Running with Rogues

CHAPTER 30 - TO WORK

As we were walking to the canteen, I caught a glimpse of a vast expanse of blue water through one of the windows. I supposed I'd known there must be a lake here somewhere, but I hadn't really noticed that it was missing until now. While Lin ploughed on, I stopped to stare.

"It's ... massive," I whispered, knowing Liam was behind me. And it was. Big enough that I couldn't properly see the far side. Big enough that there were sailboats racing across. Maybe I could go swimming one of these days — it was certainly warm enough.

"Mm," he said. There were a lot of people filling towards the canteen, but none of them paid us any heed. We were tucked into the window alcove. All the same, he lowered his voice a little further. "I never thought I'd see it again."

"Is it weird?" I asked. "Being back, I mean..."

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I was berating myself. Of course it was weird for him. How could it not be? He didn't seem to think it was a silly question, though. He just shrugged at me. "I guess. Everything seems smaller than it did before."

"That's because you've got bigger," I laughed.

He thought it over for a moment. "That could be it, yeah."

Lin had come back to find us. She was standing in the middle of the traffic now, arms folded and eyebrows raised. "Come on, guys. Geez. You're going to get lost if you keep wandering off."

I doubted that. Liam had grown up here, and it couldn't have changed that much in the last seven years. On the way, he'd been making the turns long before our guide. I'd needed to nudge him and remind him to play ignorant more than once. We fell in behind her with murmured apologies.

The canteen was noisy. The wave of sound hit me as I walked through the door and clung to me as we followed Lin to an empty table. The food had been laid out in advance to avoid the hierarchal nightmare of queueing, which I was grateful for. I had no idea where I stood with these catty females.

I sat beside Liam, of course, with Lin on my other side. There was bread and cheeses and things like that. The bowls of salad seemed to outnumber the cakes by far. I loaded the ingredients for a sandwich onto my plate and set to work. It was only when I was about to take a bite that Lin caught my wrist.

No one else on the table had touched the food. In fact, now that I was looking properly, I realised that no one in the entire room had touched their food. Two hundred and fifty people, and they were all just sitting there. Waiting. Our closest neighbours were staring at me disdainfully.

"We have to wait for the Alpha and Luna," Lin explained gently.

For Goddess' sake. From what Felix had said, I doubted they'd be coming down for lunch. I doubted Felix would be, either. We'd be waiting a very long time.

Liam had bread on his plate, too. He knew the rules, I reckoned, so he'd probably just taken it to disguise my ignorance on the subject. For all the denizens of Silver Lake knew, our last pack hadn't followed this bullshit custom. He was grinning at me in a rueful, apologetic kind of way. I was glad he hadn't tried to stop me — that would have been even more suspicious.

"Oh," I murmured. "Our bad."

Lin shrugged at me. "It's cool. You're still learning. Just be ready to grovel if any of the gods-made-flesh see your plate."

One of the older women at the table leaned towards us, her forehead creasing as she let out a quiet snarl.

"Mao Lin," she said sharply. "You watch your tone."

Lin ducked her head and nodded meekly. The contrite act fell apart as soon as the woman looked away. Soon, she was biting her lip to hide a smile and catching my eye in a way that made it difficult not to start sniggering.