Up above is a beautiful drawing of Nia Llewellyn. I think it's probably got to be my favourite one yet! Direct all of your praise, as usual, at LittleLoneWriterGirl.

I was too hot. It was the first thing I noticed when my eyes cracked open the next morning. But any instinct to throw off my covers was halted in its track by the realisation that I wasn't wearing any clothes.

The night before came flooding back then - all at once and without much warning. Liam was sprawled out beside me. Also stirring, by the looks of it. And beyond him, the fire still glowed. It had been reduced to a few faint embers, but the fact that it wasn't just a pile of ashes told me that Liam had been awake a lot in the night. It also explained why I was so hot.

I pulled the duvet around myself and winced. I could feel Liam's eyes on me now, and they were wary. He was expecting me to run away. The thought stung a little, because I hadn't really been thinking about this part last night. If it had occurred to me that I would hurt him all over again, I'd probably have exerted some self-control before it had got very far.

I wasn't going to run away. Not today. Last time had been a panic - a basal, primitive panic from the second I'd realised how badly I'd screwed up. Today ... I didn't know.

The longer I kept looking at him, the more Liam seemed to relax. Because if I had been inclined to make myself scarce, I would have done it already. That was compounded when I offered him a tiny, uncertain smile.

He returned it even as he sat up, the covers bunched around his waist, to stir the embers. I eyed his back, appreciative of the lean, corded muscle moving beneath suntanned skin. A sneak peek lower told me only that he was half-dressed, which was more than I could say about myself.

"I could definitely get used to this," he told me.

I rolled onto my front and yawned. "Get used to what?"

The smile tugging at his lips was hard to miss now. "Waking up next to a naked girl."

I snorted. We'd only been awake for a minute, but he was already looking oh-so-content. I didn't want to ruin that. And I didn't need to, right? It was all implied. Obviously, this hadn't happened, and obviously, we weren't going to do it again.

Liam had managed to wake the fire again. I watched him feed it up with scraps of paper until it was a proper blaze. The colours were ever-changing and vibrant. Reds and oranges and yellows and whites. I could have stared at it for hours, and we often did back at camp when the nights grew long.

He lay back down, looking sleepy, all of a sudden. We both watched the fire for a little while. It made me think of home, and soon there was an ache deep in my chest.

There was a Welsh word I had always liked. A word with no English equivalent. 'Hiraeth.' It meant a deep, wistful longing for home, even if that home as you had known it no longer existed. And I was certainly feeling that now.

Our camps were still there, but they were lost to me and Liam. Because how would we ever be able to leave Silver Lake now? Alphas and Lunas couldn't just vanish for weeks at a time. And the minute we gave this pack up, it would go back to being a threat to us. I didn't think even a decade of our leadership would be enough to cure them of their hatred for rogues. When I'd agreed to be a sleeper, it hadn't occurred to me that I was signing up for years of this. Maybe even my entire life. It panicked me in ways I couldn't explain.

"Are you going for a run?" Liam asked me, jolting me from my thoughts.

Now there was a good idea. I woke his phone up and peered at the time. And then I groaned. "No, I can't. We'd be late for breakfast. I'll go later."

"Since when did you care about being late for things?" he asked with a lazy grin. He checked the time, too. "We've got plenty of time."

"Yeah, time to shower," I muttered.

Maybe he was getting ideas. It was true that I wasn't making such an effort to keep the duvet wrapped around myself anymore. I had been feeling a little bit shy in the light of day. And that wasn't like me at all. But it was Liam, not some random guy I never had to see again.

But the shyness was already wearing off. Right now, he was still being respectful and keeping his eyes fixed on mine. I wouldn't have minded even if he hadn't been. He had a way of looking at me, all adoration and unmasked awe, that was really good for my self-confidence.

"That'll only take a minute," he murmured. I could feel his eyes on me, playful and intense all of a sudden. "But maybe you're right. The run can wait."

He rolled over and slipped an arm around me, tugging me a fraction closer before he closed his eyes again. I was glad that he was taking Joel's order to 'keep his hands off me' so seriously. But I wasn't so willing to fall back asleep. I didn't trust that I'd wake before noon. It was so damn warm and comfortable in that bed.

I chewed on my lip and eyed him. I didn't think I'd ever get tired of looking at him. I let my hand brush gently against his bare chest - a warning, more than anything. And then I allowed my fingertips to wander on his skin. I could feel the little bumps of scar tissue and every ridge of muscle.

He opened his eyes. He was tensing under my touch - and it was nice, in a way, to know that I was affecting him as much as he was affecting me.

"Is this okay?" I asked him, stilling my fingers for the briefest of moments.

Liam looked wide awake now. He was watching my hand with a half-smile on his lips. "Yeah. It's okay."

I let my fingers walk a fraction lower, eyeing him all the while. We were playing chicken. And it didn't take long for him to reach breaking point. He caught my hand in a firm grip before I could get any further.

"Are you trying to start something," Liam asked me, squeezing my hand, "or are you just teasing?"

"Would you be interested if I was trying to start something?" I asked, oh-so-innocently.

"We're definitely going to be late for breakfast," he murmured. He let go of me, running his hand down my side and letting it settle on my thigh while I watched on. There was a little grin tugging at his lips when my eyes darted back up to meet his. "Come here."

And all of a sudden, I wasn't feeling shy anymore.

***

We missed breakfast. And we probably would have gone hungry had Lin not knocked on the door with a tray of pancakes on her boss's orders. She told us to pretend she was still there, cleaning the room, if anyone asked, and then she slipped down the corridor to watch a movie with Lilah. And of course, I was more than happy to be an accomplice to laziness.

Now, I was running a hand through my wet hair, teasing out the tangles, while Charlie set up his laptop on the sofa opposite. I kept wrinkling up my nose as a new wave of shampoo smell hit me. The flockies were fond of oppressive floral stenches, but the thing that really got me was ... they didn't even smell like flowers? Like, not even close.

"Here it is," Charlie said eventually. "Do you want me to talk you through it?"

Liam leaned forwards and eyed the laptop with open scepticism. Charlie was supposed to be showing us the pack finances, but the screen just seemed to be a wall of numbers of varying sizes, and you'd best believe that I wasn't even going to try and make sense of it all.

"Yeah, I think that'd be best," Liam said dryly. He leant back again, his shoulder brushing against mine in the process. I was acutely aware how close he was and that our legs were pressed together. It wasn't a huge sofa. But it was big enough that this was purely self-indulgence on our behalf.

"Just tell us how much money there is," I added. "Like ... the grand total. I think that's all we really need to know."

Charlie looked up at me, his forehead creasing. He reached up to adjust his glasses. "It doesn't really ... work like that."

I stared at him, utterly baffled. I just wanted him to give me a figure, because there must have been one. And he stared back at me, unable to fathom what was going through my head to make me think he could just come up with a number.

"She means how much would we have if you liquidated all the assets right now," Liam told him.

"It'd take me a day or two just to come up with a rough estimate," Charlie said wearily. "But I can do that and come back tomorrow, if you want. Today, all I can tell you is that it would be at least eight figures ... but nine is a more likely bet."

Nine figures? Did he mean nine separate numbers? What bloody use was that, and what was stopping him adding them up to make one big number? I didn't get it.

Liam's eyes were noticeably wider than before. He glanced over at me, blew out slowly, and then scrubbed at his face. I didn't know what he'd heard that I hadn't, but I smiled a little at the look on his face.

"Right. Okay. Do you have any numbers for income?" he asked next.

Charlie looked relieved. "That, I do have. The yearly revenue is approximately six million."

I swore loudly.

Six million a year. And they begrudged us rogues a few tins of baked beans and the contents of a wallet when we could find it. It made me so, so angry. For so many reasons.

But at the same time, my heart was beating a little faster. Because that was ours now. It was one thing knowing that the packs were filthy rich. It was quite another to have that money at our fingertips.

"How many zeros is that?" I asked him. My maths education had rarely involved numbers above the hundreds. I knew a million was a lot of money, of course, but it was difficult to grasp how much. "And how many twenty pound notes?"

Charlie wrote it out for me, laughing at the wide-eyed, open-mouthed look on my face. It was three-hundred thousand twenty pound notes, he told me, after a quick, scribbled sum. I found that equally difficult to grasp.

"Of course, a lot of that goes towards salaries, food, utilities, equipment, vehicles, petrol... You get the picture," Charlie said, when the silence had dragged for a long while. "It's not cheap to run this pack. But the rest is being reinvested to constantly increase the amount of money we bring in next year. In the last decade, we've managed to almost double the revenue."

I drummed my fingers against my leg, trying to dissipate some of that anger. I'd thought this would be funny, but it wasn't. Not even a little bit.

"Where does that money ... like ... come from?" I asked him. "Who's working for it?"

Charlie's mouth opened and closed a few times before he managed to find the words. "Well ... I am. There's a team of fifteen of us working in finance. We use the money from the pack savings accounts to fund companies. Then, when the company makes some money, we get a share of it."

I didn't understand. Not even a little. And I think that probably showed on my face, because Charlie was staring at me like his opinion of me had just hit rock bottom. It was a gentle kind of scorn, but the way he kept glancing at Liam, as if begging for confirmation that I was just being an idiot ... I did not like that. Either way, he wasn't getting what he wanted. Liam was looking staunchly at me. He, at least, understood the confusion.

I scratched my forehead as I mulled it over. "We're getting paid ... for giving people money?"

"Yes. In a sense. But that's only a part of it. We also rent out houses and flats to humans - with a very nice profit margin. And lending money can be extremely lucrative when the interest rate is high enough."

"So we're not actually working for any of that?" I demanded. "We're just earning money for having money and property and shit? How is that fair?"

At least stealing actually took some effort on our parts. And the rest of the time, we were working hard in the camps to bring in food and keep the fires burning and keep everything in good repair.

Charlie shrugged at me helplessly. "It's just the way the world works. It doesn't really matter if it's fair or not. If we don't take advantage, someone else will. And I suppose in providing housing and investments and loans, we are actually doing an invaluable service to society."

No, I thought. Because Silver Lake hadn't built those houses. They hadn't worked for those companies. The loans were explicitly designed to screw desperate people over in the long-run. They didn't actually do anything except have money and be willing to spend it - while demanding all the while that they got back much more than they gave.

And the worst part? It worked the other way around for us. If we couldn't afford to mend a tent, we would have to lump out the full value when the damage inevitably got worse. If we couldn't afford a medicine, the patient would go downhill, and before long, we'd have to fund an entire surgery, not a bottle of pills. If we couldn't afford to have a car serviced and it then broke down, that was ten times the cost.

So poverty charged interest. And apparently, being rich came with interest. And the flockies would still look down on us and insist that they deserved every penny of it, all the while begrudging us even our basic human rights.

"So ... six million," Liam said slowly. He gave me a sidelong look, and I did wonder if he could feel that frustration through the link in all its glory. "Shit. Okay. I'm assuming a chunk of that is going to charity, though, right? How much?"

"Well..." Charlie began hesitantly, as if the question had caught him by surprise. "None. Unless you count the donations we make to get tax breaks."

Oh, Goddess. That really was pathetic, wasn't it? Even I dumped my spare change into the collection bins when I could. The look on Charlie's face made it perfectly clear that it had never even occurred to him to give some of that money to people who really needed it, and I was damned sure that it had never occurred to Silver Lake's many Alphas either.

"I don't count that," Liam said. "Once the pack is taken care of, you take two-thirds of the remaining money, and you donate it. The other third can be reinvested."

Even as he said it, he was looking at me with his eyebrows raised, checking that was cool with me. I answered him with a broad grin. It was very easy to make decisions together, I'd realised, because our opinions so rarely differed.

Charlie seemed to have stopped breathing. He swallowed twice, and then he asked in a very small voice, "Are you sure? That's a lot of money. It might be difficult to justify to the elders."

"Yeah, Charlie," Liam said. "We're sure. Let me worry about the elders."

"How would they even know?" I scoffed.

It was at that point when Charlie leant forwards, throwing a wary glance around the room, as if looking for intruders, before he answered me. "There was an incident a few years ago. One of the Alphas started paying the rogues to stop raiding his pack. Since then, the packmeet has mandated that all packs' finances must be audited by the elders once a month to deter anyone who is tempted to do the same."

I remembered that incident. It had been Ember who'd paid us, if my memory wasn't failing me, and we'd all had a good laugh about it. But the truth was, for those few weeks, we'd eaten well, and Ember hadn't needed to worry about being raided, so it was a win-win situation really. I wasn't surprised that it had been the other Alphas who had got their knickers in a twist and put a stop to it.

Charlie wasn't finished, apparently. He had been staring intently at Liam and me, while we made faces at each other, and now he cleared his throat, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "I know you promised the pack that there would be no more raids, Liam. But if that's how you were planning on achieving it, you had better think again."

It was such an unsolicited, bare-faced accusation that I found myself getting a little riled. There had been no need for that. Perhaps he had genuinely been trying to help us, but there was something guarded about his tone. Like it was closer to a threat than friendly advice.

"Hey, Charlie," I said sweetly. "Why don't you worry a little bit more about doing your own job and a little less about doing his?"

A tiny little growl. So quiet that I almost didn't hear it. He did not like me - that much was evident. And to my astonishment, my wolf was soon lifting her head in the back of my mind, hackles rising. She was a lot braver when I was sitting next to Liam. But even so, it wasn't my wolf that had Charlie freezing in place, head down and eyes averted.

It had only taken a heartbeat to make Charlie regret being born, let alone growling at a Luna. Liam let it go on for a little longer, just to make the point, before wrestling his wolf back down.

"Is that what you think?" Liam asked quietly. "That I'm going to pay them? You of all people should know how I feel about the Llewellyns. I'd sooner climb into bed with one than give them so much as a penny. No, I have other ways of stopping the raids. But Eva's right. It's not your concern."

"I know. Sorry. I was just ... trying to help, I guess," Charlie murmured. He took a deep, shaky breath, and then he turned back to the laptop with such obvious relief that I could tell he was embarrassed. "The money - where's it going? Which charities?"

Liam looked at me and then shrugged. "Find out who's desperate for funding."

"Stuff like foodbanks and mental health and shelters and hospices and the people who help refugees," I added. "Not the kinds of charities which exist only to make middle-class people feel good about donating."

Charlie took another long, loud breath. This one was a lot closer to a sigh. He still didn't like this idea, I could tell. He wanted that funding to be spent on making infinitely more money for the pack, even though we already had so much more than we could ever need.

"Right. Okay. Anything else? While I'm here?"

"Actually, yeah," Liam said. "There is one other thing. We want to start paying the women for the work they do."

Charlie actually winced - his eyes closed tightly and his mouth sour. "I understand the sentiment. Honestly, I do. But that would be ... difficult. And controversial."

Liam gave him a flat stare. "I didn't ask for your opinion. I just asked you to do it. I don't care if you have to dock the men's wages to make it work. Hell, cut that in half if you need to."

"Please think about it," Charlie blurted. He looked absolutely horrified now. "Just for a day or two. It's going to make you very unpopular with the fighters. They like being the ones to support their families, and I know couples would get the same amount, in the end, but the unmated men would lose a lot of income. Hell, I would. What the women do ... it's more chores than anything else. Perhaps you could just give them a small allowance or something? As a sort of token gesture?"

The longer I listened to that rant, the more annoyed I got. And the stony look on Liam's face told me that he was feeling much the same way. "At the moment, the unmated women are getting nothing, so I couldn't really care less if you can't buy an iPad this month, Charlie. Do it. Or we'll find an accountant who will."

Charlie had gone pale, his mouth slightly ajar. This really was pathetic. Yes, the commissary prices were hugely inflated, and the flockies didn't know enough about how much things like soap should actually cost to notice, but I knew the fighters were still getting twelve thousand pounds a year. That was a lot of money when your housing and food were provided free of charge. He'd survive. They all would.

"Yes, okay. I'll do it," Charlie said quietly. "But don't expect any help from me when the fighters come for your head."

***

Water droplets clung to my bare arms. I was content to leave them there, because they were taking some of the heat out of the air. I'd indulged in a quick, lazy wash at the lake because I'd been sweating through my clothes. Now, I was wandering back towards the pack house at a leisurely pace.

I could feel the gentle burn in my muscles that let me know I'd pushed a little too hard today, but that was inevitable, really. I wanted to get back to the level of fitness to which I was accustomed - or more accurately, to the speed and stamina to which I was accustomed - so I was going to keep pushing until that happened. Hell, maybe I could even improve on it, now that I was being fed enough to put on some extra muscle.

It wasn't long before I came into view of the pack house - a towering, colossal structure which cast half of the lawn into a nice, cooling shade. And I wasn't surprised to see Liam on one of the picnic benches, bent over a sheaf of papers.

He'd brought his work outside, because it was a lovely day, and because this way, he could keep an eye on the cadets while they were put through their paces. He'd decided to keep the job of training them so that the older fighters had limited opportunity to corrupt the new generation. We were starting fresh with this lot.

I crossed the lawn, skirting around the sweaty boys, and then I hopped up to sit on the tabletop beside Liam. He didn't glance up from the paperwork, but he did start smiling.

"I can always tell when you're running," he told me, "because the whole time, I get fighters linking me, asking me if I know that you're out and about without any guards."

"Yeah?" I asked. It did surprise me a little. Because while I'd seen plenty of people, none of them had the balls to challenge me directly. Instead, they just went behind my back and snitched to Liam. "And what do you tell them?"

"To mind their own business," he laughed. "I'm sure they'll get the hang of it eventually."

That made me smile, but the whole conversation had also got me thinking. And once I'd started second-guessing myself, it was usually very hard to stop. Today was no exception. I chewed on my lip and eyed Liam uncertainly. "Should I have guards?"

Liam looked up at me sharply, his forehead creasing. "Do you want to have guards?"

I shook my head, surprised that he would even ask. No, I did not want people following me around all day. The flockies treated me like royalty, and the rogues were too scared of my mother to do anything much, even if they were in a bad mood with me, and that effectively meant that I was in every shifter's good books right now. I didn't need guards to protect me, but I did wonder if I might need them for appearances.

Liam stared at me a moment longer, then turned back to the paperwork. "Then you're not having guards."

"Okay," I murmured. "Cool. Just wondering. I just ... I don't want to make life more difficult for you than it already is. You know?"

"It's cute that you're worried, Eva," he said. "But I don't really give a shit what the pack thinks. If I don't need guards, then neither do you. Was it a good run?"

"Yeah, actually. It was alright. Have you been out here the whole time?"

I saw the hesitation on Liam's face, but he didn't let the silence last longer than a heartbeat. "No. Not the whole time. I, um ... I went to see Felix."

And that easily, my stomach was tying itself in knots. There was a part of me that wanted to shake him, but I tried to keep my tone gentle. "Again?"

He nodded. And although he was still staring at the papers, his eyes had lost focus, and I knew he wasn't really seeing them.

"Did he have anything interesting to say?" I asked.

Liam gave me a rueful grin that was somehow lacking all amusement. "He swore at me some. But once we'd got that out the way ... I don't know. It was civil enough. I have questions about some things that I don't remember too well ... or can't make sense of. And he's got questions, too. So it mostly works."

Well, I wished that it would stop working. Because I didn't like him talking to his brother, and I reckoned that was logical enough. Felix may have been the lesser of three evils, but he was still a first class douchebag, and more importantly, I didn't like him.

"Is that why you went? To ask him shit?" I asked. I was trying not to let the sullenness show - honestly I was - but it wasn't easy. My voice had come out a fraction grumpier than I'd been expecting.

Liam nodded at me warily. "That was part of it, yeah. He'll be dead this time next week, so if I don't get the answers now, I never will. And I'm not sure I want to spend the rest of my life wondering about it."

"The other part is guilt," I said quietly. It wasn't a question really. One glance at his face could tell me as much. "If it's because of that sad puppy dog act he's got going on, forget about it. This time last week, he was trying to rip your throat out."

He acknowledged that with a little shrug. And there was silence. It lasted for quite a while, and I began to get uncomfortable after a minute. I shuffled in place a little and picked at my fingernails, wanting to break it, but it was obvious that Liam was mulling something over, and I wanted to give him a chance to say it. But instead, he just swallowed it all down and changed the subject entirely.

"I found out that legally he's still the Beta until he's convicted," he said. "But once that's sorted, we'll be free to pick someone. I asked him if he had any ideas."

"Right, because whoever he suggests is likely to be a stand-up guy," I murmured.

Liam acknowledged that with a wry smile and half a nod. "Well, I figured as much, so I cross-checked with Seth and Charlie and my grandparents afterwards. And one of the names he gave me is actually a decent suggestion."

I leaned forwards, my eyebrows rising, because I had a vested interest in making sure the new Beta was not a total shithead. We'd have to hang out with him ... a lot. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. There's a guy called Mal who was about to be promoted to Delta before ... y'know ... everything happened. He's mated to one of my half-sisters - she's called Kelsey. She wasn't ever properly claimed, because Dad wasn't interested in the girls, but that doesn't really matter."

"Okay. I could get behind that," I murmured.

"Well, it gets better," Liam said, smiling now. "I don't think Felix knows this, but Mal was actually rogue-born. Him and his mother joined the pack when she found her mate. It was a long time ago now - before they changed the rules. He was only a baby, so he's probably ninety percent flockie by now, but I figure even ten percent rogue is a win here."

"Damn right it is," I murmured. It was kinda sad, really, but I felt a tiny bit of excitement kindling in my chest at the idea of there being another rogue living here. Even if it turned out he was hardly a rogue at all. "When can he start?"

Liam rolled his eyes with obvious fondness. "Look, I don't actually know him, Eva. I can't promise that he's nice. I'm mostly after Kelsey. From what I remember, she's real fierce, and I reckon you'll like her. But it sounds like both of them will do fine. If it's cool with you, I'd like to test them out."

I nodded slowly. In all honesty, I'd been hoping that we could pick Seth and Lilah. Not as a couple, obviously. But I reckoned I would have to pry Seth's stethoscope out of his cold, dead hands. He'd made no secret of loving his current job. And poor Lilah was a single mother and wallowing in her grief. They could still help us, but maybe not as our Betas.

"Awesome. We'll meet them after we're done with the Deltas," he said.

I froze in horror. One glance over my shoulder showed me the group of men approaching which had prompted him to say that in the first place. I made a pitiful face at Liam. "Oh no. Please no. That's not today, is it?"

The bastard didn't actually answer me. His lips twitched, but he just put his head down and went back to his work. And before I could make a run for it, the Deltas had converged on our table. They were, of course, all looking at Liam, but he didn't even glance up.

I plastered on an innocent smile in the blink of an eye and turned to greet them. I'd gotten very good at that. Productive-Luna-Mode was automatic and nearly effortless at this point.

"Hi, boys," I said cheerfully. "Come on - gather around. Did you bring the patrol rota?"

"Luna," some of them murmured dutifully. Two of them bothered to glance in my direction while they said it. The rest didn't even manage that much. Not a single one bothered to answer the question.

As much as I hated looking at their faces, this would be fun. My job wasn't to fix the patrol rota. Not really. My job was to wind them up. There were ten of them - big, grumpy-looking guys who were all cut from the same mould. I was pretty sure at least half of them had the exact same buzzcut. Normally, I might have thought twice about pissing them off, but they wouldn't dare do anything while Liam was there. I sincerely doubted that they would even raise their voices at me, no matter the provocation.

There were some benefits to being the Luna, as it turned out. No one was brave enough to criticise me anymore.

"Wow. Okay then. If you didn't bring the rota, this meeting isn't going to be very productive," I muttered.

In answer, one of the Deltas skirted the table to deposit the rota sheet beside Liam. I couldn't reach it, let alone read it, and if he'd been trying to make a point, then it had fallen a little flat. Because again, Liam didn't even glance up.

"It was actually changed a few weeks ago, Alpha," he said, a little uncertainly. The lack of interest from Liam was putting him off. "So I don't think it needs updating yet."

He got no acknowledgement of that whatsoever. And with Liam ignoring him and him ignoring me, this was going to be a very long, very tedious conversation. But I didn't let that knock the smile off my face. We were in charge of the pack, and that meant we always got the last laugh.

"Well, I think we'll change it anyway," I said brightly. "Because we get raided a lot, and that means it's not working."

They did not like that. A few of the Deltas even shot me nasty glares before they got a handle on themselves. I was calling them incompetent, and I was calling Mason - their idea of a perfect Alpha - incompetent, and the fact that I was a girl probably made it sting all the more.

"Alpha, perhaps we could go somewhere a little more private?" one of them asked stiffly. "I don't think this will take long if we can rid ourselves of any ... um ... distractions."

Liam finally put his pen down. He stared at the man who had spoken.
His wolf was already riled, because there were a dozen strangers around us, so it didn't take much to push him over the edge for the second time that day. The wave of dominance washed straight over me, warming me as it went, and it crashed into the Delta with bruising force. I actually saw him wince a little.

"Can you see Eva?" Liam asked. "And hear her?"

The man went an alarming shade of red. He seemed to be finding his boots very interesting, all of a sudden. "Uh. Yes, sir. I can."

"Great. Just checking."

He went back to work. And the Deltas were left to eye me unhappily. They thought it was beneath them to even talk to a girl, let alone take orders from one. And that made my job all the more amusing.

I dragged the sheet across the table towards me and glanced it over. I wasn't really reading it, of course, because that would have involved some actual effort on my part. Instead, I just mustered up a disgusted expression - a scrunched up nose, a creased forehead, and wide, horrified eyes.

"Oh, Goddess. It's no wonder we keep getting raided. Look at this mess."

The Deltas looked like they were desperately trying not to laugh. A few of them exchanged derisive looks, clearly not caring that I could see them.

"The times are randomised, Luna," one of the older men said. His voice was slow and overly patient, like I was being incredibly stupid. "It stops the rogues learning the patrol schedule."

"Oh, you poor, ignorant babies," I retorted. "You think this is an appropriate counter measure? Every pack does this. And all the rogues know it. It leaves your intervals between patrols wide open. A raider sits at one side of the border, watching the patrols go around, and when he sees a nice big gap, he tells his friends on the other side of the pack, who go ahead and use it."

The Delta who had been so disgustingly condescending opened his mouth and closed it again. His friends exchanged a series of uncertain looks behind him. They hadn't known about that tactic, I didn't think. Few flockies did.

"We have cameras," he said eventually. "On the border. So even if they do dodge the patrols, we can spot them."

"Yeah, about that," I laughed. "Have you ever actually caught anyone using the cameras?"

That earned me a lot of scowls and frustrated glowers. It was just something they did - something which made them feel clever and in control - but it had never really worked. It took them quite a while to answer me.

"I think so, yes," one man mumbled eventually. "There was at least one occasion. A lone, perhaps? I'd have to check. It was before my time."

I didn't bother to bite back my laugh. "They look for the cameras, sweetie. You make it real easy for them, by putting them on the border like that. I guarantee they know where each and every one is by now. What you want to do instead is move them a hundred metres further into the territory. That way they can't scout them out unless they're already on our land. In which case, it's much easier to catch them. Goddess. Does no one ever think in this pack?"

Absolute silence from the Deltas. The closest man rubbed at the back of his neck, looking more than a little flustered, and I smiled to myself as I peered at the patrol schedule once more. Liam was right, as always. I was enjoying this immensely. I made a few tutting sounds as I scanned the times and used a pen filched from Liam to cross out two huge blocks.

"Well, we can get rid of these, for starters," I said. "Statistics show us that raids don't happen in the hour after dawn or the hour before sunset. That's when they're eating their breakfast and dinner. No one wants to miss putting their kids to bed, and no one wants to run on a full stomach."

It stung a little - teaching them our secrets. But I wasn't going to spill any of the really important ones. I just needed to give them enough new tactics to make it believable when the raids stopped altogether. Even that much had proved enough to get them listening to me properly for the first time. I had a sea of wide, attentive eyes, even if most of them were attached to very disdainful faces.

"As for the rest ... the trick isn't making it random," I said matter-of-factly. "The trick is making the pattern complicated enough that the raiders have to sit watching the patrols for hours in order to understand it. That's how you catch them. That and shortening patrol intervals as much as physically possible. The best way to do that is using the younger, faster fighters to run the border solo. Not to engage the rogues, but just to give us an early warning."

Some of them looked like they were about to burst a blood vessel. One or two looked genuinely interested now. But most of them were just staring sullenly at the rota while they pretended to listen to what I was saying.

"Also, stop organising training sessions in front of the pack house. Split everyone into little groups and have them do it near the outlying houses. That'll double our response times at the very least," I said, finally pausing for a breath. They all looked adequately pissed off now, so I reckoned I'd done enough. "So ... can you remember all that? Or do I need to write it down for you?"

"No, Luna," one of them said quietly. The strain in his voice made it sound like it was physically hurting him to take orders from me. "I can remember. We'll implement those changes today."

"Great. Dismissed."

They couldn't get away fast enough. I watched them all scatter back to their respective fighters. There were a lot of the dirty glances thrown back at me, and there was a lot of muttering amongst themselves along the way. I had no doubt they were talking shit, but who cared? They were just flockies.

The second they were gone, Liam pushed his work away again and grinned at me. He'd obviously been listening to every word.

"Thank you," he said. "That was ... very cathartic."

"You're welcome," I laughed. We'd have to fake a couple of foiled raids to make it believable, of course, but that was the brunt of the work done. "Is that Mal waiting?"

There was a young man standing near the cadets, his eyes fixed on us with a deeply-ingrained wariness. He wasn't quite close enough to hear us, but close enough that it was obvious he was waiting to talk to us. A few of the boys had gathered around him in an excited knot, and I could tell they were asking questions, because they were always asking questions.

"Yes," Liam said, beckoning him forwards. "That's him. But I don't see Kelsey."

Mal came to stand before us, his hands in his pockets and his eyes wary. He looked like he was in his mid-twenties at least. He wore his dark hair longer and messier than most flockies. And if he was half rogue, then I reckoned the other half had been human, because he looked Romani. He had clearly come straight from training, because he was sweating through his shirt, and there was blood on his face.

"Is there something I can do for you?" he said.

He wasn't afraid to stare at us - that much was evident. There was a part of me which liked him already. Most of the flockies tended to grovel when Liam so much as glanced in their direction, so ingrained was their obedience to the Alpha. It was convenient for us, but it was also a little pathetic, and it did get tiring after a while.

But by refusing to lower his gaze, Mal was making it very clear that if we wanted his respect, let alone a submission, we were going to have to earn it. And in that regard, I reckoned he was probably a lot more rogue than we'd imagined.

"Yes, there is," Liam said. "But we'll wait for your mate before we start. I don't want to be repeating myself."

Mal inclined his head towards the pack house. He had a thunderous look on his face now. "Kelsey's on her way. But I should probably warn you that she's not going to want to play happy family with you, so if that's what you're after, I'll be leaving now."

Liam shook his head, looking faintly amused. "That's not what I'm after. But the sentiment does surprise me. Here I was, thinking you were both friends with my brother."

"Wouldn't say friends," Mal said quickly and somewhat cautiously. "We both tried our best to stay away from him, if I'm being honest. I don't think he liked either of us."

I smiled to myself. If Mason had liked him, then I didn't think we'd get along. This was definitely a good sign. Mal saw the look on my face, because unlike the Deltas, he was actually looking at me as much as he was looking at Liam. Of his own free will. And his forehead creased, because this went both ways. He'd figured we were friendly with Mason and mistrusted us because of it.

"Then help me out here, would you?" Liam asked, bracing his arms against the table. "Because I'm struggling to understand why he would nominate someone like you for a promotion. Someone with a questionable background and very questionable loyalties. Someone he didn't even like."

Mal's jaw tightened a fraction. It had been a very subtle dig at his rogue heritage, but I was willing to bet he had to put up with that shit constantly here, and it had probably pissed him off. "Maybe he did it because I'm good at my job."

"I hope so," Liam said quietly. "Because I don't want you for a Delta. I have something else in mind. Hi, Kelsey."

That had been directed at the new arrival - a tall girl who stopped within arm's length of Mal and stared at Liam with a wary kind of curiosity. Her hair was light. It wasn't Lilah's striking white-blond, but it was close. But it was her eyes that really caught my attention. They were green, not dark brown like the rest of the Vaughans, and quick enough in their movements that I could tell she was clever.

It was only when I saw them both together that it hit me. I'd seen them before. They'd been at the Crochet Club, and I remembered because Mal had been the only fighter there. That was all it took to convince me. These two were going to be our Betas, whether they liked it or not.

"Hi," she said. "Is this going to take long? I've left a bunch of twelve-year-olds with scissors and glue and no adult supervision, and I'm beginning to regret that decision."

"No, it's not going to take long," I assured her before Liam could speak again. He'd suggested testing them out first because he hadn't wanted to push me into agreeing at such short notice. But that wasn't a problem anymore. And I reckoned they at least deserved to know what job they were being considered for. "We were just wondering if the two of you would be interested in a fairly major career change."

They looked at each other. And then they looked back at us. And there had been enough excitement in my voice that they were now, all of a sudden, looking a tiny bit interested.