In my defence, I didn't start the fight.

I was trying to mind my own business. I had been taking a quiet stroll through the woods, enjoying the bluebells and tanning my arms in the afternoon sun. Yes, maybe I was on Ember territory, and maybe I had nicked a few things — nothing of value, mind, just a six-pack of beer and a packet of crisps — but I hadn't hurt anyone.

"I've just mind-linked the Alpha," the woman in front of me hissed. "He's going to be here any minute."

"Cool," I told her.

She spluttered something which sounded like swearwords, but that couldn't be right. Pack females were too respectable to swear. Maybe they could make an exception when they found a rogue sitting on their patio furniture at four-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon. This one was damn near hysterical because she was too proud to run from a scrawny thing like me and too scared to attack.

I popped open my fourth beer can and took a gulp. My first one was blocking someone's gutter, crushed and drained. The second and third ones were decorating a wind vane. It wasn't very nice beer, but then I didn't really like beer anyway. Tasted like bubbly goat piss.

"Can you get an ETA?" I asked.

"An ETA?" she repeated, aghast.

"On the Alpha. I want to finish my crisps before he gets here, but I don't want to rush them unless I need to — you get me?"

Setting the can on the arm of my chair, I wrestled with the packet of Wotsits. When it came open, half of them went flying onto the patio, because I was tipsy. It was my turn to swear. The string of words were filthy enough to make the woman flinch, and if I had thought she couldn't get any more horrified, I was wrong.

"He's on his way, like I said," she snapped. "You should run."

I stuffed a handful of Wotsits into my mouth and chewed noisily. "Five minutes? Ten?"

She closed her eyes and opened them again. "One minute."

"See, why do I feel like you just made that up?" I sighed. I knew I wasn't anywhere near the pack house, and Ember territory was enormous. Ellis could've done the maths about distance and time and shit, but I was too hammered and too stupid.

I continued to eat my Wotsits, sipping the beer between handfuls. The flockie continued to stare at me like I was odd in the head. And maybe I was, but that didn't mean she could be judgy about it.

"Are you ... drunk?" the woman demanded.

"Does this look like apple juice to you?" I retorted, trying to wave the beer can at her. It slipped out of my fingers and some splashed over my jeans before I managed to catch it. "Ah, shit."

A minute had passed without any sign of the Alpha. I was beginning to relax. I slowed down my eating to savour the few Wotsits I had left, and I crossed my legs on the deck chair. My jeans were sticky now, but I would lose them in the shift anyway, so who the hell cared?

The woman was still hovering like a wasp — not dangerous, just kinda annoying. "You do know they'll execute you, don't you?"

"Oh, yeah. I know. Got my death sentence right here," I assured her. One finger pulled down the collar of my shirt to show her my tattoo. New Haven, it said in cramped black lettering. I had a bunch of Celtic-style patterns to surround it. "Do you think I deserve to die for sitting in your garden?"

"You're a rogue," she muttered, but she didn't sound very sure.

"Damn straight," I laughed. "I'd almost forgotten. So, which'll it be? Drink your blood or peel you like a grape?"

The woman took an involuntary step back before she remembered she was trying to be brave. "You're just a kid."

I stretched out lazily, letting her see the corded muscle in my shoulders. Hard earned, all of it, from sprinting in wolf-form. "A rogue kid. A Llewellyn kid. And if I'm old enough to get executed, I'm old enough to kill you, I reckon."

"You can't be older than fourteen," she scoffed.

"Shit, lady, you wouldn't know a fourteen-year-old if they knocked your teeth out, and I knew plenty who'd be willing to try. I'm short, yeah, but I'm nearly eighteen."

The woman scowled. "Well, how am I supposed to know?"

"The beer, dumbass. At fourteen I'd have nicked vodka. But I'm getting all wise and sensible in my old age." I shook the can at her again, grinning when I managed to keep hold of it. "Anyway, been nice talking to you, but I'd best start hauling ass."

And I stood up, burping as I unfolded. There was one Wotsit left, so I stuffed it into my mouth and drained the dregs of the beer. The woman took another step back just in case I was gearing up to charge her or something. I laughed at her as I stretched again, trying not to wobble.

"There she is, lads. Spread out," a new voice called. It was a guy, and that meant the cavalry had arrived. Not a moment too soon.

I turned around to see three men approaching from the house. They were fanning out, trying to corner me against the fence, but they were idiots. All of them were in human form, so they must've come from nearby. And none of them was an Alpha, which was a bloody shame.

"About damn time," I drawled. "Could've killed her ten times over by now."

"You're safe now, ma'am," the same guy said, ignoring me.

The woman said nothing. She was staring at me, but all the fear was gone. Not because the fighters were here, either — she seemed to have twigged that I'd never wanted to hurt her in the first place. Goddess above, it was like herding cats. Flockies had always had difficulty grasping that we were, like, people.

The first of the fighters had gotten close to me. Too close. I put a hand into my pocket and slipped my knife up my sleeve. It was hard flicking it out with only two fingers and drunken clumsiness, but I managed it.

I should've run when I had the chance. This was going to get messy real fast, and if I got covered in blood, Nia would know what I'd been doing. And then I would get my dumb ass murdered for real.

"Steady on, boys," I drawled. "I ain't here to scrap."

"Do us a bloody favour, bitch, and shut your damn mouth," one of them snarled.

"Shut my mouth? I'm trying to surrender. I'm too sloshed to kick your asses right now." I lifted my hands above my hand and spread my fingers to show that I was unarmed. The knife slipped down to my elbow. "See? All peaceful like."

The woman narrowed her eyes, her mouth opening a crack like she wanted to say something — maybe to warn them that I had been sober enough to climb her two-metre fence. Instead, she muttered, "Look, she's just a kid..."

"That's our call to make," the first guy insisted. "Step back, please."

The woman did as she was told with only the slightest of hesitations. Well, that defiant streak hadn't lasted long. It never did, with pack women. They were trained to be obedient from birth through careful pressure and expectations and rules that didn't apply to men.

The fighters edged closer and closer. Two of them stopped a few metres away, and since I had stayed so perfectly still, the third one approached to get a hold of me. They wouldn't hurt me unless I resisted, because they liked to think they were civilised — the werewolf equivalent of police, like.

A hand grabbed my collar to hold me still, and another patted me down for anything obvious. Knife, gun, rocket launcher, etcetera. He wasn't being gentle, but it didn't even make my Top 10 Worst Pack Searches.

When he was done, he grabbed one wrist and then the other, twisting them behind my back so he could cuff me. But as my left arm dropped, the knife fell with it, and I caught it easily. The blade bit into the flockie between his finger and thumb.

"Ow!" he hissed. "What the hell was that?"

He had jumped backwards, and he'd been so loud that both of his friends had turned to look at him. That left the exit wide open for me, and I bloody well took it. I was halfway across the garden before they even realised I'd moved.

I was laughing as I ran, and I was still laughing when I shifted mid-step. The patio was warm under my paws. I was still picking up speed when I passed the front door and spotted a group of wolves approaching. Their leader was huge — ha.

They saw me, too, and they started to give chase, but I wasn't worried. Pine needles and clods of mud sprayed as I stretched my legs out that little bit further. I twisted in and out of the trees effortlessly. The Alpha got within five or six metres before I reached my full speed — a dead sprint of forty-five miles an hour. The trees became a blur, and my pursuers were left in the dust.

Rhodri could keep his scent switch, and Nia was welcome to her mind games. My talent was much simpler. I could run really, really fast. I had never met anyone, no flockie or rogue or Llewellyn or Alpha who could match me in a race. Long-distance, short-distance ... it didn't matter.

We liked to joke I was quick because Mam had spent so much time running from pack wolves while she was pregnant with me, but in truth it had more to do with my love for speed. I had spent half of my childhood running, and it had paid off.

Within a minute, the pack wolves had fallen far behind. They had to stop and cast for scents, and that was a slow business, so I was home-free long before I reached the border. There had been a time, years ago, when a rogue could relax as soon as they crossed the bone fence. Instead, I had to spend twenty minutes running in a river before I could risk going back to camp.

We had pitched the tents under a rocky crag, so there was a constant danger of being brained by a falling boulder, but that just spiced things up in my opinion. I was sharing a two-man with three shit-awful initiates. They were as light-fingered as I was, so I kept my stuff in a hollow tree outside of camp. That was helpful now — I didn't have to sneak past the other raiders in wolf form.

I shifted back and shimmied into a spare pair of trackies and a t-shirt. I was running a hand through my chestnut hair, easing out the tangles, when I felt a cold blade touch the back of my neck. I stiffened, glowering at the tree in front of me.

"Turn around. Nice and slow," a voice said.

There was nothing else I could do. I had left my knife at Ember because my wolf didn't have any pockets. Maybe that woman would find it and keep it as a souvenir of the time she saw a real live rogue. These days, we were a rare breed. One foot at a time, I turned on my axis and found myself staring at cropped blonde hair and a pair of smug blue eyes.

"Careless as always, Eva," Lily sighed. "It's a wonder you've lived this long."

"Oh, go to hell," I spat.

"I'll get around to that eventually, I'm sure," she laughed. "Nia wants a word."

I wasn't scared of Lily. Beneath all the bravado, she was softer than warm butter. I was a little scared of Nia. She might have been my cousin — sort of — but she was also six foot and hit like a bloody truck and had a temper shorter than mine.

"Alright." Lily's knife was prodding my ribcage now, and I knocked it away with the back of my hand. "Where is she?"

"Where'd you think?" Lily snorted.

I growled at her, not because I was angry at her, but because I was annoyed with myself for letting her sneak up on me in the first place. Lily had a talent for stealth — that was true. But the forest floor had dried out under the summer sun, and the leaves crunched underfoot. There was no excuse. Well, except perhaps that the world was still spinning around me like a merry-go-round.

I trudged towards the camp, leaving Lily behind. The tents were spread in a rough semi-circle, all of them weatherworn and ancient, and the middle tent belonged to Nia Llewellyn. You could tell because she always flew a rainbow flag from her guide-ropes.

My cousin was in charge of this raiding team, despite being only nineteen and headstrong. There were plenty of rogues here with more experience, but none of them could beat her in a fight, and so she called the shots.

Pushing the flap aside, I ducked into the interior without waiting to be invited, and that was my first mistake. Nia had been counting twenty-pound notes she had pinched from Lowland Pack last week. Upon seeing me, she pushed the pile aside and raised her eyebrows.

"Hello, Eva," she said. It sounded suspiciously like the beginning of a lecture. "We've been looking for you."

I bet they had. I'd been blocking the link, and I hadn't bothered to leave a note. We weren't supposed to leave the camp for a minute, let alone hours. Carefully, I fixed my eyes on the floor, keeping my head well down to avoid the appearance of challenging her, because she was one of the few wolves who outranked me.

"I went to the toilet," I said.

Nia stood up. "Yeah? For two hours?"

"Taking a shit, y'know..." I muttered. "I like the food here, don't get me wrong, but I reckon we could use more fibre. Rabbit is nice and all — I love rabbit. But if we had, I dunno, Bran Flakes for breakfast or something, that would be super."

Nia took a step closer, smirking just a little bit when I tensed. She was bigger than me, which was nothing unusual, but her hazel eyes were swirling with black, and that meant I was pissing her off. I needed to give the smartassery a rest.

"Bran Flakes. Right. Did you get drunk before or after you took your shit?" she asked.

Obviously, my breath stank. I would've scoffed some mints if Lily had given me any time. I tried to breathe through my nose. "Before."

"Then I hate to break it to you, pup, but fibre ain't the problem."

She knew I was bullshitting her. She knew and she didn't care. I was allowed to break the rules as long as I didn't get caught, and there was no part of my story which wasn't plausible.

"This time, I'm going to pretend I believe you, Eva. But if you come into my tent drunk again, I will have no problem decking you. Got it?"

"Got it," I said, grinning. "Thanks, Nia."

She scowled at me, her eyes darkening a shade in warning. "Don't thank me. Just do what you're bloody told. We've only got three days to go, and I don't want your exile extended."

I didn't either. It had been two months since I'd been home — two months of trying and failing to keep my head down amongst Nia's raiders. And now that I was finally getting close to the finish line, I was finding that it felt even further out of reach.

I whistled through my teeth. "I'll try not to take that personally."

"I love you like a sister, Eva, but you're a pain in my damn arse," Nia said. "You don't fit here — you don't have the temperament. You and Rhodri and Liam will need your own raiding team, I swear to the Goddess, because you ain't gonna take shit from me or Emmett or anyone in a few years."

"That's fair," I muttered. "Mam reckons the same, y'know. She sent me here so you could beat some obedience into me."

Nia actually laughed. "She doesn't want you obedient, Eva. She wants you to stop making shit worse for yourself. The tattoo. The raids. One day it's all gonna bite you in the ass."

I stuffed my hands into my pockets. "Only if it can catch me. No one's managed that yet."

"Cocky little thing, aren't you?" she sighed. "We'll see if you're still talking the talk after tomorrow."

I lifted my eyes off the floor, taking the bait, and she didn't growl at me. "What's happening tomorrow?"

"We're going to kidnap a pack wolf. Anyone will do, apparently, as long as they're over forty and easily scared."

My eyes flitted higher, daring to meet hers for half a second. "Why?"

Nia shrugged carelessly. "Dunno. Ask your mam. I'm sure she has her reasons, so I'm just going to do it. We'll send the prisoner back with you."

We didn't kidnap people. There was no damn point. Ransoms were impossible to negotiate, and the packs had long since worked out that if they paid one, they would get a dozen more kidnappings within the week.

"I know you can run, pup — you've proved that repeatedly. I want to know if you can do anything else. So you're going to be watching my back tomorrow, and if you do a good job, I'll send you home there and then. How does that sound?"

"Bloody amazing," I breathed. Lily had dibs on watching Nia's back, and I had been jealous of her since I'd arrived, because I only ever got to run circles and make distractions. Add the reward into the equation and Christmas had come six months early.

"Good." She jerked her head towards the tent entrance, and I took the hint and made myself scarce.

I went to my tent. It was mercifully empty. The initiates were probably out collecting firewood or something, because that was all they were good for. There were two air beds between the four of us, so we slept head to tail. I had claimed the best spot on the far right, on the higher ground so none of them would roll on me in the night, and they hadn't dared argue.

One of them — the female — had left a knife lying on her pillow. I pocketed it. The handle was rough and the edge nicked, but the steel was good. Finders keepers. I stretched out, kicking off my boots and burying my cold toes in my sleeping bag.

Two long months, but I had served my sentence. Supper, campfire, sleep, breakfast, raid. And if I could get through it all, I could go home and see all my brothers and sisters. I closed my eyes. Someone would wake me before the food was ready, or they would live to regret it.

Home at last. And two stupid boys waiting for me.