I'm not late. You're early. Yeah. For sure.
I heard the boat before I saw it. The soft crash of churning water and an engine gurgling reached us when the moon was at its crest. Then, by the pale starlight, a shadow detached itself from the empty ocean.
The boat was running at considerable speed, even if not in a straight line. It cut through waves rather than ran with them, which I put down to inexperience, and by the grimace on Ben's face, so did he. Still, what could we expect from someone who had never seen the ocean before today? The boat creaked to a halt at the bay's mouth. At least they had the sense not to brave the rocks in this kind of current.
I saw a figure plunge over the side and tread water. Whoever it was seemed to melt into the shadow of the hull, but there was no mistaking when two smaller figures were handed down to the swimmer, who then made their way towards us, making long, lazy strokes.
With my head still resting on Kai, I felt all the tension leave his muscles as he let out a relieved breath. That must be Leah and Logan. And their rescuer didn't seem in a hurry — quite the opposite, actually. What worried me more was the stillness on the boat, the lack of any other swimmers. My hand went automatically to my blade as I watched the ferry bob freely on the waves. Too calm, too quiet. Something was wrong.
Kai stood when they got closer. Once the swimmer began wading, it was blaringly obvious that Rhys — his height distinguished him — was the one holding Kai's siblings, one in each arm, their heads resting on his shoulder. Peaceful, almost unbelievably peaceful. I remembered them as excitable and shy of strangers, but apparently, that didn't apply to their rogue cousin.
Rhys Llewellyn reached the surf and, dripping wet and sand-caked, emerged onto our beach. Kai was waiting for him and took Leah straight away. She was getting too big to be carried, but that was forgivable considering the trauma of being shaken out of bed to run away in the dead of night.
Warily, I approached the gathering. They were talking in undertones; I caught words 'followed' and 'Rochesters' before Kai and Rhys noticed my presence. The former offered a genuine smile and the latter a teasing one.
"We played a game, Kai," Logan announced, breaking the silence. "A new game!"
"Oh yeah?" he asked.
"Yeah! Like hide and seek, except moving."
Leah kept her mouth shut, watching the conversation with tired eyes. She had been the tamer of the pair, I remembered, but more sure of herself when she did want to talk. If she had any inkling what was going on, she didn't betray it.
Rhys grinned at the kids. "And who won?"
"I did!" Logan shouted. "Dad lost and I won."
"Dad didn't know he was playing," Leah said very, very quietly. I exchanged a worried look with Kai. If she hadn't wanted to be rescued from her father — even though she might not realise why it was necessary — had we done the right thing?
"That's the point, little one. Cheating's okay if you get away with it." Rhys ruffled up her hair, earning a grudging smile. He was more at ease than I'd ever be with children. They might as well be another species.
Kai's snorted. "Is that what they teach you at rogue school?"
"Don't be ridiculous. We don't go to school."
I might have had a thing or two to say about that, but just then a bright light winked into existence at the edge of my vision. It was a search beam, floating atop the ocean, obviously attached to a boat.
"That's our cue," Rhys said, a touch of sadness to his voice. Then several things happened all at once. First, he cupped his hands to his mouth and imitated a seagull's call, eerily lifelike. The docked boat began to reverse into open sea, spitting out water with every chug; and finally, I felt a questioning nudge at my mind and opened myself to a connection that was shared with both cousins.
"Care to explain?" Kai asked.
The rogue trudged up the beach, every so often casting a wistful glance at his departing friends, and beckoned for us to follow. "Not really. But I guess I'll have to — soon as we're inside and the fire's out."
As if in answer, the glow in the cave's entrance dimmed. I remembered, then, that Nate could probably hear every mental word we said. And thinking about it, so could—
We were just outside the cave when we heard the scream. It was Becky's voice, Becky's fear in that piercing sound.
"No," I found myself whispering. "No, no, no."
There was a pair of narrow, slanted green eyes in the gloom. The eyes of an animal, entirely lacking human presence. Crazy Jeff's Shadowcat form — and it was just watching us, still as stone.
"Don't shift, don't do anything heroic. Just stay out of my way," Rhys whispered. Slowly, he put Logan in my arms — the boy buried his head in my uniform — and took a knife from my harness. I felt naked, vulnerable, without the blade, but I daren't complain.
Kai opened his mouth to argue, but he was holding his little sister and her safety came first. He moved right with me when his cousin gestured. We carefully retreated towards the cliff. It felt wrong, to watch and do nothing. But we were out of our depth — and we knew it.
Rhys kept the knife loose in his left hand, the hilt up and blade pointed at the sand. His stance slacked in a way that invited an attack, but Jeff simply lifted a lip and snarled at him — a warning, not a threat.
Neither of them showed any intention of hurting the other, and I began to wonder whether there was something off about the whole thing.
Rhys didn't reciprocate, instead making a tiny downwards motion with his right hand. Then several things happened all at once. Jeff hit the ground, a dark shape leapt through the air he had occupied seconds before and tumbled into Rhys. Finally, I realised what I should have long before. There had been a second pair of eyes, right behind Jeff, and they belonged to Nate. He had been waiting to pounce, waiting for Jeff to get distracted.
It all went horribly wrong.
Rhys had not forgotten Nate's threats regarding his grandfather. He flipped the knife in a heartbeat and buried it deep in Nate's shoulder. And that would have been fine — I'd seen him hurt worse — had the old Shadowcat not seized him while he was reeling and shaken him like a kitten.
My fear for him woke my instincts to do something, anything. The floodgates had opened, unleashing pure, unadulterated chaos onto the beach just when we could least cope with it.
Kai put Leah down, obviously intending to join the fray as a peacemaker. But before he could take a step, I thrust Logan towards him and moved in his place. This was my job. Protecting Kai, even from his family. There was no plan, no intentions beyond stopping the fight before someone died, but my feet carried me into Nate's path.
Whilst I had been distracted, Rhys had shifted. He was trying, with increasing desperation, to keep Jeff in check while defending him from Nate. A living shield between two shifters who were doing their damn best to kill each other. It was futile, it was relentless and, worse of all, it was a death sentence.
So, of course, I decided to join him.
"Nathan, stop. We need him alive," Kai commanded. His tone left no doubt that it was an order, and obedience was not only expected but required. And he did an exceptional — but not flawless — job of hiding the raw panic in his voice.
Nate paused at the order, which gave Jeff all the opening he needed to throw him sideways. My heart in my mouth, I watched Nate land on his wounded shoulder and begin to get up, too slowly, and all the while Jeff was rushing to finish the kill.
Stupidly, I made a run at the old Shadowcat. He could — and probably would — have killed me, if Rhys hadn't caught me by the scruff of my neck and thrown me sideways. I landed heavily on my side, the water lapping at my sticky pelt. I was coated in blood and sand.
I ignored every scream of complaint in my body and looked at the rogue standing over me, then fixed my eyes on the floor to dodge a challenge. Still, he growled once, a clear command to stay down. The human half of me dismissed it, but the animal couldn't help obeying. Inevitably, I lost control of my own body. My tail thumped against the ground, and my ears flattened against my skull.
By all rights, that was a submission. Rhys should have left me alone and returned to the fight; the two shifters were ripping chunks out of each other. But instead he darted forwards and closed his teeth around the pelt on my flank. Despite my best efforts, a pained yelp escaped me. If it weren't for the rueful apology in his eyes, I might have been offended. Angry, even.
But his idea worked. Nate wheeled towards us, leaving Jeff alone at last. His nose nudged mine as he checked for serious wounds. The bite wasn't serious, not even close, but it sure stung. I submitted to his examination with a minimum of fuss: my wolf had rolled onto her belly, but she didn't dare move. That growl was still echoing in my ears.
"I'm fine," I promised, linking to no one in particular. Nate's green eyes narrowed at the words, part suspicion, part relief. "You're hurt worse."
To prove my point, I finally wrenched control back from my wolf and stood up shakily. My left hind leg didn't want to take any weight, and it felt oddly warm, blood-soaked as it was. Nate followed a pace behind when I wobbled towards the sea. Anything to distract him from Jeff.
It wasn't difficult to submerge my body in the water. The difficult part was staying there despite the pain which sung from every puncture in my skin. The salt would cleanse it — good, because teeth and claws were rarely hygienic.
Nate joined me in the sea without flinching — an admirable feat, considering how many injuries peppered his dark coat. It made me a little sick to see that my knife was stuck in Nate's shoulder, probably having found bone.
Rhys had managed to calm Jeff in his absence. The old man, who had shifted back, was curled in a ball, and his grandson was in the process of fetching his clothes for him. I looked for Kai, but he was nowhere to be seen, so I guessed he had gone into the cave to check on the patrol.
The beam of light swept over the beach again, frighteningly close. Nate and I flattened against the sand, hoping the waves would hide us. Then it was a mad dash to the shelter of the cave. While we had been trying to kill each other, the hostile boat had crept dangerously close. Now, it bobbed in the bay's entrance.
"Get inside," Kai hissed. He stood silhouetted against darkness in the cave entrance, and he let all of us pass before following. I found myself crouched in the stone tunnel, blood dripping into a steady puddle at my paws. My wolf's eyes had night vision far beyond my own, so it wasn't difficult to pick out the shapes of the patrol at the back wall. Ben was standing beside a motionless Alex, while Becky sat doubled over with one arm stuffed into her jacket. None of them looked healthy.
Panic overrode any semblance of modesty: I shifted back in a heartbeat and rushed towards them. Kai threw me a handful of clothes, and even in the low light it was impossible to miss the flush across his cheeks. I checked myself just long enough to pull on an oversized shirt, then demanded of Ben, "What's wrong?"
"It's okay," he muttered, "it's okay. He's scratched up, but it'll heal in a minute. Becky..."
Behind us, there were indistinct sounds of Nate and Rhys shifting and dressing and arguing hatefully about the tooth marks on my flank, but that seemed so insignificant. My eyes traced the bloodied rents in Alex's shirt and my heart stuttered. I'd known that boy for years, and I'd never once seen him hurt or even anything less than ecstatic.
"I'm fine," Becky insisted in little more than a whisper. There was an odd note to those words, like she was lost and didn't fully understand the situation. Shock, probably. I pried her hand away from her chest, expecting a set of puncture marks, but—
The blood was spilling from the hand itself. Jeff had obviously snapped and caught her fingers in the bargain. The pinkie was missing, and half of the ring finger. No, I realised, not missing, just separated. She was clutching her severed fingers in her uninjured hand.
"Now, that's not so bad," Rhys observed cheerfully, startling me. He was stood at my shoulder, his head tilted to one side, a feline habit Kai often indulged. Blood was already soaking his clothes from assorted Nate-related injuries, but he didn't deign to notice. "The aim is to keep your delicate parts away from people's teeth, but it's cool — you'll get the hang of it eventually."
"Before or after I run out of delicate parts?" she hissed.
The rogue just snorted derisively. I wasn't sure he'd have cared if his own hand was bitten off, let alone hers. "No need to be dramatic. I can reattach them before your healing kicks in — but once that wound closes, it's too late."
"What are you waiting for, then?" I demanded uncharacteristically. With his hands compressing my other bleeding friend's injuries, Ben nodded his agreement.
He let himself grin. "That boat is turning into the bay as we speak. It's her choice, really. We can fix her hand or we can survive the night."
"Leave me be," Becky ordered through gritted teeth. "I'd rather live without my fingers than die with them."
"I was hoping you'd say that. Sit tight — it'll be five minutes, I swear. Oh, and let it bleed," he advised, the grin now a fixed feature. I wondered if it was genuine or a reassurance tactic. "Only way to keep it open."
"She's pale already — the blood loss..." Kai murmured, having also come to see what the fuss was about. He had Nate with him, half-dressed because, I assumed, it was difficult to put on a shirt without ripping his wounds open any further. It was an effort to keep my eyes on the knife hilt rather than the exposed skin.
"I know what I'm doing," Rhys retorted cheerfully. And, thinking of the many scars decorating his pelt, I believed him. "We'll need all the hands we can get, so you'd better retrieve your knife, Sav."
From Nate's shoulder, he meant. I stammered, "I don't have a clue how to do that without —"
Before I could finish, the rogue turned and, after shoving Nate against the wall of the cave, tugged the protruding hilt. The knife slid free with a spray of blood, and Nate hissed. The rogue tossed and caught it, still grinning, and said, "Never mind — I got it. Let's go."
We made an odd procession. Everyone (except the children and Kai, to his dismay and my satisfaction) was bleeding from assorted injuries. Nate worst of all, not that he seemed to care. We were all islanders except Rhys, but somehow, he had ended up in the lead.
I helped Becky shuffle along. The four boys carried Alex between them — he was still out cold. The kids trailed behind, silent as the grave and grim-faced. We went straight to the cliff and began to scale it, which had been difficult in broad daylight, let alone now.
As we climbed, we started talking in low voices. There was certainly plenty to talk about. And, to my relief, Jeff was nowhere to be seen. He seemed to be trusted to look after himself.
"What's the plan?" Kai asked, although he should have been the one providing the answer.
Rhys stopped in his tracks long enough to cuff his cousin playfully — because apparently that took priority over our current mess. "Don't ask stupid questions. There's never a plan. We just make it up as we go along."
"So make up a way to hide from the boats."
"I won't hide from anyone," the rogue iterated. "I'll stay with Jeff — he won't move anyway. We can give you enough time to get away."
"Great idea," Nate agreed sharply. I didn't doubt it would suit his interests to see them both dead.
Kai shook his head then, fugitively putting his foot down. "No, we need Rhys alive. More than we need you, Nate, and you'd do well to remember that."
There was a terrible moment of icy silence as Nate and Kai stared at each other, allies turned rivals in a split second. Rhys watched without bothering to hide his grin until the meaning of the words hit home.
Then, "Why?" they demanded in unison.
Instead of a direct answer, we got another question. "How old are you?"
"Older than you, pup," Rhys shot back.
"Just ... tell me, please"
"Eighteen."
"Eighteen," Kai repeated slowly to make sure we noted it. "And you're my maternal cousin. An adult blood relative — the last one breathing, as far as I know. The regency is yours if you want it."
Nate swore furiously and turned away, but there wasn't anything he could do. The decision was made. It was the last card Kai could possibly play, the last hope of getting a regent other than Isaiah Silveryn, although... Would this fulfil the deal? Rhodric hadn't appeared, but his son had. Did that count?
"I don't," Rhys said, his voice sharp now. "But you can all shut up now, because the boat has landed."
Sudden dizziness overtook me. I pressed a hand to my side and felt the warm stickiness. But my skin was itching, too, which meant that the tooth marks should heal soon. Hopefully before I passed out. Becky chose that exact moment to slump against me, utterly spent. Her eyes were still open, but there were unseeing. I spent a frantic moment trying to support her weight and keep hold of the cliff while Ben came to help. The two of us dragged her between us.
We walked two miles into the forest before Becky finally lost consciousness, and at that point we insisted on stopping to fix her hand, if it was even possible anymore. Neither Kai or Rhys endorsed the idea, but they didn't argue either.
As we settled in a thicket, a yowl cut through the night. It must have been Jeff. Nate was the only other Shadowcat in the area, and he was collecting firewood. No one, not even Rhys, seemed overly worried about the yowl. Jeff was bound to win any sort of fight, clearly.
At first, like the others, I tried to be useful. But we couldn't see a damn thing, and we stumbled over every root and fern. Eventually, Nate got tired of catching my harness every other minute and sat me down against an oak tree. He joined me once a tiny fire smouldered in the thicket's heart.
The rest of the patrol formed a rough circle to include us. Only Rhys stayed on his feet. He had his back to us and appeared to be doing something to Becky's severed fingers with a hot knife. I couldn't see the details, and I was sure I didn't want to.
"How can you see anything?" Becky asked wearily. I was so glad to hear her conscious and lucid that I forgot to be afraid for a moment.
"I can't," he laughed. "You've got five senses — don't rely on one."
Nate shrugged his agreement; I felt his shoulders heave. On impulse, I leant my head against the rippling muscles and felt him tense. Then relax. It went in a cycle: his shoulder would go taut and slack. It almost funny, to know he was struggling with control.
"Sav," Nate murmured. "I'm not a pillow."
A smile tugged at my lips. "Could've fooled me."
The next few minutes aren't ones I like to recall. Rhys let Becky pick two people to hold her down — and joy, she chose me and Kai. I had to keep my weight on her legs while she writhed and screamed and shook. But, by the end of the whole horrible ordeal, she had her fingers splinted into place.
"They won't ever be the same," Rhys warned her afterwards, "but they're better than stumps."
Her healing took effect while we walked further into the woods. Nate's blood trail began to thin after a mile, and Alex woke up with his gashes scabbed over, even feeling well enough to walk unaided. And I was plagued by an unbearable itching as every wound sealed itself, which was a good sign, however uncomfortable it was.
There hadn't been any explicit decision about our destination. But Nate appeared to be leading, so the Shadowcat camp was a safe assumption. When Leah and Logan tired, they slept in the arms of anyone who could find the energy to carry them. When I tired, I just walked slower and slower.
The sun peeked over the horizon in the early hours of the morning. Light began to infiltrate the canopy, beam by beam, and I no longer had to fumble for every step. The summery bloom was fully underway, the forest was as much flowers as leaves, and we began to enjoy ourselves and revel in the tentative dawn warmth.
That is, until Kai asked, "I've waited long enough. What happened on Holyhead?"
Rhys chewed the inside of his cheek. "You mean why did Skye leave?"
"Yeah."
The rogue nodded absent-mindedly. He slowed his pace to match Kai's so they didn't have to raise their voices. It occurred to me that Nate, at the front, might have difficulty hearing (which was probably deliberate) but I was in perfect range to hear Rhys say, "We overheard some things while we were waiting for a shift change. Your stepdad called himself regent yesterday, claimed that Leah was the rightful heir, etcetera etcetera."
"Took him long enough," Kai muttered.
"Ah, that's the best part. He was busy finding evidence that you're conspiring with mainlanders to invade the island. There was also something about murdering a guy in Evarlin, so you're now a wanted criminal — congratulations, by the way."
My gut twisted. Marcus Rochester. They obviously knew he was dead, but I hadn't expected them to blame it on Kai. Why wouldn't they? I could have kicked myself. My vengeance missions had only served to fuel the pretender's campaign.
Kai didn't blink at the 'murder' part because, as I now realised, he'd known all along where the fingers would be pointed. He was more concerned about the 'conspiring' part. "He knows you're here? How?"
"Nah, nah, not me. The packs — isn't that perfect? I laughed my ass off."
There was a minute of silence while we tried and failed to understand that. "You're going to have to explain."
"Well, there's a squad of Alphas barricading your bridges. They must've followed us here from Corwen — don't ask me how," Rhys began.
"A squad of Alphas chased you here?" Kai interrupted incredulously. "What the hell did you do?"
"That's just it! Nothing!"
Kai gave his cousin a very flat look.
And Rhys started grinning. "One prison break. Maybe. I'm not admitting to shit. But that's what they think we did, and they aren't waiting around for proof. So Skye and the others are going home to raise hell, distract them, whatever. With any luck — and if they do it right — no one will notice I'm missing."
"So you'll stay?" In that one short question, Kai betrayed every drop of the uncertainty and insecurity that he normally hid so well. It was a request, a plea. Because if he didn't find a regent, the battle was lost before it was begun. And it was about to begin.
They shared a conversation-look, and I felt like I was invading their privacy for the first time. Then, "I'll stay to see your stepdad dead, but after that ... no promises. I have a mate waiting for me at home."
We were close to the Shadowcat camp by then. I could tell because there were tangled footprint trails in every patch of mud and a stench which I had come to associate with damp cat. They were further south than I would have guessed: almost on Evarlin's doorstep. If that didn't shout war, I didn't know what did.
Nate held his head higher and higher with every step. He was on friendly ground.
"Where's the other werecat?" Rhys demanded suddenly. Odd — I hadn't even noticed Niamh was missing amongst all the chaos. There was a long pause as everyone guessed exactly where she'd gone. To her boss, Isaiah Silveryn, of course, to spin tales about the former king and his grandson. "You didn't... Shit, really?"
Nate let his shoulder rise and fall with a smattering of indifference. What did it matter to him? I wondered with a sudden coldness if he had been the one to send Niamh home or if he'd just covered for her.
"Whose side are you on, Nate?" I didn't mean to speak out loud, but there was no way to take the question back.
His eyes fixed on me, flashing hurt for an instant before he buried it. "I wish that there weren't any sides, for all it matters. Let's just go and see my father and get it over with."
"No," Kai decided, and something in his tone didn't brook any argument. "I've had enough of running around after other people. He'll come to us, right here. Then we're going to Evarlin."
A King's voice. A King's demand.
Maybe these last few days hadn't broken Kaeden after all.
"Evarlin? The fortress filled with guards who have orders to kill you?"
I glimpsed a ghost smile on Kai's lips. His shoulders rose and fell. "Yeah, that's the one."