Hello lads. I've been meaning to ask, how are you all coping with the characters? I appreciate there's a lot of them. Would it help if I made a glossary or something?

"Would you stop glaring at me?" Rhodri snapped under his breath. "You're making people suspicious."

Hannah's glaring only intensified. She made a sudden turn into the frozen aisle, forcing him to follow. A moment later, she came back to dump a microwave meal into my shopping basket.

"And how the hell are we going to cook that, flockie?" I demanded.

"Oh," Hannah muttered. "Shit, yeah, never mind."

She put it back, making sure to yank Rhodri with her. He started to growl, only to stop when one of the nearest old ladies turned around and squinted at him.

"Now who's making people suspicious?" Hannah laughed.

I sighed to myself and grabbed a few packets of bread rolls. I shouldn't have volunteered for this. It had been a good excuse to escape from Bryn, who'd been sat next to me for the entire car ride over here, but these two knuckleheads were worse, somehow.

We were prowling around a modestly sized ALDI, shopping for a picnic lunch to take to Llechi. Rhodri had brought Hannah so she could choose some food for herself. Our campfire stews weren't the easiest things to calculate insulin doses for, apparently. She'd been dining on mostly cereal and fruit these last few days, since the evening meals had been sending her blood sugar levels all over the place. She was probably low right now.

The only problem was ... Nia hadn't trusted Hannah to behave herself in the shop, so she was handcuffed to Rhodri, and they were having to hold hands to disguise that, much to their mutual disgust. I'd been treated to a solid ten minutes of bickering already.

I managed to tune them out for nearly a minute before I felt a weight drop into the shopping basket in my arms and looked down. Hannah's latest deposit was dark green and oblong.

"We're not buying an avocado," I told her in no uncertain terms. "We're broke, remember? Don't you have, like, the slightest bit of self-awareness?"

She snorted. "You're holding me hostage, so I don't feel too awful about spending your money. Money that was stolen in the first place. You took nearly eighty quid off Hayden. Spend that."

Oh, that ungrateful shit had been snitching, had he? I'd saved his ass when I'd taken his wallet. I rolled my eyes to hide my annoyance. "That's gone to the Maggie Tax."

"The what?"

"You'll see this evening, if you're lucky," Rhodri told her, dumping the avocado into a tray of oranges. The moment he turned his back, I picked it up and replaced it properly, if only because I felt sorry for the shop attendants. Almost as sorry as I felt for myself.

***

Ninety minutes later, we parked on a tiny verge of grass in the middle of nowhere. All fourteen of us Haven kids were loaded into seven-seaters, with the littlest ones sharing seats to make room for the two flockies. Lily and Sam had driven - they actually had licences.

"Where are we, exactly?" Hayden asked blearily. He'd been napping since the shop, and he still sounded half asleep.

I resisted the urge to growl at him. We hadn't wanted to bring the flockies. They had been the condition to Mam letting us come here. She was going to have a meeting with Hayden's dad and the Fletcher boys, so she needed Hayden gone for the day, and Llechi was far enough away to stop him mind-linking his pack.

We were currently unloading the cars. Our shopping would be loaded into a barrel and then tied in the nearby river to keep the meat cool. Once that was done, we could lounge around in the grass until lunchtime.

"Only our favourite place in the world," I told him. "So don't be a prick about this and come burn it all down as soon as you become an Alpha, okay?"

"If he becomes an Alpha," Eira muttered pointedly.

"You're not going to kill me," Hayden said, and there was a smug upwards twist to his lips I didn't like one bit. "You need me. Dad has to say you're from my pack so you and Liam can join Silver Lake."

I stopped dead in my tracks and turned very slowly and deliberately to face him. "How the hell do you know about that?"

He only shrugged at me. "You think loudly."

Nia had heard the conversation, apparently. She came over to stand right behind Hayden before she spoke. "You shouldn't be listening, flockie. The very next time you venture outside of your head, I'm going to melt your brain from the inside out. Got it?"

Hayden turned around sharply. The smile fell from his lips, but he was dumb enough to shrug at her, too. "You can try, I guess."

Nia shut her eyes. A moment later, Hayden went rigid, and his own eyes unfocused. There was an uncomfortable minute where they fought on some plane of existence far, far above us poor mortals. I did push Hayden at one point to throw his concentration off, but there was no way to know if it actually helped.

And then, finally, Hayden's eyes swirled hazel for a heartbeat, and I knew Nia had won. Both of them snapped back to alertness. My cousin took a deep steadying breath, while the pup-Alpha coughed and cuffed at the trickle of blood coming from his nose. All the cockiness had been knocked right out of him - thank the Goddess.

"Yeah," Nia said cheerfully. "I guess I'll try. Rhodri, kindly take our guests into the mines and make them comfortable. Hayden is tired from the journey."

Rhodri gave him a vicious shove towards Llechi. Hannah trudged along behind, and the three of them ended up leading all of us. Nia hung back and slung an arm across my shoulder to pull me closer to her. I reckoned I was the only one to see the smear of blood beneath her own nose.

"He's quite strong," she told me in an undertone. "That could have gone either way, to be honest. Keep those walls up from now on."

"How'd you know it was me?" I demanded indignantly.

She laughed and tapped my forehead. "Because they're down right now, Eva. You need to be more careful. That boy could crack you open like an egg if he wanted."

But he didn't want to, did he? If I had, in fact, been the leak, he could have broken into my mind there and then. Whether it was fear of the consequences or his conscience stopping him ... well, that was hard to say. Maybe both.

We crossed the wildflower meadow which wrapped around the base of the hill, and we kept climbing. The grass underfoot turned to loose rock. The cool summer air turned to mist and fog. Soon the visibility was so poor that we couldn't even see the cars. It was too cold to spend any time in the mines today - we'd have to go straight to our usual picnic site.

Liam came to walk beside me. He'd been quiet for the last few days, understandably, and I'd caught him staring into space on many occasions. Today, though, he offered me a broad grin. Llechi tended to have that effect on all of us.

"You didn't have a single dream last night," I said. It had been strange going to bed and sleeping the whole night through. "That's progress, I suppose."

"Yeah, I suppose it is."

There was something too quick about that answer. I turned to study him properly, noting the dark circles beneath his eyes and the yawns he kept stifling, and I swore at him. "You didn't have a dream because you didn't go to sleep."

He knew there was no point denying it. He just shrugged at me. "And you didn't wake up once, Eva, so I guess we're both fibbers, aren't we?"

Shit. Shit. Before I could think up some clever excuse, some proof of my feigned insomnia, Liam put a finger over my lips. "I'm okay, you know. You don't need to ruin your sleep to check up on me."

"Are you?" I asked, my tone making it an accusation.

He nodded. "I stayed up because I needed to think. That's all."

Out of the mist loomed the entrance to a tunnel. The darkness within was a stark contrast to the whiteness which smothered the outside world. It was quite clearly the entrance to a mine, with those classic wooden beams marking the way in. Hayden and Hannah gawked like idiots until Rhodri made them duck their heads and walk into the tunnel itself.

Liam and I followed their example soon afterwards. There weren't many occasions when it was an advantage to be short, but this was one of them. Liam had to stoop much lower than I did. Both of us had to take care that we didn't trip over the rusted rails in the tunnel's centre. Ten metres, then twenty, and then we were outside again, this time on the other side of the hill.

"Thinking about what? Not ... y'know... ?" I picked up where we'd left off, because there was something oppressive about those tunnels which smothered words before they could leave your mouth.

Liam shrugged. "Amongst other things. Do you reckon we could do it?"

"Do what?" I asked.

"Pretend to be in love."

Oh. My brain short-circuited a little, I'll admit, because we'd barely talked about the possibility of going into Silver Lake, let alone ... that.

"Who said anything about pretending?" Rhodri muttered ahead of us.

I kicked some stones in his direction, and they went skittering past his boots. Once I had his attention, I cocked an eyebrow and growled, "Sorry, didn't quite catch that. What did you say?"

He gave me a weary look. "Nothing."

"Good," I said roughly. "And the answer is yes, Liam. Of course we could do it."

While Rhodri was still looking at us, I stopped walking. Liam stopped with me, and I stood on my tiptoes to put my mouth close to his ear. He played along beautifully - tilting his head down and putting a hand on my waist, all while I could only assume Rhodri was choking.

"We should push him over the edge," I whispered.

Liam gave a snort of laughter. "Even for us, that's a little far, don't you think?"

He was probably right. It was a long way down, after all. I thought for a moment before I let my breath warm his ear once again. "Worms in his food? We could blame Bryn."

"That's more like it."

By the time I turned, Rhodri had managed to collect his lower jaw from the ground, but there was no wiping the mind-numbing shock from his face. I was pretty sure he'd thought we were about to kiss right in front of his eyes. He didn't start moving until we'd nearly overtaken him.

"Well, you've convinced me," I heard him mutter, apparently to himself.

Cursing from up ahead. The flockies had kept walking. Inevitably, they'd reached the cliff edge, and now they were looking even more bewildered than before. I went and peered over. It was so cloudy today that we couldn't see the bottom, but that was half the fun of it. It was less than ten metres. As long as you landed feet-first, you were generally fine. Generally being the keyword.

Rhodri gave the flockie a push towards the edge. "Go on, then. Jump."

"Very funny," Hayden muttered, taking a hasty step backwards.

"No, I'm deadly serious. It's the fastest way down."

Hayden laughed at him. "Well, of course it's the fastest. Crashing a car is the fastest way to stop. That doesn't mean I'm gonna go around-"

"Shut up," Nia sighed, "and get the hell out of my way, would you?"

Hayden wasn't quick enough to move, so he got yanked backwards by his collar. Nia stripped off her jacket and shoes, handing them off to her mate, and then she took a running jump over the cliff edge. The tell-tale splash echoed around the cliffs soon afterwards, and after a few heartbeats, it was followed by the all-clear whistle.

"This isn't safe," Hannah decided. "There's water at the bottom, right? A few weeks of drought and it might get real shallow..."

I grinned at her. "Well, duh. That's why Nia goes first."

Lily's turn now. She made a neat pile of Nia's things and her own before she followed her mate over the edge. Another splash, another whistle. Hannah seemed to sense that her turn was approaching and backed up hastily, muttering, "It'd be such a pointless way to die."

"Scared, flockie?" Rhodri asked quietly. "You can always walk down with the little kids."

It was nothing less than a challenge, and she rose to it. I heard her growl at him, but I was too busy kicking my shoes off to care much. Over the years, I'd done this a dozen times. It didn't make my heart any calmer as I hurtled off the edge.

Free-falling was... Well, I wouldn't say fun. No, not quite. It was certainly thrilling, though. That coldness in your belly which made you feel like you'd left your stomach at the top and the sensation of cold air lashing against your skin was enough to send adrenaline coursing through my veins.

I was awake. Properly awake. It was the kind of mental state where you couldn't budge from the 'right now.' For a while, there was no future ahead and no past behind me. All I could think of was the way the wind tasted and the jagged grey of the cliffs speeding past my eyes.

And then I hit the water. It was cold, and it was wet, but it was the force that caught my attention. I sank, my eyes shut tight, for what felt like an eternity. By the time my body could recover enough to kick out, I'd brushed the bottom.

As always, it was a frantic race to get to the top. My lungs burned and my limbs felt leaden in the water. That was the point, though. You fell and you drowned - it was death twice over, and then you could break the surface and feel truly alive.

Coming up was as jolting as the landing had been. I took a series of gasping breaths, flicking the water from my eyes. Nia waded back into the pool to help drag me to the shore. She hauled me onto a ledge of rock and grinned at me while I hacked the water from my throat.

After a while, I scrambled onto my knees. We were in a crevice between two cliffs. It took nearly an hour to make the treacherous walk down a gorge to reach the place, and that was the only other entrance, as far as we could tell. I wasn't sure anyone but our family had ever set foot down here.

The next body to hit the water turned out to be Hayden. He took longer to surface than he should have. So long, in fact, that Nia was about to go diving when he came up desperate and spluttering. She put him beside me.

I watched Hayden recover with a wonky smile on my lips. He didn't look nearly so intimidating when he was soaking wet and gasping like a fish out of water. Slowly, he began to sit up and take notice of his surroundings.

There were no clouds down here. We could only see the wall of mist above us - a solid white blur blotting out the sky. The pool beside us was so clear that you could see every pebble beneath it, and the stream which flowed outwards looked silver in the morning sun. Hayden's jaw had dropped. It was like falling into a faerie realm.

"Welcome to Llechi," I laughed, slapping him on the back.

***

Nearly ten minutes later, we all crowded around the far bank of the plunge pool, jostling each other for the best spots. All of us except the flockies, who thought they were above scrapping like dumbass little children, apparently.

"Whoever catches the most gets to sit on their arse while everyone else works, so ... just saying... it's worth your while," I told Hayden.

"We're hostages," he muttered. "Not slaves. You can't make us work in the first place, so no thank you."

Rhodri cocked an eyebrow. "Can't we?"

Too much eye contact. I had to push between them. "Just get in line, flockie. If you're going to gate-crash our day trip, you're damn well going to participate."

Grudgingly, he came to stand beside me. He played sulky, of course, but that Alpha blood of his made him so competitive that he soon forgot that he was supposed to dislike us.

Hannah was excused because she was still coughing up water - she'd nearly drowned herself in the plunge pool. It turned out she wasn't great at swimming, but she'd been too proud to admit that to Rhodri. Those two would need their heads knocking together if we were going to survive the day, I reckoned.

When we were all ready, Sam - who was the only adult left on the clifftop by then - started throwing our shoes down. They came out of the mist like tiny missiles, raining down on us while we pushed and fought to catch them.

Some traditions were hard to relinquish, however old and 'sensible' we got. It was comforting, too, that the outcome never seemed to change. Nia always made sure Lily won, Rhodri and Bryn always ended up wrestling and forgetting about the shoes altogether, and Liam always happened to fumble his catches when I was close enough to snatch the prize from under his nose.

And once all the shoes had been thrown, there was a general scramble to retrieve your own. We didn't wear them or anything - there was no point getting them soaking wet, but leaving them in someone else's custody ran the risk that they'd get tossed into tree branches or filled with insects.

"Time we talked?" I asked Nia when it was done. I was cradling my walking boots like a newborn child. "Before everyone switches off mentally?"

She surveyed the group. Most of them were lying flat on the grass so the sun would dry them, and she grimaced. "Some of us were never switched on to begin with, Eva."

"Mm," I agreed. For some reason, my eyes were lingering on Bryn.

"But I think you're right," Nia went on. "Now's as good a time as any. I'll move the flockies somewhere quiet."

"Don't bother. They know already - what's the harm?"

"True," she sighed.

We convened the second super-secret meeting on the grassy bank beside the river. Everyone was sat in a neat little circle with their legs crossed, the flockies included. Sam was distracting the younger kids with a game of sardines because they had a tendency to blurt things out, and they wouldn't understand, anyway.

"El, you're going to keep your mouth shut about this," Nia began. I thought it was a risk letting him listen at all, but he was still one of us, I supposed. He rarely snitched when it suited him to keep quiet. "The same goes for you two..."

"I won't tell," Ellis said. He sounded almost ... hurt. Meanwhile, Hannah and Hayden exchanged a heavy look which could have meant anything, really. But honestly, who would they tell? They both liked to play sullen around the adults.

"Good." She reached over to tousle his hair. "It's true that we need to weaken Silver Lake before we make a move, and it's true that getting rid of Mason is the best way to do that. I can try to kill him, of course, but it ain't gonna be a walk in the park. He knows how his daddy died. According to Emmett, he doesn't commit to beating back raids lightly."

Liam and I were both picking grass and shredding it - me with my left hand and him with his right. Occasionally our fingers would collide or we'd fight over the same few stalks, and it made for a brilliant distraction. Even that little brush of skin against skin was enough to make me forget that anyone was speaking at all.

"An Alpha who doesn't fight isn't an Alpha for very long," Hayden said matter-of-factly.

"Oh, he does fight," Nia sighed. "He just makes sure to take plenty of friends with him. If I could get enough raiders, that wouldn't matter, but I've yet to find anyone who's interested in risking their entire raiding team and going behind Skye's back to do it."

Liam nodded, his eyes fixed on the grass beneath us. I couldn't say I was surprised, but it wasn't easy to hear our last shred of hope snatched away.

Nia swallowed before she continued, "As much as I hate to say this, you might have to go along with the plan, just for a little while. Once you're inside the pack, you can pass us information on how to get through the borders and where Mason might be. I'll take a small team in and kill him."

I didn't like this. It would be Nia and Rhodri, no doubt, and the few members of Nia's raiding team with the balls to raid without permission. And while I had no doubt that my cousins together could take Mason Vaughan, they wouldn't get a chance if they were outnumbered ten to one.

"And Uncle Rhys," I offered. If he flipped, he could take a handful of the older raiders with him. "He wasn't happy either."

"Unhappy enough to break a lifetime of dogged obedience to your mother?" Nia asked me quietly. "Because if you're wrong, it's game over before we've even started. He is ridiculously loyal, Eva..."

I scratched at the back of my neck. It was true that I didn't trust my own dad not to snitch on us, let alone Rhodri's. "If you made him choose between helping you or watching you all die... Like ... if you waited until the last possible second."

"I'll think about it," she promised me, which meant that she was uncomfortable putting anyone in that position and she would probably decide against it. But at least I'd tried. "So, what do you say, Liam?"

Liam looked skywards. "Even if you manage to kill Mason - and that's a big if - I have plenty more brothers. One of them is going to step up, and then we're back to square one."

Nia didn't have an answer for that. None of us did. It was true that we needed to break the cycle, not just speed it up. Killing off Silver Lake's Alpha was playing Russian roulette in the sense that the next one could be even worse.

Exhibit A: Liam's dad had been a shithead. But he'd been a cowardly, brainless shithead, while his half-brothers had turned out to be cruel and, in Mason's case, smart. I wasn't sure what could be worse than cruel and smart, but I reckoned the Goddess's imagination was a damn sight better than mine.

***

Lily was operating the barbeque. We had a decent fire burning, and we'd balanced a metal grill across four rocks. Right now, there were a dozen sausages and half as many burgers sizzling away. We'd have to cook several more batches because Nia could probably eat that much on her own.

I'd volunteered for roll duty, and my motives were entirely nefarious. Liam had slipped me a pocket full of ants and mud while Rhodri wasn't looking. The little kiddies ate first, so I had to wait for them to take their food, and then I had to wait for Nia, who was highest in the pecking order. She spent so long flirting with her mate that I had to put a hand over my pocket to stop the ants escaping.

Everyone else had formed an orderly line behind her, ending with little Matty, who hadn't even shifted yet, and then Liam, who was outside the hierarchy altogether. It was easy to guess where he might place - somewhere between Nia and me - but no one had ever tried to wring a submission out of him, so we'd never know for sure. He seemed perfectly happy to be last. More often than not, I'd join him there.

Since Lily was serving, Rhodri was next to rock up with his hands in his pockets. He was watching the burgers like a hawk would watch a mouse. He was hungry, then. Good. He wouldn't spend too much time examining what I gave him.

"Where did you put them?" I asked him, meaning the flockies. It was meant as a distraction while I cut his roll open and manoeuvred the sizzling hot burger inside, because I needed him to stop looking at the food for even a second.

"The driest cave we could find," he said. He turned to jerk a thumb towards the gorge entrance, and I took my chance. "Eira's napping, and Bryn's keeping watch."

Well, there went any chance of blaming Bryn. Too late now. The ants were in place, so this was a done deal. Shit. He couldn't even accuse Lily without getting decked, so ... yeah, I was dead. Liam saw it, too. He started whistling innocently and bent down beside the pool to wash the mud from beneath his fingernails.

I could only watch as Rhodri bit into the burger, mud and insects and all. He chewed for a few heartbeats before the taste set in, and then he spat the whole mouthful onto the ground at my feet. I took a hesitant step backwards.

It didn't take him long to come after me. He wasn't as dumb as he'd have us believe. He backed me into a cliff face, dropped his shoulder and then made like he was going to tackle me. I twisted away, naturally, but I'd misread his intentions. His arm caught my legs from behind, and he straightened up so I was hanging backwards over his shoulder.

"You little bitch," he growled. "Do you think that's funny?"

"Not anymore, I don't," I muttered.

We had a big audience, and they weren't afraid to cheer him on. It was a small mercy that the flockies weren't here to witness my physical incompetence, but I was willing to bet they could hear the ruckus from their cave.

There were more comfortable ways to be carried. His shoulder was digging into my stomach, making it hard to breathe, and I could feel all the blood rushing to my head. The more I wriggled, the worse it got. I tried landing punches just below his ribs because a solid blow to the kidney would hurt, but the bastard seemed immune to pain.

He turned to Nia, almost asking for permission, and she nodded ever-so-slightly. My groan of complaint was met with a wink and a smile which was entirely lacking in sympathy. She knew I'd done it. And so Rhodri started walking towards the pool, and my squirming grew ever more desperate.

He could have done worse, of course. Much worse. Getting cold and soggy for the second time that day was more a warning than a punishment. That didn't stop me cussing him out as we grew closer. The anticipation was worse than the actual dunking.

Liam watched on, more than happy to let me take the fall. I wanted to be angry at him, even if it was just playful anger, but he was grinning properly for the first time in days, and that made it very difficult.

"It was Liam's idea," I blurted. "Put me down, jackass. It's him you should be after."

Rhodri stopped to look at Liam. "That true?"

"Nah," he said without a second's hesitation. The grin only widened. "She'll say anything to save herself."

"Then you won't mind being the one to throw her in, will you?" Rhodri asked. He tightened his grip on my legs and beckoned him over.

"Do I mind? I'd love to, Llewellyn."

Fine. Whatever. Liam, the traitor that he was, came trudging towards us. He didn't have to look so damned smug about it. I suffered a rather uncomfortable transition between shoulders. By the time they'd finished, I found myself staring at the back of a different shirt, and I hadn't managed to clout either of them.

"Oh, stop squirming, Eva," Liam laughed, squeezing my thigh. "Take it like a man."

"You're dead," I told him matter-of-factly.

He reached the edge of the pool and tossed me into the deep end. The cold was so jolting that it took me a moment to realise which way was up. I could have just let myself float upwards then, but instead I kicked my way back towards the bank before breaking the surface. That way, I was closer to Liam. So close in fact, that I could reach out and grab his ankles.

He knew better than to stand so close to the edge. I yanked, Rhodri pushed him from behind, and he went toppling into the water beside me. By the time he surfaced, I had collapsed into borderline hysteric laughter.

"I deserved that," Liam admitted.

He was laughing, too. Unlike me, he could touch the bottom, so I decided it would be much easier to hold onto him than tread water. I brushed my wet hair from my eyes and tried my best to swallow my giggles before I ran out of oxygen.

"Yes, you did," I said happily.

We were close enough that it was easy for him to catch my wrists. The laughter turned to squealing as fingers prodded the soft skin just below my ribcage. It had taken quite a while to get him to the point where he was okay with being in water, so we tended to save the roughhousing for dry land. Now, if he started it, of course, that was an entirely different matter...

Because we were enjoying ourselves a little too much, Rhodri kicked water into our faces and crouched down to smirk at us. He was very careful to stay out of reach. "Have you learnt your lesson?"

I spat out a mouthful of water to swear at him.

"No?" Rhodri drawled. "That's okay. You can stay in there until you change your mind."

More swearing. He could enforce it, too. There wasn't a damn thing I could do to stop him if he decided to throw me back in, so I'd have to grovel sooner or later. Maybe even ... Goddess forbid, apologise. Before I could decide either way, Eira saved me by extending a mind-link to all of us.

"I just woke up," she began. The link was shaking so badly that I struggled to understand her, which probably meant she was scared or worried or both. "Bryn's out cold, and the flockies are gone."

Oh.

Um...

Whoops?