I'm currently in the middle of nowhere, but here's your update! It's really chill for once. I figure our characters deserve a break from all the heartache :) Hope you're all enjoying the summer and staying safe!!

"The Hibiscrub goes on the swab, Eva. Not on the floor," Seth said

"Sorry," I mumbled. I was trying to do my job and keep an eye on Liam at the same time, and it wasn't going very well. I ducked my head, pretending to focus on the pink disinfectant until Seth looked away again.

And then I went right back to staring across the lawn. This morning, Mason had put Liam in charge of the cadets. Their ages ranged from fourteen to sixteen, and they were undoubtedly the underdogs of the male hierarchy at Silver Lake. The grown-up fighters had very little patience with them and spent a lot more time mocking them than training them. They were usually made to sweep the courtyard or sent running on pointless errands.

So it was understandable that they had all attached themselves to Liam like limpets to a rock. They followed him around, hanging on every word and jostling for his attention, because he was actually willing to teach them something. He had asked one of the boys to shift, and he was in the process of showing them the best places to bite for a quick, clean kill. I had never seen teenage boys so entranced in my life.

I wasn't the only one watching. Mason was some distance away, but it was hard to mistake the direction of his gaze. This was clearly some kind of experiment on his part. I was willing to bet he wasn't disappointed. Liam wasn't the kind of person who sought out authority, but he was quietly and relentlessly competent when it was handed to him.

"Can you draw up twelve mils of Lidocaine?" Seth asked.

"Huh?" I said, because I hadn't been listening.

Twelve mils. Lidocaine," he repeated. He was being unusually short with me today. "And wake up, please."

"Sorry," I mumbled. I got the syringe ready and flicked the air bubbles out. Seth was anticipating the demand - he could see a fighter limping across the grass, supported by two of his friends.

Seth kept squinting at them as they drew closer. Once he'd got a better look at the sheer volume of blood drenching his leg, he added, "And find me some Amoxiclav."

I did that, too, sneaking glances at Liam every so often. He'd been out there for a long time, and it wouldn't be long before the lunch bell rang and he came to find me. I had something I needed to ask him.

"Have you made a decision yet?" I asked Seth in an undertone.

He looked up at me warily. "About what?"

"About the impending regime change."

"We shouldn't be talking about this here, Eva," he said without force.

I just raised my eyebrows and waited expectantly. There was no one within twenty metres of us. He was just trying to avoid the question.

It didn't take long for him to relent, with no small amount of nervous looks over his shoulder and heavy sighs. "Charlie's not sure - and he doesn't even know you're rogues. My grandfather is also far from convinced. We don't know either of you well enough to-"

"It doesn't really matter if you know us," I said. "You know them. We can't possibly be worse."

"Our last Alpha was worse," Seth said.

I acknowledged that with a shrug. The injured fighter was almost within earshot, so I reckoned it was a good idea to shut up. Seth had him sit on the grass while he flushed the wound and fussed over suture materials. I didn't have to do anything except hand the patient a cartoon of orange juice and smile like I was happy to be there.

"If someone were to die of unknown causes," I began, quite abruptly, "who would perform the autopsy?"

Seth had already started stitching, which was precisely why I'd picked that moment to ask. But to my dismay, he paused to turn and stare at me, his eyes burning a warning through my skin. "That's an incredibly strange question, Eva."

"Would it be you?" I pressed.

Seth scowled at me and cast a pointed look at the fighter, but he was too busy swearing through gritted teeth to pay attention to us. I didn't care if he was paying attention. The fighters were dense and disinterested, as a rule. I kept waiting expectantly, and it didn't take long for Seth to crack.

"No," he said. "Probably not. I might assist, but it would fall to one of the more experienced doctors. I wouldn't say post-mortems are common, though... We rarely bother."

"But if the person who died was really, really important, and the circumstances were suspicious, like ... you'd check for poisons and shit, wouldn't you?"

The look he gave me was enough to curdle milk. "Yes. We would check."

"Damn," I muttered. "Uh, what kind of things don't show up on a post-mortem?"

"I'm not answering that," Seth said firmly.

Even the fighter was starting to give me funny looks now, but I couldn't have cared less. I'd picked up a syringe to fiddle with. "Is it true that injecting someone with air kills them?"

Seth reached over to snatch the syringe away from me. "Yes, but it would take a lot of air, and it has to go into the bloodstream, and now that you've asked that, Eva, I'm going to view any stroke patients with extreme suspicion."

"Whoa, Seth," I said. "Chill out. It's just hypothetical. You're supposed to be teaching me about medical stuff."

He glowered at me, because I wasn't fooling him. I ducked my head and pretended to be cowed until he was fully engrossed in the suturing once again. And then I opened my mouth again.

"What are the rules about medical malpractice here?" I asked, ever so casually. "Like, if I accidentally injected someone with a lethal dose of anaesthesia instead of antibiotics, and I killed them, what would happen?"

"Eva," Seth snapped.

"Would they execute me? They wouldn't, right? I get that I would lose my job, and all that-"

"You're about to lose your job right here and now."

I shut up. It wasn't worth it. Deep down, I knew that Mason was never going to let me near him with a needle. It wasn't going to be that easy. I buried my head in the first-aid bag under the pretext of organising it. And in the end, it wasn't a syringe and a bottle of pentobarbital that I slipped into a pocket. It was a pair of extra-large latex gloves and one of the flares we had for emergencies.

I was still sorting through the tiny compartments when someone grabbed me from behind. I knew it was Liam, but I squealed anyway. He had caught me in a clumsy hug, with one arm around my waist and the other trapping my arms.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," Liam said. "Can I steal you a few minutes early?"

He'd let me go, but I stayed where I was anyway, resting my head against his shoulder. I loved it when he was in one of these moods. If I twisted my neck, I could just about see the roguish smile on his lips.

"No, I should really finish this," I said. There was no point pushing my luck where Seth was concerned.

"Go on, Eva," Seth called over the grass. "I daresay I can manage without you for a few minutes."

We both grinned at him and murmured our 'thank you's. He couldn't have been that angry at me, after all. I reckoned he was just tired this morning. It was easy to forget that he was a flockie - with the ingrained obedience that made any small deviation from the status quo terrifying. I needed to be gentler with him.

"Is it okay if we eat with the pups?" Liam asked me before we started moving. "They've got a lot of questions, and I figure you can answer at least half of them."

He meant the small pack of teenaged boys who were watching us from across the lawn with big, puppy-dog eyes. Some had followed him over, and they were now standing at a respectful distance, jostling each other in their impatience.

One was casting a mournful look at the sky. The clouds above us were grey and darkening by the second. The nice weather wasn't going to last, and I suspected training would have to be moved indoor before long. There was a heaviness in the air which told me it would not be some quick, fleeting shower. It would be a proper Snowdonia downpour.

And that was good. The rain washed away all kinds of things. Scents. Footprints. Blood.

"Alright," I said, "but I have a request, too."

Liam didn't even hesitate. "Yeah?"

The pockets of my jeans were too small, and the flare was digging into my skin. It felt oddly heavy. I readjusted it as subtly as I could while I looked up at Liam with big, hopeful eyes. "It's the first Saturday of the month, so there's a party tonight. Can we go?"

I didn't think I had ever seen Liam look so confused. "You want to go to a party? Why?"

Because it was hard to find an alibi in the early hours of the morning.

"Because I think we could both use a drink," I said, making sure to bite my lip and let the excitement light up my face. He couldn't say no to me. I didn't feel great about exploiting that, but it was much better than the alternative - being honest with him.

Liam spent a moment chewing on it. He didn't want to. That much was obvious. He was tired, he didn't like crowded rooms, and it was probably the last thing he wanted to do after a long day at work.

"We'll have to talk to people," he said. A gentle attempt to dissuade me, and on any other day, it would have worked.

"I know," I laughed. "Please, Liam. I really want to go."

He still looked uncertain, but my smile was infectious, it seemed. "Okay, okay. We'll go. I'll have to ask Mason to let me off work at a reasonable hour..."

He glanced towards his brother as he said it. Mason was still standing there, but his attention was now directed towards his Deltas, who were gathered around him in a tight little knot to give their reports. The way they behaved around him reminded me of the way the pups had been behaving with Liam.

"How is he?" I asked, as I picked up my coat.

Liam knew I wasn't asking about Mason's wellbeing. He ran a hand through his hair and only managed to make messier. "Alright, actually. He's trying to be nice."

"Oh," I said. Of all the things Liam could have said, that worried me the most. "Like ... in a manipulative way?"

He winced a little, and I knew the thought had definitely crossed his mind. "I don't think he means it like that, Eva. It's just how he is."

He'd spent one day with his brother, and he was already making excuses for him. I hated this. I hated Mason's influence on him. If I could have told him that without messing up his head, I would have. Instead, I just gazed at him for a long moment, trying to convey all that worry from my eyes alone.

"We're supposed to train together this afternoon," Liam said, rubbing the back of his neck ruefully. "I don't think he's going to be nice about that. He wants to set an example."

Even the thought of it was enough to make me scowl. He'd have to hold back, and Mason would probably thrash him. "We can get you out of that. Easy. You could come down with the flu, or-"

"It's okay," Liam said. "I don't care. He'll get what he wants, and then he'll calm down."

What was I supposed to say to that? He said it like it wasn't a big deal. Like it was just something he had to get on with. But we were heading towards the pack house, and it was difficult to find the words. I had to knock my shoulder against his to make him look at me properly.

"This will be over soon," I told him quietly. It was all I had to offer. In this flock, we were as helpless as lambs, and the sheepdog had his eye on us both.

"No, it won't," Liam said. "Not unless he drops dead. We're no closer now than we've ever been."

I had no idea why those words hurt me as much as they did. He sounded tired ... and very close to giving up. This was all taking a bigger toll on him than I'd realised.

"We're on the register," I murmured.

Liam looked away. He didn't want an argument, but I could tell he wasn't ecstatic about that. It had never been the hard part - getting on the register. It had just been the most time-consuming part. There were still three men standing in our way, and all three of them would have to die before our job here was done.

But I was working on that.

***

Within a minute of arriving at the party, I knew that we'd never stood a chance of sleeping that night. The music was loud enough to make the windowpanes rattle. There were fifty pairs of stamping feet in this room alone, and our bedroom was on the floor below.

Liam and I had found a quiet corner where we could put our backs against a wall and not feel quite so surrounded by flockies. We'd run into Charlie, who was stone-cold sober, Lin, who was already slurring her words, and our other neighbours, whose names I still didn't know. They had all crowded around us readily enough.

"I've been to Wyst and Bangor, obviously, but I've never visited another pack," Lin was saying. "Anyone know which is the least simpy?"

"Wouldn't know," Charlie said, swigging from his cup. "I've never even left Silver Lake."

I turned to stare at him incredulously. "What ... never?"

He shook his head.

"Shit. Seriously?" I asked. The entire territory was only a few miles wide.

Charlie just shrugged at me. "Why would I? Got everything I need right here."

"Same here," the woman from next-door added, and my facial expression morphed deeper into disbelief.

Lin seemed to take personal offence, as she always did when I opened my mouth. "Okay, I'll bite, Eva. How many packs have you been to?"

I eyed her warily. "All six."

And it was true. I'd raided all of them at some point, but it had mostly involved the very outskirts of the territory. I had only seen a few pack houses in my life.

"Seven," Lin said, pouncing on the transgression, as I'd known she would. "There's seven packs."

"Allegedly."

"Eva," Liam murmured. Before he could tell me off properly, I caught his eye, and we argued by making faces.

I won. I always won. I knew which battles to pick, and I knew who to pick them with. Lin remained oblivious to the whole thing.

"Seven packs," she repeated condescendingly. "Why don't you count them out?"

"New Dawn, of course," I sighed. "Silver Lake ... well, duh. Then there's Riverside, Shadowless, Ember and Lowland, which makes six."

"And? Number seven?" Lin prompted.

I tightened my jaw. "Hmm. I don't recall."

"Really? Well, you forgot Pine Forest."

"Did I, though?"

"Yes," Charlie said. "Yes, you did."

I puffed out my cheeks, looking towards the ceiling in my obstinacy. "Look, I just don't think we can go around making definitive statements about the existence of places that are - at best - mythical - and at worst - an authoritarian conspiracy."

They all stared at me, confused to the point of silence.

"Eva's a little tipsy, I think," Liam said. He put an arm around my shoulders and squeezed a warning. I wasn't tipsy, though. I'd been making a show of drinking for the last hour, but those cups had been filled with watery cider, and I'd been pouring most of it down the sink when no one had been looking.

"Or she's just stupid," Lin muttered.

I was willing to ignore that. It was a cheap shot, yeah, but it didn't exactly sting. It was Liam who reacted - with a stare that would have reduced me to a puddle on the floor. Lin dropped her eyes after about a second. Even drugged, Liam's wolf was strong. But as much as I would have liked to watch her squirm, I had more important things to do tonight.

"Come on," I told him in an undertone. "Let's get another drink."

Liam didn't need another drink, because he had barely touched his first one, but he followed me when I tugged at him. He kept scratching at the half-healed tooth marks on his throat. Mason's idea of training was brutal, as it turned out. Liam had needed stitches, and even now, hours later, I could see the blotchy bruises around the cuts where Mason had bitten down a lot harder than he'd needed to.

And if that hadn't been enough to piss me off, Mason had come up to me afterwards and smiled and told me that 'we had got off to a rough start' and that 'he wanted us to get along.' He had been quite convincing - I'd admit that. But I'd noticed that he hadn't apologised to me, and I noticed how he'd made sure Liam had been there to witness his little peace-making mission.

I was making a beeline to the kitchenette, making sure to stumble around and giggle as if I really had been drinking. I made sure that people saw me - and more importantly, that they saw Liam. He apologised every time I knocked into someone, and he wasn't easily forgotten. Not with all those tooth marks on his throat.

I picked up a bottle of vodka and put it down again just as quickly. "Shit. I don't feel very well."

"You look like you're about to throw up," he agreed, taking the drink off me. "Time for bed, I think."

He was right. I did feel like puking, but it had nothing to do with the alcohol or the imaginary 'illness' and everything to do with what I was about to do.

"No, it's okay," I said firmly. "I'll go and lie down for a bit. You should stay here."

I added force to those last words, knowing damn well that Liam wouldn't refuse if he thought it would upset me. Sure enough, he looked around us and blew out. He didn't want to stay. Not even a little.

"At least let me walk you back," he said eventually.

I pushed at his chest lightly to make him take a step back, smiling all the while. "No, don't be silly. I know where the room is. Stay. Have some fun. I'll see you in a few hours."

First, I'd dragged him to this party, and now I was abandoning him here. The cruelty wasn't lost on me. There was a lump in my throat as I left him. He stared after me, all the while, doing a terrible job of hiding his worry. I tried not to look back.

The corridor was dark and empty. The music was muffled by the wall - distorted almost beyond recognition - but it was still loud. The beat set the tempo of my footsteps and my heartbeat.

I stopped staggering around, now that there was no one to see. I went back to my room at a fast, purposeful walk. It was too risky to run. Someone might have seen. Nearly a full minute passed before I slipped into my bedroom and closed the door behind me.

The first thing I did was strip out of my jeans and shirt and swap them for pyjamas. They made me want to crawl into bed, not commit murder, but there was no helping that. I'd wanted to crawl into bed for the last decade - so I was very good at resisting that urge.

My pyjamas didn't have any pockets, so I had to tuck the flare into my waistband and hope it didn't fall out. My knife went into my sock, for lack of a better place. It was blunter than I'd have liked, but there wasn't time to sharpen it. Not now.

The nausea was getting worse. It felt someone was twisting my stomach and squeezing my heart. It was only nerves - but it sure felt real. It would have been easier if I'd been drunk. It would have taken the edge off.

I did eye the bottles of alcohol on the dresser. And I was tempted. But I knew it would slow me down, and worse, it would make me clumsy.

I'd have to do without. I swallowed hard, and then I forced myself to turn away. It was all about momentum. If I stopped to think about what I was doing, I was going to lose my nerve.

I grabbed a bottle of air freshener and the pair of latex gloves I'd stolen from Seth and padded out into the hallway. I didn't have any shoes on. Just a thick pair of socks. If someone had seen me out there in my pyjamas, they might have had a few awkward questions, but the corridors were deserted tonight. It was after midnight. Everyone was either asleep or at the party.

Two floors up, I stopped at one of the alcoves where people left their bags of dirty laundry. After only a minute of digging, I had an oversized jumper and a pair of joggers which were close to my size. I could deal with long sleeves. I couldn't deal with my trousers falling down.

I put them on over my pyjamas. A few strokes of my knife turned a t-shirt into a strip of dark fabric which would hide my face. That went into my pockets for later, along with the air-freshener.

I climbed another set of stairs. The hatch which led into the pack's attic wasn't easy to find. I'd been following Liam like a little lamb and not paying the slightest bit of attention to my surroundings the last time I'd come here. I wandered around for the best part of ten minutes, getting more and more anxious, before I spotted the wooden ladder.

I climbed up into the attic and flicked the light switch. It was still a maze of boxes, but I only had to keep walking to find a wall. I stumbled upon Liam's window before too long. The messy pile of blankets was still there, covered in a thick layer of dust. I used my foot to nudge them to one side so I could get into the right position to force the window open.

Liam had made it look a lot easier than it was. I could put my entire weight on the metal bar without it budging. But I hadn't come all this way to be defeated by a window, had I?

I waited for a minute, letting the strength leach back into my arms, and then I tried again with a quick, brutal tug. It made a creaking sound loud enough to wake the dead, but the window swung open.

And now the rain was coming into the attic. I could feel it against my face, cold and strangely reassuring. I tried not to look down as I took the strip of dark fabric and tied it around my nose and mouth. I was five storeys up, and I didn't think I'd walk away from that fall.

I took a deep breath. In. Out again. It only made me feel sicker.

I wanted to get it over with. I pulled my hood up. I sprayed the air-freshener all over myself - head to toe, holding the breath the whole time. It was the horrid kind that was supposed to smell like flowers but actually just smelt like chemicals. It was standard issue for the pack, so I wasn't afraid that they'd trace the scent back to me. I was more worried about hiding my own scent.

With painstaking care, I climbed out of the window and onto the wet shingles. The roof was sloping to the point where I couldn't safely sit there, but I paused anyway.

Because this was the part where it could all go horribly wrong.

Just for reassurance, I nudged Lilah through the mind-link and got no response. Not even a twitch. She was asleep, and I had to believe that. Mason had been up until the early hours of the morning the night before, same as Liam, and it made sense that he'd be getting an early night.

They were both asleep. Micah was out - I'd seen him at the party. Felix would be asleep too.

So why was I so terrified? I would have laughed if I'd found the strength. I was the intruder. I was the one with the knife. I was about to go creeping through their home in the dead of night. And somehow ... I was still scared of them.

I needed to do this. It wasn't like Mason didn't have it coming. His ideas about disciplining children were not okay. What he'd done to Rhodri was not okay. Trafficking your own pack members was not okay. Keeping children in cages and hoping they'd die was not okay.

Someone had to stop him, and I didn't see anyone else stepping up.

I forced myself over the edge of the roof. If Liam had managed this at the age of ten, then I could manage it now. The gutter creaked under my weight, but it held. I lowered myself down, my heart in my throat as my feet kicked at thin air.

It was only a second before they found the window ledge, but even that second was enough to make me feel ill. It was easier to grip without shoes on, even though the painted wood was slick with rainwater. I clung to the window frame as I crouched down.

So bloody precarious.

It took me a long while to work up the courage to let go with one hand. I had to put my knife between my teeth before I could flick it open, and then I used it to pry at the window. This was an old building, and Silver Lake had clearly not seen much need to upgrade their fourth floor windows over the years. They were ancient, and it didn't take long before I heard the first crack.

It was louder than I would have liked. Loud enough to wake someone. I waited out on the ledge, my muscles burning, waiting for a flicker of light or a voice from within. It was important to wait. If someone was close to waking, I needed to give them time to drift back to sleep before the next noise.

By then, I'd been crouching so long that my legs were shaking. I waited as long as I could bear, and then I started prying again. Another crack. It was easier than I'd thought it would be. The window came open, and I nearly fell backwards off the ledge with the force of it.

It was a relief to clamber inside. I spent a moment sitting on the dresser beneath the window, forcing air in and out of my lungs and letting my aching, cramping muscles rest. I'd made it. It was hard to be glad of that when the worst bit was still to come.

It was only when my heartbeat had slowed that I began to take stock my surroundings. It was Liam's old room, and it was in a state of serious disuse. The bed had been stripped. Most of the floor space was taken up by cardboard boxes. I peeked inside one of them and saw a handful of half-deflated rugby balls. Not Liam's things, then. Somehow, I didn't think they'd wasted much time before throwing it all away.

There were a few dark stains on the carpet which might have been blood. One of them extended to the skirting board, and it was harder to mistake the reddish-brown tint against the white paint there. Other than that, I was surprised at how normal it all looked.

I jumped down from the dresser and wiped away the raindrops that had followed me in. From the inside, the window looked undamaged, and that was good. I would prefer that they didn't work out how I'd gotten in. It would give the game away.

I found the pair of gloves and pulled them on at long last. They were much too big for me, and I struggled to get a good grip on my knife hilt. It would have to do. The latex was so thin that I knew I would leave fingerprints, but that didn't matter. I'd been in the flat only yesterday at Lilah's invitation.

There was adrenaline coursing through my veins. In some ways, it made this harder, not easier, because I was acutely aware of every tiny sound I made. Every scuff of my feet against the carpet. Every creak of the floorboard. Every ragged breath.

I opened the door with excruciating slowness. It had been dark in Liam's room, but the corridor was pitch-black. I had to run one hand along the wall to be sure I wasn't about to crash into it. Mason's room was at the very end, and there was no light coming from under the door, but it was ajar.

Please let him be asleep.

I nudged the door open with one foot. My knuckles were white around the knife hilt, and I was hardly even daring to breathe. The bedroom was so gloomy that I could barely see the bed, but the dark shapes on it were hard to mistake against the pale sheets.

I padded towards them. I was torn between doing it quickly and doing it quietly. If they woke up now, I was dead.

Mason was on the left side of the bed. Lilah was curled up against his chest, her white-blonde hair sprawled across the pillow. She was smiling in her sleep ... and not wearing many clothes, by the look of it. Neither was her mate.

The toddler was asleep in her crib - I could hear her breathing as I went past. I stubbed my toe against a waste bin that was close to overflowing. I hadn't seen it, and I had to lunge for it before it tipped over and woke all three of them.

After what felt like an age, I stopped beside the bed. My heart was thumping so loudly in my chest that I was scared they'd hear it. Ever so slowly, I leant down and positioned my knife near the place where Mason's head met his neck.

I could sever the artery there and reach his brainstem in one blow. Dead twice over. I'd done it before. I knew how quickly he'd die. And somehow I was still second-guessing myself. My hand was shaking.

I'd never killed anyone like this. Not in cold blood, not while they slept, and not while their mate and daughter were in the same room. It had always been in a fight, always when my life depended on it.

It wasn't an easy thing to do. But knowing it was Mason ... made it a lot easier. He deserved a much slower death than this, but I'd take what I could get.

I took a deep breath, steeling myself, and then I moved.

One hand pressed down on his mouth, keeping him from calling out, and the other drove the knife through his skin. At first, it was easy. Like cutting through cold butter. Then the blade snagged on something. Cartilage or bone - I didn't know which. I put my weight against the knife and drove it deeper still.

Mason woke up with the knife in his neck. His eyes fluttered open, agonised and confused, and his hands came up to his throat instinctively. I didn't try to knock them away, even when he was clawing at my arm. It was a weak effort. I'd been expecting him to put up some kind of fight, but I hadn't been expecting to smell so much fear on his breath.

He'd never stood a chance. The knife was buried up to the hilt. I stood over him as the life drained out of him. Each convulsion was weaker than the last. I watched his dark eyes glaze over and his hands go still. It was over in a few seconds.

I pulled the knife free with difficulty, and his blood came with it. I knew his heart had stopped when the spurts became a gentle oozing. It was all over my hands - I could feel the warmth even through the gloves.

Lilah moved for the first time then - turning over in bed - and I didn't stick around to watch her wake up. I wasn't trying to be quiet anymore. I ran for the door, pausing only long enough to grab the bin as I passed.

I was halfway down the corridor before I stopped again. This time to put the bin down with the flare inside it. I uncapped the little tube and yanked the cord to set it off, fumbling in my hurry. It sent up clouds of foul-smelling smoke. It would cover any traces of my scent, and it would scare Lilah into staying out of the corridor for a few minutes at least.

Although it took every drop of my willpower, I waited beside it. It wasn't enough to kill Mason. I needed to get away with it. And it seemed sensible to frame the person who'd be first to point the finger at Liam and me.

Lilah screamed. And kept screaming. I imagined she'd just realised that her mate was dead, but I had no idea if it was grief or terror that had her making that horrible noise. Perhaps both.

The smoke was starting to choke me, but I used the time to wipe down the handle of my knife. When I was done, I tossed it towards the living area, where someone would find it eventually. Felix and Micah didn't have two braincells to put together. They would need some sort of kickstart for their 'investigation,' but I'd rather they had time to calm down before they came looking for me.

Lilah had stopped screaming, thank the Goddess. But she'd done enough to wake Felix, who came out of his room as a dark figure against an even darker background. I could hear him coughing as he reached the worst of the smoke.

"Lilah?" he asked sleepily. "What's going on?"

She didn't answer him. His footsteps faded as he went into the bedroom to see for himself.

As soon as he was out of sight, I ducked into his empty bedroom. His laundry bin was only half-full, but I found a t-shirt and a pair of jeans inside and covered them in smears of Mason's blood. I stuffed them under the dresser to be sure Felix wouldn't find them too soon.

When that was done, I peeled the gloves off. They got a blast of air-freshener to eliminate any vestiges of my scent before I tossed them under Felix's bed. The flare cap joined them a second later. And then I was back in the corridor, this time headed back for Liam's room. It was my way out.

I'd left a wet patch on the carpet. All I could do was step over it and hope no one would notice as I cracked the window open and eased myself out onto the ledge once again. It hadn't gotten any less terrifying.

Lilah and Felix had gone very quiet in the bedroom. I was hoping they'd get the kid and get out quickly. There was quite a lot of smoke, and I didn't want the toddler breathing too much of it. She had started to cry now - I could hear it faintly. Seconds later, the sound was drowned out by the sudden and deafening sound of the fire alarm.

Once I was perched on the ledge, I pushed the window closed with some difficulty. If I'd thought the way down was difficult, the climb back up would be infinitely harder. Even when I stretched, I could barely reach the gutter.

I grabbed it with one hand and used the other to claw at the bricks beneath, just in case it didn't hold me. The rain was still lashing against me, and I could feel the sharp plastic cutting into my skin as it took my full weight. Every muscle was burning. The more I tightened them, the more it hurt.

I was close to panicking by the time I got my leg over the gutter. The rooftop didn't feel much more secure, but once I had my entire body up there, lying flat, it wasn't quite so dangerous. I took a minute to catch my breath there, my cheek pressed against the rough tiles.

My fingers were bleeding. The bricks and the gutter had left a dozen tiny cuts, and I swore under my breath. At least the rain would deal with any blood I'd left behind. There were some benefits to the frigid downpour that threatened to wash me off the roof.

Eventually, I found the strength to clamber through the attic window and close it behind me. The carpet felt impossibly soft against my knees as I stripped off the bloody overclothes and the face-covering.

I didn't have any time to waste. The fire alarm would send the entire population of the pack house onto the front lawn, and I needed to be amongst them. Preferably without blood on my hands.

I wiped what I could onto the clothes and then stuffed them into one of the cardboard boxes. There were hundreds of them up here - they couldn't check every single one, and I highly doubted they'd realise that I'd come from the attic. It wasn't a route of entry that any sane person would attempt.

Less than a minute later, I was back in the corridors of the pack house. I felt strangely calm - even with the alarm blaring above my head, even with pack members running around like headless chickens. The blood was drying on my hands.

I padded along, my wet socks squelching on the carpet. My breathing was slowing, my heart returning to its usual rhythm. I'd done it. There was no taking it back, no point in second-guessing myself. All I could do now was face the consequences - whatever they may be.

But first, I needed to find Liam.