Just a Rogue

Dominic

“Wait wait wait!!!” Theo calls out as we try to leave again. We’ve been here for a few hours, laughing and joking and trying to prevent him from getting out of bed. Dr. Hughes even came in and scolded him, and told him if he doesn’t stay still she’s not letting him go home tomorrow, so we’re actually trying to do him a favor, but he’s not making it easy.

“What?” Evan laughs.

“You promised you’d hook me up with some decent food. I demand hamburgers. Or fried chicken. Or, no, wait, pizza!”

“Fine, fine!” I tell him. “Give us half an hour, we’ll be back with food, okay.”

He crosses his arms. “You don’t both need to go. I’m holding one of you hostage.”

“I volunteer as tribute!” Evan grins. “Besides, Dom can find the take-out places easier than I can.”

“No he can’t,” Theo points out. “He’s from Dark Woods too, neither one of you knows your way around here.”

“Ah,” but Evan argues, “he has some sort of super special mate telepathy. Amelia can tell him where to go.”

True! I grin and shrug.

“Fine. Go,” Theo tells me. “Come back in half an hour or this hostage is toast.”

“Isn’t toast what’s for dinner tonight?” I ask, and have to duck a cup that he hurls straight at my head. They’re laughing hysterically as I run out of the room.

“You busy?” I mind-link to Amelia as I am getting in the car.

I feel her rush of love. “Never too busy for you,” she replies, her mind caressing mine like her fingers on my chest. Mmmmm. “And no, our meeting just wrapped up, I’m only doing some stuff on my computer. What are you doing?”

“Theo is being extremely bossy,” I think, but I know that she can feel the humor. Kind of nice, actually, if I tried to convey that in a text message, it wouldn’t come across right, but with the mind-link I can use all the nuance of emotion. So she knows the statement is snarky, not serious. “He demands hamburgers, or fried chicken, or pizza. Or else he’s going to eat Evan or something.”

I hear her giggle in my head. “Okay, well, which one?”

“I don’t know. Probably pizza?”

“Hmm. If you go down the street from the hospital, about four or five blocks, you will pass a hamburger place, and it’s actually across the street from a pizza parlor. How about if I call in a pizza order for you, and you go pick up a hamburger first, then go across the street to get the pizza? That should satisfy even a cranky bedridden surfer like Theo!”

“Perfect,” I tell her. “I’m on the way. How can I ever thank you?” I picture thanking her with all kinds of nasty bedroom shenanigans. We did a lot of exploring last night, and I have lots of suggestions to make.

I hear her giggle and can practically feel her blushing. “Yes, please. But later.”

“What? Later? Haven’t we waited long enough? We’ve had to say later way too many times.”

“I’m placing the order for pizza online right now,” she says, “and it will be ready in fifteen minutes. And yes, we’ve said later too much, but I’m afraid we have dinner plans.”

“Oh?” Not just the cafeteria at the packhouse with Evan and Corinne apparently?

“No. My Mom called. She wanted to know where we disappeared to last night after the mating ceremony.”

“Ah. Yeah, I guess we left without saying goodbye to anyone.”

“With good reason,” she says.

“Absolutely,” I reply, totally enjoying having a whole chat with my mate in my head while I’m driving. “We had something to take care of."

“Mmmmmm, yes we did!” she says, somehow thinking it in a very sultry tone. Sproing! “Anyway, she asked us both to come over tonight for dinner.”

Ohhhhhh. We’re going to her house, with her parents, with our marks, and it’s time to come fully clean about this. I suppose it should be terrifying, but I’ve met her family, and I like them. “Okay,” I tell her, and picture nibbling her neck a little, and I feel her little mental shiver. This is so fun. “I’ll be back in less than an hour, I hope, then we can go.”

“I love you,” she says, and it isn’t just the words, it is all the feeling behind them, washing over me, making her mark on my throat tingle and my dick jump up.

“I love you,” I tell her, and hope that the same thing happens to her. More or less.

Evan

Dom isn’t actually gone very long, I’m not sure it even takes him the whole half hour. Theo and I have spent the whole time speculating about when Dr. Hughes will okay him to go surfing again. I can hardly believe that we both want to get wet again after all the snow and rain and crashing and pain that we went through a couple of days ago, but here we are. I actually can’t wait to try it again.

When Dom comes running in the door, he triumphantly hands him a pizza box, and a bag from a hamburger chain. Theo grins, but then pretends to be critical. “What, no chicken?”

“Dude,” I grin at him, “don’t be greedy.”

But Dom laughs. “Ha! Check in the bag!” Theo peeks in, pulls out a bag of french fries, a huge burger, and a box of chicken tenders.

“You may live,” Theo grants me magnanimously.

We leave him cheered up and with junk food covering his bed, just as his hospital dinner of jello or something is arriving for him to ignore.

“Okay,” I tell Dom, “we’ve done our good deed for the day.”

“Excellent.”

“I wonder how things have gone at River Moon today?” I ask, and am surprised when he starts actually answering. Oh yeah. He and Amelia have, like, a full mind meld.

“After the leaders meeting, Corinne and Amelia spent the afternoon with the Lunas. I guess they got a lot more information about the rogues, and Janine is putting together a plan that she’ll talk about tomorrow at the meeting.”

I hope Corinne is feeling okay. Sounds like she got grilled again all afternoon. “I’m thinking we shouldn’t ask Corinne a lot of questions about it at dinner tonight,” I warn him. I want to be sensitive to her feelings.

He nods, his hands on the wheel as we drive back to the packhouse. “Yeah,” he agrees, “but I won’t be there. Apparently Amelia’s parents have invited us over to her house for dinner.”

“Oh!” I think about her family. I was there on Christmas, and they seemed nice enough. Even her flirty little sister. That feels like it was so long ago. “Um, do they know about you two?”

He grits his teeth, pretending to be terrified, and gives me a sideways glance. “Not yet!”

“Ha! Have fun with that!” I’m sure it’ll be fine, and I can tell he thinks so too. He seems very relaxed and comfortable, he has all day long. Finding your mate has got to be an amazing thing, it seems to fill him with contentment.

“I’m happy for you, Dom,” I tell him as he pulls the car around to the garage behind the packhouse. I mean it quite seriously, and I know he can tell.

“Thanks,” he says simply, and we walk back in together.

He leaves me as I go into the cafeteria to look for Corinne.

I find her still working, bringing a hot plate full of food from the back and setting it up in the buffet line. She’s wearing an apron and her long hair’s up in a hair net, and she looks so cute this way. When she puts the food in its place she looks up and sees me.

“Hey,” I say, smiling at her, “you gonna be off soon?”

She glances up at the clock on the wall. “In a few minutes. You don’t have to wait for me, you should go ahead and eat.”

“I don’t mind waiting,” I tell her, “I’m gonna go upstairs for a few minutes, then I’ll come back down and we can eat together. Okay?”

She nods, and there is a smile on her face, but it doesn’t reach her gray eyes somehow. I’ll bet she’s unsettled by her meeting with the Lunas today. I’m definitely not going to interrogate her about it. She probably wants to forget all about it.

Amelia

Even driving in the car with him feels different. We’ve done it before, but it’s somehow more intimate, to be this close to my mate, now that we have completed our bond. I watch his hands on the wheel, admiring his fingers, his wrists, the side of his face as he watches the road, the turn of his throat where my mark lingers, and I remember the moment that I marked him last night, while I was sitting on top of him, and he was inside of me, and we were merged together like -

“Are you actually trying to make me crash this car?” he asks, a little hoarsely.

Oh. Oops. “Sorry,” I say, sputtering out a laugh, “um, it’s hard not to get carried away when I look at you.”

“Well, I appreciate that whole scene you just played for me,” he says, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, and I know it is because his dick has grown because of what he could see me thinking, “but your parents would be annoyed if we die in a wreck before we make it to their house.”

“Later?” I suggest.

He grits his teeth and laughs. “Yes, Impossible Girl, later. Now can you talk about something else before I come right here in the driver’s seat?”

I think quick. “We made a plan today, but I’m not sure how much everyone is going to like it. I don’t like it, but Janine is convinced it’s the only way to go.”

“Oh yeah? What’s the plan?”

“Corinne is going to go back to the rogues.”

“What?” He sounds totally shocked.

“I know, it sounds terrible, but I think it could work. Janine says that she will get some tracking equipment, like a webcam and stuff, for Corinne to set up in that last cave near Arcata. She’ll wait there for them. Then when the rogues arrive, we’ll be able to see and hear what they’re doing, and make a whole plan. We’ll be more in control when we go to confront them.”

He is stunned into silence. “I, uh,” is all he says.

“Corinne wants to warn the she-wolves in advance. And after everything she told us, I’m starting to think this really is the only way that we could possibly get them out safely.”

We’ve arrived at my parents’ house, and he pulls the car up to the curb then turns to look at me. His eyes are stunned. “I can’t believe she’d go back,” he says.

“It’s her choice, and Janine thinks it’s the best plan. We’ll talk about it more at the meeting tomorrow.”

He takes a deep breath, then turns to look at the house. I reach over and take his hand. “Are you ready?” I ask him, just like he asked me this morning before we went upstairs to face the pack. He nods, and I lean over and kiss him before we get out of the car.

My little brother is running out to meet us before we get inside, and he stops and stares with wide eyes when he sees the marks on both of our throats. He doesn’t even say hi to us, he just immediately turns around and runs back into the house, screaming, “Guess what?!”

Dom laughs, low under his breath, and we walk inside, hand in hand.