The Wolves and the Vipers

Chapter 8 - Settled

Hey folks! I'm working on getting the Text to Speech option on this book (and all my other books), so I'll let you know when that's up and running :) Apparently us poor Android peeps have to wait a bit longer to have access to it in the app, but you can still listen on desktop, never fear.

It was the smell of breakfast cooking which brought me downstairs the next morning. I had checked the time and felt slightly ashamed to see that it said ten o'clock, given how early I had gone to bed. But after months of sleeping rough, the mattress had defeated me. I found Jace standing over the oven once again, flipping bacon in a saucepan.

But today, he wasn't alone. Tyler was aggressively buttering slices of bread beside him. Bacon butties, then. Kara was sat at the table, munching her way through one. There was a horribly familiar man sat beside her, an empty plate in front of him.

Jace turned around when he heard the stairs squealing under my feet, but he didn't smile. His smiles seemed to be rare and reserved for emptier rooms.

"I think you've already met Bradley," Jace told me, gesturing to our guest. I gave the slightest of nods. It would be hard to forget him, given that he had helped throw me into the cells and then accused me of being a rogue. "He's in charge of my Deltas, but since I don't need him today, he'll be escorting you and Kara to Wyst."

"Wyst?" I asked.

"The nearest human town. You didn't have many clothes with you when you got here, so..."

"Oh," I murmured, feeling my cheeks starting to burn. "Thank you, but I don't have any money."

"It's lucky that I do, then," Jace told me, his amusement evident. "If you spend less than a thousand pounds between you, I'll send you back tomorrow to finish the job."

"A thousand?" I demanded incredulously. "Jace, I couldn't. That's-"

He just shrugged at me. "A reasonable amount to spend on entire wardrobes for two people? Yes, it is. And in all honesty, it's probably too low, so do try and spend more, if you can. Food is ready when you are."

"But-"

"You do like bacon, don't you?" he asked me. It was clearly meant to be a prompt for me to fill my plate and stop arguing.

I bit my lip and looked at the heap of food. I knew it had been made for my benefit because he must have eaten his own breakfast hours ago. "I don't know, to be honest. I don't eat pork. But I'm happy with just bread and butter - thank you."

Jace gave me a quizzical look as he set the pan down. "You don't eat pork?"

I sat down at the table and found a plate deposited in front of me. Sure enough, there was no bacon in sight. "No. I had a Jewish upbringing, courtesy of my stepmum. I'm not very observant anymore, in all honesty, but I still avoid pork and shellfish and mixing meat with dairy and so on."

"Sorry. I'll remember that," Jace said. "Is chocolate spread okay?"

"Yes," I told him, smiling from ear to ear. "Definitely."

Jace had to leave before I had finished my breakfast, after the sullen Beta turned up at the door again. When Tyler said a cheerful hello while elbow-deep in a washing up bowl, it was only answered with a distracted nod, so something must have been up. He and Jace left in the direction of the pack house, talking in voices too low for me to make out.

"Ready, Luna?" Bradley asked me.

I glanced down at my plate and found it empty, so I nodded my assent. He led us outside, and we found two cars waiting on the gravel. I was still a little wary of him, given that he had been one of the wolves who had attacked me. The bite marks on his cheek were nothing more than red dots now, but my own injuries had been slower to heal. I was also wary of the three men who came to attention as we walked into view.