Hello to our readers from India, Germany, Down Under, and the USA. There might be a Brit around too (holler if you exist), but that could be me reading comments, because there were loads of them! Hehehe. Good work y'all. Do me proud.

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The wolf's skull was small. The canines were shorter than my fingernails. And the longer I stared at it, the more certain I was that it had belonged to a kid. The packs had started adding shifter remains to their bone fences about ten years ago — rogue corpses displayed as a warning for the next trespassers. I had seen my fair share of those skeletons, but never one as small as this one.

"Ignore it, Eva," Nia told me. She was scratching the mark on her neck absent-mindedly. "They're trying to scare us off."

"Well, it ain't working. I'm just getting mad," I retorted. That skull could have belonged to my little brother. It was the right size, and he was thirteen years old.

"Mad is good. We can use mad," she murmured, reaching over to squeeze my arm.

I readjusted my weight on my elbows. We were lying on our stomachs beneath a holly bush with a clear sightline to the border. Nia was in front, then Lily pressed against her to fit, then me and the six-foot-two guy we'd brought to do the heavy lifting. I'd asked his name, but I'd forgotten to listen to the answer, so he could have been Chris Hemsworth for all I knew.

It had been ninety minutes, and it was only now that we could see the patrol approaching from the east. Three wolves — two timbers in front looking for any obvious disturbances in the bone fence, and one semi-arctic behind snuffing for scents. They trotted straight past us and disappeared into a patch of ferns to the left.

The guy behind me kicked my ankle in a clumsy attempt to get up, and I growled at him.

"Stay put," Nia snapped.

He gestured incredulously at the place the patrol had vanished. "This is our—"

"I said stay put, dumbass. Ember uses split patrols."

The packs had thought up dozens of ways to catch us trespassing. The oldest and most annoying of those was split patrols. It was simple. Half of the patrol would lead the way, and the other half would follow a minute behind. Most rogues would only cross the border right after a patrol had passed to get the maximum amount of time before their scents were found, so most rogues got caught.

Other popular methods included patrols which ran thirty metres inside of the border, patrols which turned around to retrace their steps every so often, and patrols which sat in the undergrowth and waited near the most popular crossing points. They had all originated from New Dawn Pack — damn them.

But Nia was smarter than that. She had learnt a great deal from our parents. The packs improved their defences, and we upped our attack. That was war.

The second half of the patrol was four minutes behind. There were just two of them, and we could have thrashed them easily ... but not before they could raise the alarm. So we lay there and watched them slink through the ferns.

"That smaller wolf looks hot, don't you think? Big eyes, fine whiskers..." I muttered under my breath. "Maybe I should go say hi, get his number or something..."

Truthfully, he was looked like a drowned rat and smelt like old sweat, but I had been lying still for a long time. I was halfway through sitting up when Nia caught my shirt collar and yanked downwards none too gently. "You think you're funny? Shut up."

My chest collided with the ground, and I made an involuntary oomph noise as the breath was knocked out of me. My laughter came in rasps.

"What?" I groaned. "You might be getting laid, but I ain't. A girl's gotta put herself out there."

Lily sniggered quietly. My cousin was not so easily amused. "Go put yourself out in front of Liam. I got fifty quid staked on that."

"You and every other rogue at Haven. Screw you."

"Screw him," she suggested without missing a beat.

I twisted around to thump her in the ribs, and she answered by slamming a knee into my stomach. And then we were wrestling, rolling over in the leaves, each trying to get the upper hand. It was only good-natured violence, of course, but there was always an undercurrent of hierarchy to any tussle.

"Give it a rest, both of you. You're going to get us caught," Lily hissed.

Normally, Nia listened to her — Lily was the only person she would listen to — but I had annoyed her wolf. She ended up on top, inevitably, her weight crushing my chest and making breathing difficult. Once I had tried and failed to throw her off, she rested an arm across my throat and raised an eyebrow at me.

No reason to make life difficult for myself. I knew when I was beaten, so I dropped my eyes and went still. That was good enough for Nia, who got off me without even growling and went back to her spot beside Lily. The blonde girl was staring down at the bone fence with a scowl like thunder.

"Great — now the patrol has stopped," she muttered.

I rolled over and spat on the ground. The saliva was tinged red because I had caught an elbow to the mouth at some point in the scuffle. Lily was right, I saw. The two wolves were standing shoulder-to-shoulder and staring in our direction. They must have heard us or seen the bush move.

"Nice one, Eva," the guy behind us muttered. "Get us all killed, why don't you?"

"Oh, just me, huh?" I demanded. The bastard was too scared to call out Nia.

Nia seemed to agree. "It was a joint effort, Devin, so you can lay off her. I'm going to try tapping them. Lil...?"

Lily held out a hand, and she took it for an anchor. Mind-tapping was a tricky business; I didn't envy my cousin her talent for it. I could put up walls and defend myself just fine, but I couldn't attack anyone else, along with the vast majority of the population, and thank the Goddess for that.

Taking a deep breath, Nia closed her eyes. Her knuckles whitened around Lily's hand and, even as I watched, her nose started bleeding. It was just a trickle at first, but it quickened with every second she spent inside their heads. When it had been nearly a full minute, I was chewing on the inside of my cheek, but I knew better than to shake her.

Finally, Nia opened her eyes and took a gasping breath. She wiped away the blood, noticed the three of us staring and managed a thin smile. "They think they saw a pigeon. We're good."

"Hell yes," Lily exclaimed, loud enough to scare an actual pigeon from the tree above us.

Nia slapped her clean hand over Lily's mouth and made a shushing sound before she could screw things up again. I didn't actually see what happened next, but I was pretty sure Lily licked her, and within three seconds the two of them were kissing.

"Shit, you guys, can we just go?" I sighed. "You can make out later."

Devin muttered something that might have been an agreement, but they ignored both of us. All mated couples were like that — infatuated. The patrol was out of sight now. Knowing Nia and Lily, the next one would arrive before they finished swapping saliva.

I shoved my cousin. "Hey, you deaf?"

She clouted me — not very hard — and otherwise failed to acknowledge my existence. So I wriggled out from under the holly and stood up and started walking towards the bone fence all by myself. Devin didn't follow, the coward.

I stepped over the bone fence, scowled at the little wolf skull, and strode into the forest behind. Ember's territory was huge, of course, but we only needed to find one of the outlying houses. A mile's walk, maybe two. The tricky part would be getting back over the border with our hostage.

The other three caught up with me before I'd gone very far. Both girls had swollen lips and broad smiles. We carried on walking through the forest, passing oak trees which were probably centuries old. They had all finished growing their new leaves, and the acorns were starting to appear as tiny green lumps in oversized casings.

"Well, there's a house," Lily muttered after a while. Her eyes had always been sharp, and she had managed to spot a sliver of white drywall between two trees. "Time to dispatch the minions?"

"Wait until we're sure there's someone home," Nia decided. "Eva, you can scout."

She was testing me. I knew that. But I recognised the house, because I'd been in the back garden only yesterday, and I kinda didn't want to abduct the occupant. She'd been alright for a packling. And, more importantly, she might tell Nia that I'd been there and get me into trouble.

I couldn't refuse — that would cost me my ticket home. So I trudged towards the house without a word of complaint. My report didn't have to be accurate, after all; it just had to look like I was trying.

"Over forty, remember," she called after me.

Yes. Over forty, for whatever reason Mam had cooked up. I was quite used to her schemes against the packs, and I had played a willing part in dozens of them, but I had always known the endgame. This felt different, somehow. She was up to something.

The house was only a hundred metres away. As I drew closer, I moved slower and slower to keep my footsteps silent. The toes and outside edge of my foot went down first, weightless, then I would roll the heel down carefully. After all these years, I could keep a decent speed without leaves crunching or twigs snapping.

It wasn't necessary. I was just showing off as I crept from tree to tree, never moving into sight of a window. Soon, I could count the ivy leaves on the gutters and see the deckchair I had been lounging on. Someone had cleaned up the spilt Wotsits.

I leant out from behind an ash tree, peering through the slats of the fence trellises, and I stared into each window until I was sure there was nobody inside. The upstairs was impossible to see — the angle was wrong, but I had checked the kitchen, dining room and downstairs bathroom within a minute.

"Near side is empty," I mind-linked, then began picking my way around the fence to the far side of the house. Brambles whipped at my bare arms every step of the way, tearing them to shreds, and I had to keep stopping to pull thorns from my skin and clothes. I wasn't being quiet anymore — my footsteps were still silent, but I was swearing with every other breath.

Soon, there was no fence to hide behind, and I had to use a gorse bush for cover instead. More bloody thorns. I could see into the living room and another reception room. There was a woman watching TV in the former, and I recognised her from yesterday.

I was about to send a mind-link claiming that the whole house was empty when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickling. And instincts should never be ignored — I had learnt that the hard way. It took me half a minute to realise that if Nia was testing me, then she would probably be watching me. And if she was watching me, she had seen me staring into the living room for two full minutes.

Well, shit. There was no way the woman wouldn't recognise me, so I would just have to hope Nia knocked her out before she could open her mouth.

"Got a woman here. Forty is a good bet," I linked reluctantly. "You'd better send the minions."

The minions were the three initiates, who would run circles and draw the fighters away from us, because we had miles to walk with a prisoner in tow. Normally, I would be with them, but I had been promoted for the day.

"Already done. Meet us by the front door," Nia replied.

I didn't hurry, so, by the time I reached them, Lily had already picked the lock and all three of them were in the hallway, quiet as mice. I fell in behind Devin. The inside of the house was comfortable but not extravagant — this close to the border, they must have rogues breaking in every other month.

The floor was covered with a cream carpet, which made it easy to walk without making noise. The wallpaper was floral, but you could hardly see the pattern beneath picture frames of all shapes and sizes. They showed a smiling family: the woman, her mate and three children who grew from babies to teenagers as I walked.

We reached the door to the living room. The sounds of the TV could be heard within, muffled by the wooden door. Nia raised her eyebrows at Lily, and she answered by pulling a strip of white cloth from her pocket.

"If she manages to link, we're in trouble," my cousin reminded us through the link. "Ready, everyone?"

"Ready," we chorused.