Just a Rogue

Hugh

I never had a chance. The bomb went off right in my face, and it was instant agony. I hadn’t managed to do anything but claw at my face and yell and cough before the huge Alpha wolf was knocking me to the floor of the cave, then I must have passed out. Next thing I knew, I was being dragged down a hallway with my hands cuffed behind me, more agony, my hands were switched to the front, and I heard the firm and definite sound of a jail door being slammed shut.

I was in and out of consciousness for a while longer. I feel a fuzzy awareness settling in, and I try to look around to see where I am, but my eyes are still swollen shut. Whatever poison had been in that dust bomb really did a number on me. But I hear voices, especially one, and as my head starts to clear a little, I think I recognize … Wyatt?

I squint around, trying to rub my eyes, and realize that they are clearing up a little, I can see just a bit. I also realize that my hands are cuffed in front of me, and when I try to sit up I hear a chain. Oh, damn. I shake my head, trying to focus, and yup. I’m in a cell, hands cuffed together, with silver judging by the pain in my wrists, chained to the wall, sturdy walls, sturdy bars.

Screwed.

“Are you finally fucking awake?” Wyatt’s voice grumbles at me. I sit on the edge of the bed here in the cell. Bed? That’s nice I suppose, for a dungeon. I squint up at him. My vision is still extremely blurry, but at least I can open my eyes, sort of.

“Where are we?” I ask, surprised at how hoarse and raspy my voice comes out.

“Pack jail, obviously, idiot,” he replies.

I can see that being locked up hasn’t improved his personality any. Asshole.

“Report,” I command him. As far as I know Xavier and Seth aren’t here, so that means Wyatt answers to me still.

He doesn’t argue about it, he falls into line. He always was one for the hierarchy.

“Me, Blake and Finn were attacked and brought here last night,” he tells me. “Ruby was here this morning for a while but they’ve taken her away for questioning. You and Landon and Amir got here about an hour ago.”

Ruby was here? That’s probably on me, I shouldn’t have let her out of my sight when we went shopping. The pack probably attacked her since she was alone. “Anybody else?” I ask.

“No word,” he says. Well, that leaves the other she-wolves, and if they aren’t down here, I imagine they’ve been taken as prizes by the pack. Four of our males are missing, and I have to assume that they were killed in the fight, including Xavier.

Why are we alive, I wonder. Why not just kill us? I was entirely incapacitated, it would have been easy. I don’t really understand what the pack’s play here is, but I obviously will have to just wait and see. The pack has us thoroughly secured. We have no power or ability to do anything but wait for whatever they have planned for us.

“Well?” Wyatt asks.

“Well what?”

“What’s the plan? How are we getting out of here?”

What? I hold up my chained hands. “Unless you have superpowers, we aren’t. They’ve got us, Wyatt, admit it. We just have to wait for our execution, I guess.”

He starts yelling, but I ignore him. I’m sorry it has come to this, but it was always inevitable. Xavier played too close to the edge of the rules, attacking humans and wolves when he thought he could get away with it, and I always knew someday he would cross a line. I should have left him a long time ago, before I got drug down with him.

It’s too late now, though. The reality of my situation settles on me with the weight of a thousand tons of rock. I’m doomed. I’m breathing my last breaths, thinking my last thoughts. I’m a condemned man.

I wonder how the she-wolves are. I hope that they are alive, at least. They can adapt to their new lives, presumably as pack slaves. If they could get used to Xavier, there is not any abuse the pack could heap on them that they wouldn’t be able to survive. If Ruby is being questioned right now, I hope they don’t torture her too bad. I could have seen her as a friend, if it wasn’t for Xavier. I hope she’s okay.

I wonder how much time I have left. I hope at the end I at least get to see the sky one more time.

Ruby

We’re allowed to just sit out on the patio behind the packhouse, in the pleasant afternoon sunshine, only a couple of pack males here to guard us. They aren’t really guarding, though, they’re just sitting around too, chatting.

Corinne and I are both so excited to see that Lynette and Nova made it out alive. They never had a chance to run off like I did, so it is wonderful that they were able to get through the battle, submit, and apparently earn enough trust that they weren’t immediately tossed in a jail cell. I’m glad, because Nova would have found it difficult to ignore all of Wyatt’s screaming and ranting.

After we get past the immediate frenzy of hugging and crying and laughing through our tears, we sit back down on the super comfy outdoor furniture. I don’t think this pack does uncomfortable. Everything is plush and pleasant. Who knew wolves could live this way?

Nova curls up next to Corinne, who wraps her arm around the smaller girl. “You saved us, Corinne,” she whispers up to her, “you saved us all. Thank you.”

Tears are still rolling down Corinne’s cheeks. “I couldn’t save you all,” she says, and her voice catches. “Not Grace.”

I point out, “You were right not to tell her. She would have told Xavier right away. I was down in the jail, by the way, I didn’t see them. Do you know what happened?”

She nods, wiping her face. “They went out the back tunnel with me and Seth, when the battle started, and they….” She stops talking, and a fresh batch of tears starts, and Lynette meets my eyes.

The male pack member, Evan I guess, sitting on Corinne’s other side looks at her, and she nods, apparently wanting him to tell us. I’m not really understanding what is going on there, but I listen as he says, “Xavier and Seth and Grace fell over the cliff.”

Nova gasps and puts her hands to her face, but Lynette’s eyebrows lift, and she looks grimly pleased. I know that those three caused her so much misery. Seth was the one who put the collar on her every time, and Grace is the one who let it happen no matter how much she claimed to try to protect us. I think I agree with Lynette. Good riddance to Xavier. And Grace and Seth got what was coming to them for supporting such a monster.

I think Corinne can tell what Lynette and I are thinking, because she seems to find her voice. “Seth…” her face crumples and she has to pause to take a couple of deep breaths. “He tried to save me,” she says. What? Really? She goes on, “Xavier told him to put the collar on me, because I was trying to get away from him, and instead Seth put it on Xavier. They were fighting, and Grace tried to stop it, and that’s when they fell.” Her tears are falling too.

Lynette’s mouth drops open. “The collar was on Xavier?” She gets a hard look of exultation on her face, and I can’t blame her.

Neither can Corinne. She nods at Lynette, and reaches out for her hand, and whispers, “He knew, at the end, how that felt.”

Well, damn.

I know there is a lot more to say, a lot more questions to be answered, but somebody else comes out of the packhouse and joins us. It’s that guy that I had submitted to at the trailhead, Dom, and his girlfriend Amelia.

Corinne jumps up and rushes over to Amelia, and they give each other a tight hug, and I see that Amelia was right when she told me earlier that she and Corinne have become good friends.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Amelia tells her, utter sincerity in her voice. Then she looks around at all of us, and says, “Alpha Kanen would like you all to come inside, he wants to talk to you.”

This is it. The pack has won, I think we might be about to learn our fate.

Lynette meets my eyes again, then she reaches out for Nova’s hand. She uses the same hand that was cuffed to Nova for so long. I think it comforts them.

I see that Corinne takes Evan’s hand. I wonder if being involved with a pack member is enough to save her. Or if he’ll just be in trouble, or at the very least disappointed when she is exiled again.

I follow them inside, and the random thought crosses my mind that this pack is so prosperous that in the middle of everything that happened today, the battle and the jail and the whole thing, they obviously had their cleaning crew hard at work, because the smell of that pine-scented cleaner is stronger than ever, smelling delicious alongside the yummy scents emanating from their kitchen.

It smells so good that it’s weirdly distracting, and as we walk through the packhouse I have to try to force myself to stop thinking about something as random as how good it smells. I’m about to meet my doom, maybe, I shouldn’t do it sniffing up a storm. I need to concentrate.

But the closer I get to where we are going the less I can concentrate on anything except this smell, and I realize that my inner wolf, who is normally quite silent, is completely freaking out, and I am feeling almost dizzy with confusion and a strange desire as I walk through the door behind the other she-wolves.

And am immediately met by the most beautiful pair of dark eyes, in the most attractive brown face I have ever seen, and realize that this magnificent man is the source of the scent, and he is bursting to his feet and rushing straight over to me with an almost savage expression of intensity on his face, and I am ready to fall over I am so excited and confused and overwhelmed.

Theo

Just watching everything unfold on the monitors has worn me out. Geez. The battle in the cave, the battle on the cliff, the rescue operation, the jail cells full of rogues. This day has been wild.

Kanen gets back without Ross, because apparently the other Alpha wanted to stay at the hospital and keep his eyes on Xavier. Although from what I understand, Xavier was more or less splatted at the foot of the cliff and is so entirely messed up that he’ll never be able to cause trouble to anybody again.

Other than the two rogues at the hospital, and the one missing she-wolf, everything is pretty much wrapped up. The cave rogues have been brought in, after they had to wait for their wolf healing to get them to the point where they could withstand the silver cuffs. Sometimes, I admit to myself, I think that we might be slightly too considerate. They’re rogues, who cares if we put silver cuffs on them before they’re ready for it? They get what they deserve.

But, our leaders are very firm. Our pack is just, fair, honorable, and we will never allow abuse to occur for no reason. The rogues will be given an opportunity to defend themselves before a pack tribunal prior to their punishment being decided. And we have all the time in the world for that to unfold. The rogues are locked in our jail cells downstairs. They aren’t going anywhere until we’re ready for them.

Kanen sends Amelia and Dom out to go get the she-wolves. They have all submitted, and some kind of plan needs to be made for what happens next.

I realize that I’m smelling rain again, suddenly, very strongly, and I glance out the window, confused. It still looks sunny out there, but there has to be a storm on the way. I glance over at Kanen who is smooching Janine as she sits on his lap, both of them looking happy and relaxed now that the battle is over. The Betas, Malcolm and Nolan, are talking quietly together. Darlene is watching the video feed from the jail downstairs where the last two rogues from the cave have just been deposited. It’s all quiet, and nobody else seems to be noticing the very obvious scent of inexplicable weather.

I idly realize that I’m hungry, too, the fried chicken the kitchen apparently is making, I guess for dinner since it didn’t show up at lunch, is creating an overpoweringly delicious scent. It’s making me twitchy. I hope this meeting with the rogue females is over quickly so I can go get something to eat, and maybe take a walk before the rain hits.

I feel weirdly restless, which I suppose isn’t surprising since I just spent the entire day watching action I couldn’t participate in. But what strikes me as super strange is that my wolf is suddenly hyper and bouncing around in my mind as well. Just one more day, I think, then we can shift without the doctor being mad, and we’ll go have a nice run together. But the thought of a run doesn’t calm him down. My wolf is just getting very wound up for some reason.

Amelia and Dom come back in the door to the conference room, followed by Evan and Corinne and two of the she-wolves, and something suddenly happens in my brain.

That scent. The rain, the fried chicken, is suddenly swirling around like one unified thing, not two separate unrelated aromas, and it is causing every neural receptor in my brain to go absolutely haywire. I start breathing heavily, staring around, my wolf is going wild, and I don’t know what is happening.

Until I see her walk in the door. My eyes just about pop out of my head on springs like one of those old-fashioned cartoons, the second that I see the most enchanting woman in the world. Tall, slender, clipped short afro, skin a warm brown color, black intense eyes, moving with a lithe and easy strength, and the most intoxicating scent.

I am alone with her, only her, nothing else matters, and before she can get one more step inside the door I am surging to my feet and striding over to her without my cane, ignoring the pain in my leg, because I am compelled to her side, overcome by the intense urge to go to her, to touch her, to say to her…

“Mate!”