Luna of Rogues - Chapter 51: Chapter 51

It only took ten minutes for me to get bored. Another hour and I was carving my initials into the tree just for something to do. If you've ever spent three hours sitting in a tree, you'll understand. It was boring. Maggie was fond of telling me that I was a poster-child for ADHD whenever I voiced those kinds of feelings around camp. But if I was, then so were half of the raiders, and it was probably an advantage amongst rogues. Occasions when I had to sit still in a tree for several hours straight were thankfully few and far between.
I even tried taking a nap, lying across the tree branch with my head in Leo's lap. That lasted about a minute and a half — the time it took for the ferals to realise I was trying to sleep. They started howling just to wind me up, and I'll be damned if it didn't work.
Following that, my next source of entertainment was taking pot-shots at any hint of clothing I could see. It had to end when I'd gone through half of my ammo without actually hitting anyone. Leo brought out his phone to distract me, and I spent a happy twenty minutes playing Flappy Bird and blasting 'We Are The Champions' until it ran out of battery.
Two hours in, the ferals filled tin cans with shredded clothing. They were set alight and thrown around the base of our tree, which made us cough, and that was about it. There was too much air in the ... um ... air, and the wind was blowing hard from the north.
"It was a good idea, honest," I told them sweetly. "Would've worked if the tree was, like, indoors."
The most excitement we got was when Luke decided to pay another visit with only ten minutes left before the three-hour marker. And he was looking worryingly smug, like he had an idea.
"Too scared to come down, are we?" he sneered ... from a safe distance.
"Too scared to come up?" I countered.
"Guns are cheating."
"And three hundred against three ain't fair," Rhys laughed.
Luke shrugged. "Suit ourselves. We can wait, you know."
No, he couldn't. He was planning to attack our camp in another hour or so. If we could hold out until then, he'd either have to post a few guards or leave us alone altogether, and then we would stand a chance, at least.
"As long as it takes," Luke went on. "And the longer you make us wait, the longer we'll take to kill you."
"Well, I'm scared," I drawled. "Leo?"
"Pissing myself," he confirmed.
Luke put his hand into his jacket pocket, where it closed around something we couldn't see. A knife, obviously. He was probably imagining stabbing us over and over to keep his temper in check. "You can laugh all you like, pups, because you'll be screaming soon enough."
"I've had enough of this," Rhys said. He looked at me. "Permission to screw with them?"
"Permission granted, little brother."
I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn't expecting him to jump down from the tree and spread his arms wide.
What. A. Dumbass.
"Come and bloody get me, cowards," he jeered.
I swore at him and lifted the rifle to my shoulder. Luke smelled the trap straight away and stayed put, but in the seconds it took him to warn his friends, half a dozen of them had taken a run at Rhys. I picked off two before they even got there, and Leo managed another two, and that left two for Rhys to gut with his knife.
It only took him a few seconds. The ferals had been snapping at his legs, because they weren't allowed to kill him. Once they were bleeding out, he climbed back onto the branch between Leo and me, bloodied and grinning, to spit down at the corpses.
"Thanks, Skye."
I swore at him for a second time, but I couldn't stop my lips twitching at the corners. If we were going to die in this muddy patch of forest, we might as well have some fun first.
"We have some friends of yours," Luke shouted, out of patience at last. "Come down or we'll gut them in front of you."
I sighed. There was some rogue scent in the air. I didn't explicitly recognise it, so he had probably just grabbed the first few rogues he could get his hands on and hoped I knew them. But friends or not, I wasn't sure I could sit in a tree while innocent people were tortured, and from the way Rhys and Leo glanced at me, I wasn't sure they could, either.
"Fion," I linked, "how confident were you on the three-hour estimate?"
"Not at all confident," she replied immediately. "Why?"
"Oh, no reason. Just ... curious."
She growled at me. "Skye Llewellyn, what the hell is going on?"
I twisted the link shut. I didn't have an answer for her. She was just worried, and she had every right to be — I could only imagine how it must feel to sit in a tent and wait while your entire family risked their lives — but there was no way to reassure her without lying my ass off.
"Uh... Fion wants to know what the hell is going on," Leo murmured a few seconds later. "She's being quite ... tenacious."
"Oh, for heaven's sake," I muttered. Back into the link I went, this time armed with the greatest defence of all — impatience. "We've been treed, big sister, and we're absolutely fine, but I'd like to know how much longer I have to spend up here."
For maybe a minute, her thoughts were an absolute jumble of panic. Eventually, because it was Fion, and her head kept her heart on a tight leash, she smothered all the worry and tried her best to help.
"Three hours was an underestimate. When they drank and how much they've eaten will factor in, obviously. If I had to guess, I'd say they'll start dying in the next half an hour, but please don't risk your life on that, Skye."
"I won't," I promised her. And I meant it. Jumping down from the tree to rescue some random strangers was heroic and all, but the ferals would kill them as soon as we were dead. We wouldn't be saving anyone.
Below us, the ferals were dragging the rogues closer. They were careful to stay out of sight, but they left their prisoners in full view. I sighted down my rifle. It was a man and a teenage girl who was probably his daughter. They looked pretty beat already, and they were holding hands.
"Please help her," the man called out hoarsely. "Please. I'll do anything."
I had a headshot. It would help her alright, but I wasn't sure I could do it. And the longer I sat there, my finger resting on the trigger, the harder it got. It wasn't my call to make, I decided. It was hers. If they started torturing her and she wanted out ... well, then it might get a little easier.
Leo closed his eyes to mind-link. A moment later, he opened them again, grimacing. "They're from Jaz's crew. The girl is fourteen."
Shit.
This was so not happening. I physically couldn't just sit here and watch if they were going to start torturing a fourteen-year-old. But then again, I also couldn't watch my mate and my brother die trying to save her.
Rhys put his rifle down. "Let me go down and pick a fight with him. That'll buy us a few more minutes."
"No," I said.
"He can't kill me," he pointed out. "She's a kid, Skye."
"So are you," I told him harshly. "And there's plenty else he can do. Mutilation, maiming, disfigurement..."
"Those are all synonyms," Leo murmured.
"Firstly, I don't know what that word means, so the joke's on you. Secondly, don't encourage him," I snapped. "I said no, and I mean no."
Rhys swore under his breath. He might have listened to me, but the ferals picked that moment to drag the man and the girl apart and force them onto their knees. There were now branches in the way of my headshot, so that option was gone. And Rhys threw his leg over the tree trunk and got ready to jump.
"Hold him," I snapped at my mate. "Choke him out if you have to."
Leo, who was behind Rhys, grabbed his collar and pulled him over backwards. Rhys couldn't throw a punch without knocking Leo off the branch, so he had to settle for a restrained, careful type of wrestling. It didn't work. Leo managed to get an arm around his neck, and he started squeezing.
I was going to help, but the ferals were using our distraction to creep from tree to tree, edging closer, and I had to shoulder my rifle and fire off a few warning shots. Once that was done, I punched Rhys in the stomach to get his attention.
"That's enough, you reckless idiot. One more twitch out of you and I'll put a bullet in your leg."
He twitched anyway. He was still trying to shake Leo off, and his attempts were getting rougher by the minute. Just to show him I was serious, I pressed the barrel of my rifle against his knee and cocked it. Rhys went still in a very grudging, I-know-you're-bluffing sort of way.
"I'm getting sick of this, little brother," I told him roughly. "Every minute I have to spend keeping you from getting yourself killed is a minute I can't spend fixing this shit, alright? I don't give orders without a damn good reason, so sit still, shut up, and let me try something that might actually work."
I didn't shout at him very often, so I wasn't surprised to see him freeze. He stared at me for a moment, realised he was staring, and carefully averted his eyes.
"Alright," he said. No resentment there, which was lucky, because that telling-off had been as far from tactful as it was possible to get.
Slowly, I eased the rifle away from his leg and signalled Leo to release him. There was an awful lot of coughing. But he didn't take it out on my mate, and he didn't immediately throw himself to the ground, so I would take it as a victory.
"Oi, Luke, I'm up for negotiating. Let them go and we'll throw down one of the rifles," I offered. "Not loaded, obviously."
"Pass," Luke sneered. "I don't have to make a deal with you. Come down or they die."
One of the ferals dragged a knife down the girl's forearm. She didn't cry out because she was a rogue, but I could see her shaking as the blood started to soak through her coat. Rhys was already getting restless again, and now Leo looked inclined to join in the stupidity.
"Hold on," I said. "I can tell you where Rhodric is. Isn't that what you want?"
Luke paused and smiled for the first time. "Yeah? I'm listening."
And for lack of any better options, I reached into my mind-link with Rhodric. I hadn't been expecting him to answer — he'd been blocking us since before Brandon-era — so I was astonished, to say the least, when the link connected. It was strained and stretched over miles, but it was serviceable.
"I am actually a little busy right at this moment, kiddo," he told me. "Are you dying?"
He wasn't lying. I could feel his focus split, and every now and then a wave of pain rolled into the link. He was fighting someone. Honestly, it was astonishing he was able to link me at all.
"I'm not, but it would be super helpful if you could tell me where you are," I replied.
"Mm," Rhodric said. "I'll pass."
"I'm not going to come looking," I snapped. Instead of explaining any further, I showed him our predicament.
"I can help with that. Hold still a second."
He didn't mean physically. I didn't have the faintest idea what he was going to do, but I tightened my hold on the link and concentrated on keeping it steady as Rhodric did ... something. He seemed to use me as a stepping stone, and then a series of strange things happened.
Two of the ferals holding the rogues keeled over and fell on their faces for no apparent reason. It could have been the poison, I supposed, but it was far too sudden. A moment later, Luke swore loudly and started clutching his head. He sank to his knees, his chest heaving.
What the hell, Rhodric? It didn't take me long to decide that I didn't much care how he'd done it, just as long as it was done. The girl had won herself a reprieve, however brief, and I watched her catch her breath through the rifle scope.
"I told him I'm standing beside a portrait of old King Edward. Just sit there and look smug, and you'll be fine," Rhodric told me.
And with that, he twisted the link shut. I had no idea what on earth was going on, to be honest. But Luke was looking very, very pale all of a sudden. He darted out from his tree to speak to a lieutenant. A minute later, that lieutenant set off at a dead sprint in the direction of the feral camp. Several more ferals came over to speak to Luke, and it looked like they were arguing.
I did try to look smug. It would have been easier if Rhodric had explained himself, the bastard. When Luke returned to his original position, he was so royally pissed off that I could feel his wolf from twenty metres away. The wind carried the stench of his anger right to us.
Beyond him, I couldn't help but notice that one of the ferals was coughing. Another was lying on his belly, retching up yellow bile. A third was leaning against a tree trunk and swaying like he was about to pass out.
It was starting.
"You need to send Jace," I told Fion through the link. "I think it's working."
She was quiet for a split second, and I felt her attention wandering before she snapped back to alertness. "On it. They'll be ten minutes."
Luke spared the coughing, retching, fainting trio only a cursory glance. For all he knew, they had been shot while he'd been distracted. Instead, he turned his attention back to us. "We don't need the boy alive anymore. Burn down the whole damn forest if that's what it takes to kill them."
Oh dear. Rhodric's plan was not flawless, after all. I debated mind-linking him again, but it wasn't so easy to swallow my pride when I would be asking him to save me, not some random strangers.
"And the prisoners?" one of his underlings asked, jerking a thumb towards the two rogues.
"Turn him," Luke snapped. "Let him kill the girl."
Well, shit. Now that there was a definite clock on this whole situation, perhaps I could do something about that. And honestly now ... so what if I died? Fion would probably resurrect me just to kill me again, Rhodric might feel guilty, but the two other people I cared most about in the world would be dying right alongside me. It wasn't a bad way to go, all things considered. Quick, brave, heroic...
So I jumped down from the tree. I stripped off my winter coat and kicked off my shoes, and then I shifted into my fur. There was no time to put on the wolf armour. We'd dragged it all the way here for nothing, but that didn't matter much. I was quicker without it, anyway.
Rhys followed me. Leo would have done the same if I hadn't tugged on the link. He was the worst fighter of the three of us, and he could do far more damage picking off the ferals from the safety of the branch. Did sentiment have anything to do with the decision? Yes, of course. The incident at Ember had scared me more than I was willing to admit.
My brother and I were back-to-back. My left hind leg was pressed against his right, and I could feel his tail lashing against mine. We had to wait for ten whole seconds — that was how long it took the ferals to decide it wasn't a trap, and then we were treated to the sight of dozens of the bastards running straight at us.
The first one collided with my left side. He sunk his teeth into the soft spot behind my ribs, and I twisted back on myself to rip his throat out. I could feel his teeth tearing my skin open as I moved — feel the warmth of blood matting my pelt, but that was a familiar feeling. I was ready for the next feral, and the next, but three opponents at once and I was struggling.
I went into autopilot. Roll and bite and twist and release. And on and on it went. There was rarely time to think about what you were doing when you fought in wolf form. The fights were faster and more brutal than you could ever imagine. Pain was a constant companion. One bite on its own stung like hell, but once you have a dozen littering your pelt, you didn't really feel them individually. It was just a generalised throbbing agony.
And from overhead came a constant, relentless bang, bang, bang. It stung my ears and set the tempo of the fight. Leo couldn't aim too close to us, obviously, but he could keep the tide of ferals at bay. There was no way to tell how Rhys was doing. We'd been separated in the first few seconds.
Too many ferals. I had to abandon any efforts to attack and just focus on defending my throat. I had three or four wolves clamped onto various body parts, my forepaw included. They were trying to bleed me out. Even as I watched, one of them took a bullet to the hindquarters and went down.
The fight dragged on. I knew I was tiring, but there was still adrenaline coursing through my veins, so I could ignore it for the time being. I must have killed five or six ferals before I began to notice the onslaught easing a fraction. There were fewer opponents.
And, yes, Rhys had killed some, too, and Leo had shot nearly a dozen, but plenty more were on the ground of their own accord. They were choking or clutching their stomachs, and I knew the poison was kicking in at long last.
I managed to shake off a feral who had his jaws around my hind leg. My wolf twisted around to get her jaws around his neck in turn, and she wrenched backwards with enough force to spill his throat onto the mud. I killed another wolf with a bite to the base of his spine. And then there was no one else. No new opponent. I dropped my head and took a moment just to breathe before I looked for Rhys.
Alive. He was still grappling with an arctic hybrid, and his pelt was closer to red than brown, but he was breathing. The rogue man had his daughter caught in a fierce embrace. He was murmuring something to her over and over, and he murmured something at me, too, when he caught me staring.
I couldn't lip read or anything, but it looked an awful lot like thank you.
Leo was beside me, all of a sudden, the rifle slung over his shoulder. He laced his fingers into my scruff and scratched in exactly the right place. Despite everything, I closed my eyes and leaned against him. I knew he could feel every single one of my injuries.
And all the while, the ferals were dying around us.
I found my clothes. They'd been trampled into the snow and the mud, but they were still very much intact. I shifted back and pulled them on. It was freezing standing out in the wind stark naked and almost as cold wearing wet clothes, so it was a race to get my coat on and zipped.
Behind me, Rhys was standing around in his jeans like a dumbass. Even as I watched, he pulled his shirt clumsily over his head. He wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to dressing himself, or to the dozen bite marks littering his chest alone, because he was staring at one of the dying ferals.
It was one of the younger ones — he was barely my age, if that, and he was so skinny that I could count his ribs. He'd been a rogue, then. Before ... this. Packlings got three square meals a day. He had shifted back in his panic, and now he was thrashing around, his eyes blood-red and foam spilling from his mouth.
Shit. I'd thought I would be able to handle this, but I'd been wrong, hadn't I? Beneath all the madness and the cruelty, they were just men, and they were dying, and it was my fault.
I found myself wandering over to the place I had last seen Luke. Maybe I thought it would be easier to watch him suffer. I'd certainly hated him. But when I found him, sprawled at the roots of a yew tree and choking on his own vomit, the hatred drained away like someone had pulled the plug from under it.
Crouching beside him, I rolled him onto his side so he could be sick properly. There was a long minute while he gasped for breath and hacked up blood and the contents of his stomach in equal measure.
"Why?" he managed to ask after Goddess only knew how long.
Why are you helping me? That was probably what he meant, and I'd be damned if I knew. Luke's nose was bleeding, and he was sheet-white. His brown eyes were fixed on me, wide with confusion and fear. He was feral, yes, but he just looked ... vulnerable.
"Because I'm not like you," I said quietly. "Because I don't want to be like you."
People were always going on about 'what made us human.' And the difference between Luke and I — a half-mad animal in a human body and me — it was this, and this alone. Not compassion, as most people seemed to think, because there were plenty of animals capable of that. No. Being human was perhaps just a refusal to act logically all of the time. A habit of ignoring perfectly good instincts.
And yes, sometimes that meant cruelty. Sometimes we inflicted suffering without good cause. But it could also mean love and selflessness and guilt, and every other emotion that pushed us into doing the 'right' thing and not the thing that best served our interests. It was choosing the hard path over the easy one.
I could have sat down and closed my eyes and plugged my ears and probably been happier for it, but instead I sat with Luke and held his hand while he died.
It was almost fifteen minutes before he took his last breath. Fifteen minutes was a long time to spend in agony, and already the guilt was eating away at me. We had done this. It had been my idea, and my idea alone.
Rhys and Leo were helping the rogues. The girl had my mate's coat draped around her shoulders, and she was standing there, pale and shell-shocked, watching the few remaining ferals thrash and vomit. Her dad was blinking and dazed, which might've had something to do with the blood sheeting down his face from a nasty gash in his forehead.
I wandered towards them. I was still bleeding beneath my clothes, and I was acutely aware that the smaller wounds were starting to clot against the fabric. I could feel the scabs tearing every time I moved. Before I could actually get there, I heard the crunching of leaves and twigs snapping and stopped dead in my tracks.
And out of the shadows came the pack fighters, ready for an attack they would never need to launch. The men stared at the destruction with all the impassivity of seasoned killers, but I got accusing glances from most of them. It's your fault, the eyes seemed to say. All your fault.
The flockies just kept coming — a hundred of them at least. They were led by the three Lloyd Alphas. Zach was nodding his approval, Jaden's mouth was twisted in disgust, and neither of those reactions were at all surprising, but Jace was showing the most emotion that I'd ever seen from him.
"What the hell have you done?"