Micah Vaughan was being carried away on a stretcher. The doctor had rinsed his intestines with disinfectant, jabbed him with a syringe full of antibiotics, and then stuffed them back inside. He'd stitched him up while we sat in a moving vehicle. I'd helped as best I could, if only to throw off suspicion.

When I got out of the truck, I spotted Liam almost immediately. He was standing with the rest of his patrol beside another one of the trucks, but he came over quick enough when he saw me.

He was covered in blood. And not just a little bit of blood — no, he had several pints drying on him. Like me, Liam should have been safe today. The rogues didn't want to hurt him. The flockies thought he was on their side.

"Hi," I said. There was no energy in it. My legs were so weak and shaky that I sat on the back rim of the jeep just to take the weight off. I ended up sliding straight down, my arse thumping onto the grass, and I didn't make any effort to get back up.

Liam knelt down, looking me over with those big, worried eyes of his. "Are you okay?"

I looked a mess, admittedly. There were bloody furrows under my chin, and my arm was in a sling, courtesy of the grumpy pack doctor. Liam wrinkled up his nose as he got Mason's scent. It was the t-shirt. I'd tried to give it back, but I'd already bled all over it, so he hadn't been interested.

I offered him a very unconvincing smile. "No. But I'll live. What happened to you?"

Liam looked down at himself and flinched. "It's ... uh, it's not my blood."

I could see that. There was too much to belong to a single person. And besides, there wasn't a mark on him. I raised an eyebrow, asking the silent question. He didn't answer right away. He took a moment to swallow and find the words.

"Will's dead."

Oh, Goddess. It hadn't even occurred to me. All this time I'd been worrying about my family ...  I'd never stopped to consider that a flockie might get hurt. Because why would I care, right?

Well, I did care. He'd been nice to us. So had Lin, despite the frostiness of the last day, and I knew how badly it hurt to lose a mate. She was sat in the passenger seat of the truck, where Mason had not-so-gently put her, and she was still crying her eyes out. This wasn't hysterics, after all. She'd felt the bond break. Something cold and oily settled in the pit of my stomach.

"Who was it?" I asked quietly.

Liam picked at the blood drying under his fingernails and murmured, "Rhodri."

"Okay." I took a deep breath in and out. "Don't tell him. I know he acts like he doesn't care, but that shit bothers him."

It bothered all of us. Killing wasn't an easy thing to do. Not even when your life was on the line. And we all knew that sometimes we got the wrong flockies. The ones who just wanted to protect their families and were actually decent people. We knew, and we couldn't do a damn thing about it.

Liam nodded. "The thing is, Eva ... I was scrapping with him. You know, trying to make it look real. And Will jumped on him from behind and Rhodri just turned and ... yeah. It wouldn't have happened if Will hadn't tried to help me."

"It's not your fault," I said. It was a useless thing to say, and I knew it, but I had to say something.

"Yes, it is," Liam said firmly. He'd noticed the shaking. He draped his patrol jacket around my shoulders, and he rubbed my arms, trying to warm them up. He'd guessed wrong, but it was still sweet. "And since I've seen Mason walking and talking, I'm guessing he died for jack shit."

I eyed him cautiously. "Well, yeah. Everything went sideways real fast. You did see the Shadowcat, right?"

The alarm was written all over his face. "What Shadowcat?"

"He was chasing Rhodri. You should have seen him..."

Liam shrugged at me helplessly. I would've liked some reassurance that it hadn't all been a crazy dream, but while we were on the topic of the Shadowcat... I reckoned it had been long enough now. The raiders should have shaken their pursuit, which meant they would be able to spare me a few minutes of their attention to explain what the hell had happened.

"Are you guys okay?" I asked down the link. It wasn't directed at anyone in particular, but Nia was the fastest to answer me, as usual.

"Yeah. Mostly. Are you, pup? That dumbass was using you for a chew toy."

"Well, I'm ... alive."

She sighed down the link. "That's the main thing, ain't it? Is Liam okay? Rhodri said—"

"Liam's fine," I said, swallowing the lump in my throat. "But the guy who's been looking after him on patrol is missing his throat."

Nia's silence was very telling. She'd just lost two raiders, and somehow she was finding the energy to care about a dead flockie. "I'm sorry about that, Eva. Things got a little ... hectic."

"You don't say," I snapped. "Who was that, by the way? The Shadowcats are supposed to be on our side."

I felt her wince. "You had the pleasure of meeting Jeff Silveryn. Rhodri's great-grandpa. The man's ninety-something and absolutely batshit. And you're not wrong, kiddo. He is on our side. He thought he was helping."

That was ... a lot to absorb. I blinked a few times and reached up to scratch at my injured shoulder. It was starting to itch, and that was good. Itching meant healing. "Hold up. I thought he was dead."

"Yeah," Nia said dryly. "Everyone thought he was dead. He's been missing for the last three years, doing Goddess knows what to Goddess knows who."

I let out a long, loud breath. "Fab."

"Mm. It was him who killed Kaitlyn — I saw it happen. And apparently we've got to play nice and pretend like he didn't. I mean ... the dude is currently sat in a cardboard box, and I'm pretty sure he's talking to a pigeon, so ... yeah."

"I don't know what your problem is, Nia," I drawled. "He sounds like a stand-up guy."

"He tried to break your neck."

"Yeah, well, shit happens."

Liam was looking at me. He knew I was mind-linking — that much was obvious from the patience on his face, but he raised his eyebrows now to ask me a question.

"They're okay," I mouthed, and then I got to watch him relax for the first time in hours.

"How are the three little pigs?" Nia asked. That quickly, my attention snapped back to the link. She was hoping she'd managed to kill one of the Vaughans ... or at least mortally wound them.

"Well, they're all alive, so that's fun," I sighed. "Mason's kinda smug — not gonna lie. Mostly because he's got Mortimer Morris in cuffs."

Silence from Nia's end, because she knew that already, and she probably blamed herself. When it became obvious she had nothing to say, I tried to nudge the conversation along. "He ... um, he knows I'm here, doesn't he?"

"They all know about you, kiddo," Nia told me, not ungently. "I can't ask people to risk their lives without a damn good reason why. But I didn't pick anyone who'd open their mouth, no matter what those pricks do."

"He might, though," I muttered. "It happens sometimes, even with the bravest guys. And I'm pretty sure Mason already suspects us, so it wouldn't take much..."

Nia's thoughts ground to a complete and utter halt. The usual flicker of motion stilled, just for a heartbeat, and then it went reeling backwards. She was worried, and it was spilling over to the point where I could taste metal. "What do you mean he suspects?"

"We're new. They're looking for sleepers, and I guess it makes sense. We didn't think this through."

"Shit, Eva."

"Yeah. You get why I'm worried?"

She was distracted. I could feel it in the way the link was flickering. "Mortimer won't talk, okay? That's a promise. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get yelled at. Your mother's just arrived."

For the first time, there was a little part of me that was glad I wasn't at home. Nia had organised a raid without permission, gone against Mam's explicit orders, and got two rogues killed and another captured. That would all be fine if she'd succeeded in killing Mason. But she hadn't, and now she'd face the music.

"Is she angry?" I asked. It was a stupid question.

"Oh, Eva. Don't you worry your little head about it. I made this mess — I take the heat."

She was pulling back from the link even more, her attention clearly elsewhere, and something in the real world had just caught hold of mine. We didn't really end the link — it just stretched too thin and snapped of its own accord. Neither of us made any attempt to reconnect it.

A car had pulled up on the edge of the grass. There were maybe two dozen fighters gathered on the lawn, here to get medical attention and report back to their bosses. The steady hum of their conversations faltered when they caught sight of that vehicle. And when the noise from the engine died, silence fell in its wake.

A couple of fighters got out of the car, and they started unloading stretchers from the back. They'd taken the wounded guys past us a few minutes ago, Micah included, and it had been done with some urgency and medics running alongside them. There was none of that now. The people on those stretchers were beyond help.

A woman and little boy — maybe five or six years old — walked beside one of them. They looked utterly shell-shocked, so I could only imagine they were the family of the other guy who'd died.

As the stretchers came past, the fighters came to attention. Every single one of them. Even Liam, who must have seen this happen enough times growing up. They stood up straight and stared off into the distance, lining the way back home.

I'd never seen this part before. I'd seen the part where the flockies tried to rip our throats out, of course. And I'd seen the part where they got killed for their trouble. I'd never had to witness the aftermath — all the grief and the fear and the quietness.

I got it now. From their point of view, we turned up on their land, killed a bunch of their friends, and then we buggered off with a handful of cash ... or in this case, nothing at all. I understood their hatred. The average pack member didn't get to see what they did to us. That all happened off the territory or in the privacy of the prison.

Lin picked that moment to wander out of the jeep. She was unsteady on her feet and so vacant-eyed that I did wonder if she knew where she was. It took her a while to reach the stretchers. And when she did, they stopped for her.

Will's body was covered with his patrol jacket. It was covered in as much blood as the one draped over my shoulders. One forepaw was hanging loose, and even from here, I could see his claws were split and broken. He must have put up one hell of a fight.

Lin let her fingertips brush his paw, and she let out a broken little moan. I should have gone to her, probably. We were friends, and she was having the worst day of her life. It was the guilt that stopped me. It was relentless and overpowering and made me feel sick to my stomach.

Because we'd done this. There was no denying that. And while I felt like shit, Liam must have been feeling a hundred times worse. He'd made a conscious decision to let Will die. In staying out of the fight, he'd picked Rhodri. And of course he had, because they were as good as brothers, but it didn't make this part any easier.

It was Mason who walked over. He put himself between her and Will so she couldn't make a scene. I was pretty sure that it only worked because even Lin was terrified of her Alpha. If it had been anyone else, they would have been pushed away in a heartbeat, because she was half out of her mind with grief. But maybe that was me being biased. Maybe she liked standing beside that slimy, murderous piece of shit.

"Why don't you go with Lilah?" he was asking her. "She can sit you down somewhere quiet. You don't have to see him now. Give it a few hours, and then I'll take you down to the mortuary myself."

I knew why he was doing it. The fighters were all watching. They would want to know that their families would be taken care of if something happened to them. And maybe, I thought grudgingly, maybe he really did care. This was his pack, after all.

Lin burst into tears again. A hand on her back guided her into Lilah's arms for one of the fiercest hugs I'd ever seen. Mason dropped back to walk alongside the other female and her kid. After a moment of quiet conversation, they broke away from the procession to follow Lilah, too.

I moved my eyes onto the grass. I didn't want to watch anymore. The noise level gradually climbed back to where it had been, now that the stretchers had gone past. One of the fighters near us spat on the ground and muttered something about 'filthy rogues,' and I flinched a little.

"Third patrol!" Stevens shouted. Another flinch. His voice was loud enough to carry across the entire field. "Come and report."

"Shit," Liam said. His patrol leader was stood right behind Mason, and there was no way he wouldn't be seen. He looked at me with a hint of panic in his eyes. "I can't not go."

"You could say you're taking me to the med wing," I offered gently. "I think you'd get away with that. Or ... you could go over there."

I didn't want to push him. If we'd managed to kill Mason, we would have gotten away with this. But there wouldn't be another opportunity to do that now. Liam was going to have to face his brother before the month of probation was up, and I'd much rather we did it before we wasted any more time here.

Liam chewed on the inside of his cheek. His hair was still tousled from the shift, and the combination of bedraggled and anxious was almost too much for me. "You mean ... like ... now?"

"Well, yeah, I guess," I murmured. "Think of it like this, Liam. If he recognises you, we get to go home."

The worry was gone from his face, just like that, and it was replaced by stunned contemplation. A few heartbeats later, he was actually grinning at me. "Yeah, okay. Screw it. I'm going."

It was nice to see that he hated it here as much as I did. If not more so. There had been times when I'd wondered if he'd been fitting in a little too well. Aside from the puking and his brothers, of course. Liam clearly hadn't forgotten how to be a flockie.

He got all of three steps before he stopped in his tracks and turned back around. He was frowning at my sling. "Hang on. You can't run."

"Neither can he," I said dismissively, with a nod towards Mason. It was hard to tell while he was in human form, but I was willing to bet my life that the tendon damage in his arm hadn't healed yet.

"At least loop around back. I can draw them away from you if it comes to that," Liam said

"Okay." I regarded him cautiously. "But do me a favour, yeah? Breathe."

He made a face of gentle confusion. "Breathe?"

With some effort, I got onto my knees and then back onto my feet. My ribs throbbed when I breathed too deeply, but I demonstrated for him anyway. "Mm. In and out. And keep doing it."

Because he wasn't. Not at the moment. I wasn't sure he'd taken a proper lungful of air since Stevens had called him over. The teasing note in my voice was enough to snap him out of it, and he showed me a very exaggerated breath.

"How's that?"

I gave him a thumbs up. With a last half-hearted smile, we split up. Liam went to report. I trudged across the field to stand behind the Vaughans. They were leaning against a garden wall, waiting for their wounds to heal. Felix was holding a wad of medical dressing against his thigh, and it was already soaked in red.

"Why were they trying to kill us?" he wondered aloud.

Mason laughed at him. "Why do you think? Bastards know the amendment will pass. They're just trying to make a point, and now we'll make one of our own. Did we get all the signatures for you-know-what?"

Whoa. I didn't know what. And I didn't like the sound of that at all. It was nice that they held conversations like these in such public places, but couldn't they just spell out their entire plan? I mean, for Goddess' sake.

My legs were getting tired again. The adrenaline was gone now, and exhaustion was filling the hole it had left. I was glad of the pain, in some ways. It kept me awake and sharp when all I wanted to do was collapse in a heap. I sat down, my back against the wall, and I started shredding the grass.

Felix nodded. "Lloyd didn't even hesitate, for some reason."

Jace Lloyd? If it was the Shadowless Alpha, I didn't give a shit, but Hayden's dad would be getting involved with this goddess-forsaken pack for one reason and one reason alone. To screw us over.

"Good," Mason said, "Time to fight fire with fire."

He was grinning as he surveyed the fighters. It was inevitable, really, that his gaze would eventually pass over Liam. That was where it snagged, and that was where it stayed. I blew out slowly, every muscle in my body tightening all at once and my heart breaking into full gallop.

"Bloody hell," Mason muttered. "Felix?"

Felix looked at him quizzically, and Mason nodded in Liam's direction. He seemed to get the message. "Oh. He's the new guy. The one you were too busy screwing Lilah to meet. Alex Hayes, I think."

Mason stared at him, one eyebrow cocked. "And?"

I closed my eyes for a moment, because we were so definitely busted.

"And ... what? You think he's the sleeper? I guess it would make sense, seeing as he's only been here a few days..."

Liam was pretending to listen to whatever Stevens was saying, but I could tell his mind was elsewhere. I nudged the link, and he turned away a little, hiding a fraction more of his face, for all the good it did.

"Tell me," Mason said curtly, "does he look familiar to you?"

Shit shit shit shit shit—

Felix made a face. "Not really. Guess he could've come to the packmeets. Or maybe we played him last summer. He's big enough for rugby."

A sidelong look. It was loaded with disbelief this time and accompanied by a snort. I found myself climbing onto my knees in case I needed to make a quick getaway. My fingers had frozen in place, still clutching a few blades of grass.

"What?" Felix demanded.

Mason went back to staring at Liam, but there was a curl to his lip which was clearly directed at his Beta. "Sometimes I just forget how stupid you are."

"Alright," Felix muttered, kicking at the ground. "Bloody hell, Mase. We can't all be bright as lightbulbs. Some of us got to be like ... glow-worms."

Another snort. "Don't flatter yourself, little brother. You're just a regular worm. Now, returning to the matter at hand ... this individual has been here for days, I would imagine, and I haven't seen him once. That's bloody suspect, don't you think?"

"I dunno, Mase. There's a lot of people in the pack. I don't know everyone."

Mason gave him a look-over so full of disgust that I felt a shiver run down my spine. "You should. You're the Beta. How old is he?"

Oh, that wasn't good. That was an I-think-that's-my-dead-brother-but-I-don't-want-to-sound-crazy type question.

Felix scratched his head. "Hell if I know. Eighteen, nineteen, maybe? He's mated to the mouthy girl who fought the panther. Now that I think about it, they kinda fit the profile for sleepers, don't they?"

Oh, bloody hell. Could he ... like ... not? I was in enough trouble as it was without getting busted over this. It was lucky Mason wasn't the slightest bit interested in what his brother was saying. Those unfathomable dark eyes of his were back on Liam, who had given up on pretending to listen to the briefing.

He was fidgeting in place, probably feeling the weight of that stare on his back. He dared to look at his brother, just for a heartbeat, and I could see all the raw emotion written on his face. It was fear and it was guilt and it was this overwhelming sadness.

I was sure Mason could see it, too. Liam dropped his gaze within a heartbeat, but it was enough time. Mason had gone incredibly still. After what felt like the longest minute of my life, he said, "His wolf's quiet. It's been a long day. I'm going to put this down to blood loss."

The Beta squinted at the patrol group. "Put what down to blood loss? Because if it's thinking he's a sleeper, you might be onto something. We can slap some cuffs on him, at least until we've had a chance to—"

"Do us all a favour, Felix," Mason sighed, "and shut up."

Felix shut up. It was the type of instant, unthinking obedience that had probably been beaten into him. And as little as I liked what he'd been saying, I felt the slightest glimmer of pity for him. He didn't look evil right then. He just looked worried and maybe even a little hurt.

A smile spread across Mason's face, and it was the kind which made me want to crawl into a little hole and die. "That's better. I want his transfer request on my desk within the hour, and I want Jace on the phone, because he's got an awful lot of explaining to do."

"Cool," Felix said. He was walking on eggshells now, and he was keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the ground. "Consider it done. Are you coming by the office?"

Mason shook his head slowly. "Stevens tells me we've got two dead fighters and another three fighting for their lives. Our little brother included. I'm going to start on the rogue."

Well, phew. I didn't know what had just happened ... like ... at all. But one thing was obvious. Mason wasn't sure. He must have had his suspicions, but I reckoned he was the kind of person who wanted to be absolutely certain about something before he acted on it. I found it weird that he hadn't told Felix, though. Was it a good thing or a bad thing?

Uh oh. Hang on. I dropped a handful of grass and wiped my hands on my jeans. Mason wasn't heading towards the prison. The moment Felix had turned his back, he had pushed himself off the wall and stalked straight towards Third Patrol. I had a heartbeat to spit out a few choice swearwords and scramble to my feet.

I didn't like the look of his walk. It was an impulsive walk — like even he didn't know what he was going to do. It might be a civil conversation. It might be a very public murder. Either way, I didn't want it to get that far.

And I certainly didn't want them getting any closer than they were already. Liam looked too much like ... well, Liam. His hair was tousled from shifting, and that made him look younger. He was wearing half a dozen dark bruises from training and the incident with Micah. If those had jolted Charlie's memory,  I didn't see any reason they wouldn't jolt Mason's, too.

It was lucky that I was so quick on my feet. A dozen steps, and I'd overtaken Mason and put myself in his way. He came to a rather impatient halt, one eyebrow cocked and the furious look on his face asking me what the hell I thought I was doing.

"Go," I told Liam through the link. "And go fast, yeah?"

He didn't waste any time replying. He just slipped away from the briefing and ducked into the crowd. One minute there, the next vanished. Kinda like my will to live.

"Alpha," I exclaimed a little belatedly, since Mason was still staring me down. "Hi. I wanted to ask, um, if you need me to come and clean today. It's just ... I don't think Lin will be feeling up to it, and I don't want to bother her with questions, so I was thinking that—"

Mason cut across me. "This can wait."

"Well, actually, I kinda need to know now, because I've got a whole bunch of things to do this afternoon. If I clear it with my boss, do you reckon I could bring one of the other girls to help—"

It was a mess of words, sicked up from some distant, useless corner of my mind. And it had worked for a few seconds, but then he growled at me from deep in his chest, and I seemed to lose the ability to speak.

He'd guessed it. His eyes flitted past me, checking that little gathering of fighters. And he saw that Liam was gone.

And then Mason smiled. It was the fake, irritated kind of smile. One of his hands closed around my wrist, squeezing hard enough to leave a bruise, and then he started to twist. It was my bad arm. The one I'd just broken defending his family.

He pulled me closer, until we were pressed together. I was hardly daring to breathe, because his wolf was crushing mine and he looked pissed. I was suddenly very glad that Liam wasn't here to see. If he had been, we might have had a fight on our hands.

"You're not as clever as you think you are," Mason said, quiet and vicious. His mouth was uncomfortably close to my ear, and his breath was hot against my skin. "And neither is he."

He twisted my arm further, and it was enough to make me yelp. That seemed to satisfy him — he released me with a shove that tipped me onto my hand and knees. I sat there for a moment to catch my breath and let my heart calm down and suppress the urge to break his nose.

And then I got back up. Mason was already halfway back to the packhouse. What he was going to do there ... well, that was anyone's guess. It wasn't my problem anymore. I decided I was happy as long as he wasn't within ten metres of Liam.

I'd skinned one knee, and there were a few pieces of gravel in my palm which needed picking out. My shoulder was throbbing again. Everyone around me was pretending like they hadn't noticed, because it was Mason, and he could do whatever the hell he liked.

Deep breath in. I huffed it all out again. Was I going to tell Liam about this?

Hell no. He'd do something stupid. But ... then again, it might be the kick up the backside he needed to realise we should leave. There was no way on earth this could end happily for us now. Felix had convinced himself we were sleepers. Mason was probably planning to execute Liam for desertion. And Lin still thought I was a prostitute.

So yeah. One way or another, we were screwed.