Luna of Rogues is currently cruising #1 in rogue (the only tag which matters), so nice work, y'all. Let's show all the pack-lovers what they're missing ;)

P.S. welcome Malaysia!

The packlings were slow to find our trail and slower still to follow it, so we'd gone nearly a mile before the sound of their hunting howls reached us. There wasn't a ghost of a chance they would catch us now. We were only five minutes from the border, but that didn't mean we were out of the woods — literally or figuratively.

Stretching my back leg out was excruciating, so I tucked it against my body and ran on three legs. It wasn't easy. I had to correct my balance every other step, and the other hind leg soon ached, but I could still keep up with Nia just fine. She set the pace, glancing back every so often to make sure I hadn't fallen behind.

The undergrowth swayed to our left, and that was all the warning we got before a wolf pounced at us. He was big and well-built, and he crashed headlong into Nia's shoulder, sending her tumbling. By the time I had managed to skid to a halt, it was already too late — they'd rolled and she'd gotten hold of his neck in the span of a few seconds. She shook him like a ragdoll and left him lying in the mud with spinal damage.

I dropped my knife and pressed my side against hers. We waited, head-to-tail, eyeing the ferns around us, because flockies were never alone. We didn't have to wait long. Two more wolves burst from the bushes, and then another two. It was an entire patrol, and they must've reckoned they'd have an easy job tackling two female rogues.

They hadn't counted on Nia. Me? I was average at fighting, and that was being generous. But Nia was worth, like, six normal wolves.

So I went for the smallest, skinniest wolf there, and Nia went for the other three. They hadn't been expecting us to attack them, outnumbered as we were, so my opponent scrambled backwards until his rump hit a tree. And then I was on him - my teeth tearing into his side. Hot blood filled my mouth, the taste of it jolting me awake and setting my heart to racing.

I quite enjoyed fighting. It wasn't as good as running, but there was something about imminent danger which turned my whole body electric. As soon as I'd snapped at the packling, and he'd snapped back at me, we had passed the point of no return. One of us would live and one of us would die right on that patch of earth.

He managed to close his jaws around my forelimb, and the pain was ... well, it hurt. That goes without saying. It also pissed me off. As soon as he'd locked his jaw, he was vulnerable. I didn't bother going for his throat. I just ripped open the corner of his mouth, taking out a chunk of the muscle which worked his jaw. He couldn't keep hold of my leg, because his lower jaw was hanging useless, and he couldn't do a damn thing to stop me opening his carotid.

He writhed and slumped onto his hocks, his front claws raking across my chest. Before long, he was just twitching on the ground.

Dead. Or heading that way.

And then I was free to help Nia, who wasn't doing too badly. She had incapacitated one of her opponents already, and now she was wrestling with another and doing her best to ignore the wolf with his jaws clamped around her shoulder.

I went for that wolf — biting clean through the last five inches of his tail. Enraged, he released Nia and twisted around to punish me for it, but I was ready for him. Before he could turn all the way, I reared up and bit down on his lower back, vertebrae cracking under my teeth. He dropped like a stone.

The other packling was down, too, his intestines spilling into the mud.

Nia was panting through a grin. Her pelt was bloodied, her shoulder scratched to ribbons, and she had never looked happier.

"You good?" she asked me.

I tested my foreleg. In the chaos of the fight, I had been able to ignore it, but I could definitely feel it now. The muscle was damaged. I couldn't put weight on it, and that left me with only two working legs. I couldn't run on two legs.

"I'll live," I linked back, spitting out a mouthful of the second guy's blood to collect my knife.

She rubbed up against me, wiping her blood on my nice, clean fur, and I could only glare. "Damn right you'll live, pup. If you went and died on my watch, your mam would have my throat."

"Nah," I said. "She adores you."

"I'd rather not find out. Let's move our asses before anyone else joins the party."

Moving my ass was easier said than done. I alternated between using my injured legs and, even then, every step hurt. I was determined to keep up with Nia, but determination was only worth so much, and she had to slow down for me before two minutes had passed.

It was horrible. Running was the only thing I was good at.

Somehow, I kept moving. After a few more minutes, the pain seemed to grow distant and dulled. Adrenaline was one hell of a drug. But we weren't moving fast enough — the howls had gotten louder. By the time the bone fence came into sight, we were cutting it very damn close.

Since we'd retraced our steps, we crossed the border at the same place. I paused for a moment in front of the wolf skull, and all of a sudden, I didn't feel so bad about kidnapping that woman. She couldn't be entirely innocent while she belonged to this pack of pup-killers.

***

A mile across the border, Lily and Devin waited on the side of a road. Our getaway car — a Honda with tinted windows — was parked there, every single one of the doors open, and I could see the woman we'd abducted lying unconscious on the back seat. The rest of Nia's raiding team were sitting on the bank and throwing grass at each other.

I was over-excited from the running and the fighting, so I tackled Lily's wolf, and I was probably a bit too rough. She let out a surprised yelp. Teeth closed around my scruff and hauled me backwards. I'd pushed in line for a greeting, and while I hadn't actually hurt Lily, Nia had no way of knowing that.

She lifted a lip and growled at me. In human form, I could've ignored it, but my wolf had a healthy respect for authority. She sank onto her haunches, half-rolled over and showed her throat. Our tail thumped against the ground in apology. Nia, who probably would've been satisfied with a duck of the head, pushed her muzzle into my throat and sneezed, and I sighed at my wolf.

With me disciplined, Nia and Lily said hello with a wrestling match. The winner, as always, was my cousin, but she was very good at pretending that Lily was actually a threat. When they were done, I crept forwards on my belly for a snuffle. Lily rubbed her cheek against mine, telling me I was forgiven.

There was a pile of clothes waiting for us. I took a mouthful behind a tree and shifted back. They were boys' clothes, and they stank of other rogues, and they were way too big, and there was no bra, and I got blood all over them before I could even put them on, but it was better than being naked. Probably.

When I limped back out in a scratchy jacket, a t-shirt which reached my thighs and a pair of rolled-up cargo trousers, Nia and Lily had gone to shift (and probably make out). I leant against the car door and stared at the pack woman, who was drooling in her sleep.

Then someone shoved me from behind, and not gently. I whirled around to face them, one hand already darting into a pocket for my knife, only to growl at the culprit. It was the least annoying of the initiates — Charlotte. And when I said least annoying, I meant she was the only one who hadn't thrown a punch at me yet, not that I liked her in any capacity.

I let go of my knife, if only because she didn't have one, and it wouldn't be fair.

"Hey, bitch," she snarled. "You stole my knife. Where the hell is it?"

Oh, she'd noticed now, had she? It had taken long enough. Maybe she had noticed yesterday and spent this long psyching herself up to ask me about it ... but I doubted it, somehow. She was taller and older than me. More likely, it had taken her this long to interrogate the other initiates and determine that they were innocent.

"You know what, Char? I have no bloody idea," I told her. I'd lost a lot of blood in the last hour — I was too tired for this shit.

She frowned, taken aback by the shortness in my tone. "Well, I want it back."

"Then you can walk your ass into Ember and get it, can't you?"

"You're the one who lost it, bitch. You get it," Charlotte said sweetly.

I felt a hot flash of irritation, and even my sheep of a wolf pricked her miserable ears up. I wasn't the type to pick fights, but I wouldn't take shit from anyone. It was the only way to survive among rogues. If you backed down once, showed weakness once, you'd get trampled on for the rest of your life.

The last few months had been a steep learning curve in that regard. Away from Mam and the Llewellyn boys for the first time in my life, I'd had to make my own name. And evidently I wasn't very good at it yet, because this upstart pup seemed to think she could come at me.

"Call me a bitch one more time, Char, and I'll use your entrails for a chew toy," I said.

"Bitch," she spat without hesitation, grinning the challenge.

Oh. I'd been banking on the deterrent, to be honest. This was ... oh, no...

Now what? Was I supposed to kick her ass? Could I?

My cousin was back. She was watching from a few steps away, letting it play out for the time being. She wouldn't let us tear into each other so close to the Ember border — she couldn't afford to. I decided to bet on that and lunged at the girl. I managed to get a hand around her neck and lodge a punch to her stomach before someone grabbed me from behind and dragged me backwards.

I'd won the bet. Nia had a firm grip on the collar of my shirt. She was pulling upwards so it dug into my neck like a noose. I couldn't break free, and I certainly couldn't go forwards, which suited me just fine. Naturally, I made a good show of struggling, and Nia just twisted my collar tighter.

Devin was holding Charlotte like a rag doll to stop her retaliating. I'd definitely got the better end of the bargain. She spat at me and muttered an unrepeatable word.

"There's a time and a bloody place, pups," Nia told us. "And guess what? It ain't here."

"She's a thieving piece of shit," Charlotte hissed.

"We're all thieving pieces of shit, Char," I said sarcastically, and she gouged bloody lines in Devin's arm trying to free herself for another go. Nia shook me.

"Eva Llewellyn," she said — a clear warning. "Not another word from you."

I settled for smirking instead. There was still blood on my lips from the fight with the patrol. The surname drop had been very, very deliberate. It was a reminder for Charlotte that we were family ... and that she was punching above her weight. It should have annoyed me that my cousin reckoned I needed her protection, but I was tired, and she was right.

A moment later, I was released with a shove. Nia went to the car and came back a moment later holding something — the pack women's purse. She threw it at Charlotte, who barely managed to catch it.

"Buy yourself a new knife," Nia ordered. "You can sit your ass in the car, little cousin. Now, please."

I did. The howls were getting uncomfortably close. The chase didn't end at the border anymore. We were at war, after all, and there was no such thing as no man's land. No time out zone. The battlefield stretched from Ember to Silver Lake — all those hundreds of acres, and not a single patch of earth where a rogue could be safe.

I sat in the back with the pack woman, which was kinda awkward, given that she was unconscious. It got less awkward when Lily and Nia got into the car, too. Lily was driving, because she was the only one of us who actually knew the rules of the road.

We pulled off as flockies started to appear from the trees. The rest of the raiders were already gone — running north, back to the camp, by the most strung-out, roundabout route they could dream up. They weren't coming to Haven with us. Haven was only for the coolest, most awesome rogues.

"And that, Eva, is the last bit of trouble you can make for me," Nia said from the front seat. She was grinning again.

"Don't count on it. There's a whole car journey between here and Haven," I muttered.

"You'll behave yourself or I'll leave you on the curb to walk home." Almost as an afterthought, she added, "And if you bleed on my upholstery, they won't ever find your body, kid."

I looked down at the red-brown stain beneath me and bit my lip, because it was a little too late. My leg was still leaking, and my left arm had left a long, messy smear along the window. By all rights, Nia should've been bleeding, too. But she healed fast — faster than Rhodri, even, and he was Llewellyn by blood. It wasn't fair.

When I didn't answer, Nia turned around to look at me, her eyes already full of suspicion and horror. "Eva...?"

"Sorry?" I offered.

She growled. Not at me, but I smiled sheepishly all the same, which was a classic appeasement tactic. Sure enough, she turned back around and glowered at the road ahead.

"Just sit on your jacket," Lily suggested as she nosed the car out of a junction. She was wearing her driving glasses, which made her look more like a suburban housewife than a wanted criminal. "Babe, are we going via Arlow?"

"If you don't mind. Better safe than dead."

The indicator started ticking away, and we turned onto the main road east. It would be a long journey — half an hour at least. I unclipped my seat belt and wriggled out of my jacket. It didn't make a very comfortable cushion, but it was better than getting my ass kicked.

I rested my head against the window and closed my eyes. I had a talent for napping. Given five minutes, I could get to sleep anywhere, anytime. Today was no exception. The second I found a place to rest my head without staining my neck, I was out like a light.