Running with Rogues

EPILOGUE

"Some people do," I told him. "But it's usually only for sport and bragging rights."

"Fishing isn't a sport any more than hunting is," Bryn scoffed. "But they do eat it afterwards ... right?"

Silence.

"Right?" he asked, his voice a little more desperate.

Liam rubbed the back of his head, looking like he was deciding how to answer that. We all knew that they didn't. I'd actually watched a guy throw every single fish he had caught back into the lake yesterday, but only after he'd taken a picture of them first. They would all be swimming around now with holes in their jaws for no good reason.

And the other day, there had been some idiot who had shot a bunch of pigeons, brought them to the pack house to show them off to his mate and friends, and then thrown them into a dumpster when he'd thought no one was looking. And when I'd found them later, one of them had still been alive and wriggling around with a broken wing.

I'd shouted at him, I wasn't afraid to say. And then I'd confiscated his rifle and buried it in the woods along with all the other guns I'd found around the pack in the last few months. And then, realising that I was still furious, I'd gone back and shouted at him again. I'd spent the last few days debating whether shooting him and throwing him into a dumpster would be a fitting punishment. In all honesty, the only thing stopping me was the knowledge that I had no idea where I'd buried his gun.

"Well, it feels like breakfast time to me," I said after a while. I needed to stop thinking about that guy before I burst a blood vessel. "Everyone happy to go in?"

"Yeah, I'm not going back in the water. Don't want to push it," Eira sighed.

Her seizures were becoming rarer and rarer, but Seth had still insisted on some precautions if she was going to swim. Constant supervision and a thin life-jacket being the main ones. Usually, it was Dad who came out with her, but he was getting petrol for the car.

"We'll come back out tomorrow," I told her. "Ah, no, wait. Never mind. Can't."

My hands were full of squirming toddler, so I didn't even have to pick up my paddle. Liam guided us towards the sandy bank, and when we were close enough to shore, Bryn hopped into the water, took both kayaks by the bow, and pulled them the rest of the way. He was already sopping wet so it didn't really matter. He hadn't spent very long swimming, but he hadn't bothered to put his shirt back on afterwards, and his shorts were still closer to brown than beige.

Liam was first to jump out and take the rope from Bryn. I passed the little girl to him and then clambered out of the boat in turn. It was light enough that I had dragged it halfway up the shore before Liam had returned his niece to Lilah. He then helped me pick up the fish, one by one, and thread a string through their jaws. It was the easiest way to carry them.

"Goddess," Lilah breathed, looking at our catch. She was holding her daughter's hand tightly. "That's quite a lot, don't you think? How are you going to eat it all?"

"Dunno yet," Bryn said cheerfully. "But dried fish lasts for ages if you do it right. Like more than a month. And I can smoke some, too. Brine is a lot of hassle, but ... hell, I've got some time on my hands."

"Or you could just ... put it in the freezer," Lin said.

I held my breath, as I always did whenever the two of them interacted. Lin hadn't stopped hating rogues, I didn't think, and given the way she had lost her mate, I wasn't sure she ever would. But Bryn seemed oblivious to the icy looks and tension in every word she spoke to him — the key word being 'seemed.' I knew he was aware of it. I reckoned it even made him a tiny bit nervous, because he was always stood up very straight like a little meerkat when he was talking to her, and sometimes he even stumbled over his words. It wasn't something you'd notice unless you knew him well.