"I can throw raiders at Silver Lake all I want. We kill one Alpha and they just crown another. We need to break that cycle once and for all," Mam told us. "That's the tricky part. See, I could send any old fighter to topple an Alpha. Nia could certainly manage it. And you, Rhys - could you beat an Alpha one-on-one?"

"With my hands tied," Rhys said from the doorway.

"Probably," she agreed. "Problem is, the moment Rhys wins, the pack turns against him. Kills him if they can ... which would be even easier with his hands tied. What I need is someone with an actual claim to the Alpha position. Someone like, say, the last Alpha's son."

I was torn between laughing and growling at her. She wanted Liam to be an Alpha? Bullshit. It would happen over my dead body, and I wanted to make that very clear. In the end, I settled with a derisive snort.

Liam, however, was taking this much more seriously. He was looking at Mam now, and all I could see were the whites of his eyes, which were as wide as they ever got. It wasn't quite fear I could feel rolling across the link, but I reckoned he might be nervous at the very least.

"I'm only a bastard son," he pointed out.

"Your father only ever had bastards," Mam countered, rising to her feet. "The fanatics might despise you for it, but the average pack member couldn't care less whether your parents were mated when they did the deed. As long as they don't find out that you're a rogue, they should tolerate you."

We had to look up at her now. Liam could have stood, too, and used his extra foot of height to make her regret that decision, but he just scratched the back of his neck. "So, what, I'm just supposed to walk into Silver Lake and kill Mason?"

"Not quite, no. Pack law insists that candidates for the Alpha position must come from existing members of the pack. And you would have been struck off the register when you ran away, so..."

"I have to join the pack first?" he demanded.

This was way out of line. To send him back into that house, to live under his brothers' thumbs all over again ... it wasn't right. I wasn't sure how he was finding the courage to even consider the possibility. I leaned into him, hoping the weight of my shoulder against his might remind him that he could just say no.

Mam nodded. "For a month, apparently. Thirty whole days. It's tricky, but it's not impossible. The real test will be joining in the first place, what with their views on outsiders. A lone male looks suspicious. A family would be ideal, but I'm not risking children in a hostile pack, so we'll have to settle for a friendly young couple."

I burst out laughing at that point. Couldn't help it. "Ha, that means some poor female has to pretend to love him for an entire month."

Mum was looking at me with this awful little smirk.

It took an embarrassingly long time for the other shoe to drop. When it finally did, I said a rude word. Then another. Then, when that still didn't quite seem to summarise my feelings on the subject, I said three more. Liam's eyebrows were raised, and he was wearing a long-suffering smile, so I couldn't have hurt his feelings too badly.

"You're the right age, Eva, and you know him," she reasoned. "That's hard to fake. I can't make you do it, obviously, but I think you want to, deep down."

"Do not," I growled. It was only half a lie. There was no way in hell I was letting Liam go into that pack alone. "If this is about that stupid bet-"

She reached over to tousle my hair. "I'm betting against, actually. Put my money down too early and got stuck. And ... well, someone has to bet against, I s'pose."

"Well, I'm not doing it," I spat. "Not in a million years. But don't, like, take that personally or anything, Liam."

"Oh, I'm trying not to," he assured me with a roguish grin.

I was suddenly aware of how close we were. His cheek wasn't even an inch from mine, and we were pressed together from ankle to shoulder. If I turned my head towards him, I could have been able to count his eyelashes. We sat like that a lot - like ... a lot. So I wasn't entirely sure why it was affecting me now.

"It's not going to work, you know," Liam said eventually. "Any of it. They'll recognise me."

Mam grimaced, and I knew that thought must have been nagging at her. "I'm thinking they won't. You've changed a lot. Your scent, too. I wouldn't advise hanging out with anyone who knew you, and you'll need to go heavy on the cologne, but I think we might get away with it. I'm assuming you and your brothers weren't very close, of course..."

His eyes were on the ground again. "It was ... complicated."

She nodded. "Think about it. That's all I'm asking. Once you've joined and the immediate danger has passed, I reckon you might actually be safer in the pack than you are with us."

"Until the month is up and I have to fight Mason," Liam murmured. "That won't be very safe, will it?"

"No," Mam agreed quietly. "Think about it, Liam."

Silence fell like a blanket, smothering the conversation entirely. There was more to say. Much more. But Mam was already leaving, and Liam and I were left on the hay bale. He picked at his fingernails and avoided my eyes.

"You can't seriously be considering this," I whispered.

The muscles in his shoulder rippled against mine, and he kinda shrugged. Alarmed, I scrambled off the bale and sat on the one opposite, kicking at his shins to make him look at me. I found myself staring into those restless dark eyes. I wondered briefly if the eye contact had been a mistake. "Liam-"

"I would rather die than go back there," he told me steadily.

"Good," I snapped.

"But it's not about me, is it?"

A growl rumbled deep within my chest and spilt out into the morning air before I could smother it. "Like hell it's not about you."

I saw him swallow, and then he stopped looking at me. Even as he opened his mouth to say something which I was sure would only have scared me more, the barn door opened. They were bringing Hannah and Hayden back inside, so we had to cut the conversation short.

***

Did you know about this?" I asked Nia.

She swore quietly and shook her head. "No."

I believed her. The look on her face when we'd explained - it was shock and disgust on a level I didn't see often. Even now, minutes later, her forehead was creased and her lip was curled upwards. Beside her, Lily muttered curses periodically.

I wasn't quite sure how we'd all gotten here. Rhodri had been waiting for us outside, and Nia hadn't been far behind him, but everyone else seemed to have converged on our location like moths to a flame. Now we were all huddled together, hoods up, far too close, all throwing wary looks over our shoulders every so often.

It was a risky meeting - we were right on the edge of the woods, tents on both sides of us, and there was a danger of being overheard, so we were having to keep our voices well down. We hadn't really done anything like this before. The seven of us whispering together just outside of camp ... well, it felt almost ... rebellious.

"You're not going to do it," Rhodri told us, kicking at the leaves. The fact that he hadn't tried to tease us about Mam wanting us to pretend to be mated was a sure indication of the seriousness of the situation. And we didn't really ... do serious around here.

"Of course they aren't," Eira assured him. She threw a dirty look in the direction of camp. "And I'll be telling our mother that myself."

I slung an arm around her shoulder. "You'll do no such thing. I don't reckon we're supposed to be spreading this around."

Eira only snorted. It was good to see her walking around. She was leaning against Bryn now to give her treacherous muscles a break, and I reckoned she'd be back in bed within the hour, but it was still progress.

"She said you could say no, right?" Bryn asked Liam, and he nodded. "Then what're you waiting for? Find her and say it."

I chewed on my lip. We'd already been through this, of course, but the others seemed to have assumed that he wasn't even entertaining the possibility, which was easily done. We'd all seen the scars, and we'd all seen the damning evidence of those deeper, less visible wounds. The ones that still kept him up at night and had him flinching whenever someone moved too quickly.

Liam said nothing. An uneasy hush fell over the group. Nia was the first to break it - she always knew what to say. She swapped places with her mate so she'd be next to Liam, and she knocked her shoulder into his.

"Look at me, would you?" Nia asked, her soft hazel eyes fixed on his. "Good. Now listen. She had no right to ask you, Liam. We'll find another way to deal with Silver Lake. A way that doesn't involve sending the pair of you to die."

Liam ducked his head again the moment she finished talking. I knew that look only too well. It was the tight-mouthed, empty-eyed look boys wore when they were trying to pretend like they weren't afraid of something. Rhodri was doing it, too. He knew there was a fair chance that he could lose both of us in one fell swoop.

"By all means, give me a better option," Liam said eventually. "Otherwise..."

He trailed off, unwilling to finish the thought, but I could fill in the blanks. Otherwise he'd walk into the house of people who'd abused him, and he'd pick a fight with the worst of them. I was almost certain he'd lose. His half-brother was at least seven years older and had a reputation for violence.

Before Nia could reply, a pair of raiders stumbled out into the forest to take a piss, and we all went quiet to watch them go by. It was raining now. I ducked my head to keep the drizzle out of my eyes, and I leaned a little closer to Liam. After nearly a full minute of silence, the raiders disappeared from sight ... but not before they'd thrown a dozen curious glances our way.

"Don't make any snap decisions, pup. We all love you to pieces, and you ain't getting away from us that easy," Nia said eventually. She slung an arm around his shoulders and squeezed as tight as she dared. "Give me a couple days, and then I'll see if we can't go to Llechi and talk properly. Is that okay?"

Liam looked at me, and I nodded ever so slightly. Of the seven of us, Nia was the only one with any real power, but no single raiding team would be able to make a dent against Silver Lake. She would have to sound out some of the other raiders, and that would take time and caution. If any of this got back to Mam, she'd have the hiding of her lifetime.

"Okay," he said.

"Can you all keep your mouths shut until then?" she asked, looking around the circle. Every single one of us nodded. "Brilliant. Now scatter, pups."

Nia's word was law, so we splintered back into our friendship groups and went our separate ways. Eira and Bryn made a beeline straight for camp, because even those ten minutes of standing upright had probably worn her out. Nia and Lily skirted the edge of camp, picking their way back towards their tent.

But Liam, Rhodri and I went straight into the forest under the pretext of gathering firewood. The few branches still remaining in the vicinity of camp were soaked through and hardly worth collecting, but it gave us a brilliant excuse not to look at each other. The rain was beginning to soak through my hoodie and chill the skin beneath.

I'd been hoping that we might manage to ... I didn't know ... talk about it, maybe. But nearly half an hour passed in difficult silence, and my arms were soon overflowing with tiny, soggy twigs. A chasm seemed to have opened between me and Liam, all of a sudden, and I didn't have the first idea how to traverse it. As for Rhodri ... well, his face was like a thundercloud. He was pissed at both of us, probably.

"I'm going to take these back to camp," I said after what felt like forever. It was the first words any of us had managed to speak. I kinda wanted to hate Mam for dumping this at our feet and leaving us to cope with it - or not cope, as it turned out.

Rhodri piled his own armful of logs on top of mine, making the already-precarious stack sway and shed little twigs with every step that I took. He went back to collecting branches without offering any sort of reply, and I made the walk to camp feeling even worse, somehow.

The rain was only getting heavier, and everyone seemed to be hiding in their tents, so it was a ghost town near the firewood stack. As I was letting the twigs spill out of my arms, I heard footsteps squelching in the mud behind me. Finn.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," I replied, too miserable to keep him at arm's length. I brushed mud and flakes of bark from my hoodie and crossed my arms over my chest.

He looked around carefully, checking for any onlookers. "Emmett said we have to stay away from you."

I took a hesitant step closer to him. "And yet here you stand."

Finn shrugged. "I've never been brilliant at doing what I'm told, and ... well, you don't seem all that dangerous to me. No offence."

The rain was falling harder. It lashed against my face - the coldness jolting me to alertness. Finn had moved closer to shelter me from the worst of it. He reached up and brushed raindrops from my cheeks.

"Then you don't know me very well," I told him.

"No?"

"No."

I stood on my tiptoes and pressed my lips against his. It was only meant to be a fleeting moment of pressure, more teasing than anything, but he started kissing me back, and ... well ... he wasn't half bad at it. His hands skimmed down my sides and came to rest on my hips even as he deepened the kiss.

I wasn't sure what I was doing, to be honest. Making out with someone was a brilliant way to relieve stress, but it didn't seem to be working today. Maybe I was thinking too much. Maybe it was the yellowy nausea which had been twisting my stomach from the moment Mam had first mentioned Silver Lake.

I should have pulled away. I knew damn well I was using him, and it wasn't fair, really. The only redemption point for my conscience was that he must have decided he was okay with keeping things casual.

Footsteps behind us, and then a muffled cough. I broke the kiss just long enough to glance over my shoulder. It was Dad. He had a tarpaulin in his arms, and his eyes were as wide as saucers. Sighing, I smacked Finn's hands away and stepped backwards properly.

It didn't take Finn long to identify the cause of my sudden retreat. He held his hands up in an attempt at appeasing my dad, whom he clearly hadn't met before. "Hi, Mr Morgan. We were just... Uh... Shit. I think I'd better go."

I hid a smile. Where was the boy who'd faced down Nia and my uncle without flinching? Surely a minute of swapping saliva couldn't have gotten him so flustered, could it?

"No, no. Don't mind me," Dad said. Unlike the vast majority of my family, he was good at minding his own business. "I'm supposed to be ... um, covering the firewood, but I can definitely come back later, or-"

"Stay," I said quietly.

Given that was the first time I'd spoken to him in two months, he dropped the tarpaulin and choked on thin air. "Really?"

"Really."

And before I could change my mind, I raised my eyebrows in Finn's direction, because if Dad was staying, he was most definitely not. It was an easy escape for me, all things considered. I'd been allowed to release some pent-up tension and run away without addressing any of the feelings which had caused said tension.

"I'll see you around, Eva," Finn said, taking his cue brilliantly.

"Yeah, I expect you will."

Now that he was being chill, I was starting to remember why I'd liked him in the first place. I stuck my hands into my pockets and watched him leave. Beside me, Dad knelt down and began fastening the tarpaulin over the pile of firewood. He smiled in faint amusement. "Finn Sullivan, huh? You could do worse."

"Forget him," I sighed. Goddess knew I was trying to. "I understand why you had to snitch about the tattoos, but I'm not sorry for ... y'know ... sending you to Coventry and whatever."

Dad stopped what he was doing "She told you, then?"

"This morning." I paused, knowing something was nagging at me but not quite understanding what. "You ... you didn't know that?"

An uncomfortable pause. Mam told him everything, as far as I could tell, and a conversation about sending one of your children into lethal peril was probably not the sort of thing you just 'forgot' to mention.

"Your mother and I had a disagreement of sorts," he admitted after a while.

Uh oh. That didn't sound like my parents. They didn't even raise their voices at each other. I wasn't entirely sure how I was supposed to react, so I settled for scuffing at the dirt with a heel. "Oh. Is the argument about ... this?"

"You could say that," he said, rubbing his temples. "When I told her about the tattoos, I thought that would be the end of it, but apparently you can get the things removed, so..."

"You don't agree with this," I said. It wasn't a question because the look on his face wasn't much different to the one I'd seen on Nia's - like the whole idea left a bad taste in his mouth.

Dad shrugged, unwilling to confirm or deny so blatantly. "Obviously, I want you safe, kiddo. But I can see your mam's point of view - really, I can. She's worried that sheltering you is going to get you killed quicker than sending you into the line of fire. You've got to understand now, that your grandfather let her do battle with flockies when she was about twelve."

I folded my arms. I didn't feel coddled, but I hadn't been allowed to fight anyone until I'd been sixteen, and even then there had been plenty of people standing by to help if something went wrong. Mam had been careful with us all these years. It seemed to me that now was a strange time to renege on that strategy - the first minute it was convenient for her.

"And maybe she's right," he continued when I failed to reply. "Maybe teaching your children to protect themselves is the best thing you can do for them, but that doesn't make it any easier to send you into Silver Lake. Sleepers have a life expectancy of about three months as things stand. It's only natural that you'd hesitate to-"

I cut across him, "This isn't about me. I'd go. Whatever. Couldn't care less. But it ain't fair on Liam."

Instead of trying to convince me otherwise, he sat down on the log pile and sighed heavily as if to say no, it's not. He couldn't tell me that, of course, because it was too close to mutiny. Instead, we spent a minute in silence while he tried to decide on a safe way to answer.

"Some of the packs," he began cautiously, "they've been hiring fighters from the west to hunt us down as soon as the amendment passes. That means we'll have dozens of trained trackers combing the woods for our scents, and there is a fair chance we'll be wiped out within a month. That is what your mother is trying to contend with. I think she's struggling to justify protecting you and Liam over protecting every rogue in Snowdonia."

"Why didn't she just tell us that?" I demanded.

Dad went back to fastening the tarpaulin to avoid my eyes. "She wants you to agree on your own volition. Not because you feel guilty."

"Then why are you telling me?"

"Because I think you've already made up your mind," he sighed. "Am I wrong?"

He wasn't. I would have followed Liam through the gates of hell themselves, so if he decided to go, I wouldn't be far behind him. That didn't mean I wasn't still hoping he'd refuse, of course.

I said as much to Dad, who tied the final knot and raised an eyebrow at me. "Does he know you'd go with him?"

I shrugged. I thought it was pretty obvious, but Liam had a habit of underestimating how much people cared about him, so perhaps he didn't. Perhaps he'd believed all the bullshit posturing I'd done for Mam's benefit.

Even as I thought that, I considered whether I should tell Liam. It could've easily been interpreted as a 'go for it' rather than a 'if you're dumb enough to go for it, I've got your back,' so I reckoned I'd keep my mouth shut.

Hang on now. Why was Dad asking me something like that, anyway? Was he trying to nudge me towards telling him? A shiver ran down my spine, making me wonder whether I'd just shirked an attempt at manipulation.

"Do you really disagree with this," I asked slowly, "or are you supposed to be the good cop?"

"Eva," Dad said, and hurt flashed across his face.

Well ... he hadn't explicitly denied it. I knew I was just being paranoid now. I also knew I had very good reason to be - my own mother seemed to be using me as a pawn. I scratched at the back of my neck and mumbled, "Sorry."

"I should hope so."

I found myself grimacing. My eyes were on the ground, and I couldn't seem to peel them away. Now I felt miserable and guilty. Some of that must have spilt into the link, because he straightened up and offered me a little smile.

"My job is to stand in your corner," he told me, "whatever you decide. And if that means fighting with your mother, I'll fight with your mother, okay?"

I nodded slowly. I'd missed this - missed talking to Dad and knowing there was at least one person in the world who'd always be on my side. "Okay. Just don't ... like ... get divorced or anything."

"You needn't worry about that, Eva," Dad laughed. Without warning, he wrapped me in a gentle hug and rested his chin on the top of my head. I closed my eyes and basked in that familiar sensation of being warm and safe. Sometimes it was nice to be treated like a kid again. Sometimes it was nice to be reminded that I didn't need to have all the answers at the age of seventeen.

The rain was easing. Before long, the raiders were creeping outside again, and Dad got called away to settle some argument about tent pegs. I didn't really want to go back into the forest and collect branches in awkward silence, so I sat myself down on the firewood stack. I was still sitting there nearly an hour later, wondering what Liam might decide and wishing to the Goddess that I hadn't got out of bed that morning. Because none of this was fair.