Running with Rogues

CHAPTER 78 - CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG

So it seems that someone upstairs was determined to put a stop to this update, but oh well. As usual, I was more determined. Next time I go into hospital, I'm gonna take my laptop so I can actually write. Because Goddess knows there is shit-all else to do there. Cannot take it to work with me, though. It would 100% get covered in cow shit and ringworm. Just like I do 😔

 Few things:     - We've only got the epilogue left now :O     - Midnight Watch crew, I hope you're ready for action      - We reached 100,000 reads at some point while I was out for the count, so thank you all! Good work      - Today's art is at the top /\ and LittleLoneWriterGirl is really spoiling us with five characters at once.

I was jumping up and down on the spot. Hayden was eyeing me with poorly-concealed disgust, the folder he had been reading completely forgotten. He had been studying for the packmeet like a dutiful little Alpha. I'd called him a nerd already, but he hadn't cared much.

"Someone's full of beans today," he muttered.

"It's freezing," I told him. The words came out choppy because I hadn't bothered to stop jumping long enough to say it.

"You didn't bring a coat?"

I shook my head vigorously. "Liam's got it."

"So ... go inside and get it," he sighed.

"I dunno. That's a super long way to walk. Think I'll just keep jumping."

Hayden looked incredulously at the church, which was all of a hundred metres away from us.

"You know the people we're meeting are really important, right?" he told me waspishly. "Hell, this whole packmeet is really important. I'm seventeen. You're not much older. It's hard enough to get people to take us seriously without you acting like a bloody pogo stick."

I just smiled. To him ... sure, the people we were meeting were 'really important.' To me, they were family of the extended, seldom-visited kind. Anglesey's leader was a cousin of the Llewellyns, and he'd taught me how to catch crabs and lobsters when I'd been hardly more than a toddler. I'd played with his kids. He didn't frighten me. But I wasn't going to tell Hayden that.

"Maybe there's a spare coat in the car," Hayden was saying distractedly. "Han, do you know? If— Hey. Stop touching that. It's fine."

Hannah let out a strangled growl. It was directed at him, even as she snatched her hand away from her upper arm and shoved it deep into a pocket. She had already spent five minutes introducing me to the strange blob-like device that could measure her blood sugar for her. She had told me that she loved it, because it meant she was less of a pincushion, but within about two minutes, she had also told me she hated it, so I didn't really know what to think.

"I think I put it too high. The stupid bloody thing keeps getting snagged under my sleeve," she muttered.

"Well, now you know for next time, don't you?" Hayden told her.

Hannah went back to fiddling with it. She must have been very confident she wouldn't have to shift today, if she'd bothered to stick that thing into her skin. I wasn't so confident, given what had happened at the last packmeet.

The road to the old church was little more than a pair of tyre tracks cutting through grass and wildflowers. It looked like every other turning for a dozen miles, so we'd offered to be the walking, talking signposts. For Hayden, it was a chance to avoid entering the room where his father had died for a few minutes longer. For me, it was simply fresh air and an opportunity to stretch my legs.