Unhappily Ever After

Chapter 22 - The First Siege

Last chapter! Have a very Merry Christmas :)

"Do you have to listen?" Kat asked shyly.

"Sorry," I replied, meaning yes. "It's not that I don't trust you, but I don't trust you."

I was rewarded with the slightest of smiles. She didn't raise another argument.

I dumped a handful of change into her hand and then retreated to the doorway of the telephone box. It was lovely and traditional — red metal and glass panes. Someone had smashed a few in, and there were beer cans littering the floor, but the actual phone appeared to be in working order.

"Sit down," I told Alex roughly. His incessant shuffling was irking my wolf. Alex sat down on the grass without even a glower. He was so relieved at getting a chance to talk to Evie that he was forgetting to be angry at me, which suited me just fine. Still, we made an odd group, and the humans had been looking at us funny.

This outing had gone against my better judgement. And Eira's, and Vik's, and Dafydd's, and every other rogue with an ounce of authority. But, in the end, I had ignored the lot of them. If I wasn't capable of escorting the world's two most compliant hostages to the village and back, I didn't deserve any ransom money.

Kat dialled a number from memory. It rang a few times before her mother picked up, and I kept one ear on the chatter in case she decided to drop any names or locations. But I hardly needed to worry — it was just a constant stream of reassurances that she was okay.

If I had stopped to really think about it, I might have felt a twinge of guilt.

Six minutes later, Kat ran out of change, and she stepped out to let Alex take his turn. I listened to his conversation, too, but without the same diligence. Half of the things he said to his mate turned my cheeks red, but the corners of my lips twitched when I heard my name mentioned. The pitch of her voice on the other end of the line rose with her excitement.

And, then, after a while, when the conversation was slowing, I heard Evie ask when he would be coming home. Alex glanced at me, clueless for an answer.

"You can tell her you'll be home in a week," I murmured. He scowled back, disliking the scale of it. "Sorry, I know — I need to keep you until the packmeet. She can come and visit if she likes. You can even tell her where we are."

That was all repeated dutifully to Evie, and she decided quite firmly that she would visit today because waiting was impossible, and then they said hurried goodbyes before the meter ran dry. I held the door open for Alex as he stepped back outside.

"Back to the castle?" Kat asked. She was probably worried about the chick, which was in Eira's oh-so-tender care.

"Not just yet," I said and pointed at the ground. "Sit. Stay. If you run, I'll drag you back here and I won't do it gently."

"You'd have to catch us first," Alex pointed out sullenly.

My answer was a slow, lazy grin. To be honest, I didn't have a clue if I could outrun him, but those longer legs must count for something. I caught him looking me over, and I reckoned he must be wondering, too. But when I closed the door, Alex sat himself down again, Kat sat beside him, their legs stretched out on the grass, and the two of them played a subdued game of eye-spy. All the same, I didn't dare take my eyes off them as I dialled the number from memory.

It only rang twice before I heard a painstakingly familiar, unsuspecting, "Hello?"

Keeping my voice low, I asked, "Are you alone?"

There were a few heartbeats — which felt like minutes — before my sister recognised my voice. I heard her soft intake of breath, felt a smile through a mind-link stretched thin across miles and miles.