just fast-tracked the process of becoming a feral. I wanted to see him behaving normally.
"You alright, Ol?" Rhys asked.
Ollie made an indistinct humming sound.
"They turned you," I told him warily, trying to gauge his response. There was no sign of that feral rage — that much was clear.
"Ooh. They ... what?" Ollie mumbled. He was trying and failing to sit up and seemed to be suffering from a distinct lack of coordination, but hearing that familiar voice was nothing short of heart-rending.
"They turned you feral. The meal was drugged. We just turned you back. So I'm hoping you're entirely back to normal now, but if I'm being honest, we don't how well this works."
He didn't make any effort to reply to me. He was still fumbling around, trying to get his arms underneath himself. Rhys hauled him up in a sitting position and held him there, letting him lean against his legs.
Ollie was wearing a mindless smile now. "I thought my meatballs smelt funny."
"How are you feeling?" Rhys asked him, grinning like mad. He had one arm slung over Ollie's shoulder.
"A lot better than before, that's for sure," Ollie giggled. "Hey, that rhymed!"
"Right..." I stretched out the word. "Anyway, if Ollie's well enough to travel, we really should be getting home. I've manged to piss off two Alphas in the last hour and although Jace seems to have forgiven me, Jaden is probably still in the rip-out-your-guts phase."
"Did you say home?" Ollie's words were slurred. "Home, foam, bone... I'm a poet and I know it."
"Goddess," I muttered. "Someone put him in the car. He needs to sleep this off."