Unhappily Ever After

Chapter 64 - Torn Up

Five years later.

I slung a rucksack over my shoulder and closed the car door softly. On the passenger side, Lee followed my example with a face-splitting grin. Jess was asleep across the back seat.

Normally, the adrenaline of a raid gone well would be enough to keep anyone awake, but Jess and I had been up most of the night. Now that Bran was old enough to run with the semi-feral pack of rogue kids, we were trying for a pup again, to put it discretely.

Riverside was now short several hundred quid, and they were none the wiser. We were leaning more towards sneaky raids these days — most of the raiders would make a distraction, and a few of us would slip over the border with our scents masked, or in my case, turned off. The few who slipped over were almost invariably me, Eira and Jess. The holy trinity of ghost raiding.

"I'm going to shower," Lee told me.

I was in the middle of adjusting the rucksack straps, but I did pause to look at him. "Will I see you after?"

"Nah, think I'll go to bed."

Not a surprising answer. Eira would come to the fireside later, and the two of them were avoiding each other like the plague. The reason was not all too complicated — Lee had found his mate only last week. And that was it. That quickly, their five-year dalliance had turned to ash. Such were the perils of dating someone without marking them.

My sister, although she would never admit it, had fallen hard for Lee at some point over the last few years. Right now, she was in a car with some guy I didn't much like, and it was safe to assume they were sleeping together. It was her way of pretending she didn't give a shit.

Lee was trying to be sensitive about the whole thing, but he couldn't fight the bond any more than I had been able to. He adored the girl already. She was Silver Lake Pack, like Jess had been, and they met every few days for coffee. She seemed lovely, to be honest, and I was trying to like her for Lee's sake, but she was the sole cause of my little sister's misery.

It hadn't been an easy week.

"Goodnight, then," I said.

"Night, Llewellyn. I'll trust you not to short me."

I laughed at him even as I started to walk away. "That'll be your mistake."

Lee flipped me off, but he was laughing, too. His raiders would get the vast majority of the profit for making such a brilliant distraction. It wasn't like I needed the money. I didn't have four hundred people to feed while we were living in our summer camps.

I skirted the tents, feeling my way along one of my stronger mind-links. It didn't take me long to spot Brandon at the edge of the woods. Tom was sat a few metres away, half dozing in his camp chair while he kept an eye on the kids. We all took our turn to watch them, and it appeared he'd drawn the short straw today. He offered me a tired smile.

"Come here, trouble," I told Bran. "Have you been good for Uncle Tom?"

"No," Bran said with the barest hint of a grin. Instead of obeying, he edged away from me, making sure I couldn't grab him. "Where's Mammy?"

"In the car. You think I'd leave her with the flockies?"

He shrugged. He was chewing on his fingernails now, so I took a few long steps to close the distance and scooped him up before he could run from me. Once he was tucked against my shoulder, it was easy to see why he'd been so skittish. There was a bruise under his chin and a split beneath his eye.

"Have you been fighting again?" I asked him.

Bran shook his head vigorously. Those hazel eyes were wide and innocent, but he was terrible at hiding the little smiles. "No, I never."