HELLO! I'm early for once! You might notice that a little star has appeared beside my name. It's good for my ego, but I don't think it'll affect your reading experience very much! I do have to behave myself now. No more pretending to kill off the entire cast of characters for a laugh :(

"We've got two options for this afternoon, ladies," Lilah said. "Option One - tequila, chocolate and a movie. Option Two - eavesdrop on my mate's top secret meeting."

"Option Two," I said, without a second's hesitation. "Please."

Lilah pushed herself off the sofa and gave me a knowing smile. Both of us turned expectantly to Lin, waiting for her vote. I was trying to play nice with her - honestly, I was. I didn't want to upset Lilah.

"I'm all for Option Two," Lin told us. "But there's no reason we can't make use of the Option One refreshments, is there?"

"Lin makes an excellent point," Lilah said, beaming from ear to ear. "Let's go. They'll be in the executive lounge."

I carried the orange juice and the bottle of tequila, Lilah carried the glasses, and Lin carried the chocolate. She walked behind us, so it was safe to say she was nibbling it the entire way.

Lilah was leading us to the bottom floor of the pack house, and she ducked under the rope that blocked off the private wing of the pack house without a second thought. There was a guard posted there, given the nature of the meeting being held within those corridors, but he just nodded at Lilah as she passed him. I followed her after only the slightest of hesitations.

"I thought you weren't allowed out without guards," I murmured to Lilah.

"I'm not," she snorted. "But what Mason doesn't know won't hurt him."

She turned into a small room filled with boxes. Lin and I hovered in the doorway, not bothering to hide our confusion, until Lilah ever-so-carefully dragged a box out of the way to reveal a small grate in the wall. She pressed a finger to her lips and beckoned us.

I sat cross-legged on the floor beside her. It wasn't difficult to hear the voices of the men in the next room. They were all so loud. I supposed it was a common trait for Alphas, and there were five of them in that room. Mason had invited them all here today for an informal packmeet. I'd seen them all arrive that morning in their respective SUVs.

"-found him yesterday," Mason was saying. "He had been torn to pieces. If they'd known he was my half-brother, they'd have done far worse."

I tried to keep my face blank. They were talking about the sleeper we'd executed, and that meant the topic was rogues. And of course it was. This entire meeting was probably being held so they could discuss the best way to wipe us out.

For Lilah and Lin, this was a bit of fun. For me, it might be life and death.

"I just don't understand how they caught him so soon," another voice murmured. It was rough and husky and not one I recognised. "He only informed on one raid."

"Jaden Lloyd," Lilah told us through the link. "He's from Riverside. Bit grumpy, if you ask me, but he's always been a close ally."

I nodded my thanks. Most of the Alphas were interchangeable in my eyes, because they were all basically the same person. Old, white, dumb and hateful. Mason was the youngest of them by far - only twenty-five - but he seemed to be the ringleader, if only because the rest of them seemed to share a single braincell between them.

"Maybe you've got a leak, Mason," someone else said. "I don't mean to offend you, of course, but I think it's a more likely scenario than the rogues figuring it out by themselves."

The laughter that followed made my skin crawl. They were being so loud that Lin felt safe enough to fill our glasses with orange juice and tequila, as quickly and quietly as she could. I took the one with the most alcohol and took a long, long draught. I'd need it if I was going to get through this without going next door and throttling the lot of them.

"Jackson from Ember. I don't like him one bit, but again ... a close ally," Lilah said wearily. She hadn't touched her drink yet.

Jackson was the Alpha that we were about to replace with his nephews. I looked forward to that day. It couldn't be long now. I didn't know if Mam was waiting to see if Liam and I succeeded before she sent them into Ember, but it seemed likely.

"I've been considering that myself," Mason said slowly. "In the last week, I have had two different rogues tell me that my Beta is working with them. I don't know what to make of it. Felix knew about Adam, and Goddess knows they hated each other, but ... I find it hard to believe."

Joel had done his job, then. I hadn't really expected anyone to take him seriously, so this was an added bonus. I tried not to smile as I took another long gulp of my drink. The Alphas had started muttering amongst themselves, which provided a helpful cover for Lin to open the box of chocolates and offer them around. I took a handful.

Lilah blanked her. Her eyes were very wide, and she seemed to have frozen in place. I didn't know what she'd been expecting when she suggested we eavesdrop, but this clearly wasn't it. She wasn't very close her brother-in-law, as far as I could tell, but this had to be a shock.

It was while before a clear voice rose above the muttering, and once again, it belonged to Jackson. "Did they name him directly?"

"Yes," Mason said. "He was also implicated in an ambush that nearly killed me, Lilah and my daughter. It could have all been baseless slander, but I'm planning to replace him, just in case."

I glanced at Lilah then, and I saw exactly how pale she'd gone. Mason hadn't told her about any of this. That much was obvious. I reached out and gave her hand a quick squeeze, because it couldn't have been easy for her.

"This is all very troubling, Mason. If we can't trust our own Betas, then who can we trust? You're right to replace him - and quickly. Who else could it have been?"

Lilah had stopped commentating in her shock, so I wasn't sure who that was, but he had a sneering, gravelly voice that I took an immediate dislike to. I took another handful of chocolates and nibbled them as quietly as I could.

There had been a moment's silence, which seemed to stretch longer than it needed to. Mason was the one to break it with another veritable bombshell. "One of the rogues also named Jace Lloyd as a traitor."

More silence. I would have given my right arm to have seen their faces at that moment. If it was this easy to make them turn on each other, why hadn't we been doing it years ago?

"I don't have any proof," Jaden said slowly, the first of them to dare speak, "but my pack is pretty close with his, obviously. We drink with the New Dawn fighters sometimes. A while back, they mentioned - after a few pints - that Jace had caught a couple of rogue kids on his land ... and let them go with just a warning."

Well, that had been me, and I'd actually very much appreciated not being thrown in jail or executed, but I supposed I was biased.

"Even if that's true, Jaden, which I very much doubt," another voice cut in, "it's not technically illegal to pardon trespassers. Especially when those trespassers are kids. I'm not saying I agree with it, but I don't think you can persecute him for it, either."

"Who's that?" Lin asked through the link. "He sounds like a simper."

I didn't know what a simper was, but I didn't like her tone.

"Uh, Zach Lloyd," Lilah replied distractedly. "Shadowless. He's Jace's cousin, so I think he's just being protective."

"No, it's not illegal, but it's extremely questionable," Jaden snapped. It was loud enough that I winced, even with the wall between us. I knew that Jace was his brother. Seemed like flockies hated us more than they loved each other.

"We've all heard the reports that he released his prisoners a few weeks ago," Jackson added in a smug, know-it-all way that got my hackles up. "How do you explain that, Zach?"

"I can't explain it," Zach said acidly. "But again, I don't think it's true."

Jaden only laughed at him. "Of course it's true! Have you all forgotten that he used to be friendly with the Llewellyn family? That he argued against war and has been undermining our efforts to bring them to justice ever since? Only last week, he voted against the amendment! At what point do we say enough is enough?"

Oh dear. It seemed that we might have thrown Jace Lloyd under the bus. I didn't feel particularly bad - he was the one who'd decided to side with these pricks, and if they turned against him, he only had himself to blame.

"I used to be friendly with the Llewellyns. Do you have something to say to me, too?" Zach snapped.

"Let's keep this civil, shall we, gentlemen? We're all on the same side here," Mason said, trying to keep his voice light despite the fact that it sounded like the two of them about to square up. "Obviously, we will need proof before we make any formal accusations. I'll see what else I can get from my prisoner."

My glass was half empty already, but I didn't shirk from taking another sip. Joel had now been in that prison for four days. How much longer could he possibly hold out?

While I'd been worrying, Jackson had broken into a coughing fit to try and disguise his laughter. "Prisoner singular? Your men razed an entire camp, and you only got one prisoner?"

"He wasn't even from the camp," Mason said irritably. "I made the mistake of sending my bull-headed little brother, and he brought me four toddlers and a baby. Goddess knows what he was thinking. Now I have to feed them and hope they die of cholera."

Beside me, Lilah's breath caught in her chest.

"Now, now, Mason," said the man with the sneering voice. "You need to be more proactive than that. Put the lot of them in a cell and have them fight each other. If it's good enough for their parents, it's good enough for them."

"Oh, no. As fun as it would be, I wouldn't want to do anything illegal."

"Well ... it would have to be a select audience," he said playfully.

"It's nothing compared to what the rogues would do to our children," Jaden said. "If you do find the nerve, I wouldn't mind an invite."

I wanted to kill all of them. I wasn't capable of it, obviously, but if they laid a finger on those kids... Well, I'd give it my best try. There were some things worth dying for.

"Come on," Lilah said through the link. She looked like she was about to be sick, and it wasn't difficult to guess why. Her daughter was the same age as those kids. "Let's go. I don't want to listen to this."

"They're just kidding, Lilah," Lin said incredulously.

She clambered to her knees. "Yeah. I know. I just ... I've had enough now."

I chewed on my lip. As much as I wanted to hear the rest, I could see exactly how uncomfortable she was. I wasn't sure she'd ever seen this side of Mason before. I started to get up, too, albeit half-heartedly, but Lin pulled me back down again.

"Oh, shush," she said. "This is the most fun I've had in weeks, and I could really use the distraction."

"Is something wrong?" Lilah asked her, frowning.

Lin wouldn't meet our eyes anymore. She took a long drink and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Yes. But we'll get into that later."

Lilah eyed her strangely, but she didn't push it. She resettled herself so that she was sitting hunched forwards, hugging her knees to her chest. Her drink was still full. She would pick it up sometimes, swill the liquid around and raise it to her lips, but she never actually drank. Once I'd noticed that, it was hard to stop noticing. Maybe she didn't like orange juice. I should have grabbed something else.

She didn't make another move for the door. I watched her for a moment longer, wincing at the misery on her face, and then I tuned back into the conversation next door. They hadn't exhausted the topic of child murder yet. Somehow.

"-if they're that young, I just give them to a female," Zach Lloyd was saying. "Let them grow up. It's worth keeping an eye on them, obviously, but I haven't had any problems. Why not, right?"

"Well, not all of us want bloody rogues in our packs, Lloyd," Jaden spat. "What's wrong with you?"

Jackson was just waiting to jump in. "I certainly don't. And they have to be incredibly young if you want them to assimilate. I've had a seven-year-old spit in my face. You can't even beat the corruption out of them - it's sad, really."

"What did you do with the seven-year-old?"

That question came from Mason, who was undoubtedly looking for ideas.

"Kept her caged, obviously," he said. "Eventually, I got bored of waiting for her to die and put something in the water. Our fighters have better things to do than babysit rogues. It's a waste of manpower."

"I agree," Jaden said. "Whenever a fighter gets back from sick leave, I move him to the prison for a shift or two. Sometimes a good dose of flu is enough to tip them over the edge..."

I had to sit through another ten minutes of that. Lilah had a very distant look on her face by the time they were finished. I wasn't even sure she was listening anymore. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to eavesdrop on Liam and find out that he was saying shit like this ... and awful didn't even begin to cover it.

When they started talking about the female prisoners, even Lin decided they were being too vile. She caught my eye, and then nodded towards the door. I stood up carefully. A touch of Lilah's shoulder snapped her out of her trance, and then all three of us were sneaking back into the corridor, wine glasses in hand.

Lin had finished her glass and was now drinking straight from the tequila bottle. She looked like she was making a concerted effort to get drunk at three o'clock in the afternoon, and I felt a stab of worry break through my lingering resentment. She hadn't been right since Will had died.

"Seriously, girl, what's up with you?" Lilah asked her, reaching out to pluck the bottle from her hands.

"It's ... um, it's not a big deal," Lin said. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "It's just that my period came yesterday ... so I'm not pregnant. And because of that, they're already arranging a new match for me."

"I'm sorry, Lin," Lilah sighed. "Do you know who it is?"

She shook her head miserably. "All I've been told is that he's twenty-seven, and he hasn't found his mate yet. The priestesses are giving us special dispensation to mate without a bond. They want the ceremony to take place next week. And honestly ... I don't want that."

I ground my jaw, barely able to believe what I was hearing. This girl was sixteen. She was a child. First, they'd rushed her into a relationship with Will, who'd been a few years older. That was one thing. But to pressure her into mating with a grown adult she'd never met? Hell no. Not on my watch.

Lilah, on the other hand, didn't look the least bit surprised. "I'll talk to Mason. This is ridiculous. Will is barely even cold - it's way too soon."

"That's the thing," Lin said quietly. "I'm not going to want it next month, or the next month, or ever, as far as I can tell."

There was a moment's silence. Lilah was watching her with big, pitying eyes, because she knew full well that they wouldn't let her get away with that. I hadn't forgotten about Silver Lake's insistence that every woman needed to have at least four pups.

But I was on the pack register now, and I fully intended to have this wrapped up within a week. The entire pack was making me nauseous.

"Keep saying no, keep putting it off, and I promise we'll find a way to get you out of it," I said. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.

I wasn't expecting gratitude, but I also wasn't expecting her to turn on me with such scathing disdain. "Are you kidding me, Eva? You have even less status than I do. What are you going to do?"

Lin snatched the bottle back from Lilah and continued to empty it. She had turned away before I had a chance to answer. All I could do was exchange a worried look with Lilah before we both traipsed after her.

It wasn't long before we were back in the main section of the pack house. No sooner had I ducked under the rope of exclusivity than I saw Liam. He was supposed to be on patrol at this time of day, but instead, he was standing around with three other guys.

The oldest two came to attention the moment they saw us. I recognised them as Lilah's guards from our previous outings, of which there had been many. Lilah got bored easily, and when her daughter was at daycare, she had nothing to do all day.

"Luna," they said in unison, somehow managing to make it sound reproachful.

Lilah came to a halt, groaned, and then glanced over her shoulder as if she was considering making a break for it. They couldn't follow her into the private corridors, and she knew it.

One of them cleared his throat. "It's not safe for you to be walking around unaccompanied, ma'am."

"Ugh," Lilah said. "I think you're right. This pack is full of snitches."

I wasn't interested in watching them berate her in the most passive-aggressive way they could dream up. Instead, I made a beeline for Liam. Since we'd slept together, I'd lost a lot of my shyness. 'Keeping our cover' had turned into an excuse to make out with each other without consequences.

I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him - first on the lips, just because Lin was watching, and then along his jawline. We were a lot more convincing than we had been a few weeks ago. Liam's hands were on my thighs, and he was enjoying himself a little too much - if the grin on his face was any indication.

The other fighter was giving us both a withering look. "Cool it, Hayes. You're on duty."

"Yes, sir," Liam said. He took a reluctant step back, returning his hands to his pockets, but his eyes remained fixed on me - openly adoring, as always. We were still dangerously close together.

"What are you doing here?" I murmured.

"I've been reassigned," Liam said quietly, "to Mason's personal detail."

He didn't sound thrilled about it, and I felt the smile fading from my lips. "What does that mean?"

He glanced at the others, checking that no one was close enough to hear before replying. "It's supposed to be a promotion, but it really just means that he decides where I go and what I do all day."

"Shit," I said. The last thing Liam needed was more time with his brother. The conversation yesterday had set him off quite badly. He'd thrown up, and then he'd spent most of the night staring into space. I didn't think he'd slept at all.

"I'm working through dinner," he told me. "Will you be okay on your own?"

"Yeah. I think so. I can always go and sit with Seth," I mumbled. "What time do you get off?"

Liam looked like he'd like to know the answer to that himself. He caught the eye of his supervisor. "Hey - what time are we off tonight?"

The guy just shrugged at him. "The shift ends when the Alpha dismisses us. It's usually late evening, but since we have guests today ... certainly not before midnight."

Liam swore quietly. He was exhausted already, and it showed. Even as I watched, he swallowed down all the misery and replaced it with a grim sort of determination. To me, he said, "Promise you won't wait up?"

"I'm not promising that," I scoffed. "See you at midnight, I guess."

He was trying to scowl at me, but it wasn't very convincing. I could sense the girls getting impatient behind me, so I gave Liam one last grin and then went to join them. We still had an entire afternoon to waste.

As I walked, I tipped the last dregs of the tequila down my throat. And I couldn't help noticing that Lilah's glass was still untouched.

***

Midnight came and went. I got real bored of late-night television, which was mostly just comedy sketches and BBC news on a loop. There was nothing else to do in our room. Well, nothing except tidying up, but that just wasn't appealing to me, for some reason.

So instead, I curled up in bed with a packet of biscuits. I had a tendency to graze when I got bored, and the flockie culture of leaving food everywhere made it a little too easy to indulge. So I munched on the biscuits, and I stared off into space, and I tried to put my sleepy, worn-out brain into gear.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what the Alphas had been saying. And the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I wanted to believe that Mason wouldn't hurt the rogue kids, but there was another part of me that recognised he was capable of it. And since he could do it at any moment, there was a new time pressure on our mission here. As if there weren't enough already.

There was also Joel ... the problem I didn't want to think about, let alone solve. He was still alive, and every second increased the risk that he'd say something. It didn't even have to be something coherent. I'd imagine that one mention of my name - coupled with the fact I'd tried to cut his throat - would have Mason connecting the dots faster than any toddler.

And then there was Liam, and he was probably the most complicated of my problems. The more time he had to spend with his brother, the quieter, more withdrawn, the more miserable he was going to get. It had taken us years to get him to this point, and I didn't think I couldn't watch him go back down that road.

All three of those problems had someone in common. Mason. And honestly ... he just needed to die. Sooner rather than later.

Only thing was ... I wasn't great at completing tasks when there was no deadline. Even when that task was life or death, apparently. And I didn't want to rush into it, like Rhodri had, and screw everything up. I took another biscuit and gnawed on it while I thought.

The easiest, most risk-free way would be poison. I could have walked ten metres into the wood and found enough poisonous plants to end him ... but the trick would be giving it to him without killing Lilah, too. Everyone served themselves from shared plates and jugs in the canteen.

I didn't have a gun or the slightest idea how to use one, so sniping was out of the question. It would be hard to stab him, because he would have time to mind-link before he died, and I'd almost certainly get caught.

Unless-

Unless he didn't know who'd stabbed him.

That felt like a revelation when it entered my brain, but approximately ten seconds I realised that I didn't have a clue how to pull that off. It didn't matter if he could see me or not. One touch of my mind and he'd know who I was. He'd need to be unconscious or sleeping at very least when I did the stabbing. I had another biscuit.

This was all so impossible. There was a reason that shifters couldn't pull off assassination or murder. If you didn't like someone, you picked a fight with them, and if they wouldn't submit at the end of it, you could legally kill them. It was brutal, but it seemed to work.

It was a shame we couldn't do that. It really was. If we'd had a few more years, if Liam had been given enough time to come into his strength properly ... our time here could have been very different.

I smiled to myself sleepily. It was all just wistful thinking. This was the lot I'd drawn, and the responsibility lay with me now. There was a part of me that was actually curious to find out what I was capable of when I really pushed myself. This was a good test, in a way ... because if I failed, I wouldn't live long enough to be disappointed.

I didn't mean to fall asleep. But I was just so tired, and the bed was so warm, and I'd thought myself into a nice corner... It wasn't long before my eyes drifted closed, my breathing slowed, and the packet of biscuits slipped from my hand.

***

The next thing I knew, there was an alarm blaring beside my ear. It was a sound I was learning to hate - because it meant that my time in the nice, warm blankets had come to an end. My shift in the med wing started early on weekends. Sunlight streamed in through the open window, and it was still the soft, muted gold of dawn.

I rolled over, kicking off the duvet and groaning. Liam was lying beside me, although I hadn't heard him come in at Goddess knew what hour of the morning. He blinked at me sleepily and then closed his eyes again just as quickly. I turned off the alarm for his sake.

It was cold outside the covers. I was cursing under my breath as I swapped my pyjamas for jeans and a jumper. That took the sting out of the air while I hunted around for matching socks.

"Come back to bed, Eva," Liam murmured. "It's too early for this."

"I can't," I said. "I've got work. What time did you get back, sleepy-head?"

"Three," he replied, opening his eyes properly. "You were fast asleep - I didn't want to wake you."

"Three?" I repeated incredulously.

He nodded. "Two of the Alphas stayed late. We went down to the boathouse for drinks ... and they've ... um, they've got girls there."

I stopped in my tracks and turned to stare at him. His chest was bare, and his hair was tousled in a way that made me think he'd gone to sleep with wet hair. "So it was three in the morning, and you were drunk, and there were girls with you? Do I want to know the end of this story, Liam?"

His eyes were wide and alarmed, because I'd completely misunderstood his tone. He sat up in bed slowly and scrubbed at his face as he tried to find a better way to explain himself. "No, like ... they keep them in the boathouse. They're not allowed to leave."

"Come again?" I asked, my voice dangerously low.

"There's only a few of them. Most about our age. One was crying - that's how I put it together. She's only seventeen, and they've marked her so she can't find her mate."

"They marked her?" I snarled. "That's so screwed up. I can't even- "

Liam grimaced, still half-asleep. "I know. It was Micah's idea, as far as I can tell, but Mason is letting him do it."

Well, shit. How had it taken us this long to find out that they were trafficking their own pack members? And to take their guests there for a night of 'fun,' like it was just a local tourist attraction? It was beyond belief.

"Do you think Lilah knows?" I asked. I gave up on matching socks and settled for two clean ones. I'd never had the patience to unlace my trainers, so I pulled them on, swearing some more as my fingers were crushed against the heel.

"I don't think so," Liam said. "There are showers out the back. Most of the guys rinse off so their mates won't smell it on them."

I made a disgusted sound in the back of my throat. "Most of the guys? Who's going there, exactly?"

"Half the fighters. Maybe more."

A growl rumbled its way through my chest. I would've liked to give them the benefit of the doubt - it was possible, after all, that they thought the girls were there of their own volition. But it was a much more likely scenario that they knew and didn't give a shit.

It took me a moment to realise that I was just standing there, frozen in place with my coat in one hand. I pulled it on and fought with the zip while Liam watched.

"I'm late for work," I said. Some guardian angel had pried the biscuits out of my sleeping hands and eaten half of them, but there were a few left. I decided they would be my breakfast and stuffed them into a pocket along with my knife. "But we'll figure something out, okay? There must be a way to get them out of there."

"Okay."