Hey y'all! Happy New Year! As always, slay those typos. It's a few days later, so I've made the chapter extra long to make up for it.

"Please don't fall off," Liam told me.

"I'm not going to fall off," I sniggered, and then hiccupped so violently that I nearly did fall off. Liam's hand on my lower back was all that saved me. I was much too drunk to be climbing a ladder, in all honesty, but I wasn't going to let that stop me.

I was more careful after that. I took it one step at a time, pausing every few seconds to hiccup, and before long I poked my head into Silver Lake's attic.

"Ooh," I said. "It's dark."

I heard Liam sigh below me. It really was dark - pitch black, in fact, and I perched on the hatch, not daring to venture any further. Once he'd climbed up behind me, he reached over to find a light-switch with practised ease.

And then it was light. I could see the sloping walls, the mountains of boxes, and the cobwebs. Or I would have been able to see all of those things, if I hadn't been too busy blinking.

Liam tried to stand up. He did it much too fast and smacked his head on the ceiling. I giggled even as he swore. I was too short to have the same problem when I clambered onto my feet alongside him.

"That's lower than it used to be," he muttered.

"I think you've grown just a tiny bit," I told him. "Did you come up here a lot? It's ... um ... it's really spooky. No offence."

I wasn't lying. The attic ran the whole length of the pack house, so it stretched as far as I could see, fading into gloom. The whole thing was stuffed with so many boxes and other random shit that there could be someone sitting three feet away and you'd never know it.

Liam shrugged. "It's out of the way. If anyone wanted to clout me, they had to come looking."

I wanted to hug him. I really did. But I'd already had one tonight, and I didn't want to push my luck. Instead, I started wandering down the aisle between the boxes. It quickly became obvious that I wasn't walking in a straight line, and I clipped my knee on a box of paper and started giggling.

"What did you want to show me?" I called over my shoulder. The box lid was half-open, and since it had given me a decent sized bruise, I decided to start rummaging. I wanted to know what was making it so damned heavy.

"It's further down," he said. "What's that?"

It was full of paper. I pulled out the top sheet and let my eyebrows fly upwards. "It's a wanted poster."

And not just any wanted poster. It was for my grandfather. I recognised that likeness anywhere, because he looked like Rhodri. A lot like Rhodri. In fact, when my cousin went a few days without shaving, the older rogues started blinking at him. Our parents included.

"Rhodric Llewellyn, Eira Llewellyn, Nia Llewellyn," I said, leafing through. "Holy shit. This doesn't look like her at all. Mam's in here, too. Rhodri's dad. Emmett Byer, Aaron Morris, Syd Jacobs, Ollie Jenkins, Lee Jenkins, Mortimer Morris, Ian Brooks, Jaz Walker, Dafydd Powell... You really got everyone, huh?"

Half of them were dead now, but I knew all those names. If they were famous enough that the flockies had heard of them, you could bet they'd featured in my bedtime stories once or twice. I kept leafing through. The deeper I got, the fewer I recognised, until I was sure we were going back sixty years or more.

Liam shrugged. "All the raiding leaders and anyone with a reputation. This must be an old print run. They update them every few years."

I'd reached the bottom of the box. And there was one last face in here, printed on a piece of paper that was yellowed and crumbling.

"Bryn Llewellyn," I said quietly. "The first Bryn Llewellyn. Say it's from 1942. We've been at war for a long time, haven't we?"

I was tired of it, in all honesty. Things had gotten bad in the years before I'd been born, and they'd only gotten worse since. This was all I'd never known. Growing up, the threat of death had always been there, hanging over our heads.

"I guess we have."

Liam reached into the next box over. There were more posters, but these ones had a list instead of a face. That was too much writing to interest me. Liam, however, grinned at the paper like he recognised it.

"Symptoms of a sleeper," he read. "I remember when they had these up. We all took it very seriously, believe it or not."

"Symptoms? We're a disease now, are we?" I muttered, scuffing my heel. "Well? How do I measure up?"

"Let's see. Quick to anger, yep. Unkempt ... yeah, I'll say. Carries a knife?" Liam had to pat me down to answer that one. It took him just seconds to find the little knife in my jeans pocket. "Hmm. Apparently she does. She shouldn't, though. Maybe she should stop doing that."

"It makes me feel better," I mumbled.

He eyed me, unconvinced. "You could outrun every wolf in this pack without even breaking a sweat, Eva. You don't need the knife."

I just shrugged. There was no way in hell I was going to give it up. I felt naked without it. Liam was deadly all by himself, but I needed a helping hand, and that was okay.

When it became obvious I wasn't going to answer, Liam kept reading. "Sympathetic towards criminals? Incredibly. Unresponsive to authority? Wouldn't know authority if it hit her in the face. Fascinated by fire... What? How's that relevant?"

I snorted aloud. "The flockies are on their bullshit again."

He put the sheet down. "Well, that's still five out of six. I diagnose you with late-stage rogue. It runs in your family, the effects are irreversible, and it'll probably kill you one day."

We were laughing, because that made it easier, but it wasn't funny. Not really. Chances were, I'd die young, and Liam would die young, and most of our friends would join us. That was the problem with war. It was all fun and glory until someone got their throat torn out.

We wandered further down the aisle until we reached a window. I could see a messy heap of blankets and pillows between some of the larger boxes, and I wondered exactly how much time Liam had spent up here. He ignored the little den in favour of a tray of what looked like ... phones?

"This is what I wanted to show you," he said. "Before you get too excited, they're old. Most of them are used. But I reckon they could still be worth a tenner each. Maybe more."

I broke into a grin. "We can get these to Mam."

Liam nodded. "And no one'll miss them, because no one ever comes up here."

"And there's probably more stuff like this, right?" I asked, bouncing on my toes as I craned to see into more of the boxes. "More things we could sell."

Another nod. "There's laptops down the other end. Again, they're really old, but again-"

"You're amazing. You know that?"

He just shrugged. "I should've thought of this before."

I was shoving handfuls of them into my pockets. When they were at capacity, I filled Liam's instead. He was very tolerant of it, all things considered. Mostly because he was too busy trying to force the window open.

It was dark out, and there was a drizzle so fine I mistook it for mist. We could see the lake as a smear of silver on black. I'd never felt such a long way from the forest as I did right then, looking down on those toothpick trees. It was a long way to the border, and longer still to a rogue camp. Somehow, we had to get the phones from up here to out there.

The window was open now. It was helping to clear some of the dust we'd raised traipsing across the attic. I sneezed a few times in quick succession, ever shrill, until Liam was fighting a losing battle with a grin.

"Oh, shut up," I muttered.

We sat on the ledge. It was sloped and distinctly uncomfortable, but the view alone made it worth my while. The drizzle coated my jacket, leaving a glistening sheen of tiny, perfect droplets which caught the moonlight every time I moved.

"That windowsill below us - you see it?" Liam said. "That was mine. Once or twice I climbed down from here. It's easier than it looks."

"Challenge accepted," I drawled.

Liam caught the back of my shirt before I could get very far, and then he leaned out to close the window, just to be safe. He was drunk, too, but he was a good deal more sensible than I was. One slip and my brains would be splattered on the tiles, because we were five stories up.

Liam had the bottle of rum in his hoodie pocket. It was actually the second bottle, because the first was sitting empty on our bedside table, but that didn't matter. I swiped it and took a long draught. It didn't taste foul anymore - my taste buds, like the rest of me, were taking a break.

"You really lived here," I said, surprising myself. Usually, the more I drank, the less I wallowed in my thoughts.

"I did, yeah."

"And you were a proper flockie."

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, Eva."

"A rogue-hating flockie?" I tried next and found my voice a lot quieter than I would've liked. I'd never admit it, but those posters had put me out of sorts.

Liam didn't try to fob me off with some bullshit about how he'd been different. He knew I wasn't asking to wind him up, so he just nodded warily.

"Then why didn't you snitch on me? You saw me, and you didn't say anything."

I meant the day we'd first met ... although 'met' was a strong word for it, in all honesty. I'd glimpsed him through the undergrowth, and I'd watched the Silver Lake fighters knock him around, and then I'd watched my family knock them around. Our so-called meeting had been a few heartbeats of eye contact through a bush.

Liam looked astonished that I would even ask. "You were a kid."

"So were you," I mumbled. "If you'd sold me out, they would've left you alone."

"I know."

"But you didn't."

He shrugged. "You knew you were risking your life by staying, and you did it anyway. For a flockie. Why?"

"I don't know. Mostly because they were hitting you," I said. "And because you didn't look surprised."

Liam nodded without meeting my eyes and picked up the rum. I watched him carefully, making sure he didn't drink too much of it. We had no idea if it would react with the pills, and besides, he'd done enough throwing up in the last week to last a lifetime.

When he put the bottle down again, I leaned forwards, resting my arms against my knees, and I asked, "Do you ever ... like ... do you wonder what would have happened if we hadn't met you?"

His answering smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "Don't need to wonder. I would've gotten the shit beaten out of me."

"No, I mean ... do you think we would've ended up trying to kill each other one day?"

And there was the unasked question. Would I have found my mate from the wrong side of a prison cell? Would he have let them execute me, like everyone else did these days, and then settled down with some nice, tame flockie girl?

Liam looked at me. And I meant really looked at me. Quietly, he said, "I hope not."

We were close. Too close, probably, because I could have moved a few inches and we'd have been kissing. Even as that thought crossed my mind, I swallowed hard. Bad idea. We only needed to put up with another month of this clumsy hot-and-cold. No point screwing everything up when we were so close to the finish line.

Plus, I didn't want it to be here. I didn't want it to be ... like this. It was just the two of us at the moment, and we were utterly co-dependent, and it wasn't healthy. I didn't know if we were getting cosy for the wrong reasons - because we had no other options.

I'd keep repeating those arguments, over and over again, because it was always getting harder. The more I looked at him, the more I wondered if he was fighting the same battle.

I took the bottle off him. Drank more of it than was sensible. And then I turned my back, taking the temptation away altogether, and I tried to slow my treacherous heart.

***

The walk to the medical wing was a long series of yawns and near-collisions with strangers. The wait for my caffeine to kick in was one long haze. It was nothing short of a miracle when I got there in one piece, without taking a single wrong turn.

See, we hadn't actually gone to sleep last night. We'd gotten very drunk and stayed up watching TV on Liam's work laptop until the bell had gone for breakfast. So now I was starting my new job exhausted and very, very hungover.

"Who are you visiting?" one of the nurses asked me

"Huh?" I mumbled. It took me another few seconds to process her question, and a few more to come up with an answer. "I'm not visiting anyone. I think ... I think I work here."

Her forehead creased. I was saved by the arrival of a familiar face - the doctor from yesterday, who was looking even more haggard than before.

"Done your shoulder?" he asked, a little too hopefully.

"Nah," I sighed. I needed to be more assertive about this, or they were never going to accept me into the herd. "I'm the new paramedic."

He and the nurse exchanged a heavy look. "You must have got muddled, love. You might be a nurse or an orderly, but we have to get combat training before-"

I cut him off with a shake of my head. "Mason said it was cool."

"Mason," he repeated coolly. "I see. Well, I'm sure the Alpha knows best. If you wouldn't mind helping me discharge a patient first, we can go out and relieve the night shift."

I didn't like the sound of that tone. The words were friendly enough, but there was an underlying stiffness which told me in no uncertain terms that I was in trouble. He didn't like being foisted with an untrained, untested girl.

Still, I followed him. The ward was communal, with beds down both walls and the steady beeping of neglected drips. We ignored all of that, passing an elderly gentleman and a woman who looked like she'd just given birth. The last bay had the curtain drawn around it. The doctor made a beeline for it, and we both ducked inside.

Micah Vaughan was sat up in bed. The sheets were bunched around his waist, and he wasn't wearing a shirt. That made it a lot easier to appraise the massive surgical dressing across his abdomen where Nia's teeth had been. All his insides were ... well, back inside, but I was willing to bet there was a nice scar to remind him of their outing.

I could also see a line of burn scars running up his ribcage. They were nearly identical to Liam's, but there were much, much more of them. The doctor didn't seem concerned. He only eyed the dressing briefly before saying, "Morning, Mr Vaughan. How are we feeling?"

"Fine," Micah said automatically.

"That's good to hear," the doctor replied. He leant over the bedside table, scribbling on what looked like a prescription form. He didn't even bother to look at me as he said, "He doesn't need the cannula anymore."

He paused then, his eyes lifting from the clipboard, as he waited to see if I actually knew how to do that - if I was as useless as he thought I was. But all those times I'd helped with my little sister were coming in handy now.

"Yes, sir," I murmured, and then I removed it under the doctor's watchful eye. My hands were shaking a little, but it was more nerves than anything else. The flockies had doctors on hand whenever they needed them. We had like two for the entire rogue population, so everyone had to muck in.

"Seth," he corrected, with a faint smile that verged on approval. "And you'll do, I think."

I'd just finished dumping things into the sharps bin when I felt a hand on my leg, just above the knee. It was intended to make me turn, and it succeeded. I scowled down at Micah Vaughan, ready to tell him what for, but he had other ideas. His fingers curled around my wrist, squeezing tight enough to cut off the circulation.

"Hi," he said with what was probably supposed to be a charming smile. "It gets lonely up here. Been a few days since I saw such a pretty face. What's your name, sweetie?"

I didn't dignify that with an answer. The more I tried to pull away from him, the tighter his grip seemed to get, until it felt like my bones were grinding together. I didn't know how to free myself without creating an 'incident.'

The doctor set his pen down abruptly. Now we had his full, undivided attention, and I could see worry tightening his face. "Let her go."

"She shouldn't even be here," Micah said. "She reeks."

"I literally just showered," I said defensively as I tried and failed to pull my hand free.

He shook his head slowly, his mouth stretching into a smirk. "I mean you're in heat. And mated, too. That's a hard thing for a guy to miss."

"And so what if I am?" I demanded.

Because heat didn't really affect me. Like ... at all. It was just the part of our bodies that lined up with a wolf's cycle. Once every seven months, I got to skip a period. Then came a few days when it was a little too easy to get pregnant, and the guys were marginally more interested in me. That was literally it. I didn't feel any different.

"So he's just letting you walk around like this?" Micah retorted.

What was the alternative? Lock me up for a week? I didn't even know why I was surprised. This pack had decided sexual assault was okay somewhere down the line - this was just another of their backwards policies on females.

"Micah Vaughan," the doctor said, keeping his voice light and airy. "If you don't take your hands off her, I'll swap your painkillers for laxatives."

There was a long, long moment. I thought Micah would punch him, in all honesty, but the three of us just stared at each with enough tension to fire a catapult. Slowly, Micah peeled his fingers from my wrist, and I took a relieved step away from him.

"I was just mucking around," he said, sickly sweet. "Didn't mean anything by it."

It was bullshit. His eyes were telling the truth. He didn't like being ordered around, and he didn't like backing down, but he knew, like we all did, that you didn't screw with the doctors. It was like buying a one-way ticket to hell.

"I'm glad to hear it," the doctor said. "You're being discharged. Come back tomorrow to get your dressing changed, and we'll see about clearing you for active duty. Until then, I don't want you running, shifting or throwing down."

"No training, then?" Micah asked slyly.

A snort from Seth. "Not unless you want to see your colon again."

He was grinning now. "Oh no. That's tragic, that is. Any chance you can tell my brothers you said that?"

"I'll let them know."

"Cheers."

Micah pulled his shirt on, and then he was out of the door. While he was leaving, the doctor froze suddenly, his eyes glazing over in a mind-linking trance. The longer he stayed like that, the more worried he began to look, until his face was all screwed up.

I was taking the opportunity to unashamedly stare at the guy - a mess of ginger hair, green eyes and stumble on his cheeks. All in all, he was stunningly average. And if he'd been five years younger, I might have even shacked up with him. He didn't seem bothered that I was in heat. None of the nice guys were ever bothered - all the more evidence, in my opinion, that the shitty guys were just using it as an excuse to act like pricks.

"Grab the bag over there and follow me," Seth said when the link finally ended.

I did what I was told, and I did it with a great deal of enthusiasm. There was never anything to get excited about when your job was cleaning up after other people. Five minutes in the med wing, and we were already going on an adventure.

The bag in question was a rucksack overflowing with gauze, suturing equipment and an oxygen tank. It was a reassuring weight on my shoulders, not unlike the bags we carried when we moved camp. They were usually heavy enough that you'd fall over backwards if you put a foot wrong.

The doctor set off, picking a winding, overlong route through the corridors. I followed at his heels as closely and keenly as a puppy would. We reached the massive front doors in a matter of minutes. But instead of taking the exit, he led me deeper into the pack house.

"We're not going outside?" I asked, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice.

Seth glanced over his shoulder and showed me a grimace. "No. We're needed elsewhere. I hope you've got a strong stomach, darling."

I didn't like the sound of that. I dragged my feet all the way down the corridor, and I dragged them down the stairs, and then I ground to a complete halt. We were standing outside a reinforced steel door with two guards and a deadbolt. I knew what this place was.

Seth noticed my hesitation and said gently, "They're all restrained. Mason will be there to keep an eye on things. You'll be perfectly safe, and that's a promise."

The fact that anyone thought 'Mason will be there' was a reassuring thing to say... Goddess. Not for the first time, I wondered what the hell I was doing here.

"I'm not scared of the bloody rogues," I muttered with a great deal more sullenness than he deserved.

"No?" he asked quietly. "Maybe you should be."

I shook my head. "We like to big them up - act like they're monsters or something. But they're just people, ain't they? They bleed and suffer and die like the rest of us. Not so scary."

I was getting more subtle with my propaganda. But not subtle enough, apparently, because Seth raised his eyebrows at me. "Well, you're just full of surprises, aren't you? Why didn't you tell me you had a brain in your head? I wouldn't have got so grumpy with you earlier."

I answered that with a snort. But when he started down the steps, I padded after him. It was dark in there, and my eyes took a moment to adjust. There were rows and rows of cells, most of which were empty, and if I'd thought New Dawn's prison was grim ... well, this was about a thousand times worse.

Concrete walls. Cells empty save for buckets of urine and vomit. Drains in the floors. The stench of blood hung heavy in the air. This was a miserable place, where miserable things happened to decent people, and I'll be damned if I didn't feel the cold bite of fear in my stomach.

Most of the cells were empty. In fact, only two of them seemed to have an occupant. In the closest, a girl who was maybe fifteen or sixteen was curled up in a little ball. I turned my face away from her, trying to make sure she wouldn't recognise me, although I didn't think she was conscious.

A man lay sprawled in another cell. He was bloodied and bruised to the point where I had to nudge his mind to be sure it was Mortimer. Two days he'd been here. Two days, and they'd managed to do ... this.

Because while Liam and I had been getting drunk and screwing around last night, Mortimer Morris had been enduring literal torture. He was taking it all, knowing all the while that it would stop if he just gave us up.

It had been easy to forget, easy to pretend it wasn't happening, but now I had to look him in the eye and- I couldn't. He was going to die for us. It was all the more terrifying knowing that it would all be for nothing if we didn't manage to keep our cover and kill Mason. That was more pressure than I'd ever felt in my entire life.

Mason and Felix were lounging outside his cell, looking bored out of their minds. They looked up at the sound of our footsteps, and Felix turned to unlock the cell and slip inside.

Even battered as he was, Mortimer found the strength to lift his head as we approached. One of his eyes was swollen shut, but the other fixed on me with an expression I couldn't even begin to understand. Desperation and misery mixed with a spark of something which looked suspiciously like guilt.

Had he said something? How was I supposed to tell? Felix already thought I was a sleeper - he wasn't going to give me any clues. And Mason ... well, there was just no reading him.

"What's the problem?" Seth asked.

"Think we nicked something important," Felix murmured, kicking the raider to illustrate his point. "It was squirting blood everywhere."

"In pulses?"

A hesitant shrug. "Yeah, I guess."

"You did the right thing calling me," Seth sighed. "Do I need to sedate him?"

Felix regarded him for a moment, then shook his head. "Nah, he's quiet enough."

And with that, he bent down to wrestle his prisoner into a sitting position. There was dried blood plastered on him like a second skin, but most of the fresh stuff was soaking his left side. I could see it oozing from a gash just above his elbow. He was already pale from the blood loss, and his eyes were glassy and unfocused.

While Felix was securing him, the doctor opened a link with me. "First lesson, Eva. Arteries pulse in time with the heartbeat. Veins just seep. Which is going to kill him quicker?"

I eyed the growing pool of blood. It was almost unnaturally crimson. "Artery."

"Right on. If he was human, we'd have to intervene, but with enough pressure and time, he should fix that by himself."

"Cool."

I waited for something to happen. Seth just kept staring at me, arms folded and his forehead creased. Eventually, he made an impatient clucking noise. "Well, get on with it, would you? The patient's bleeding out."

"Me?" I demanded. "You want me to-"

The look on his face answered that question well enough. I crouched beside Mortimer and pressed both hands over the wound until Seth dug out some gauze. Under his guidance, I packed the cut and used my weight to apply even more pressure.

Mason leant against the wall and watched us with an unwavering indifference. I knew I'd stopped being invisible to him the moment he'd recognised Liam, but that didn't mean he was interested. I'd begun to realise that there were very few things in this world that did interest him.

A few minutes in, Mortimer had regained enough strength to resist. Weakly at first, and then vigorously enough that Felix ordered me back. I didn't understand why until I saw the colour of Mortimer's eyes. He was going to shift.

I got why. I really did. He didn't want medical attention because it was going to keep him alive. It was going to prolong this hell for another few days, and it gave the Vaughans a chance to try again. A chance to get information out of him.

Mason came in. He wasn't rushing, but there was a sense of annoyed purpose in his stride that worried me. It usually meant he was about to do something vile. So I wasn't too surprised when he dragged Mortimer away from his brother and slammed his head into the bars.

The old rogue groaned in pain, but he'd gone limp. Another blow sent him spiralling into unconsciousness. A second later, he was awake again but too dazed to do anything except swear at them.

"You're a special kind of dumb, you are," Felix growled. He was a little breathless from the struggle. "Try that again and I'll have your eyes out."

Together, they got him onto the ground, and they twisted his arms behind him so he couldn't take the shift any further. Wolves' shoulders didn't bend that way, and it became so excruciating that you passed out before you managed it.

All I could do was stand awkwardly in the corner with Seth and watch. It was a long time before Mason jerked his head at us, and then we came back over to finish the job. There wasn't much left to do. The bleeding had almost stopped. I pressed for a little while longer, just to make sure, and then I dressed it with fresh gauze and a bandage.

Again, Seth watched on, occasionally giving me a pointer through the link. I understood now that he was training me. And as much as I appreciated that, I would have liked to skip this particular patient. The guilt gnawed at me, cutting to the bone, because I was keeping him alive when I knew damn well he didn't want to be. I got more certain of that every time he thrashed.

As cold as it was in that prison, Mason and Felix were both sweating through their shirts by the time I was done. They waited for us to get safely out of the cell before they released him. I reckoned they were going to all this effort because they were arrogant prats who were too proud to put an injured old man in handcuffs.

"He can't afford to lose any more blood," the doctor warned them sternly.

"Cheers, Seth," Felix said. "We'll lay off for a bit. He's not feeling chatty today, anyway."

I started packing everything into the bag. There was a lot of soggy gauze that needed throwing away, and I made a neat pile of that on the prison floor. I was trying not to look at Mortimer, in all honesty. He was clawing at the scab on his arm, trying to tear the wound open again, but it was already too late.

Seth watched on with his arms folded across his chest. "Maybe just give up now. He's not going to last much longer, and if he hasn't said anything by now..."

The Beta shrugged at him. "It's still early days. They all think they're brave as shit, and they all break in the end."

"Not all of us," Mortimer murmured. It came out slow and hoarse and barely audible, but he had Mason's attention. He had everyone's attention. And then Mortimer smiled. It was a terrible smile - with broken teeth and bloodied lips.

"I was there the day Rhodric killed your grandfather," he said. "I was with him when he killed your uncle. And I watched Skye Llewellyn tear your daddy apart. I know I'm going to die here. And honestly? I don't care. In fact, my only regret, Mason, is that I won't be there to watch them kill you."

Mason regarded him with clear disdain. If he was shaken, he did a good job of hiding it. "They're welcome to try, rogue. In the meantime, I'm going to ask you one last time. Is there a sleeper in my pack? Yes or no."

Mortimer's eyes flicked to me, and then he shrugged. "Sort of, yeah. He's standing right next to you."

He meant Felix, of course, and that angered both of them in very different ways. Felix snarled at him, and Mason's lip curled as his patience ran out. "Do you really think I'm going to fall for that?"

"It ain't a trick," the old man laughed. "He came to us and started talking shit about you. Said he wanted you dead. He told us where you'd be and when - how else would we get that information? We were s'posed to kill you and your mate and your pup. Leave him alive to take the crown. Didn't you wonder why there was hardly a scratch on him?"

"You're lying," Mason said.

Mortimer cocked an eyebrow. "Am I?"

"Mase," Felix said, almost whimpering. "I never-"

I wasn't supposed to be listening to this. Since we'd technically been dismissed, Seth was already halfway down the hall. I needed to hurry up. But I couldn't leave, not knowing I wouldn't get another chance like this one. Felix kept grovelling, and I dared stay for another few seconds.

There were any number of things in the med bag that could kill a person. The trouble was, most of them were difficult to hide and easily traced back to me. While everyone was looking elsewhere, I dug around until I found a low gauge needle in a sterilisation packet. It wasn't ideal, but it would do. I made sure Mortimer was watching, and then I tossed it behind the bucket of piss, just out of sight.

"Hide it after," I said through a careful link. "Somewhere they won't look."

"Thank you, Eva."

I swallowed the lump in my throat, because I was doing the absolute bare minimum for him, and he was enduring torture for my sake. "No, thank you."

The tiniest smile crept across his lips.

"Always happy to die," he said, "for a Llewellyn."

It was hard to walk away. It was harder to hide the wobble in my voice when Seth drilled me on triaging a blood-loss patient. But somehow, I coped, just like I'd been coping with everything else.

It could have been worse, I told myself. It could have been Rhodri or Nia in that cell, and I wouldn't have been able to bear that. And Mortimer ... well, he was the sort of man who'd made a better grandfather than a father. Happy to lend a hand, but not keen to stick around. I didn't think his kids would be inconsolable, given that they were all grown and only a handful of them actually spoke to him.

It could have been worse. Yeah. It also could have been a lot better. If they'd just managed to kill Mason ... but that was wistful thinking, wasn't it? It would have to be Liam now.

We were outside. Seth was setting up a first-aid point on the front lawn while I stood around and dithered. We had a clear view of the fighters training at the other end of the lawn. I could see Liam amongst them, doing push-ups with the rest of his patrol. I was so busy staring at him that it took me a moment to realise that Seth was talking to me.

"There are things happening in that prison," he said slowly, cautiously, "that I don't agree with. Especially with the females. It's worth betting that if an Alpha tries to legalise something, he's already doing that thing."

I froze in place. That was a very dangerous thing to say, no matter how far we were from the pack house. It was verging on treason. He'd waited to say this - waited until we were away from prying ears.

Seth was watching me closely for a reaction as he continued, "But we can only do our job, and perhaps push a little too much of a drug every so often. Maybe take a little too long to intubate. Because you have to believe me, Eva, when I say death is the only thing those poor souls have to look forward to."

Oh, I believed him alright. But ... was he baiting me? I'd never heard a flockie talk about us with anything except disgust. There was too much sympathy, too much understanding, and I didn't trust it.

"They kill pack members," I mumbled half-heartedly.

Seth let out a long, exhausted sigh. "Yes, they do. And I won't justify that, or make excuses, but there is a line when it comes to retaliation. And we've crossed it."

I felt like crying. It was lonely in this pack, surrounded by people who wanted me dead, and even the barest glimmer of hope was enough to put a lump in my throat. Here was someone who might see me as a human being. Someone who might not despise me.

"I said you had a brain." Seth levelled me with a heavy stare, probably worried that I wasn't saying anything. He didn't realise it was out of relief, not dissent. "Was I wrong about that?"

"No," I whispered.

"And you know what happens if you repeat any of this?" he prompted.

"Yeah. I won't say nothing."

"Anything," Seth said.

"Huh?"

"You mean 'I won't say anything.' That was a double negative."

My entire face seemed to scrunch up. "A double what?"

He turned around to unpack the equipment and said ever-so-casually, "If you're going to pretend to be a pack wolf, you should probably stop doing that."

This time, when I froze, it was not shock. It was terror. "What?"

He looked me up and down slowly. His gaze lingered on the scars peeking out from beneath my collar and my shirt-sleeves. "I've treated a lot of prisoners over the years, Eva. A lot. I know a rogue when I see one. I don't care if you're reformed, rescued or here because your mate is. Hell, even if you're a sleeper, I'm not going to report you. I don't want to see you on the wrong side of those bars."

"I don't know what you're-"

"I've already said I'll keep my mouth shut, okay?" Seth said. "You don't need to waste your energy denying it. All I'm asking in exchange is that you come and meet some people. They think the same way I do - or close enough. We want to see real change in this pack."

I gaped at him, my mouth opening and closing like a fish. I still didn't really understand. How had he guessed it so easily? And how was I supposed to trust him?

He sighed at my expression. "Just think about it, alright? Give me an answer at the end of shift."

I knew it was reckless, but ... we needed this. Even if we survived the month, and Liam managed to kill Mason and Felix and Micah, he would still have to fight an uphill battle to keep control of the pack afterwards. We would have to find support somewhere, and this seemed like as good an opportunity as any.

"I don't need to think about it," I said. "I'm in."