Running with Rogues

CHAPTER 17 - WELCOME

Little public service announcement real quick. I'm going lambing for a fortnight (!!!) and since there will be no wifi and no time to do anything except eat, work + sleep, I've split this super long chapter into two halves to give you some sustenance in the gap.

Also, now that 'Wattpad Paid' is being rolled out properly, I feel the need to make a little disclaimer here. My books will always be free. Always. That is a promise. I'm not down with the idea of a paywall on this site, so we can all be poor together, as far as I'm concerned.

"Yeah, it wasn't difficult. We were in and out in twenty minutes tops. We made some noises, got him outside and away from his mam, and what do you know? Caught ourselves an Alpha," Nia was saying. "The chloroform worked a treat, but he did manage to clock me one before he went down."

Yes, I could see that. Nia had a fist-sized bruise beneath her left eye, and the skin over her cheekbone had split. She was still smiling, though. We all were. Just for added effect, she opened the back door of the car to show us Hayden Lloyd. He was lying across the back seat - unconscious, hooded and handcuffed. Beneath the hood, he was still being dosed with chloroform to keep him quiet until we could get out of mind-linking range.

"Good work," Mam said. "Both of you, that is. I don't think we can keep him down much longer without doing some damage, so you're going to the rendezvous. We'll join when we've made sure we're not being followed."

We watched them load into the car, and we watched them drive off. I was drowning in adrenaline by then. Heart racing, stomach free-falling and everything tingling ... it was the raiding high that we were forever chasing - the reward for gambling with your life and winning.

"One, two, three," Mam said next, pointing at Liam, Bryn and me. "Go and help Rhodri. I want you all back here within twenty minutes."

We left our clothes in neat piles and shifted. I was the size of a large husky, and that was being generous, but Liam's wolf was bloody massive. His pelt was the ashy silver of the old families, as opposed to Bryn's classic Llewellyn timber patterning. My own fur was patchy charcoal, much to my disgust. It wasn't my mother's inky black, and it wasn't my father's grey, but rather somewhere in between.

Liam came over to press his body against mine and nip at my ears. He was above me in the pecking order, but he didn't enforce it, so I felt perfectly safe to twist around and jump on him. I made sure he saw it coming, of course. It wasn't ever a good idea to surprise Liam. He threw me off him, and the two of us wrestled lazily until Bryn came and sat on us.

"Sometime today, please, cubs," Mam sighed.

We untangled ourselves with no small effort. I set off at a dead sprint to make up for the time we'd wasted, and the boys inevitably fell behind. Albeit not for a lack of trying. By the time we'd gone half a mile, they were both panting and sweaty.

Rhodri had been sent to play rear-guard before we'd even left the tracks, since he was practically a ghost when his scent was off. It was hard enough for us to find him - we had to follow the link and still nearly missed him, sprawled on his belly in a patch of ferns. He hadn't bothered shifting.

I lodged my muzzle in the place where his neck joined his shoulder and sneezed on him. Without even looking at me, he caught a handful of my scruff and pulled me over. I ended up lying on my side, grinning like an idiot. My tail beat softly against the ground.

"We've got a little shadow," Rhodri told us. A glance over his shoulder showed him Liam and his little brother waiting at a slightly more respectful distance. "Want to guess who?"

"Nah, nah. Don't ruin the surprise," Bryn said into an open link. "Can we handle them?"

"There isn't a person on this earth the four of us couldn't handle," I scoffed. I had rolled onto my belly to look a little more dignified. And it was probably true. Two Llewellyns, an Alpha's son and ... me. There was a reason Mam had sent all of us, and I was pretty sure it was in case Jace himself had decided to track us.