Running with Rogues

CHAPTER 62 - ALL IN ORDER

Up above is a beautiful drawing of Nia Llewellyn. I think it's probably got to be my favourite one yet! Direct all of your praise, as usual, at LittleLoneWriterGirl.

I was too hot. It was the first thing I noticed when my eyes cracked open the next morning. But any instinct to throw off my covers was halted in its track by the realisation that I wasn't wearing any clothes.

The night before came flooding back then - all at once and without much warning. Liam was sprawled out beside me. Also stirring, by the looks of it. And beyond him, the fire still glowed. It had been reduced to a few faint embers, but the fact that it wasn't just a pile of ashes told me that Liam had been awake a lot in the night. It also explained why I was so hot.

I pulled the duvet around myself and winced. I could feel Liam's eyes on me now, and they were wary. He was expecting me to run away. The thought stung a little, because I hadn't really been thinking about this part last night. If it had occurred to me that I would hurt him all over again, I'd probably have exerted some self-control before it had got very far.

I wasn't going to run away. Not today. Last time had been a panic - a basal, primitive panic from the second I'd realised how badly I'd screwed up. Today ... I didn't know.

The longer I kept looking at him, the more Liam seemed to relax. Because if I had been inclined to make myself scarce, I would have done it already. That was compounded when I offered him a tiny, uncertain smile.

He returned it even as he sat up, the covers bunched around his waist, to stir the embers. I eyed his back, appreciative of the lean, corded muscle moving beneath suntanned skin. A sneak peek lower told me only that he was half-dressed, which was more than I could say about myself.

"I could definitely get used to this," he told me.

I rolled onto my front and yawned. "Get used to what?"

The smile tugging at his lips was hard to miss now. "Waking up next to a naked girl."

I snorted. We'd only been awake for a minute, but he was already looking oh-so-content. I didn't want to ruin that. And I didn't need to, right? It was all implied. Obviously, this hadn't happened, and obviously, we weren't going to do it again.

Liam had managed to wake the fire again. I watched him feed it up with scraps of paper until it was a proper blaze. The colours were ever-changing and vibrant. Reds and oranges and yellows and whites. I could have stared at it for hours, and we often did back at camp when the nights grew long.

He lay back down, looking sleepy, all of a sudden. We both watched the fire for a little while. It made me think of home, and soon there was an ache deep in my chest.

There was a Welsh word I had always liked. A word with no English equivalent. 'Hiraeth.' It meant a deep, wistful longing for home, even if that home as you had known it no longer existed. And I was certainly feeling that now.

Our camps were still there, but they were lost to me and Liam. Because how would we ever be able to leave Silver Lake now? Alphas and Lunas couldn't just vanish for weeks at a time. And the minute we gave this pack up, it would go back to being a threat to us. I didn't think even a decade of our leadership would be enough to cure them of their hatred for rogues. When I'd agreed to be a sleeper, it hadn't occurred to me that I was signing up for years of this. Maybe even my entire life. It panicked me in ways I couldn't explain.

"Are you going for a run?" Liam asked me, jolting me from my thoughts.

Now there was a good idea. I woke his phone up and peered at the time. And then I groaned. "No, I can't. We'd be late for breakfast. I'll go later."