The Wolves and the Vipers

Chapter 52 - Another Luna

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We passed under a crumbling arch and into a dimly lit room. There were wooden benches along the walls, which looked hand-made, but no other furniture in sight. The roof was mostly intact, with tarpaulins covering the areas where it had crumbled. Skye and I weren't entirely alone. Rhys and the ginger-haired girl had followed us in here. They sat on the benches. I stared at the former with poorly concealed annoyance.

"What happened to no testosterone?" I asked. To be honest, I was furious at him for leading us all here like lambs to the slaughter, lying with every other breath.

She shrugged at me, indifferent. "Oh, don't you know? Rhys is a girl."

He rolled his eyes in a way that made me think perhaps they were siblings, after all.

"I know for a fact that isn't true," I told her.

She exchanged a smirk with the ginger girl, who was raising her eyebrows suggestively. Both of them looked like they were trying not to laugh. I felt my cheeks getting warm. "No, no, no. I didn't mean it like that. I just— I meant—"

"She has seen me mostly naked," Rhys explained, rather unhelpfully. "But not for fun reasons."

Right. At the river. I was a tiny bit grateful for his clarification, because the last thing we needed was another rumour about a Luna and a rogue sleeping together.

Skye frowned at him. She closed the distance and pulled the collar of his shirt down, and I could only assume she saw the collection of half-healed cuts and bruises, because she turned and fixed me with a hateful stare.

"Skye," Rhys interjected with a half-hearted smile, "it's not what you think. This was my fault. I tried escaping in the Silverstones. My fault — I swear."

She hesitated then, looking between him and me as if she wasn't sure whether to believe it. I kept my mouth firmly shut, because if I opened it, I would have to lie. Most of those injuries had been well-deserved ... but not all of them. Jaden and Bradley's contributions came to mind.

The other girl snorted. "I believe him. Why would he lie?"

"Hey, I'm right here," Rhys protested. "Look, it's fine. They're healing anyway."

She made a face at him and prodded the shirt, not very gently. "Take it off. We're cleaning you up before anything else."

"Skye..." he whined.

"They look half infected already," she told him. "So take it off, jackass."

I had a feeling someone had been mind-linking, because an old woman came bustling into the room with a bowl of water and a cloth at that opportune moment. Her eyes landed on Rhys, and her expression morphed into something between relief ... and fury?

"Rhys Llewellyn!" she exclaimed. "What in the Goddess's name did you think you were doing? Three days, it's been. Three! And not a peep from you — we were worried sick. Would it have killed you to mind-link?"

"I was too far away until an hour ago," he explained patiently. "And besides, I wanted to surprise Skye. It's her birthday, you know."

He could have told them about us drugging him — that he couldn't have mind-linked them even if he had wanted to. But for some reason, he had lied. I studied him with a frown growing on my lips as I tried to work out why. He must have a motive.

The rogues carried on speaking, but I didn't pay them any attention. It was mostly just the old woman telling them off ... and then wrapping Rhys in a suffocating hug as if she wasn't angry, after all.