
CHAPTER 19 - THE CALM
I stretched out like a cat, letting my aching muscles groan their complaints about the way I'd been sleeping - curled up in a little ball with my back against Rhodri's. We always kept the door of the tent open for Liam's sake, so it was laughably easy for me to wake up when the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon.
The rays were blinding me now. Rolling onto my stomach, I reached out with one foot and prodded Liam awake. It was always best to do it gently. We'd been up at about three a.m. because he'd been dreaming again, so he took nearly ten minutes to wake up enough to sit up in bed and yawn.
"I need to go to bed earlier," he told me, running a hand through his hair.
I snorted. I was already pulling my socks on inside the sleeping bag. "I've been telling you that for years."
"Yeah, you have." Liam stretched out then scrubbed at his face. He was still half asleep, and it showed. "Is that my shirt?"
"Mm-hmm."
I crossed my arms over it and turned away, because I wasn't wearing anything underneath it. Like all his shirts, it was far too big on me, of course, but that made it perfect for sleeping. Once upon a time, I'd used to nick Rhodri's. He'd got so fed up of it that he'd filled one of them with goose grass and told me that he'd knock me on my arse the next time I touched his clothes. I believed him.
"Well, you'd better give it back," he told me dryly.
I smirked. If I waited long enough, he'd probably forget about the whole thing, and that was how I acquired most of my clothes. "Sure, whatever."
As I wriggled out from under the sleeping bag, I began the subtle art of changing beneath the shirt. Liam turned around to face the side of the tent. I could have done it before I'd woken him, in hindsight, but my brain wasn't entirely functional at this hour of the morning.
"So, which of us is going to bite the bullet?" I asked, gesturing at my cousin, who was still snoring.
Instead of answering, Liam showed me a fist. We rock-paper-scissored for it, naturally - the only correct way to make decisions like these. He won, but only because I was dumb enough to choose paper.
I let out a strangled groan. Before I followed through, I laced my trainers and swapped my pyjamas for jogging bottoms, because I'd need to make a fast escape from the tent once the deed was done. Liam was already outside, sat cross-legged on some ferns and rubbing his eyes. I retreated right to the tent entrance, I winced in anticipation, and then I kicked my cousin.
***
Half an hour later, the three of us were trekking through the sleeping camp. All of us were physically awake now, and none of us were being persecuted for waking someone up when they'd specifically asked to be woken up. Rhodri was not always a pleasure to be around before lunchtime, to say the least.
"This one here," Liam said, pointing at a tent which had been repaired so many times that it resembled a patchwork quilt.
"Awesome," Rhodri replied. "I'll be back in five minutes."
He took off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders, and he started towards the tent, but I caught the back of his shirt. "Don't be stupid. I'll lure him out into the woods, and you can do it there."
If he started a brawl in the middle of camp at this hour of the morning, they would get pulled apart before Joel had a chance to grovel. And we would all get into a steaming heap of trouble. Fights between raiding teams were not allowed. You could thrash your own guys without interference - that was just sorting out the hierarchy, but anything else ran the risk of starting feuds.
"And how are you going to do that?" he asked me, folding his arms across his chest.
Instead of replying, I beckoned for Liam to follow me and crept towards the tent myself. Joel was very predictable. It wouldn't even be difficult.
"I'm going running," I told Liam loudly, letting the leaves crunch beneath my shoes. We were right beside the tent, so there was no way Joel was going to sleep through this. "Do you want to come ... or ...?
He didn't take long to catch on and let out a disdainful snort. "Not really."
"You know when I say running, I don't really mean-"
"I know what you mean, Eva," Liam said. "I'm not in the mood."
Rhodri watched on, frowning because he wasn't quite so quick on the uptake.
"Fine. Whatever. You don't have to be so pissy about it," I said quietly.
And then I gave him a little push back towards Rhodri, and the two of us split as if we'd just gone our separate ways. I stayed just long enough to whisper a few curses and let out a mournful sigh, and then I made a beeline straight for the trees, reckoning I'd done enough.
I made sure not to walk too fast. It took Joel less than a minute to get dressed and stumble out of his tents. Before long, I heard footsteps crunching behind me. Rhodri and Liam had made themselves scarce, wisely, but I knew they wouldn't go far.
"What the hell do you want?" I asked him, making sure my voice lacked most of its usual venom.
"You should be careful where you hold your arguments," Joel told me, a little smile playing about his lips. "I knew you were screwing him."
I let my pupils flare, and I chewed on my lip. "You don't know shit."
"If he's not interested, that's his loss. I can keep you company," he offered, that little smile now a full-blown grin.
I stared at him for a moment before shaking my head. "Piss off, Joel."
I wouldn't even have to bend my pride and be nice to him. All I had to do was remove the force from my words and let him think my hatred was wavering. Joel had always been the type of guy to hear 'no' as 'convince me.'
I started walking into the trees, and Joel followed me, saying,"Your flockie pal is alright, I guess. Or he would be, if he wasn't spoiled rotten. I've never understood why you all worship the ground he walks on. It makes me feel sick, to be honest with you. How many of our people did his father execute, do you reckon? Your parents let a cuckoo into the nest."
I hoped to the Goddess that Liam wasn't close enough to hear this.
"Careful," I said much too quietly.
"Why? I get it - he has a sob story, and girls eat that shit up. But ... like ... so what? My dad clouted me, too. That don't mean I get a free pass to do anything now. If he's being an arse, dump him. You don't need to feel guilty about it."
Wow. Just wow. The urge to punch him had just increased by a hundredfold, and it was an effort to keep my fingers from curling into fists.
Somehow, I kept walking. The further we got into the woods, the better. And he followed me, of course, never more than a few steps behind. When we were nearly a mile down the hill, I stopped in my tracks and scowled at him.
"You don't give up easy, do you?" I asked.
"No, I don't," he agreed, leaning against a tree trunk. "You were more than happy to make out with me a few years back. I want to know what changed."
"What changed?" I repeated incredulously. "Three days in, you told me I couldn't wear shorts or talk to other boys."
One other boy in particular.
"That was your problem?"
"Yes, Joel, that was my problem. I thought I'd made that very clear."
I was getting off track. I could've just left him now because I was sure Rhodri was lurking somewhere nearby, but I could see the bulge of a knife in Joel's pocket.
He scratched the back of his neck and looked skyward. "Would it help if I said I was sorry?"
"Would you mean it?" I retorted.
Joel shrugged. That meant no, of course, but I made sure my eyes followed the ripple of his shoulders. He didn't miss the look, and he dared to take a step closer to me. His sullenness was evaporating faster than the morning dew.
Slowly, I reached out and curled my fingers into his pocket under the pretext of drawing him closer. My other hand came to rest on his belt buckle. He'd stopped breathing. He was just staring down at my hand with wide eyes and the beginnings of a smirk. I started undoing the buckle to hold his attention in all its entirety, and all the while my fingers slid the knife upwards and out of his pocket.
And as the buckle came loose, I pulled the knife free and hid it with my sleeve. There. Now he'd have no chance of shanking Rhodri. And I'd managed to thoroughly piss him off - it was a win-win situation.
I let my forefinger touch the zip of his jeans before I stopped and made a face at him. "Mm, think I've changed my mind."
A growl ripped through his chest, as loud and vicious as I'd ever heard, but I was already walking away. The forest was decent around here. It wasn't Haven, of course, but the leaves were green and the trees had bark ... and yeah, I was much too tired to enjoy any of it.
"What the hell, Eva?" Joel shouted after me.
I span just long enough to show him my middle finger, and then I kept walking. In the next few seconds, Rhodri would jump him. I wasn't going to stick around to watch. I'd get to see his bruises later, and besides, I was already fifteen minutes late starting my run.
So I didn't even look back to see Rhodri slam his head into a tree. I only heard the muffled thud and smiled to myself.
***
It was not unusual for me to be soaking wet at this time of the morning, but it was unusual that I wasn't shivering as we made ourselves breakfast. I always went for a swim in the river when I'd finished my run - to wash off the sweat and flecks of mud. The water had been freezing, obviously, but I was now engulfed in a hoody that was four sizes too big.
Now, it was hard to say who it had belonged to originally, but Nia was a good guess. There was a faded NL scrawled in biro on the label. I wouldn't say that was definitive proof that it didn't belong to me, though. A lot of our clothes came from charity shops, so this could have been the property of Nigella Lawson, for all I knew.
"Let's go and eat with the flockies," I suggested wickedly as I poured milk onto my Coco Pops. "See how they've coped with a night on the floor."
That idea proved very popular, so we poured two extra bowls of cereal and carried them into the barn. Hayden was sitting cross-legged on his bed and yawning periodically. Hannah, on the other hand, was lying flat on her back, eyes closed and everything. She sat up quickly enough when she heard us coming.
My dad was sat against the wall opposite, having clearly drawn the late shift. I sat down and started to neck my cereal so I could pretend he didn't exist. I could feel the tangible weight of his eyes on me and the unhappy twist to his lips. It wasn't fair that I felt bad. He was the one who'd snitched.
"You go to sleep, Uncle Leo," Rhodri said cheerfully. His motives were entirely selfish, of course. "We can watch them for a bit."
"Are you going to watch them, or are you going to torment them, Rhodri?" Dad asked him in that eternally patient voice.
"Why not both?"
Such was my cousin's charm that my dad stood up and pulled his coat tighter around him. He was chuckling to himself as he trudged off towards his bed. I felt his eyes on me for a moment, but I had steeled myself to ignore him, and so they slid right off again.
Left alone, we peered at the flockies. Without so much distance between us, I could see the circles under their eyes, and I knew they probably hadn't slept. Okay, so maybe they didn't have mattresses, and maybe the raiders had been jeering at them until the early hours, but I reckoned they hadn't even tried.
"Morning, flockies," I said.
Neither of them bothered to reply. Hannah stifled a yawn with her sleeve, and Hayden ran a hand through his tousled hair. Their composure seemed to have to deteriorated overnight - both mentally and physically.
"If anyone asks, we've been here for an hour already," Rhodri told them. They exchanged a wary look and did nothing to indicate that they might obey him.
He was after an alibi, and I was worried. Shuffling in place, I drew my knees up to my chest. "You think Joel will snitch?"
"No. I think he got the message. His friends, though... What do you think I'd do if you came home black and blue and wouldn't say who did it?"
"He has friends?" I snorted.
"A few here. More among Syd Jacob's team."
Shit. I wouldn't have agreed to this if I had thought there might be ... like ... consequences. If we accidentally started a feud with two raiding teams, Mam might separate us again. And I wasn't sure I could stand another two months of separation.
We stewed in uncomfortable silence for a moment before I remembered that I was holding the flockies' breakfast. I felt safe enough to walk right up to Hayden, who was looking too sleepy to attack anyone. He took the bowl and began wolfing down the contents like he'd been starved. Maybe we'd have to feed him more. He looked bigger than Rhodri, and he was probably accustomed to three square meals a day.
Hannah, however, wasn't that much bigger than I was. She was wearing a thunderous scowl this morning, but whether it was exhaustion or hunger was hard to tell. Cautiously, I put the bowl down in front of her and nudged it closer with the tip of my shoe. She still hadn't touched her dinner from the night before.
I raised my eyebrows. "Not hungry?"
"No," she said without looking at me.
"Are you going to want your breakfast?"
"No."
For Goddess' sake. Even if she hadn't fancied our campfire curry, it wasn't physically possible for anyone to dislike Coco Pops, so this had to be pride. I took the bowl back straight away - no point wasting good food on the flockie if she was just going to turn her nose up.
Rhodri saw and crouched down to examine the untouched curry bowl. "Don't be an idiot."
Hannah shrugged.
"Oi, flockie. Tell her she needs to eat," he said roughly.
It was hard to tell if that comment was directed at Liam, who'd done a similar thing when he'd arrived at Haven, or Hayden, to whom she might actually listen. At this point, however, Hayden seemed to be answering to 'flockie' like it was his name.
"If you're not going to tell them," Hayden warned her, "then I am."
She scowled at him, and I could only imagine that she was saying some very unpleasant things through the link. But she didn't open her mouth, and she certainly didn't explain.
"She's diabetic," he said eventually. "Type 1. If you can't get her insulin, you need to let her go."
Oh.
Well, now I felt bad for jumping to conclusions so quickly.
"Hayden," Hannah snapped.
He drew his knees to his chest defensively. "What? I'm not going to watch you kill yourself."
Rhodri ran a hand through his hair and muttered a few foul words under his breath. "We can't let her go. She's seen too much. I'll get my mother - see if we can sort something out. Is there anything you can eat in the meantime?"
Hannah looked like she might tell him to go to hell just out of principle, but she was interrupted by her stomach growling, and she seemed to think twice. Her voice was almost inaudible as she muttered, "I should be okay with meat on its own, if you've got any."
I gave Liam a look, and he was gone - headed back to the cookfires to raid our supplies. I'd have gone myself, but since Rhodri was already heading off ... well... It just didn't seem like a good idea to leave Liam alone with the flockies. Hayden had been staring at him from the moment we'd walked in, and I felt like a fight between those two was not one that would end happily for anyone.
And so I was left alone with the flockies. It didn't worry me much - they were both chained up and couldn't have touched me if they'd wanted to. I had just settled down to eat the remains of Hannah's Coco Pops, which were already going soggy, when I heard the squeal of the barn door opening and turned around abruptly. A little bit of milk dribbled down my chin.
There were three raiders at the entrance. Two guys and a girl, and all three of them were from Emmett's raiding team. For a heartbeat, I thought they might be here for the flockies, because our parents had been fending off intruders all night. Everyone wanted to spit their fair share of abuse.
But they made a beeline straight for me, and it was all I could do to drop the bowl before they were upon me. The sight of my cereal spilling into the mud was so distressing that I ... um, kinda forgot to defend myself. The shorter of the two men kicked my legs out from under me, and a shove to my back sent me sprawling onto a patch of gravel.
"Whoopsie daisy," the taller guy said. "That was clumsy of you, Eva."
My ribs were on fire. One of my knees had twisted as I'd fallen, and my hands were grazed and bleeding. They'd taken me by surprise. So much so that I could feel my entire body trembling a little. I lay still so I'd have a chance to mind-link someone, but the girl lodged a kick into my ribs the second she saw my eyes glazing over.
"Help her up."
The shorter guy reached down and hauled me up. It helped that I was too busy gasping for breath to offer any resistance whatsoever. He got me upright, and by then I had enough oxygen to squirm a little and reach for my knife. The others closed in, sensing the danger. The switchblade was soon lying in the dirt.
I managed to shove one of them backwards, but the girl got an arm around my throat from behind and held me in place. My hands clawed uselessly at her arm. She was bigger than me. Stronger, too. Not for the first time in my life, I wondered if it would be worth paying attention in training.
"Now that we've got your attention, I have a few questions for you," he said cheerfully.
"Shoot," I said. My voice was a lot hoarser than I'd have liked. I looked around for any sign of help approaching. The flockies were both on their feet, and Hayden was trying to pull his wrist out of the handcuff without any success. It was cute that they wanted to help. Cute and entirely selfish. I was the only person who'd really tried to be nice to them.
The raider stepped closer. I could smell last night's alcohol on his breath. "One of our buddies is looking a lot like a mashed potato. His scent trail says that the two of you went for a walk together and came back separately. Care to explain that for us?"
"You mean Joel?" I demanded. "I didn't touch him. He followed me, and I told him I wasn't interested. That's all, my friends. What the hell did he say happened?"
The three of them exchanged a guarded look, and I knew what that meant. Joel wasn't saying anything at all. Rhodri must have managed to scare him quite badly. They seemed to believe me, though. The taller guy set his jaw and looked around the barn properly for the first time.
"Where are they?" he asked quietly.
He was after Rhodri and Liam, because it was bound to have been one of them. Nearly every rogue in Snowdonia knew the three of us were thick as thieves. Still, I shrugged my shoulders. "How the hell should I know?"
Quick as a snake, he struck me across the face. It was a sharp, merciless blow which split my lip and jarred my neck. "Where are they, Eva?"
"Down by the river," I said, even as I licked the blood from my lips. It would buy me a few minutes. I was dropped like a ragdoll, and the three of them stalked back towards the barn door.
It opened before they could get there. In came Rhodri and his parents, and behind them was Emmett, Nia and Mam. It was a strange, motley assortment, and I did wonder what they were all doing here.
Rhodri took one look at me and lunged for the three raiders. Rhys and Mam caught him before he could take a step - almost throttling him with the collar of his shirt, but the raiders flinched anyway. And despite their bravado a moment earlier, they stood quietly and refrained from venturing any closer.
Normally, Nia would have been in the thick of it, but she came over to me instead and helped me dig pieces of gravel from my palms. I offered her a half-hearted smile because I was still a little shaken up. "Nice timing."
"You've got the flockie to thank for that," Nia said, nodding towards Hayden.
Huh. Interesting that he'd called Nia and not Rhodri and Liam. It was probably the wiser decision. Either he'd realised that she was the ranking member of the younger generation, or, more likely, he'd tried the boys first and they'd ignored him. It was dangerous to mind-link a tapper. Nia had enough talent of her own to risk accepting, but the rest of us didn't.
I smirked at him. "Yeah, well, I'm his favourite."
"Don't get too attached," she warned me. "He just wants you to drop your guard so he'll get a chance to escape."
Huh. I'd been so smug about my plan to turn him rogue that the possibility hadn't even occurred to me. Maybe we'd been playing each other. Then again, maybe not. Hayden looked almost ... offended by Nia's words. There was no way of knowing, really, whether he was just a seventeen-year-old boy looking for friends in a camp full of enemies or an Alpha in training trying to return to his pack.
Perhaps he was a bit of both. Hell, I knew I was at the tipping point now. The older I got, the more the girl who wasn't so sure of herself and the cocky young raider were doing battle, and it was only recently that the raider had started winning more often than not. She wasn't winning today. I looked at my mam, who still had a death-grip on Rhodri's collar, and then I looked back at Nia.
"Are we in trouble?" I dared to ask her, chewing on my lip.
Nia gave me a heavy look. "That depends. Did you do it?"
"No."
She rolled her eyes, stepped around me and put a hand into one of my pockets. When it came out again, Joel's knife was lying in her palm.
Uh oh. I wasn't entirely sure how she'd known it was there. I winced, bracing myself for the telling-off of a lifetime, but Nia just sighed. Without saying a word, she slipped the blade into her own pocket, glancing around to be sure no one had seen. The way she was looking at me ... it was weariness and exasperation and disgust all wrapped up in a little bow.
"Emmett's not happy," she told me in an undertone. "But keep your smartass comments to yourself and you might just get away with this."
Nia was helping me stay out of trouble? What the actual hell was going on here? I got that she wanted to avoid a feud between us and Emmett's guys, but making us apologise would have accomplished that, too.
"Let's have a chat, yeah?" Mam asked loudly. "You two - come and join us."
She meant me and Liam, who'd just returned with a packet of ham to dump at Hannah's feet. I couldn't help noticing that she looked like she was about to throw up. She was already having a quiet conversation with Rhodri's mam, our resident doctor, who had much more experience with battle wounds than diabetes.
I went over to stand beside Rhodri and glower at the people responsible for my aching ribs. Liam took a little longer. He ended up right behind me - he was one of the few people I did trust at my back - and I was pretty sure he was staring the raiders down over my head.
Just to kick things off, Mam took hold of my wrist and checked my knuckles carefully. They were grazed, but there were no tell-tale bruises which might suggest I'd beaten someone up this morning. As if I could beat anyone up. Liam was also cleared because his were faded enough to be from the night before, but Rhodri's were still bleeding in places.
"See? I knew it was him," Emmett began roughly, his eyes fixed on my cousin. "He broke the boy's arm his first week with us. Kids fight - whatever. That's fine. This wasn't fighting, though, was it? It was an ambush. Joel's jaw is broken, and he looks a bloody mess."
I tried not to take this personally, and I was sure Rhodri was, too. Raiding leaders had to stick up for everyone under their command, no matter how vile they were.
"No scent trail," Nia pointed out. "Hard to prove it."
"That is proof. If it wasn't Eva... Well, who the hell else could have been out in the woods without leaving a trail?"
"Maybe he tripped over," Rhodri suggested, the beginnings of a smirk playing about his lips. Mam looked like she wanted to clout him for that, and Emmett let out a furious growl.
Nia intervened once again, her tone even and patient. "You have to prove that he's guilty, Em. Not that everyone else in the world is innocent. Unless Joel will name him, he's going to walk."
"That won't stand," Emmett snapped. "He's a little shit. He needs a good thrashing, and I'm this close to doing it myself."
Rhodri's eyes flashed dark. Nia studied the old raider for a moment, deciding how serious he was, before she jerked her head at my attackers. "Better do these three while you're at it. It looks to me like they just laid into Eva."
"Oh, I slipped and fell," I said robotically. It wasn't convincing, but it wasn't supposed to be. Half a dozen pairs of eyes scanned my visible injuries, deciding for themselves. If Joel wasn't talking and I wasn't talking, both sides could escape punishment here. It was a peace offering, almost.
And Nia rode that wave all the way to shore. "We've had blood on both sides now. Can't we just call it quits before this goes any further?"
It didn't escape my notice that my cousin was being allowed to do the vast majority of the negotiating. If anyone was going to succeed Mam, it would be her, so she needed to learn how to deal with the raiders and their constant bickering. And she seemed to be doing alright so far.
Emmett paused for an uncomfortable moment while he stared at Rhodri. "I'll call it quits if you put him on washing-up for the rest of the month."
"Deal," Mam said. When Rhodri turned to her incredulously, he got nothing but a flat stare in answer. She knew he'd done it, and she could probably prove it if she tried hard enough. There would be footprints in the forest which matched his boots.
Satisfied, Emmett left the barn with the three raiders trailing at his heels. I wouldn't hold a grudge, I didn't think. They'd just been defending their friend, even if that friend happened to be a prick, and ... well ... I got it. Loyalty was one of the traits rogues valued most.
"Did Liam or Eva help you?" Mam asked Rhodri the second they were gone.
"No."
"I'll pretend like I believe you," she sighed. "Joel was punished for last night. You are not a vigilante. If you pull shit like this again, I'll put you on the graveyard shift until you forget what the sun looks like. Do I make myself understood?"
A muscle popped in Rhodri's jaw, and he cast a sulky look around himself before muttering, "Yes, boss."
"That's better," Mam said. She turned to our resident doctor next. "Can you treat her, Cassie?"
"Don't see why not. It won't be cheap to buy insulin under the counter, but it's possible."
"Good. Cuff them together and take them out for some fresh air. Nia, would you-?"
She nodded. We watched in silence as she unlocked each of the flockies in turn and took them out of the barn. Rhodri's mam went with them, too, doubtless to make arrangements for Hannah. It felt a lot like Mam was trying to clear the barn, for some reason. I was acutely aware that Rhodri, Liam and I had yet to be dismissed.
Maybe she wanted to inflict a punishment of her own. And if she tried to send me away again ... well, I wasn't going. The standard she held us to - it was above and beyond that of a normal raider, and I didn't think that was fair. I wanted no part in leadership. Neither did the boys. We'd be happy enough freelancing on raids for the rest of our lives, whether that be another year or ten.
The three of us watched in stony silence as Mam went over to take the huge doors off their latch and push them closed. I moved backwards a fraction to press against the boys. Rhys was the only other person who'd stayed, and he followed her now.
"For the record, I'm not happy about this," he told Mam. "They're just kids."
"We were kids," she said quietly. We weren't supposed to be hearing this conversation, I reckoned. They thought they'd left enough distance, but they were wrong.
"And look how that turned out."
Mam gave him a look. It didn't quite mean 'shut up,' but it was a definite advisement to stop talking. It was so rare to see them arguing that I felt a prickle of unease run down my spine. Something was definitely afoot.
"Are you going to send us away again?" I asked as she came back over.
She sighed aloud and shook her head. "No, Eva. We don't have time now. I was... I meant to give you a few more days, but things are moving quicker than I'd anticipated. We need to have a conversation."
My wolf pricked up her ears at the pure weariness in Mam's voice. I was getting the strangest feeling that I wasn't going to like what she was about to say, and I had no idea why, but I'd learned to trust my gut at times like these. It was a lot sharper than I was.
"Rhodri, would you mind leaving us for a moment?" Mam asked next.
What? What the hell could Liam and I hear that he couldn't? He agreed with me, by the stony look on his face, but he did obey. As soon as he was gone, Rhys took up a sentry position by the door. He was looking out for eavesdroppers. That was a regular occurrence when Mam met with the raiders, but I'd never been on the receiving end of it before.
Mam sat down on an old and very rotten strawbale and gestured for us to the same. Liam and I ended up squashed together on the bale opposite - we were hip to hip, and I could feel the prickle of the straw through my joggers. I took a few pieces and started methodically shredding them to calm my jumpy nerves.
"I need to make this very clear, Liam," Mam began. "What I'm asking ... it's not easy, and it's not fair. If you decide to do it, that's great, and we'll support you as best we can, but the decision is entirely yours, okay? Take a few days. A week if you need it. Don't rush into this."
What the hell?
I could feel Liam tensing at my shoulder. His eyes were wide and wary, and rightly so. This sounded like it was going to be unpleasant for him. I wasn't sure what I was doing here. Moral support, maybe?
"I haven't been entirely honest with you, kids," she went on with a rueful smile. "I'm not trying to get a majority in the packmeet. Well, I am, but that's more of a means to an end. Voting down one amendment isn't going to fix anything, so I'm going to see if I can't start a pack war."
"I've been saying you should do that for years, Mam," I muttered.
"Yes, you have. It wasn't possible until recently."
Bullshit. She could have kidnapped Hayden at any time in the last seventeen years. The Fletchers boys had been sitting around even longer than that - growing older and more bored with every passing day. What else could she possibly have been waiting on?
"The newest amendment has divided them," Mam continued, picking at her fingernails. "Half think it's crossing the line, half think it's not enough. We can use that."
Clearly, she was using it already, so I didn't see why she needed our help. I pretended to count on my fingertips. "If we can get Ember, that's probably three packs on our side. Maybe even four. Add our raiders to four packs, and we'd win easy."
"The key word is 'probably,' Eva. I don't want to bank on Jace managing to keep control of his pack and the Fletcher boys killing their uncle and the other two packs deciding to join us. I want a fifth pack, and in an ideal world, the fifth would be the pack which hates us the most."
"And which is that?" I asked, just to humour her. We all knew the answer.
"Well, all seven packs are fighting the war, obviously. But only three of them really hate us. Silver Lake, Lowland and Riverside. All of them have their reasons, of course, and most of those reasons are courtesy of your grandfather," she said, and then her eyes went straight to Uncle Rhys, who offered her the barest hint of a grin.
It was too quiet in the barn. There were no creaking timbers, no birds singing in the rafters, no planks rattling in the wind. The dawn rays streamed through the battered roof, painting the straw-covered floor with streaks of gold. It was like the calm before a storm. Every hair on the back of my neck was standing on end, just waiting for something...
Mam had paused, her thoughts clearly elsewhere. When she did continue, her voice was an awful lot quieter and more measured. "Of those three... Hard to say. The Riverside Alpha is getting more brutal with every passing day. Lowland would see us dead to a man if they could. But all of this began with Silver Lake, and I have a feeling it might end with them, too."
Already, I didn't like the stress on Silver Lake. It was going to get Liam all screwed up in the head, and it was never easy to pull him back again. We had come a long way since his first day at Haven, true, but it had been a winding, twisted route full of setbacks exactly like this one, and we still had a long way left to go.
"So we destroy them," I muttered, hoping to end the conversation before it properly began. "It's not like they don't have it coming..."
Mam shrugged. "Could do. But it's a short-term solution to a very long-term problem. I would much rather have them on our side, because then we can win decisively."
She wanted to get cosy with the people who were killing our raiders by the dozen? Had she finally lost it? I would sooner work with the English wolves than those sons of bitches in Silver Lake.
"You can't negotiate with Mason," Liam said quietly. "He'd kill anyone you sent, and he'd make it good and slow, too."
I found myself staring at him, my breath caught in my throat. Not once in seven years had he ever talked about his brother in my hearing. He wasn't looking at me or Mam or even Rhys. Those wary brown eyes were fixed on the ground at our feet.
Mam seemed equally astonished. "Even if that person was you?"
"Especially if it was me."
"Then it's lucky I'm not planning to negotiate," Mam said. "Your family - no offence or anything - they need to go. Every last one of them. And that's where you come in, Liam."
Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: Truyen247.Pro