Look at me updating on time for once!!! Are you proud?? For those of you who are reading Rhodric's story, that should be updated tomorrow. It's very nearly finished now, and then my undivided attention will be on this book :)

It was nearly one in the morning when Liam came home that night. He was even muddier than usual and utterly soaked from the rain. He made a beeline straight for the booze cupboard and dug out a bottle of strange Australian rum.

"Hey, Eva," he said.

"Hey," I murmured.

He unscrewed the rum bottle. Instead of diluting it with coke like he usually would, he just splashed some into a glass ... and kept pouring.

I put my hand over the glass, giving him a look. It took him a moment to nod at me and take a step back. Getting drunk now wouldn't help anyone. Him least of all.

I took a deep draught myself, tipped some back into the bottle and then handed him the glass with only a few fingers left in the bottom. I knew exactly how much it took to get him sleepy.

"Good day?" I asked.

It was a sarcastic question, so he offered me a wry smile as he took a sip. "Not really, no. I think I'll just go to bed."

He started making his way over, favouring his right leg for no discernible reason. I looked between him and those nice, clean sheets. I'd changed them today after realising exactly how filthy he'd made them.

"Nope," I told him. "I can excuse wet, and I can excuse mud, but I draw the line at wet mud."

Liam stopped mid-step, nearly falling over himself. He looked down at himself and winced.

"Shower," I said, trying to be stern. "I'll find you some clean clothes."

All the other fighters showered before they came into the pack house. Poor Liam had to make his excuses and slip away because they couldn't see him without his shirt. Those burn scars were damning.

He scratched the back of his neck. "I don't think I can, Eva. I'll pass out."

I believed him. He had thrown up his supper, too, so his blood sugar must have been at rock bottom by now. Once combined with the physical exhaustion which came from such intensive workouts, it spelt disaster.

"We'll have a bath then," I decided.

Liam set the glass down on the counter. The way he was looking at me... Well, it was like I'd just grown another head. "What do you mean by we?"

"You and me," I said, slowly and deliberately, "will have a bath."

Lin had been saying she wanted one earlier. She had sounded all wistful, and I'd started to wonder if I was missing out on something. I'd ducked under the shower at the lodge for as long as I could bear (the water came out hot, and that shit hurt), but the closest I'd ever come to a bathtub was the pond near Haven.

"Together?" he demanded.

"Well, yeah. I need a wash too," I said indignantly. I was gathering supplies as we spoke - towels and clean clothes and soap. "What, you don't want to share? You're the one who's filthy, not me."

Liam blinked at me. He picked at his fingernails and managed to murmur, "It's just ... not that I'm complaining or anything, but ... we'll be naked, Eva."

I dropped the stuff I was holding and spluttered, "Shit. What? No. Of course not. Why on earth would you think ... that...? We can wear clothes."

We sat in the river in our clothes. You kinda had to. It was freezing even in mid-summer, and besides, people would come down for a drink and see you naked. Those problems didn't exist indoors, of course, but the principle was the same. I couldn't imagine someone sitting naked in a ceramic tub of water. That was ... that was just weird.

But Liam shook his head slowly. There was an amused smile on his lips now, and I supposed that was an improvement on the bewilderment. "Not in the bath."

"Have you ever had one?" I demanded, folding my arms because I wasn't about to back down now.

"Not since I was really tiny. I just went in the lake or the showers. But I'm ... I'm pretty sure, Eva. Ninety-nine percent sure."

"I'll take those odds. Get those boots off, and I'll run the taps."

I heard him sigh very loudly and deliberately, but he was also grinning as I disappeared into the bathroom. It took a long time to fill the ceramic bowl. I was so wary about using the hot tap that it ended up lukewarm at best, but that was fine. Literally anything was warmer than river water.

When it was done, I climbed in cautiously. It was slipperier than I had imagined and much, much smaller. I took a moment to enjoy the feeling of the warm water lapping at my skin before I jerked my head at Liam.

"Come on," I said as I splashed him. "Water's lovely."

He came over to peer down at me. "If you're trying to distract me from what happened, it's working."

Sometimes, I wished he wasn't so damned clever. I was nearly always trying to distract him from something, and today was no exception. "Yeah, well, I imagine stripping naked would have worked better. Get in."

And that was when the problems started. I watched the water turn from clear to murky brown in a span of a few seconds. The tub wasn't really big enough for both of us. We both had to keep our knees up, although I was pretty sure Liam would have had to do that anyway. He was so damned tall.

My clothes were already drenched. They stuck to me and weighed me down, clinging in all the wrong places. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. I thanked the Goddess that I was wearing one of Liam's shirts and not the see-through, flimsy things from my own wardrobe.

"I don't think we're doing this right," I said after a minute. I broke into a fit of giggles then, because I really couldn't help it, and it was all worth it just to see Liam smile.

"No," he agreed, "we're not. If you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe google. My work phone is on the side there."

He had a work phone now? Why didn't I get a work phone? I found it easily enough, sticking out of his hoodie pocket, and I dried my fingers on the soft fabric before picking it up. He didn't have a password yet. There were nearly two hundred unopened notifications, and I really couldn't help myself.

There seemed to be a group chat for his patrol unit, and another for all the fighters in Silver Lake. They were both filled with pictures of girls in various stages of undress and the occasional reminder to stop pissing outside the changing rooms.

"Nice," I murmured. "Classy."

Liam winced. He must have guessed that I was snooping, and he scratched at the back of his neck like he was embarrassed. "I know. It's really- I've never-"

"It's calm. I can see that," I assured him. "You haven't opened the chats since you were added."

I kept scrolling. The conversations in the smaller group chat were particularly colourful. I skimmed them over, making sure to remember the names of those involved so I could stay very, very far away from them.

"Do they talk like this often?" I asked quietly.

He nodded slowly. "Often? It's constant."

"Well, make sure you keep your mouth shut, then," I sighed, closing the group chat before I could see anything truly scarring. "If they figure out you're a virgin, we're both screwed. Some of us more literally than others."

One of those goofy smiles had crept up on me. It only grew when Liam choked on thin air and splashed me. "Eva, you-"

I sent a wave of water right back at him. "I know. I'm horrible."

"Yes, you are."

He caught one of my ankles, which was easily done in such a confined space, and then he tugged. I didn't fall over backwards, but I did slide forwards and give a little shriek before I could stop myself.

My retaliation was less sophisticated and entirely accidental. As I struggled to right myself, my other foot caught him between the legs. We broke down. And amongst all the swearing and laughter, our splashing fight turned into a full-scale war. There was water everywhere by the time we'd managed to reach a stalemate.

"If you do ever feel like educating yourself, come find me," I told him once I'd caught my breath. A moment too late, I realised I shouldn't have paused after that sentence. Liam had gone very, very still, his eyes wide, because he thought I'd just shattered our unspoken pact. I blurted out the rest hurriedly. "Some of the girls I work with think you're hot. I can introduce you. "

"I know plenty," Liam assured me with an eye-roll. We were back on safer territory now. "And I don't need your help getting laid, thank you very much."

"No? Oh well. It's a shame - they were so keen."

He regarded me with one eyebrow cocked. "I'm not interested. Are you going to use the phone, or shall I do it?"

"Right. Yeah, sorry. I'll get right on that..." I mumbled as I typed into the search bar. "Ooh, look, there's a wiki page. 'How to Take a Bath.' It says we're supposed to rinse the tub with vinegar first, and I didn't do that. Should we start over?"

There was some genuine panic in my voice. He flicked more water at me. "We're not starting over, you moron. Do we get naked or not?"

"Straight to the point, aren't you?" I muttered. "It doesn't say..."

"Oh."

"...but they look naked in the pictures, I guess," I conceded, throwing the phone aside.

Liam sat back and grinned at me. "What did I tell you?"

"Whatever," I laughed. "You win. But I would like to know you lived here for a decade without doing this. It's actually quite nice."

The smile was gone. That was it - that was the only warning he gave me, but it was enough.

"I tried running one when I was like six or seven," Liam said slowly. "Only I forgot about it, and the water went everywhere. Mason got ... pissed off. He held my head under the water. It was only for a minute, I guess, but I got a lungful and coughed for a week."

I drew my legs to my chest and hugged them close. He'd caught me by surprise with that sudden change in tone. It felt like the ground had been taken out from under me, and so it didn't even occur to me to guard my reaction. Not that it mattered, really. He wouldn't look at me.

"He said that if I ever touched the bath again, he'd drown me properly," he went on. The smile was back again. But now it didn't reach his eyes, and the undercurrent of misery was impossible to miss. "I believed him."

My mouth was dry, but I tried to swallow anyway. I didn't know what to say. It was the nonchalance which got me every time. That empty, matter-of-fact tone. It made me wonder if that had just been a typical evening for him and the really dark shit had yet to come out.

"Why didn't you say something?" I murmured. "I'd never have made you... Shit, Liam. Sorry."

He shook his head. "No, it was years ago. I want to get over it."

I chewed on the inside of my cheek. "I don't think that's the kind of thing you can just 'get over.'"

"Yeah, well. Watch me."

I sighed. Both of us were starting to shiver by then, given that the water had gone from lukewarm to cold. I could see that Liam was dozing off as the alcohol did its work.

"Bedtime," I said.

We left a murky puddle on the bathroom floor, and we left a pile of towels which were closer to mud-brown than their original cream colour. Our wet clothes were tossed unceremoniously into the empty bathtub. It was a trail of destruction which I would have to tackle after my shift tomorrow.

We kept the window open, naturally, but it was still too warm in the bedroom. Liam was wearing joggers and not much else. I only had underwear and another oversized shirt. It made things more awkward than usual when we curled up together. I needed to smell like him, which was a good excuse to be pressed up against each other all night long.

Today, he draped his arm around me with that easy familiarity and closed his eyes. I could feel his chest rising and falling against my back. It was kinda nice. Reassuring. I would have drifted off in a minute flat had I not been determined to keep my eyes open.

Suddenly, we both tensed. There were some noises coming from next door. Not Will and Lin, but the other couple, and I felt my cheeks flushing despite my best efforts. It was bad news. If we could hear them, they could hear us. Not the talking or anything as quiet as that, but rather the absence of anything louder.

"Why were you back so late?" I asked to try and mask the awkwardness. The sounds were only getting louder and more distinctive with every passing second. "Will got in two hours ago."

"Turns out punching your boss is a one-way ticket to scrubbing the entire changing rooms," he said, yawning midway through his sentence because he was just that tired now.

I swallowed a wave of pity before he could see it. And then I seized on the opportunity, sinking my teeth into the subject before he could realise his mistake and change it. "What happened, by the way? One minute you're fine, the next you're knocking his front teeth out."

Silence.

"Hey," I murmured. It was a warning of sorts. We were supposed to be breaking that habit, not falling straight back into it at the earliest possible opportunity. "You can tell me."

Liam sighed quietly. "He ... well, he doesn't like you much. None of the guys do. They think you're too... They think you're outspoken, I guess. Just because you're not some poor flockie girl who's been beaten down her whole life... It's bullshit."

"Yeah, okay," I said, grinning. "You like me exactly the way I am. I get it, so you can stop worrying that you're hurting my feelings. Now please tell me you didn't punch him just because he doesn't like me."

"Not exactly. He was talking shit," he muttered, "about things he does to his own mate when she talks back. Things I don't think any girl could possibly enjoy. He reckoned I should try it on you."

Oh. So it wasn't about the incident at training, then? That was good, in a way. I wasn't exactly proud of what had happened, of the way I'd kept my mouth shut and let him get away with it.

"And then you punched him?" I asked.

He scratched the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish. "No. First I called him a rapist. Then he said something that was even worse than the first thing, so yeah. I punched him."

"What?" I demanded. "What did he say?"

"Nothing I want to repeat."

"If it was about me, I want to know."

"It wasn't. Not really," Liam assured me. "He said... He said it's not possible to rape your mate. Micah agreed with him."

Goddess. In a rogue camp, he would have been beaten and castrated as a bare bloody minimum. And they called us uncivilised. If a Delta could say that publicly and without repercussions, what else were they getting away with?

"Okay," I said. "I'm glad you punched him. He sounds like a prick."

"He's always been a prick. We were at school together. I remember giving him a few bruises back then, too."

Right. It was still weird to me - all these reminders that Liam had existed before I'd known him. He'd lived here longer than he'd lived with us. I wasn't sure what to say, so I didn't say anything, and the conversation dwindled of its own accord. The noises from next-door had stopped by then, thank the Goddess.

I lay there, counting the seconds, until Liam's breathing slowed and his mind dimmed. It was only when I was certain he was asleep that I dared to reach into the mind-link. I had to be very careful to avoid brushing against the strings which led to him as I searched for my cousins. Nia felt me nudging and reached out to take the strain, and that was a relief for my overworked, undercaffeinated brain.

"What's up, pup?" she asked in that familiar, overly affectionate tone which never failed to reassure me. "Why all the secrecy?"

She could feel me guarding the link, then. I was holding it so carefully still. Even as we spoke, I was reaching out further, trying to locate Rhodri, too. For whatever reason, I couldn't find him. Maybe he'd gone back to camp for a break.

"Liam's sleeping," I said by way of explanation. "I wanted to ... I don't know. I wanted to talk about the thing we were going to do."

"Killing Mason, you mean." She took my silence as acquiescence. "Is there a reason we're going behind Liam's back?"

I got very defensive very quickly, unsurprisingly. "I'm not- No. It's just ... he's exhausted. I didn't want to keep him up, and it's not like..."

It was a feeble excuse. I realised that, and I trailed off. We were literally sharing thoughts, so there was no way Nia hadn't seen the truth lurking beneath those clumsy words.

"He's not coping," Nia said. Not a question. She had seen the fight earlier through my eyes, and she had seen the aftermath.

"It's just Mason," I explained helplessly. "He's fine with the other two. I'm thinking we need to take him out sooner rather than later, 'cause if he recognises Liam... Yeah. I guess we're dead."

I felt her hesitation. Concern flickered black and red in the undercurrents of her thoughts, and it was soon followed by reluctance. She didn't like this idea. "We were going to wait until the month was nearly up. This shit gets messy, Eva."

"It's already messy," I muttered. "And we're right in the thick of it. I'm telling you - if we're going to survive the month, Mason needs to go. We can only avoid him for so long."

A long, tense silence. She had retreated a little to think it over, and I could only wait, hardly daring to breathe. Eventually, she nodded down the link. "I'll do what I can to speed things up. Rhodri was ordered back to camp. It'll be a day or two before he can sneak away, and I still need to-"

"What?" I spluttered. "Ordered? Why?"

He was supposed to be our moral support. That, and our guard dog should anything go drastically wrong here. It wasn't like he could just be replaced - scent switches didn't exactly grow on trees around here. Maybe his dad had found out about his extra-curricular activities.

"I don't know," Nia sighed. "But we had to delay the raid, and I've been told in no uncertain terms to keep all my raiders close to home."

Oh, this was definitely about the dead man. If even Nia was being kept in the dark ... I didn't like the implications of that. While I was worrying, she was thinking furiously. I could feel her thoughts racing along, fast enough to make me dizzy. She was spinning a web of sorts. A half-baked, draft version of a plan.

"If we do this, Eva, I need to know where he's going to be. Take a day. Find someplace quiet and isolated that we can hold the ambush. And would you please clue Liam in and let him help you? He knows the pack, and more importantly, he knows Mason. If this is going to work, we'll need that insight."

"Fine," I muttered.

"We'll also need to train him," she continued matter-of-factly. "Even if this works, he's still going to have to kill one of his brothers, you know. There's no wriggling out of that."

I baulked from that suggestion. "He's training with the flockies."

Nia snorted down the link. "Yes, training with shit-awful fighters and holding back the entire time. I want to bring him off the territory - pit him against someone with actual talent. Think of it like reverse trespassing. Once again, you can pick the where and the when, as long as it gets done."

Goddess. Liam was already exhausted from work. Extra-curricular training sessions weren't going to help with that. But I did see her point. We'd already gone a fortnight without proper training, and after another month here ... he'd be rusty at the very least.

"Okay," I sighed, "but-"

"In the meantime, you can practise together. It's better than nothing."

Oh no. Please no.

"Me?" I asked in a very small voice.

I could feel her exasperation hanging over her mind like a thundercloud. "Yes, you. There was a time you could knock me over, kiddo. What happened?"

Eira had happened. And afterwards, when I'd started hesitating and losing more fights than I'd won, I'd just decided to stop trying. Because if I did try, if I put my entire focus and effort into something and still failed ... well, it hurt. But I wasn't going to explain that Nia, was I? I could barely admit it to myself.

"Dunno."

"Well, do your best," Nia said, with that tone that always made me feel like she could see straight through me. "And keep checking in, would you? Everyone's worried. Even the flockie's been asking about you."

Aw. Wasn't that cute? Even if we failed spectacularly here, at least the next Alpha of New Dawn would still have some residual, grudging affection for me. That had to count for something ... right?

"We're fine," I assured her.

It wasn't true. I felt like I was constantly on the verge of tears, and there was enough responsibility on my shoulders to make me aware of every breath I took. Liam was probably feeling all that and the torture of returning to the house in which he'd enjoyed a decade of abuse. 'Fine' was the literal polar opposite of what we were.

I closed the link suddenly and without warning. If I hadn't, Nia would have seen all of that in my mind, plain as day, and I reckoned she had enough to worry about as it was. She didn't try to stop me.

I closed my eyes. Liam was still asleep, and I was still warm and comfortable, but I tossed and turned anyway. It all felt very real, all of a sudden. Nia and Rhodri would come and kill Mason, and then Liam would have to kill whoever succeeded him.

One tiny mistake, one careless move, and all four of us could end up dead. Or worse. The longer I spent lying there, listening to the steady beating of Liam's heart, the more certain I was that I wouldn't be able to bear that. And so I wondered if maybe I should start trying at long last.