“No. You weren’t.” Rhona looked over all of them. A sergeant in Her Majesty’s Army. But a general in the Cadwaladr Clan. “We are not on holiday. We have duties. Important duties that need to be accomplished quickly and efficiently. Can’t do that if you lot are drunk off your asses, now can we, Branwen the Awful?”

Blinking, Brannie looked up at her cousin. “What the battle-fuck did I do?”

“How many times have you gotten drunk one night, only to wake up the next day someplace else, with no idea how you got there?”

Brannie opened her mouth to argue that, but Aidan leaned in and whispered, “Let it go.”

He was right. Nothing Brannie said would convince Rhona that she was wrong on this point. She was a firm believer that the Cadwaladrs, as a whole, drank too much. And it was one thing to drink when you just had to get up the next morning to perform some basic army duties or handle guard duty. But when on a mission . . . there was no excuse for “that,” as she liked to call the Cadwaladr Clan’s love of heading out to a local pub and indulging in a few pints.

“You lot going off to do that again?” she’d ask with that tone.

Not that Rhona didn’t drink. She did and she did it well, but it’d better be the right time. And traveling on an important mission for the queens was not, in her mind, the right time.

“Now”—Rhona pointed at the triplets—“you three take first watch.”

That was met with eye rolls that had Rhona walking over to them, but the She-dragons were off the log and disappearing into the surrounding trees before their older sister could launch into one of her famous tirades.

“The rest of you get some sleep,” Rhona ordered. “I’ll wake you up when it’s time for your watch.”

“Are you going to get some sleep?” Brannie asked her.

“I will. But you know me.”

Brannie did. Her cousin slept like a house cat. Waking up the instant she heard a sound that she knew wasn’t normal. And as soon as she woke up, the dragoness was ready for battle.

Although Brannie often woke up swinging, she wouldn’t say she was necessarily ready for battle or even really awake. One time she was halfway through a battle before she realized that she hadn’t been dreaming but had actually been knee-deep among the enemy.

Brannie tossed the bones from her meal out into the woods so that the local animals could eat and gratefully took one of the bedrolls that Rhona provided her and the others. Sleeping on hard ground was not one of her favorite things. Unless, of course, she’d been drinking with her kin. Then, wherever Brannie landed would be her bed for the night.