Just a Rogue

Amelia

What an astonishing performance. Janine and Darlene and I are all gaping at each other as we hear the drama in the cave settle into quiet discussions, the rogues apparently accepting her back into their midst quite easily. Except for the beating part.

“That girl deserves an Oscar,” Janine points out. “That was so well done.”

It really was. She revealed exactly the right secrets, in exactly the right way, while concealing more important secrets.

I look at Darlene. “Do you know how Evan is doing?” Ross had chased after him out of the room, and neither of them has come back.

“Ross is talking to him. He’s decided not to allow Evan to do monitoring any more.”

Well that makes sense. I think that listening to Corinne get beaten broke Evan. I knew that he liked her, it should have occurred to me that it would be too hard for him. I blame myself for this. I shouldn’t have put him on the schedule, maybe it would have been better to just keep him on drone duty. I thought he and Dom should split that so they could each lead a team since they were the ones who had a little more experience. I feel like an idiot for setting him up for such pain.

Darlene is watching me beat myself up. “It wasn’t your fault,” she assures me. “Don’t blame yourself. We all should have seen that coming.”

I nod and wipe my face, determined not to let myself cry. Dom is telling me the same thing, he felt my rush of sympathy for both Evan and Corinne while everything was unfolding. I close my eyes for a moment, allowing myself to bask in the love that he is sending to me. It fortifies me, gives me the strength to continue.

When I open my eyes again, Darlene and Janine are both gazing at me.

Theo and Alpha Kanen are carefully monitoring the audio feed, trying to hear what Xavier and Seth are talking about, to see if they can get any clues about the rogues’ next steps. The Lunas and I should be watching the drone feeds for the arrival of the other rogues, and we are keeping our eyes on it, but it doesn’t seem quite as critical now. We know they’ll arrive soon, and that Corinne has already been accepted back into the group. The primary thing to do at the moment is listen to the audio feed.

Darlene asks, kindly, “Is Dom helping you feel better?”

I nod. I know that they both understand what a comfort a mate can be.

Janine adds, “I was surprised by how precisely he was able to control the drone for us, while he was tracking the rogues walking to the cave from their car. I know you were telling him, but I don’t know how you instructed him so carefully which direction to move the camera.”

“Oh,” I say, “I was just showing him the video. He couldn’t really watch it on the app on his phone, it was too small, it was easier just to watch what I was seeing.”

They both stare at me, then glance at each other, then back at me. Janine says, “You said the other day that you could see the image of Theo at the hospital, and I thought that seemed unusual, but it’s more than that? You can send whole streaming videos? Like, he can basically watch t.v. through your mind-link?”

“Yeah,” I say, “pretty much.” Then a little giggle comes unbidden to my lips, remembering what else we can see through our link. And feel.

“What?” Janine asks.

“Dreams too,” I admit.

“Ahhh!” Darlene says. “That’s what happened in the car coming back from Arcata, wasn’t it?”

It’s nice to confide in the Lunas. They understand so much, and they really do feel like friends, not just bosses. I smile. “He was taking a nap, and dreaming about me, and it felt very… real.”

Janine’s eyes widen. “I think I’m a little jealous.”

Darlene just smiles. “Your mate bond is incredibly close and powerful, Amelia. It truly is blessed. I think that great things are in store for both of you.”

“Pfsh,” I say, waving that aside. “I’m just a wolf.”

Our conversation is interrupted when Darlene goes still for a moment, getting the distracted expression on her face that I recognize as being in communication with her mate. I wonder if I look like that too when I talk to Dom. After a minute, she says, “Ross wants to know if we’d be able to stay on for the next shift too. He’s decided that it’s time for some combat training, and he wants all the available wolves who want to participate in the battle to meet out behind the packhouse.”

“Of course,” I say.

Alpha Kanen has already stood up. I assume that Beta Malcolm must have mind-linked him. Janine stands as well, and he gives her a glare. “No,” he says.

“But…” Janine starts, and I am sure that she intends to participate in the combat training.

“No,” Kanen repeats, and she glares back at him, then he takes a step forward and wraps his enormous arms around her. They are such a vision together, he with his long blond hair and massive physique, and she with her long dark hair and slender body. He whispers to her huskily, “Please, stay. I can’t risk you, so soon after I found you.” They apparently have forgotten that anyone else is in the room with them, or at least they don’t care that underlings are watching.

She is silent for a minute, and I think they have taken their conversation to their private mind-link, then finally she relaxes in his arms. “Fine,” she says, grumpily.

“Besides,” Kanen points out, trying to sound completely practical and conciliatory, “you’re the hacker here. You’re more valuable to the effort on tech than in battle.”

She sniffs, and shrugs, and he lets go of her. “Try to record their conversations about their plans,” he says. “The battle will probably be the day after tomorrow. We need to know exactly where they’ll be.”

She nods, and he touches her cheek with the back of his hand briefly, caressing her with his knuckles, and she closes her eyes and leans into the gesture. It is intimate, and sweet, and I understand it completely now that I am mated too.

After Kanen goes, Theo makes a disgusted snort. “And here’s me, useless crip, nobody even asking if I want to join the battle.” He crosses his arms and scowls in his chair.

“Awwww!” I tell him, with exaggerated sympathy. I look at the team that is left, just four of us now, and that’s not enough. Especially since when the rest of the rogues arrive we’ll have a lot more work trying to sort out the different audio feeds, trying to eavesdrop on all the conversations. “I’m gonna go get some more people to come in and join us in here.” I look at Theo. “And I’ll bring back a bunch of cookies. Any preferences?” I know he’ll want white chocolate chip, and Darlene will want dark chocolate.

“White chocolate chip,” he specifies like a cranky child, and I know he is just acting. Such a comedian. He’s not actually this grumpy.

“Luna Janine?” I ask.

“Mmm, anything would be fine,” she says, already distracted, staring again at the monitors.

“Be right back,” I say, and run out.

“Now I want cookies,” Dom complains straight into my mind, having obviously overheard that whole thing, knowing that he’ll be stuck out on drone duty longer as well. The picnic lunch that was packed for the drone crew probably did not include enough cookies to get through the whole afternoon.

“Oh no!” I respond silently as I leave the conference room. “I’ll make it up to you later?”

“Hm,” he thinks to me. “Or cupcakes maybe?”

I laugh. I love him so much.

“I love you too,” he adds.

Evan

I don’t make it very far when I run out of the command center. Ross is right behind me, and he commands me to stop, imbuing his voice with all the irresistible power of the Alpha. He hardly ever does that, he doesn’t need to. We always obey him immediately, completely, without question, even without using his Alpha control. But I think he knows that I’m beyond all reason, completely overcome with emotion, and he just wants to catch me before I do something stupid.

So my feet freeze where they are, utterly subservient to his will. I turn to the wall I’m next to and throw my arms against it, and bury my face in them.

I feel his hand on my shoulder. When he speaks, his voice is full of sympathy, not compulsion. “Let’s take a walk,” he says quietly.

I follow him out a side door, and he quickly leads me out of the River Moon enclosure into the forest on the other side of the fence. How many times have I taken walks out here to try to calm down since we arrived? It’s become a real habit.

He just walks, not asking questions, not demanding anything. I haven’t spent much time alone with the Alpha, I’m usually with Beta Nolan whenever we are doing anything together with Ross. I’m not sure what to expect.

My mind is in such a tangle that I’m not paying any attention to where we’re going, and it is a shock when I look up and realize that we’ve gotten to the little campsite where Corinne stayed the first night after I found her, on Christmas.

Ross stops walking and lifts his head, inhaling, taking in the scents. “You’ve been here before?” he asks.

I look around bleakly. The fire ring we had made is still here, under the pine trees, sheltered by the edge of a short, rocky cliff. I smell her here, I remember that night around the campfire with her and our friends, a better Christmas than I had ever spent at home.

I answer quietly, “This is where Corinne stayed on Christmas night, while she was waiting to find out whether she could come to the packhouse.”

He grunts to let me know that he understands, then he crouches down in front of the firepit and pokes it a little with a stick. There’s been a lot of rain since that night, there is almost no evidence left of the ashes from our fire. He looks up and gestures at me to take a seat, so I sit down cross-legged on the other side of the pit, on the thick carpet of soft pine needles. It’s still damp from the rain, but I don’t care.

He asks me, “Are you… is she… your mate?”

I can’t look up at him. I stare down at the pine needles. “No.”

He grunts again. “I just thought, after Dominic….”

“It’s not like that,” I mutter. “But I….” I can’t make myself say it.

“You love her?”

I glance up, expecting judgment in his eyes, but I can’t read his expression.

I look back down. “It’s stupid, I know,” I try to excuse myself, “but -”

He cuts me off. “It’s not stupid. Some things are out of our control. But it’s important for me to know things like this, Evan, it could impact our planning.”

His chastisement is very mild, but I hear it just the same. I was trying to keep an important element of the plan secret, and I should never try to conceal anything that could have a bearing on the situation. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“Is there anything else I should know?” he asks, giving me the chance to come clean. I think for a moment, and decide that even though I love her, my primary loyalty is to Alpha Ross, and there is one other secret I have been keeping.

It hurts to betray her in this way, so my voice is hoarse when I tell him, “I stopped her from leaving before. On New Year’s Eve during the ceremony. She was going to go back and try to do the same thing on her own, to warn the she-wolves that we are coming. I had to convince her to come back, hoping that we’d be able to help her, instead of letting her try it alone.”

Another grunt. He is silent for several long and anxious minutes. I don’t know how much this is going to change his calculations.

“She actually left?” he finally asks.

I nod, almost preferring to die rather than tattle on her like this. “I chased her down and she came back.”

He sighs. “Are you sure she was only going back to warn the she-wolves? Not to warn Xavier?”

I look up at him, startled. “I am absolutely certain. Please, I know we can trust her. She feels that the she-wolves are like her sisters, and she has to help them. She would never try to help Xavier.” Even if she is carrying his baby. God. I haven’t even really let my mind linger on that fact, the most horrifying thing, the thing that changes everything. The secret she kept from me.

“I’ll believe you,” he says, and I breathe out a relieved sigh. “We’ll be listening to everything, so if she does try to warn him we’ll hear and can adjust our plans. But I’m inclined to believe that her attempt to leave before just demonstrates her commitment to helping the she-wolves.”

I nod, fervently. That’s exactly it. She really had no reason to anticipate how much assistance the packs would be able to give her.

And even if she was keeping a horrifying and critical secret from me, I have realized that it doesn’t change the way I feel about her. I still feel an intense and protective love, even if she is pregnant with that monster’s child. It’s not her fault, and she was probably afraid to tell me.

“Well,” Ross says, “in the meantime, no more surveillance duty for you. I’m sorry, but your emotions are going to interfere with your ability to impartially observe and record the rogues’ activities.”

I open my mouth, wanting to protest, wanting to assure him that I’ll be fine, but then I hang my head miserably. He’s not wrong. I’ve demonstrated that over and over. I’m too emotional, it hurts me too much to hear what she’s going through. I’m ineffective and useless, and all of my resolve to help her no matter what is pointless. I can’t. What a failure.

He sniffs, an almost amused sound, like he can tell exactly what I’m thinking and believes I’m being silly. I clench my jaw.

“I have a better outlet for your emotions,” he adds.

I look up at him, hopeful and confused.

“Time for some combat training,” he says, and gets to his feet. “Now.”

Oh, yeah, now we’re talking!