Hello again! For this round of quarantine bonding, I want to know your favourite book of all time. It can be Wattpad or it can be real. You can tell us why, or you can be all mysterious and just drop the title. It's up to you. (the only rule? you cannot say any of my books. I know what some of you are like, you lil cuties ;D)

"Have you seen Eva?"

That question came on a cool evening breeze. Silence came afterwards. I froze in place, not even daring to crouch, because there was nothing to disguise the sounds of me finding cover. The river was low, and its usual gurgling had become a murmur.

It was a pause that dragged on for an odd length of time, and I had a sneaking suspicion that the recipient was taking the time to point in my direction. You pointed, so you wouldn't piss off whoever was looking, and then you claimed ignorance aloud so you wouldn't piss off whoever was being hunted down.

Because of the mind-link, no one had to look for anyone who wanted to be found. It was certainly true now. I'd been blocking Nia for hours - it was inevitable that she'd got tired to poking and decided to find me the old-fashioned way.

"Nah," the raider said. "Ain't seen nobody."

The second he started talking, I edged back from the riverbank, flattening myself into the long grass. I could only breathe easy when there was a tree between me and my cousin. And if some ticks crawled onto me ... well, that seemed like a fair price to pay to avoid the conversation Nia was looking to have.

I could hear her footsteps on the sandy riverbank. She had found Turner. Like me, he was here to wash, but he stood up nice and straight when he saw Nia. River water dripped down his bare back.

"Eva?" Nia asked.

He ran a hand through his hair, which was, of course, soaking wet. "What about her?"

My cousin was not fooled by the delaying tactics. Her mouth became a thin line. "Where is she?"

"Search me."

Turner didn't point. He had to know I could see him from where I was hiding. But maybe there was a turn of the head. A flick of the eyes. The raiders loved Nia a lot more than they feared her, but ... there was a bit of fear.

More footsteps. Coming so close that I could feel them through the ground. I pressed myself lower into the grass. Nia was going past. I could hear the grass rustling as she moved. As long as she didn't look down, I'd be-

A strand of sedge brushed against my nose. I felt my eyes pulling closed and brought my hand up sharply, hoping to scare the sneeze back down, but it was already too late. And it was not a quiet sneeze.

A shadow fell over my face, and a boot nudged my arm. "Oh, get up. You're not in trouble."

"Didn't think I was," I muttered. I rolled onto my back and stared sulkily up at the clouds.

"I said get up, Eva," Nia said. She pulled me up by my jacket when I was still too slow to move, setting me on my feet and steadying me. "We're going for a walk."

I made a disgusted noise in the back of my throat. I hated walking, and I felt that I'd done enough today, and she couldn't make me. Nia's eyes rolled skywards. She caught my arm and pulled me into a grudging march, even as I squirmed and swore at her.

"There's someone who wants to talk to you," she said

She was hoping to wake my curiosity, and damn her, because it worked. I'd thought she was going to hassle me about Liam. For once, it was nice to be proved wrong. Maybe I hadn't needed to spend the entire day blocking her.

"Who?" I demanded.

"You'll see."

Nia led me off the path. We crossed through ferns which were already broken, stamping on brambles and ducking under low branches. Although this was not an animal trail, it was clear that someone had been wearing it down over days. We were heading away from camp, and there was nothing but empty forest for a dozen miles, as far as I knew.

"So," she said. "While we walk, do you want to get anything off your chest?"

Ugh. This was about Liam, wasn't it? I set my jaw and stared off into the trees. "Nope."

Nia smiled to herself. There was something knowing about it - something which got my hackles rising. Her voice was horribly matter-of-fact. "I know you slept with him."

Ah, shit.

I made a good show of creasing my forehead and looking lost in thought. "With who?"

It was a valid question, in theory, because Finn had just died and I'd spent the afternoon with Turner. But Nia just made a disgusted sound, because she could see right through me. "Liam."

"Did not," I said vehemently and without hesitation.

"Yes. You did."

I chewed on my lip. She sounded so sure. I could keep denying it, if I wanted, but it was only going to delay the inevitable. "Did, um, did he tell you that?"

"No," she said. "Not intentionally. When I asked him, he got nervous, like he always does when he's lying. It's the only time I get proper eye contact from him."

"He also does that if he reckons you think he's lying," I mumbled, but there was no energy in it. "It don't prove anything..."

Nia didn't dignify that with a response. She stopped walking and turned to face me properly. "Why, Eva? Why do that and then ignore him after?"

I swore, and I scrubbed at my face. "He started it."

"And you ended it, right?" she drawled. "Why am I not surprised?"

"It was a mistake," I said. "Believe me, I'm not going to make it again."

Nia stuck her hands in her pockets and cast a long, pained look at me. She started walking again. "That bad, huh?"

I had to jog a few steps to catch up with her. "No. Not at all. He was ... I dunno ... he's sweet."

"So you had a good time, and he was sweet," she said slowly. "And he's your best friend, and you're lowkey in love with him. Maybe I'm being thick, but I'm not seeing the problem here..."

Damn her. She had this way of acting like it wasn't a big deal, like she was just trying to help, and I ended up being honest with her. I knew I'd regret this later ... but it had been a long time since I'd had a real conversation with anyone who wasn't Liam. Maybe getting some external input would help me, somehow.

"Isn't it obvious?" I mumbled, almost too quiet to hear. "I don't know if he's my mate."

And if I messed this up - if I went out with him and then realised that he wasn't my mate, then that was probably the end of our friendship. I wasn't going to risk losing Liam just to get laid.

Nia didn't seem to get that. She turned her head to look at me incredulously. "Are you kidding me, Eva? Who cares about that? You find a good one, you keep him. Why're you letting the Goddess pick your men for you?"

I picked at my fingernails. "Because we all do ... right? I don't know anyone who hasn't got with their mate. You and Lily. All our parents. We get our perfect match, and we live happily ever after."

"Yeah, no. Screw the mate bond."

I wasn't so sure about that. All of our parents had been soulmates, and all of them seemed very happy together. 'Screw the mate bond' sounded controversial to my ears, not least because I'd never heard anyone say it before.

"I started dating Lily before she turned eighteen," Nia explained, when I failed to respond. "Not because I knew we'd be mates, but because I knew it didn't make the slightest bit of difference to me. I would've marked and mated her regardless. She makes me happy."

"If you'd done that, you'd never know who your real mate was," I said.

A derisive snort. "So? The whole thing is random, as far as I can tell. I reckon mate bonds work the same way that arranged marriages do. If you spend enough time with a person, you usually learn to love them. The bond helps speed that along. That's all."

I scratched my chin. "It can't be random. They're supposed to be perfect for us..."

She shook her head patiently. "You really believe that, Eva? My parents were mated, and I'm sure as hell as that the Goddess got it wrong that time."

"No, she didn't," I exclaimed. "They're really cute together, Nia - why would you even say that?"

For a long time, Nia just looked at me. There was a look in her eyes which I didn't think I'd seen on her before, and it was almost ... nervousness. Apprehension. She chewed on the inside of her cheek as she wrestled with some decision.

"Okay, you're not really supposed to know this," she began cautiously, "but it's my secret to tell, so just ... look at me, would you?"

"I'm lookin'," I mumbled. It wasn't comfortable for me. My wolf was a coward, and she knew exactly how rude it was to stare at bigger, stronger wolves.

Nia managed a weak smile which did little to put my wolf at ease. "Good. What colour are my eyes?"

I spent a while squinting. There was a ring around the pupils that was almost pure brown, but that quickly faded to a depthless mixture of green, russet and amber. "Hazel, I guess...?"

"Yeah," she said. "They're hazel. You ever wondered why?"

"Not really. Your mam's are green, and your dad's are brown. Mix them together and you get hazel."

"Goddess, you're dumb, ain't you?" she asked fondly. "It don't work like that. Look at me, kiddo. Look at me and ask yourself if I look more like Rhodri than I should."

"Like ... I guess?"

I still didn't understand. I'd never been very bright. Given enough time, I could usually think things over, but I could rarely be bothered. And at times like these, when there was someone pressuring me, waiting for an answer, my brain tended to shut down altogether.

"Eva," Nia said, not ungently. "Ollie's not my father."

She hadn't even stopped walking. But I stopped walking out of sheer astonishment. By the time I got my legs to work again, Nia was a few paces ahead. I was so busy staring at her that I forgot to look where I was putting my feet. I tripped over a bramble and barely caught myself before I ended up headfirst in a holly bush.

"Sorry, what?" I demanded.

"I know," she said, smiling to herself. It was not exactly a happy smile. "I know it's a lot to ... like ... process."

I didn't understand. How was she being so calm? Nia had been calling Ollie Dad her entire life, and he was mated to her mother, and ... yeah. I didn't understand.

"If he's not your dad," I said slowly, "then who is?"

Nia blew out slowly. She had been expecting this question, if the look on her face was any indication, but she clearly didn't want to answer it. "Well ... that's the thing. Have you ever heard the raiders talk about Brandon Llewellyn?"

Llewellyn? Shit. That would explain a lot. Her height, for starters. Her bulldozer of a wolf. Her natural talent for all things physical. I was still having trouble believing it, because she had just shattered my most basic assumptions about my family, but there was a part of me which recognised that it made sense.

It took me a while to a hold of myself enough to say, "Um, I've heard the name. He's dead, isn't he?"

"Yes. He was Rhys's older brother. Our parents don't talk about him, understandably, but he was mated to my mother."

"He's your dad? Then why ... why don't I know that?" I asked.

Nia winced. "Because he was a dick. And he did some horrible, horrible things. The point is - the mate bond is not some fairytale, magical shit. It's not destiny. My mother deserved so much better than that - and she got it, in the end. Just not from her mate."

"Shit, Nia..." I murmured. "How long have you known this?"

"They told me when I turned sixteen," she said quietly. "And yeah, it was a shock. A really big shock. I spent a long time being angry about it, but like ... it doesn't matter? We get a lot from our parents, yeah. What we look like, how smart we are, how healthy we are. But not our morals. That shit is learned, not genetic, luckily for me."

I nodded along, still dazed. She'd shocked me plenty in the last five minutes, both with her radical ideas about the mate bond and this newer revelation. I needed some time to think.

I scrubbed at my face. "So ... you're saying that I shouldn't wait for my mate? Because they might be horrible?"

That concept actually made me feel a lot better. It took the pressure off, to some extent. Because if I was mated to a douchebag, it didn't necessarily mean I was a horrible person, too. It wasn't some divine judgement of my character.

"I'm saying don't look for your mate," Nia corrected. "Look for someone you can fall in love with. Someone who'll love you back. If they happen to be your mate, awesome. If not, who cares?"

I cared. I'd always cared. And I wasn't sure I was ready to let go of that. I'd never had a serious relationship because I'd been too busy waiting for my mate, and if I changed my mind now ... that would've been a massive waste of time.

Besides, there was still a chance that Liam was my mate. It was still difficult for me to admit - even to myself - that I wanted that to be the case. But, yes, I did want it. He was complicated, and he wasn't always easy to be around, but I had yet to find a person I liked more.

"Did you have this conversation with Liam, too?" I asked. Maybe he was wrestling with this, too.

"Didn't need to," Nia said, shrugging at me. "That boy knows what he wants."

Oh, Goddess. That was another problem. Even if Liam did know, he still didn't think that it mattered what he wanted. He'd go along with whatever I said because he was loyal to a fault and didn't know how to assert himself, and that meant the decision rested entirely on my shoulders.

I'd got so caught up in the conversation that I didn't see the tent at first. Like all of our tents, it was a murky green colour so it wouldn't stand out in the forest. It wouldn't have worried me if it weren't for the fact that it was pitched nearly two miles from camp. One single tent, all alone in the forest.

And it wasn't just any tent. No, I recognised it well enough. I'd slept in there more times than I could count. There was a hastily patched rip on the back corner, and there was a spray-painted RL across one side. It was Rhodri and Liam's tent, and I didn't understand.

"Nia?" I asked quietly. "What the hell?"

She just shrugged at me. Closer and closer we went, until I had to watch my feet for fear of tripping over the guy ropes. There was a smoking pile of embers near the tent entrance. Someone had let it go out. That was another warning sign.

As we rounded the tent, I could see a camping chair. There was an old man sat on it. And when I said old, I meant it. His hair was ghostly white and thinning, his skin was almost translucent, and the fat had melted from his face like candle wax, leaving only jutting bones and tendons.

He looked up as we approached. A child-like smile spread across his lips. I stopped dead in my tracks, unwilling to go any closer. He was toasting his bare feet over the warm coals, and I could see that he was missing at least two toes.

Nia ventured closer still. It was only when a rabbit's skull cracked beneath her feet that she stopped walking and grinned at the old man. "Jeff, this is Eva. She's a friend of mine. I told you I'd bring her - do you remember?"

Jeff? Oh, no. No thank you. I wanted absolutely no part of this. I hadn't forgotten how close he'd come to breaking my neck, and I began to back away. A pair of intense green eyes tracked the movement, narrowing ever-so-slightly. That was enough to make me think it was probably best to stay close to Nia. I stopped moving.

That seemed to placate him. He stood up slowly, his bones creaking and clicking. "Oh, yesh. Jeff remembers. Ish the girl he killed. Has she come to haunt me?"

I stuffed my hands in pockets, closing my palm around the hilt of my knife. My heart was beating a lot faster than it should have been. He was an old man, yes, but I remembered how he'd knocked our raiders aside like skittles.

"No, Jeff," Nia said. "She's here because you said you wanted to apologise."

He nodded a few times, vigorously enough to make me flinch. He was squinting at me, and to my horror, he took a few shaky steps forwards. "Jeff ish sorry. He thought the girl was a wolfie! She smelt like one, you see. If she comes closer, he could-"

Nia stepped into his path and shook her head slowly. "She's not coming any closer. Not until I know that you're going to behave yourself. Sit back down, now, and I'll get your dinner."

He grumbled and he hissed at her, but he didn't resist the gentle hand on his arm, guiding him back towards the chair. She waited until his arse was back in the seat before she dared turn her back on him.

I grabbed Nia's arm as she passed me. One glance at Jeff, and then I leaned closer to hiss, "Is this safe?"

Even before he'd disappeared, our parents had kept us away from him. And after the incident at Silver Lake, I was confident that his three-year hiatus had not made him any less dangerous.

She looked at Jeff and made a face. "No, not really."

And that was it. That was all I got. She'd brought me to see a psychopath, without a word of warning, and now I was expected to make polite conversation. He'd tried to kill me. Hell, he'd nearly succeeded. How was Nia so calm?

She slipped a rucksack off her shoulders and rummaged within. There was a Tupperware box full of thick campfire stew. I felt like I could almost taste it, and I was nearly drooling as she opened the lid. My stomach gave a loud rumble in protest, reminding me that I had only eaten a handful of lime leaves that day. Jeff looked up sharply at the sound, his eyes flashing gold for a second before he got control of himself.

Nia gave him the box and a spoon to go with it. He dug in without hesitation, shovelling it into his mouth and chewing vigorously before swallowing every mouthful with enough force to make me wince. I was surprised he had any teeth left - he must have been ninety years old at least.

"Ish good food," he said between mouthfuls. "I feeded my children, and they feeded their children, and those children feeded you, and now you comes back to feed me. It goes round and round and round and round. And when you dies, the crows will eat you, and Jeff will eats the crows, and it goes round and round again."

He giggled to himself. And then he went straight back to the stew. I crossed my arms over my stomach, trying to ignore the dull ache within. A few weeks of regular meals and my body had forgotten how to be hungry, apparently.

"I won't be able to bring your supper tomorrow," Nia told him. "But there's more food in the bag to keep you going, and Rhys will come when he can."

Jeff gave an approving grunt. The mention of more food was almost painful. I cast a longing look towards the rucksack, and I wondered how long it would be before we could go back to camp and get our own supper.

Nia must have caught the look, because she grinned at me as she dug out another two boxes. One was handed to me, and the other she kept for herself. I nearly dropped it in my hurry. And I was so busy scoffing it down that I forgot to be scared of Jeff for almost a full minute.

But soon enough, my stomach was full, and I became painfully aware of the silence. It stretched for minutes, and Jeff used that time to stare at me with his one good eye. The other did lazy laps of its socket.

Nia had sat herself down on the forest floor. I was still hovering awkwardly and struggling to eat one-handed. I wasn't sure if Jeff would be cool with me talking to him, but anything was better than the silence and the staring.

"Did you know our parents when they were younger?" I asked, trying and failing to keep my voice steady.

To my surprise, he cocked his head to one side and grinned wonkily. "Who'sh your parents? The big girl is one of his - Jeff knows this. But he doesn't know you."

"Eva is Skye's daughter," Nia said without even looking up. She'd scraped her tub clean, and she was now licking stew from her fingers. Like me, it had been a while since she'd eaten.

"The cloudy girl," Jeff said, nodding to himself. "Yesh. You is cloudy too. I sees that. But ... heh. I thinks your mother was trouble when she was small. She came visiting Jeff even when his son growled at her."

Well ... damn. He'd been here since the very beginning, and he had known all the people from my bedtime stories, and I couldn't waste this opportunity. Against my better judgement, I sat down with my back to a tree. Not too close, but close enough to hear what he was saying.

"Did you know Bryn Llewellyn?" I asked next.

He wrinkled up his nose and wiped a goblet of saliva from his mouth. "Eh. Jeff was small when he died. Too small to know. But he knows the daughter, oh yesh, he does. My Isabel was so pretty! She was the only wolfie Jeff ever liked."

"Not your children?"

Nia shot me a warning look that I didn't understand. It was hard to know which subject in particular was sensitive, because she couldn't tell me. If she came over to whisper, he'd probably get upset. If she mind-linked me, he'd definitely get upset. He could hear that shit.

Jeff shook his head vigorously. "The girls was so bossy. And the boy ... he hurt Jeff. Took his eye."

That was not a story I'd heard. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, trying not to stare at the old man in case it upset him. "Why did he do that?"

"Oh, the boy was angry. He was angry at Jeff, not at me, but he could never tell who was who. He thought he could kill both of us, but he was stupid! No one can kill us now. Even death is scared of old Jeff."

He cackled then, and I felt a shiver creep down my spine. The switch away from third person was my first warning. He had clenched his hands into fists, and his words had become so forceful that spittle flew from his lips. I wasn't close enough to see if his eyes had changed colour, but it seemed likely.

It was Nia, as usual, who came to the rescue.

"Jeff," she said loudly, "why don't you show Eva the shadow puppets?"

Those were the magic words, apparently. Jeff broke off in the middle of a hiss to beam at her. "He could. Maybe. If the girl really wants to see...?"

I wasn't six years old anymore, but if it calmed him down, it would probably be worth it. I sighed long and loud. "Yes, please."

He shuffled over to the tent. The few fingers he had left were twisted together, casting a dark shadow on the fabric. The shadow became a screaming face, and then a wolf, and then a sleek, panther-like creature in quick succession. The shapes shook a little, probably because his hands were shaking, but they were still so lifelike.

I didn't understand how he was doing it. He only had three fingers, and the shapes were far more intricate than any shadow puppet I'd seen before. I didn't have to pretend to be enthralled as he made his panther and his wolf fight each other - a long, vicious battle that left the wolf without its head, predictably.

"So many years!" he sighed. "Too many for Jeff to count. But the shadows still dance for him, see? I forgets so many things, but not this. Never this."

He looked exhausted. He could fight a dozen wolves without pausing for breath, but a few careful hand movements left him with a sheen of sweat on his forehead and a sickly look about him? I would never understand this man. He was panting for breath as he turned back towards us.

"Jeff did it for his kiddies, when they was small," he said. "The girl could do it too, if she likes..."

He was looking at Nia, and she came forwards grudgingly. He made the panther appear again, with no small amount of effort on his part. He was swaying on his feet after a few seconds. I reckoned he needed a sit-down and a cup of tea.

Nia could only manage a faint, shapeless blob. And for all her trying, Jeff first frowned and then began to scowl when there was no improvement. I didn't understand why he cared so much.

"It comes from here," he hissed, prodding at her skull.

Nia gave him a long-suffering. She had a visible effort to look more constipated after that, if only to make him happy. I tried, too, but no matter where I put my hands, I couldn't seem to cast a shadow on the side of the tent. Jeff saw me trying and reached over to smack my hand away.

"Not you," he hissed. "The shadows don't like you."

"Alright, geez," I mumbled. I knew I wasn't the favourite great-grandchild, or whatever, but he didn't need to rub it in. I retreated a little way and watched them instead. The old man got more and more frustrated with Nia as the minutes passed. She didn't stand a chance. He wouldn't even keep his hands still long enough for her to copy the gestures.

We managed to waste nearly half-an-hour like that before Jeff tired of it. He sat himself down heavily and muttered to himself about how Nia's blood was too thin and how she was stupid.

It felt a lot darker in the clearing than it had been, and I knew we should head back to camp before the sun set. Nia seemed to want to stay. She had a soft spot for the crazy old man, it seemed, and she insisted that we stay and keep him company for another hour. Half of what he told us was probably lies. The other half didn't make any sense.

When it was getting dark, we woke the old man's campfire for him and used its feeble light to begin retracing our steps. Nia waited until we were a few dozen paces away before she stopped me.

"With your help, I can take him onto Silver Lake territory, point him at Mason, and let him do all the hard work for us," she said. "He's more than a match for that whelp."

Our visit to the old man was starting to make more sense to me now. I looked back the way we had come, at the faint glow of firelight through the tree trunks, and I scratched at my neck. "He's mentally ill, Nia. Isn't that like ... unethical?"

She shrugged at me. "After what they did to Rhodri, I am done trying to be ethical."

I made an indistinct grunting noise.

"If it's a choice between you and Liam dying ... or him dying, I'm sorry, but that's not a contest," Nia said flatly.

"And what if he goes berserk again?" I demanded. "How many innocent people do you reckon he could kill before the flockies put him down?"

Nia grimaced. I knew she'd considered that, but she was furious, and she was getting desperate, like all of us. "Let's hear your idea, then. Your mother says you volunteered for the job."

The edge of disbelief in her voice was evident. I didn't think it was malicious, but it was a little insulting. I was trying, wasn't I? I'd been trying for a while now. This was what she'd wanted, what she'd pushed me towards. Sometimes, it felt like I couldn't do anything right.

"I don't have an idea," I said defensively. "Not yet, anyway. But I reckon I can do it without anyone else getting hurt."

She didn't look convinced. To be honest, neither was I. Mason was not an easy person to kill. I couldn't poison him, because everyone served themselves from the same plates and jugs. I couldn't fight him and win. I couldn't shoot him without royally blowing my cover. I had even wondered if it worth sleeping with him for a chance to slit his throat, but I didn't think Liam would forgive me for that.

"Okay," Nia said after a long pause. "Okay, Eva. I've tried. Rhodri's tried. I guess it's your turn now. But if you need help with anything, you just call me. I have a scent switch and mental superpowers and a whole lot of rage."

I started smiling, despite my best efforts to the contrary. "I'll bear that in mind."

***

By the time, we got back to camp, everyone was in bed. Well, everyone except Rhodri's parents, who hadn't slept in days, and Emmett Byer, who was still sat there, staring at his flockie prisoner.

Nia went towards the med tent, probably intending to sleep there, since she didn't have a bed or a tent. I headed to the outskirts of camp instead, looking for the small, bedraggled tent that I shared with my little sister. She was asleep when I crawled inside, but that didn't last long, of course.

"Ugh, you bitch," she groaned. "I was having such a nice dream."

I winced. It wasn't easy to close the tent without making a noise, but it was midge season and I didn't want to get eaten alive. "Sorry, kiddo. Are you doing alright? Is there anything I can get you?"

"I'm fine. Like, weirdly fine. It might have something to do with the codeine," Eira replied. She held up her hand as proof, and there wasn't a tremor to be seen. "Are you staying or...?"

I kicked my shoes off and wriggled into my bed. I knew Bryn had been sleeping there while I was gone, because it smelt like him, but he was nowhere to be seen now. And first come, first served...

"Oh, yeah," I agreed. "I'm being a coward."

Eira stared at me for a long moment. Then, without warning, she attacked me. It was a tremendous effort on her part, and I didn't dare retaliate, because I was too scared I'd hurt her. All I could do was retreat. She wasn't strong enough to drag me properly, so she had to resort to kicking to get me out of the tent. And once I was sat on the forest floor, indignant and shocked, she threw my shoes at me.

"Go talk to him," she told me.

So everyone knew, did they? Great. Just great.

I made an impolite hand gesture in Eira's direction. And then I trudged off, pulling my shoe on as I went. It had been a long time since I'd slept, and mentally, I was already asleep.

We didn't have enough tents to go around, so a dozen of the younger rogues were sleeping in hammocks with nothing but a tarpaulin between them and the sky above. It was alright on a clear evening like this, but it made for a miserable night's sleep when the wind and the rain started.

I came across Bryn first, and I shook him awake, much to his horror. His hammock was right beside Liam's, and we didn't need any eavesdroppers. I could feel a pair of dark eyes watching me in the darkness, but I didn't look at him. Not yet.

"Move," I told Bryn.

The poor boy looked so confused and drowsy that I almost felt bad. He sat up, ran a hand through his tousled hair, and he swung his legs over the side of the hammock.

"I told you I was getting vibes off him," he murmured sleepily. "Didn't I tell you?"

So Hayden had taken my advice and told him. Good. He'd have someone to talk to when I went back to Silver Lake.

"Yes, Bryn, you told me," I said. "You are a fountain of wisdom. Now move."

I could still kick his arse, so he listened to me, and I watched him trudge towards Eira's tent without a backwards glance. He'd sleep better there. He wouldn't get woken up by the sunlight and the dawn chorus at five in the morning.

It was only then that I lifted my eyes to meet Liam's gaze.

It didn't surprise me that he was still awake. He looked tired. I knew he'd been hunting for most of the day. It took time to find deer which were injured or old enough to run down, but he hadn't come back empty-handed. There was a roe buck being butchered in the centre of camp.

As I got closer, I saw the bruise on his neck. It was dark blue and blotchy, and it stretched across his shoulder and onto his chest. It looked like he'd been caught by a hoof. There were more bruises, too. Some with pinpricks of blood, and that meant he'd been training.

I was going to say something. Honest, I was. But there was something about those dark, wary eyes that send the words scurrying back down my throat. I was still being a coward, apparently.

I climbed into the hammock with him. I put my back against his chest, and he draped his arm across my body with easy familiarity. There wasn't an inch of space between us, but that was nothing new.

"Hey," he murmured. I shivered slightly, because his breath was hot against my ear, and I would have smiled if I hadn't been in such a state.

"Hey," I said softly. He'd given me an out - an opportunity to pretend like nothing had happened at all, but I was too worked up to see that. "I, um ... I wasn't ignoring you."

Liam sighed. I felt his chest rise and fall, and I felt the rush of air. Not ungently, he said, "Yes, you were. It's okay - I get it. I screwed up."

"It was a team effort, Liam," I sighed, turning my head to look at him properly. "But it can't happen again. We need to wait."

For a few heartbeats he just stared at me, looking like he wanted to say more, but instead he nodded slowly. My heart had been skipping along, but it calmed now, knowing that I'd fixed it. We couldn't pretend nothing had happened, and I couldn't avoid him forever, but now I knew he wouldn't try and kiss me again. Because if he did ... shit, I didn't know what I'd do. And I didn't want to find out.

"Eva?" Liam asked in a low, rough voice.

I turned my head away again, if only because I couldn't cope with another second of that damned incendiary eye contact. "Mm?"

"I don't want to go back," he said.

It was barely a whisper, but it still jolted me. Somehow, being home was making me even more homesick, not less. I bit down on my lip and looked towards the glow of a campfire through the trees. "Me neither."

***

"Well?" I asked. "Do you know him?"

Liam let out a heavy breath. He was leaning against a tree, far enough away from the prisoner that he couldn't be seen. But close enough to see his face. "Yeah, I do. He's one of my brothers. Dad never claimed him, but everyone knew."

Dammit. That complicated matters. Beside me, Mam rubbed at her jaw, clearly worried. Emmett had taken a break from his vigil to join this conversation, and the look on his face said it all. He was furious. The man chained in the centre of camp was responsible for the deaths of two dozen of his rogues. He was not going to let him walk without a fight.

"Were you close with him?" I tried next, quietly and somewhat hesitantly.

Liam shook his head. He hadn't taken his eyes off the young man. "No. I mean, I knew him. He wasn't a very nice person back then, and I doubt he's changed much. You do what you want."

Emmett's sigh of relief was audible, and I felt most of the tension drain from my body. It was Mam who frowned at him. "Are you sure, Liam?"

"Yeah."

"In that case ... are you ready now?"

That question was directed at Emmett, who nodded without saying a word. Like Liam, he was staring at the prisoner. He hadn't slept since that fateful raid, two days earlier, in which he had lost most of his raiding team. The children included. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his face was gaunt and lifeless.

"Good," Mam said. "There's rope by the campfire."

"I want to do it the old way," Emmett said firmly.

My mother blew out, looking away from all of us. She had been wrestling with this decision for days, and Emmett had not made things any easier with his refusal to compromise.

'The old way' was our most brutal method of execution, and I wasn't surprised that she was hesitating. This argument had happened a few times already today. The flockie had given up the location of a camp, but there was no way to prove he had known what would happen to the people inside it. It was hard to know if he deserved it.

"We've been through this, Emmett," she sighed. "I want a confession first. And unless you can get one without torturing him, then he'll hang, and that's the end of it."

"I'll try," Liam offered quietly, before it could turn into another argument. He surprised us all, and both of the adults swung their heads around to stare at him in their astonishment.

"You'll try what?" Mam asked.

"Pull everyone back and you'll see."

***

The camp was eerily quiet this morning. Sam and a few other babysitters had taken the children to play in the river, so they wouldn't see anything they shouldn't. The silence made it harder to sneak around.

I padded carefully to the rear-end of my parent's tent. Hayden and Hannah were standing there, handcuffed and under Dad's supervision. Poor Hayden was still splattered with mud from our dawn trip to check the snares.

"Not a bloody word from you two," I told them in an undertone. "I might not be allowed to kill you, but I can take an ear or an eye."

Hayden chewed on his lip and looked unhappy, but he didn't say anything. It was Hannah who folded her arms across her chest, set her jaw and stared me down. "You want us to stand here quietly while you kill him."

In some ways, I understood. They knew he was a flockie, and they reckoned they owed him some loyalty and help because he happened to be on their side. But they needed to remember what he'd done to deserve this. The taking-of-sides and blind loyalty to those sides was the reason we were at war and the reason the flockies were getting away with so much shit.

"Yeah, I do," I said. I didn't bother returning the stare - that was a fight I'd lose. "And if you listen now, you'll understand why."

Because Liam was walking towards the flockie. He did it slowly, with frequent glances over his shoulder. There was no one else in sight - a few shouts had drawn them all to the edge of camp, as far as the prisoner was concerned. He was now trying desperately to pull his hands free before they got back.

He looked up sharply at the sound of Liam's footsteps, and I watched his forehead crease. That confusion turned to outright astonishment when Liam stopped within a foot of him and dug out a knife.

"What are you-?"

"Quiet, yeah?" Liam said. "We don't have much time."

He began sawing at the ropes which bound the flockie. And he made a show of struggling with it to buy himself a few minutes. No, it wasn't easy to cut rope with a knife, but it wasn't that difficult. I smiled to myself, even as Hayden and Hannah were frowning beside me. They didn't understand what was going on.

"Who are you?" the flockie demanded.

"What, you don't recognise me, Adam?" Liam asked dryly. "I suppose it doesn't matter. Mason sent me. That's all you need to know."

Beside me, Hannah opened her mouth and sucked a breath into her lungs, no doubt intending to warn the flockie. I was faster than she was. All of a sudden, my knife was out, and it was pressed against her ribcage. The breath died in her throat. She stared me down, torn in indecision as she tried to decide if I'd actually do it. The answer was no, of course, but the stone-cold expression on my face said otherwise.

Hannah didn't say anything.

"He told me I was on my own if things went wrong..." the flockie said. But I could tell that he was falling for it now. His rescuer stank of Silver Lake and looked like a flockie, and he knew his name, which had to count for something. It helped that he'd been living under the threat of death for days now - it didn't take much to get his hopes up.

Liam had finished the first rope. He started on the second after shrugging at the prisoner. "Yeah, well, you did a good job. We got the whole camp."

"Yeah, I should get a raise," he muttered. "Hurry up, for Goddess' sake. They'll be back in a minute. What's taking you so long?"

Liam eyed him flatly. He managed to keep his voice eerily casual as he continued, "When I say the whole camp, I really mean it. The elderly, the teenagers - hell, the youngest kid who died was seven years old. Did you know they were going to kill the kids, too?"

The knife had gone still in his hand, and that was no less than a threat as far as the flockie was concerned. He peered at the frayed rope and then stared at Liam with narrowed, wary eyes. It was obvious that he wasn't going to be freed unless he gave a satisfactory answer.

"Of course I knew," he said scornfully. "Are you stupid? If they're old enough to fight back, they're old enough to die. And even if they don't fight us ... shit, I mean ... what's the point in letting them grow up? The world doesn't need any more rogues."

Anger rippled through the camp. It was strong enough that I could feel it thrumming across the link and smell it in the air - a hot, cloying stench. Even the flockie must have felt it, to some extent, because he looked around himself and scuffed at the ground.

Hayden swore under his breath and reached up to run a hand through his hair. Maybe he genuinely hadn't known what his allies were doing to us. Or maybe he'd just never been given such blatant evidence of it. Beside him, Hannah had closed her mouth. Her face was tight and paler than it had been. Slowly, cautiously, I took the knife away from her ribs and pocketed it once more. I didn't think we'd have any more complaints from them.

Liam looked like he wanted to be sick, but somehow he managed to control himself long enough to cut through the second rope. The flockie let his arm fall with a great sigh of relief, and he rubbed the life back into it as he stumbled towards the edge of camp.

He didn't even check that Liam was following him. It didn't matter in the end, because just seconds later he ran into the solid wall of raiders waiting amongst the trees. He swore, skidded to a halt, and turned to find more raiders closing in behind him.

The colour drained from his face.

He was facing my mother, with Nia on her left and Emmett on her right. The rest of my family were scattered through the crowd with stony expressions. We could have claimed some justice for ourselves - for Rhodri - but his parents had yielded that to Emmett and his raiders. No one could dispute that they had suffered more, in the end.

"Normally, we'd have some kind of trial, or whatever," Mam said. "But I think it's fairly obvious why we're executing you."

Obvious to everyone except the flockie, apparently. His entire face scrunched up as he thought about it. And even having taken that time, even after letting his brain work, what came out of his mouth was, "Because I belong to a pack. It's pathetic, if you ask me. You hate us because we're better than you."

After weeks in Silver Lake, I wasn't entirely surprised by that answer, and so I wasn't as angry as I should have been. But the crowd was jeering at him before he'd even finished his sentence. A few of them threw improved missiles. He was struck by a pinecone and an apple core, and that only made him angrier, of course.

"They're not killing you because you're a flockie, Adam," Liam said. "They're killing you because you're a piece of shit."

The flockie spun around to gape at his 'rescuer,' and he was met with empty eyes and a cold stare. By then, he was so worked up that it didn't take much to make him snap.

"You prick! You set me up!" he spat. He shoved Liam back a pace in his fury and then threw a clumsy punch. Liam let it land on his shoulder, but he was still holding the knife, and he buried it in the flockie's stomach. The answering moan of pain was enough to make my skin crawl.

"Seven years old," Liam repeated.

The flockie stumbled backwards, gasping for breath. There was blood on his fingers, but he was still upright, so he couldn't be that injured. Liam had barely nicked him.

Emmett was already in wolf form. He paced towards them both and caught the flockie's shirt with his teeth, pulling him over backwards effortlessly. He waited then, quite patiently, for his opponent to shift so it would be a fair fight. The flockie did shift, more out of panic than anything else, and his wolf was a mottled silver-grey, like all of the Vaughans.

Liam didn't stay to watch. Instead, he came over to stand beside me, and he fixed his gaze firmly on the ground. He wiped his bloody hands on his jeans. I wanted to say something, but the words seemed to stick in my throat. It was all so hopelessly complicated for him. I could feel the guilt nipping at me across the link - because he still felt responsible for everything his family did to us.

Words couldn't fix that. At least, not any words that I could come up with. I reached out and squeezed his fingers with my own.

Even in wolf form, the flockie was in no hurry to face Emmett. He was one of the oldest raiders left, and his fur was patchy, the pelt underneath scarred a hundred times over. Every one of those scars was proof of a victory and a dead flockie. Even the way he waited in perfect stillness, his head low and his teeth bared, proved that he knew what he was doing.

In fact, the flockie took one look at him and launched himself at the onlookers instead. He picked a teenager as his target, no doubt hoping she would panic and move out of his way so he could make a run for it.

Before he could knock her over, a wiry, reddish wolf crashed into him from one side, knocking him flat. He was on his feet again in seconds, snarling for all he was worth, but Ryker had already melted back into the crowd. It was the rules - we had to go one at a time. No one else could draw blood.

Before the flockie could leap at the audience again, Emmett charged at him in a rush of teeth and claws and fury. He took chunks out of the larger wolf's skin and clawed him to ribbons. The flockie could hardly get a bite in.

Emmett backed away after a minute or two. His mate padded forwards to take his place, and then came the rest of the raiders, one after the other. Each of them left the flockie bloodier than they'd found him. The rest of us watched in silence. It wasn't a nice way to die.

But Liam was right. He hadn't been a very nice person.

When it over, almost an hour later, the flockie's body was shredded. He'd shifted back involuntarily. His blood had soaked into the earth, and it was making the whole camp smell. He had stopped fighting back in the end, like they all did, and the raiders were usually quick to finish them off after that.

My mother went into the circle to nudge the flockie with a toe and check for a pulse. He was dead, of course, but it was always worth making sure. If Mason had made sure, Rhodri wouldn't be alive today.

"Put his body in the car," she told Nia. "You can leave him for his brothers to find. We'll be raiding Silver Lake this afternoon. This shit has gone unanswered for too long."