Luna of Rogues - Chapter 5: Chapter 5

The next day we were on a very, very routine patrol. In fact, it was so routine that we felt the need to spice things up a little bit.
Who can do patrol blindfold?
Certainly not me.
Personally, I blamed whichever smartass it was who put Rhys, Fion and me on the same chore rota for everything that happened next. Because yeah — it was all totally their fault.
So we were trying to navigate the woods by sense of smell alone, which is actually kinda impossible, especially as wolves don't have hands to protect themselves — you just have to tiptoe around and hope you don't face-plant a tree.
All of a sudden, the stench of unwashed werewolves filled my nostrils. I thought it might be Rhodric or his lackeys. We really would have deserved to be caught by our guardian on that occasion, but the scents were unfamiliar. Which meant our fun had to come to an end.
The only problem was, when I scrammed at my blindfold, I discovered that Rhys had tied it a little too well. It was impossible to remove without opposable thumbs, and I daren't shift back and end up naked and vulnerable when the strange wolves put in an appearance. To make matters worse, we were standing at the top of a small cliff, although we didn't know at the time.
I wasn't quite sure why I ever listened to Rhys's bright ideas.
Without any other options, I went still as a statue and tried to stifle my embarrassment. The enemy wolves edged so close that I could smell what they'd had for breakfast — rabbit. But they weren't attacking just yet; they were just ... laughing at us. And in hindsight, I don't really blame them.
Then Rhys, our resident fountain of wisdom, had another brainwave — he growled at them. Sure enough, it made them stop laughing, but it also made them start attacking. We instinctively moved back-to-back, as Rhodric had trained us to do. Look after each other, he insisted, work as a team.  But there was a serious flaw in that plan on this occasion — I need my eyes to fight, and I was pretty sure Fion and Rhys did as well.
I felt a faint trickle of air on my snout and ducked just in time to avoid a rogue's jaws ripping my throat out. Okay, maybe this wasn't so bad.
Full of confidence, I thought I had a lock on my target and lunged for him, but my teeth bit empty air.  In that moment, I realised that we couldn't win, no matter what we did. We were fighting blind and they were just toying with us. I started backing up, until one of my back feet hit empty space. A faint smell in the air told that there was water far below.
Oh, a cliff....perfect.
No really, perfect. That was my ticket out of there.
I reached into the mind-link with Rhys and Fion, and mentally shouted, "Turn, run and jump."
Even I was impressed when I heard the faint scuffle of paws on earth. They must have really trusted me. I growled and snarled at the wolves long enough to cover my friends' escape, then also leapt into the empty space.
There's something thrilling about free-falling off a cliff you don't know the height of while blindfolded.  For about three seconds, I could revel in the adrenaline. But unfortunately, I hadn't had much of a launch off the top, so while Rhys and Fion landed safely in a small lake, I hit the ground with bone-breaking force.
Literally, I felt my left hind leg snap.  This day was just not getting any better.
I rolled around on the ground, scrabbling with my front paws at the strip of cloth tied around my eyes, until the world suddenly got a lot lighter. After a good deal of blinking, I identified Fion's soaked wolf a few paces away, also liberated from her blindfold. But my brother was nowhere to be seen.
"Skye, what are you doing? We need to go," Fion said through the link.
I growled quietly and pointed with my muzzle. Fion finally noticed the unnatural angle of my leg. Goddess knew it hurt enough to be mangled beyond repair, let alone broken.
"In that case, I'd better tell Rhys to hurry up," she decided. "You're going to need to stay lying down."
Just to prove a point, I rolled onto my feet (well, most of them) and started limping off into the woods. In seconds, Fion was beside me, trying to make me stop. I wasn't having any of it — my leg would heal in ten minutes or so, then I'd be completely fine. We had a sort of competition going on: who had the highest pain tolerance. Rhys had been winning for most of his life, and I wanted the bragging rights for a change.
I was following my brother's scent, in the hopes that we could all get out of here. In the end though, he found us. Rhys appeared in human form, still dripping wet from his little swim and holding a pile of clothes from one of our stashes. He threw a shirt and jeans towards me, and I went behind a tree to shift without letting him see my broken leg.
It hadn't really occurred to me that humans only have two legs (you poor bastards), and when fifty percent of them don't work, it's a little tricky to walk. Rhys took one look at me, slumped miserably against a tree, and laughed before unceremoniously throwing me over his shoulder.
Oh, hell no.
I attacked him. No one — and I mean no one — picked me up. It stemmed from my humiliating experience at my birth pack, when Rhys had carried me by my scruff, and with the catalyst of damnable amounts of pride, it had developed into a full-blown phobia.
"Believe me, Skye, I don't like it any more than you do," Rhys said dryly. He ducked one blow and caught another. "But if you want to leave these woods alive, it's our only choice."
I eventually quit trying to murder him and stayed still. Every movement jostled my broken leg and caused waves of pain. Not to mention his shoulder was digging into my stomach, and all the blood was rushing to my head.
We walked — or they did, anyway — to the base of the cliff and slipped into a narrow cave. Rhys didn't put me down, not even when he had to scale a rocky slope. To be honest, I'm not sure my weight even affected the guy.
I only regained my independence of movement when we were hidden in a maze of tunnels. I'd found the cave years ago, during an over-competitive game of sardines. Long story short, it had taken my siblings an entire afternoon to find me. But now, it would be our refuge.
It was nearly half an hour and two rounds of eye-spy before my leg snapped back into place with a horrific grating sound. I drew in a sharp breath through clenched teeth at the wave of pain and otherwise failed to react. Fion rolled her eyes, while Rhys gave me a grudging nod of approval.
"Now we just have to wait for the patrol to chase those wolves away," he said.
"Uh Rhys....we were the patrol," I reminded him.
"We were?" He looked very sheepish. "Then I suppose we should be doing the chasing."
What could possibly go wrong with that plan?
As it turns out, not a lot.
We didn't even bother shifting to track them down — they were looking for us, too. Rather predictably, we found them sniffing around at the base of the cliff where I'd fallen. For the first time, I could actually see the wolves we'd been about to fight.
There were five of them: four wolves and one in human form. They had the slightly feral look about them which practically shouted rogue. Whatever they'd thought they were doing on Rhodric's turf, I wasn't planning to let them get away with it.
"You guys want to have a bit of fun?" I asked wickedly. My siblings instantly picked up on my train of thought.
"Do I ever?" Rhys's grin made a reappearance. He and Fion vanished into trees, leaving me standing alone.
I strode forwards into the rogues' line of vision, then cleared my throat.  "Lovely morning, isn't it?"
They jumped out of their skin at the sight of me, standing so casually despite the blood which drenched my clothes.
"Come here, little one. We don't hurt girls," the man sneered.
Oh, I guess that's alright then. What, are you going to offer me candy next?
Even winding these people up could get tiresome. In true Rhodric fashion, I got to the point all of a sudden. "Who are you and what are you doing on our land?"
He ignored me. "You shouldn't be alone in the woods. There are some dangerous people around."
"Fortunately, I'm one of those dangerous people." I smirked. "While we've been having this lovely discussion, my friends have been sneaking up behind you."
Predictably, the man whirled, giving me the perfect opportunity to take his legs out from under him. Redshirt #1 fell to the ground with a dull thud, and all his buddies lunged for me. It was fortunate that I hadn't been lying; Rhys appeared in wolf form and wreaked a fair amount of havoc from one side, while Fion took the other.
I shifted on the spot and dived for one of the rogues, tackling him clean into a tree and ripping out a chunk of fur. While dodging every one of his obvious attempts to rip out my throat, I stamped on his stomach with my front legs. The wind whooshed from his lungs, and he gasped for breath. I took the opportunity to get a grip on the back of his neck and finish the kill.
My sister had also won her fight, surprise surprise. Rhys was still toying with the second of his opponents, but he got bored of that quickly enough. I turned my attention to the human, who was still sprawled on the floor, watching us with wide eyes.
"Who the hell are you?" he spluttered.
I should probably mention the role of female werewolves at this point. Tradition dictated that they should exist only to raise pups and be good mates. As many of the packs still followed those rules, Fion and I were a bit of an oddity. Fighting females, along with Rhys, whose wolf was the size of an Alpha, often elicited this sort of reaction.
"Rhys," he paused for dramatic effect, "Llewellyn."
"But that would make you Rhodric's son. Oh, Goddess..."
Rhys didn't miss a beat. "And this is Skye and Fion Llewellyn. So the Goddess can't help you now."
The man's face drained of blood, then darkened again in angry flush. "Of all the pups I could have run into, it had to be you three." He seemed to work up the courage to snarl. "You killed four of my friends."
There was a gleam of determination in his eyes. That would have been warning enough on its own, had I not seen the sunlight reflect off the blade hidden in his hand. He pulled back his arm to throw it. I sidestepped lazily and watched the knife bury itself handle-deep into the bark of a tree.
"I thought you said you didn't hurt girls," I said sadistically through the link as Rhys, with total composure and calm, raked his claws down the man's chest. The screams were loud enough to frighten a flock of birds from the canopy above us.
We herded him all the way back to camp, and then through the crowds of staring people. They jeered and yelled insults, and some kids even pelted him with rotten fruit. Having thrown my fair share of apples in my day, I was quite happy to step out of the way and let them.  We didn't take too kindly to trespassers, which was kinda hypocritical.
Sadly, we were under orders to bring in at least one prisoner for questioning. Otherwise, I would have gladly ended the guy myself. Once we'd handed him over to the jailers for safekeeping, we went to get some refreshments in the cook tent.
As I munched my way through a slice of pizza, our normal, casual stream of banter was interrupted by Rhodric arriving to 'reprimand' us.
"What's this I hear about you three jumping off a cliff?" My adopted father sat down beside me on the bench and filched some of my food.
"Ah yes, about that." Fion began, ready to recite our rehearsed excuse.
"We were practising skydiving," Rhys cut in with an amiable smile, then added in a conspirational whisper, "Get it? 'Cause it was Skye and she was diving..."
Fion shook her head in exasperation while I glared at him.
Rhodric was taking a moment to absorb the first piece of information. "You went skydiving...off a cliff?"
"Yeah, um...we didn't have a helicopter so...you know."
Honestly, I had no idea what demented part of Rhys's mind came up with ideas like these, but I thought the 'dark playground' might be the scientific name for it.
"Without parachutes?"
Rhys nodded, getting into his stride. "I got a bit caught up in the excitement of, well...chucking myself off a twenty-metre cliff that I, well...forgot."
"You forgot," Rhodric repeated coolly. A hint of a grin appeared on his face.
"Yes," Rhys confirmed. "I decided to go sky diving and forgot my parachute. Do you have a problem with that, dad?"
"Not at all. But you're all still alive?" Rhodric asked. This time there was definite amusement there.
"We fell into water," I explained.
"No, we fell into water," my brother muttered. "Skye fell onto very solid earth and broke her leg."
"Oh, that's alright then," Rhodric said. "As long as you're still alive — that's the main thing."
"Don't tell me you were worried," Fion scoffed. We were talking to a man who thought throwing children in a lake and walking off was a good way of teaching them how to swim.
"There's absolutely no point in getting worried about the three of you. You get yourselves into so much trouble that I'd be in a constant state of concern," Rhodric replied, and ruffled up Rhys's hair before turning to leave.
When Rhodric was a few paces away, he called over his shoulder. "Oh, and Rhys?"
"Yeah?"
"You have a lot to learn if you think you can lie to me and get away with it."