Running with Rogues

CHAPTER 4 - FIRESTORM

Hello Iceland and South Africa! I still think it's really awesome that I can hit some keys and people thousands of miles away can see some black and white lines and ... just ... understand what I was thinking. The human race sucks ass, but we did manage to make that possible, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ALSO I fell down some stairs and landed on my laptop, so that's out of commission for a few weeks :( but I saw that LOR had reached 300k reads (!!! nice works my peeps !!!) and I've spent most of today wrangling with my ancient prehistoric laptop to finish this chapter for y'all to say thank you!

And seconds later, the door rattled in its hinges. One of them must have kicked it. They weren't the brightest of souls, so it took them a full minute of kicking and swearing before they realised the front door wasn't a viable option. A muttered conversation followed, and I could hear just enough to know that the guy in charge had dispatched five men to check the back door and another five to check the windows.

"They're here," I shouted to no one in particular. We had to maintain the illusion that Lily and Devin were still in the house, after all. They would only make it to the border if nobody was looking for them, and that depended entirely on how dramatic we could be about the situation. After all, why would they bother sniffing around for a trail when they had a pair of real live rogues right here?

The fighters outside must have heard me — it went very quiet for a moment. They must have been mind-linking amongst themselves. Soon, one of them shouted in a deep, rumbling voice which could have easily belonged to an Alpha, "Surrender and we'll let you live."

Liar. No rogue caught by Ember had lived to tell the tale for ten years or more. Alpha Jackson might have been approaching his sixties, but he hadn't gotten the hang of mercy yet.

"And what if I don't want to live?" I shouted back. "Huh? Do you cater for that?"

Silence fell outside.

"We... Sure ... we can kill you, I guess. Whatever you like. Just open this door and show us your hands."

"You leave my hands out of this, you pervert," I spat. "It's a fungal infection, I'll have you know, and my GP said it happens all the time."

The Alpha went strangely quiet for a second time. I would've loved to see the look on his face — to be honest, I would've risked getting caught for even the briefest of glimpses.

"Stop teasing them, Eva," Nia scolded as she came back with a dozen Molotov cocktails. She paused and frowned at the door, noticing maybe that no one was trying to kick it in anymore. "Scratch that. Do whatever the hell you like as long as you keep them talking. Buy as much time as you can, then get your ass upstairs."

The second part of that came through the mind-link — the packling was listening. 'Do whatever the hell you like' was an order I didn't get very often, because I tended to interpret it to the absolute extremes, so I couldn't help getting a little bit excited as Nia climbed the stairs and lost her ability to supervise me.

"This is your last chance," the Alpha said. "Let us in."

"I don't see why I should," I scoffed. "I've lived in this house for twenty-five years, and I don't remember inviting you here."

"What the hell are you—" he began, only to trail off into Sudden Doubt.

"Is this the right house? Are we at the right house?" someone demanded quietly.

That was followed with a chorus of muttering which ended with, "I dunno, dude. Can you see the house number anywhere? It's supposed to be fourteen."

"I can't see shit. We passed thirteen on the way, though. Maybe this is twelve?"

"No, this is definitely the right place. The Burrows live here — I've been before."