Hi everyone! Welcome back. The picture at the top is Eva and Liam being very, very cute in Chapter 60. Just wanted to make sure you all got a chance to see it. And below is Bryn Llewellyn. Both drawn of course by the very talented LittleLoneWriterGirl :)

I'd only known Kelsey for ten days, but she was fast becoming my favourite flockie ever. And that was saying something, because I liked Seth a lot. She didn't take herself too seriously, but she also wasn't afraid to stand up for herself. Even to me. And that was a brilliant quality for a Beta to have.

I circled her warily. Her eyes were watchful, but her ears were respectfully low, because you'd best bet that I'd wrung a submission or two out of her the hard way. She was older than me and a good deal heavier too, and both of those things were a useful advantage in a fight. But they didn't stop me walloping her every time we clashed. She'd admitted early on that her only training had been lazy wrestling matches with her mate.

I tightened the circle a fraction, so that she had to make a sharp turn to match me, and then I sprang at her. My teeth closed around her scruff - not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to keep her from twisting around and reaching my throat.

She didn't even try to free herself. She just lunged for my hind leg and yanked it, taking the leg out from under me so we both went down in a tangle of snapping teeth and scrambling claws. I yelped as her teeth crushed a tendon into the bone beneath. A moment later, she had released me, none the worse for it, so that her jaws could find a new home, and it was me making her squeal with a tight grip on her ear.

Vicious as it looked, we weren't trying to hurt each other. Every now and then, one of us would end up breaking the skin, but it was always an accident. After an hour of this, our pelts were now peppered with blood, even though the injuries beneath had already scabbed over.

Kelsey was impressively ruthless about it all. Most of the women had been too afraid of hurting someone or getting hurt themselves to do anything more than wrestle with their jaws closed. In fairness to them, today was the first time we'd done any training in wolf form.

I'd started the 'self-defence' lessons a week ago. They were open to every single one of the women. The first time, there had been a grand total of four of us. But I'd put them through their paces anyway, and I'd made sure plenty of people had seen us stopping for cake and lemonade halfway through, and the next day we'd had a lot more participants. Now there were two dozen of us arrayed on the lawn.

I fought tooth and nail to put Kelsey onto her back. And then I used my weight to keep her there while I panted into her fur, letting the heat from the exertion dissipate. It hadn't taken long, all things considered. There was a steady murmur of voices from the onlookers. The other girls were watching and learning.

Lilah was also observing with her daughter balanced on her knees. She hadn't found the courage to join in yet, pleading the pregnancy as an excuse, but she came out every day to watch us and offer encouragement, which was sweet of her.

Behind her stood a group of sullen-looking men who seemed to have made it their life's work to ruin this for us. They had made so much noise the first day - jeering, mostly - that Liam had started lending Mal to us in the mornings. His only job was to sit there and tell them to go and screw themselves when they got too loud. Right now, I could feel his cold brown eyes on me, because I had my teeth around his mate's throat.

Deciding that I had made my point, I let Kelsey up and sneezed - an apology of sorts. She had to spend a lot more time lying in the mud than I did, but that was because she was learning. Her tail was low and sweeping back and forth as she licked beneath my chin and then trotted towards her mate.

Liam was talking to one of the elders nearby while he waited for me to finish. I loped over, just because I was in a playful mood, and I jumped up at him, my paws resting on his side. Liam scratched behind my ears with one hand and pushed me down with the other, but not before I had left a muddy smear across his jacket.

"Eva," he said. It was a warning, albeit a very gentle one.

He left one hand resting on the scruff of my neck even when I was back on all fours, his fingers scratching the skin beneath. I couldn't help leaning into it a little bit. But when I hiked up, getting ready to jump at him again, he used a handful of my scruff to stop me.

"No, I know. I've spoken with him several times now," he was saying to the elders. "It's always about New Dawn, not our pack, so there's no need for you to get involved. Or worry."

Liam hadn't loosened his hold on me, so I twisted around and closed my jaws around his hand. I wasn't breaking the skin. I wasn't even hurting him. But it was a firm enough grip that he couldn't pull free. And then I looked up at him with big, innocent eyes, my tail wagging back and forth, while he did his best to ignore me.

"Alpha Vincent is an important ally," the greyest, most wrinkled elder said. I got the sense that Liam was being told off. "I would hate to see relations sour."

Liam let out a long, weary breath. "Look, I've returned every single one of his calls. But some of the accusations he makes ... they're verging on paranoia. He thinks Alpha Jace is working with rogues, and the solutions he proposes are increasingly violent. There's only so much I can humour him - you know? Isn't New Dawn also an important ally?"

The elder seemed stumped by that one. He took a moment to come up with a counter-argument. "Yes. Of course. But our pack has always been closer with Vincent's. I doubt he would make these accusations without good reason. Perhaps it would be wise to investigate further."

"I have," Liam said, a little indignantly. "But it's all nonsense, as far as I can tell. He doesn't have any proof. He doesn't even have reasonable grounds to be suspicious."

"Check again," he snapped. "I think it would be well within Alpha Jace's capabilities to do such things without leaving a shred of proof. Vincent agrees. Chris agrees. Jackson agreed before his untimely death. As did Mason. I mean, for Goddess' sake, even Jace's brother agrees, by the sounds of it. You would do well to take us seriously."

"And I will. When I've seen some actual evidence. So please don't go running your mouth to the Lowland elders in the meantime. If it gets back to Vincent that I don't believe him, you'd best believe relations are going to sour faster than warm milk."

I didn't like this conversation. It felt like we'd been having it over and over this past week. Liam was trying to play nice with the other Alphas and pretend like he was Mason born again in terms of politics, but they still didn't trust him, so we hadn't learnt much.

I began to chew on Liam's hand, ever so gently. He let me for the most part, but when I moved my mouth onto his arm and tried to jump up again, he knocked my muzzle away.

"Eva," Liam said again. This time a little firmer. "Quit that."

But my wolf was in one of those moods. And so I stared him right in the eye and did it again.

He didn't hesitate to grab me, even though I could have taken his hand off with very little effort. He knew I'd never actually bite him. He pried my jaw open and pulled me over, all at once and so quickly that I didn't get much chance to resist him.

He put me on my back and held me there. I let out a pitiful whimper which was entirely for show. But once he'd released me again, I stayed put - simply rolling onto my side and beating my tail against the ground and grinning from ear to ear. I was lying between his legs.

My wolf loved it. It was one big game to her - and perhaps not a very wise one. She was all too aware that he outranked us, so she liked to push him and push him until she got a reaction. I had no idea what she was trying to achieve, but lately it had been getting a lot more frequent.

The elder was eyeing me with a definite curl to his lips. Probably because I was interrupting the oh-so-serious conversation with my antics. He stood up straighter and fixed a flat stare on Liam. "We are only here to advise you, Alpha Vaughan. Whether you take that advice is, of course, entirely up to you. Think on it. I trust you'll make the right decision."

And with that, he turned to leave. Liam stared at his retreating back, the muscles in his jaw writhing in frustration. The flockies were good at being passive-aggressive. Better than we'd ever be. And this last week, the elders had been getting progressively grumpier with us. We'd been disturbing the status quo with all our quick changes.

And they weren't the only people we were upsetting. We'd started paying the women proper wages for their work, and boy were the fighters pissed about it, even though their pay-cuts had been almost negligible in the end. Half of them glowered at us in a way that made me think they were close to mutiny. One had even spat in my direction yesterday - and been taken by surprise when I'd returned the favour with a few colourful words to boot.

Liam was still looking a bit stressed, so I rolled onto my feet, shook myself off, and then nipped at his fingers, this time affectionately. I followed it up with a few rough licks when I'd got him smiling.

He caught my attention with a jerk of his head and then pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, just far enough to let me see it, before pushing it back in.

"Is that what I think it is?" I asked through the link.

Liam nodded. "Found it in our room, so someone must have dropped it off this morning. I think it was probably Nia, because our whiskey is gone, and so is all the cash from my wallet."

That bitch. I supposed that was what we got for leaving the patio doors wide open all day long. She would only have needed to jump the garden wall and walk right in.

"Alcohol and money," I mused. "Could have been any rogue. But yeah, I think you're right. That has Nia written all over it."

He gave me a nudge with his boot, and I knew what that meant. We were running late. I let go of his hand and shook myself off. Following at his heels, we went far enough into the woods that he could shift, too, and then we ran to the sanctuary together.

It took twice as long as it should have because we kept stopping to scrap with each other and play chase. It was fun, yes, but it was also delaying tactics. Neither of us really wanted to reach our destination. Today was Monday, and that meant that we had to go and pretend to be religious for an hour. My only consolation was that Liam's piece of paper was going to make the ceremony a lot spicier than usual.

***

I could've sworn that they had built the seats in the sanctuary to be uncomfortable on purpose. They were only used for the longer ceremonies, apparently. The priestesses preferred to make the pack stand up. But today was certainly going to be a long ceremony. The full moon had fallen on a Monday, and that made it a very special day.

I wouldn't have minded it so much if they'd been doing actual religious things. The Moon Goddess that they worshipped was the Welsh one, the daughter of Beli Mawr, and I liked hearing those stories. But instead, they used the ceremonies to drone on about loyalty to the pack and obedience and having as many babies as you possibly could, all of which I hated for obvious reasons. It wasn't really religion. It was just propaganda in fancy-dress.

My back was aching before an hour was up. I couldn't seem to sit still, and the constant wriggling had already caught Mal's attention. He wasn't interested in the ceremony, but he was interested in eyeing me. He'd been doing it all damn week, and it did leave me wondering where I stood with him, because he had warmed up to Liam much, much quicker.

Before I could die of boredom, the priestess who had been speaking sat down rather abruptly, and a silver-haired man took her place. He had no name, I'd been told, because he was born into his job and had never really been considered a 'person.'

Liam had explained his role to me. He was the 'derwydd' - the man in charge of the priestesses, because obviously there was no way Silver Lake could let women make any important decisions. He was also the one who marked them all so they wouldn't find their mates - a decision they made of their 'own free will,' apparently, in order to better serve the Goddess.

He held a lot of influence in the pack, for obvious reasons. In theory, he bowed only to the Goddess, but he was not immune to Liam's wolf, and he was also well aware that we could defund the entire sanctuary and generally make his life a living hell. So he was a lot more obedient to us than he'd like to think.

He stood now, holding the piece of paper that we'd given him before the ceremony. It had been written by Bryn and Hayden, I was told. And apparently they'd had a lot of fun with it. Bryn had provided the sass, Hayden had provided his knowledge of the religion and his ability to spell words correctly, and together they'd created quite the speech. And now the strange silver-haired man had to read it. Out loud. To the entire pack.

"This is a missive from my counterpart at New Dawn," he began slowly. I wondered if the whole pack could tell that he was having to force the words out. "He has pored over the holy writings, and he has some important knowledge to share with us."

He paused there, glancing at Liam, and he was met with a flat stare. No escape. No leniency. I wondered if this was physically painful for him.

"There is no mention of same-sex mates in any of the scriptures, save for a few vague references which have been mistranslated and taken out of context over the years. In fact, all of the evidence we have points to a grave misunderstanding of the Goddess's will."

I started smiling. And once I'd started, it was very hard to stop. The man threw another glance at Liam - this one openly pleading, but he was once again ignored. There was nothing for it but to swallow his bigotry and continue reading.

"The Goddess would not mate men with men and women with women if it was an abomination," he said. "They should be allowed to live with their soulmates without fear of harassment. Show them the same support and encouragement that you would offer to any other mated couple."

One of the fighters got up quite abruptly and left the sanctuary. And it was pretty obvious that the words were not sitting right with him, but it had half of the pack turning to watch him leave and probably wondering if they could get away with the same thing.

Without us having to say a word, Mal stood up, hands in his pockets, and he followed the man out ever-so-quietly. And that was enough of a threat for the people who remained. They turned back to face the front with wide eyes and overly attentive looks.

The man went on to read the whole damn thing. And it turned out that Bryn and Hayden had written quite the essay. The man had to explain that people without mates were not 'cursed.' They were probably just asexual. He had to explain that changing your gender identity or identifying as nonbinary was not offensive to the Goddess. It was the opposite, really. Because it meant they were trying to be true to themselves and live the life she had gifted them to the fullest.

There were a lot of confused faces in the room. In fairness, a lot of the flockies looked like they were genuinely trying to listen and understand. But there were a fair few who were shooting incredulous looks at Liam and me, as if they couldn't understand why we weren't putting a stop to this kind of talk. We stared them down one by one.

At some point, Mal came back to sit beside us. He didn't say anything, but I did see him wiping his bloody knuckles on his jeans. No one else left the room. And after a few more minutes had passed, the guy who had stormed out came limping back in, sporting a newly rearranged face, and he took his seat again with a ducked head and all due meekness.

"We must acknowledge that we were in the wrong," the man finished, after nearly half an hour. "Only then can the Goddess forgive us this lapse in judgement. This defiance of her will. We must show nothing but total acceptance if we are to redeem ourselves."

And with that, he withdrew from the circle, his relief evident, and the flockies were left to murmur amongst themselves.

***

I could have sworn that the forest air had never smelt so sweet. Every time the wind swept past me, I took another big lungful and beamed from ear to ear. I rapped on the side of the car to let Seth know he could pull away. He'd been kind enough to drive us here, but he'd refused in no uncertain terms to come anywhere near the camp, even though I'd promised him no one would try to shank him this time.

Liam was shouldering a big rucksack. It contained all kinds of things which we'd filched from the attic, knowing damn well that no one would miss them. Food, old phones, a dozen pairs of gloves, rope, tarpaulins, a cookpot, and even a pair of sleeping bags. Which was lucky, because there was a high chance that someone had already stolen our old ones.

I was already wearing my own rucksack, and it was a calming, settling weight on my shoulders. It had always been associated with that feeling of excitement and a fresh beginning that I got whenever we moved camp. And I was getting that feeling now, because we were going home. We could do that now. Whenever we wanted. We were the Alpha and Luna, and no one could call us deserters. Alright, maybe we couldn't stay long, but it was still a very welcome taste of freedom after weeks in the pack.

Together, we set off through the undergrowth. This was a campsite that we'd used many times before. Before five minutes were up, I recognised a split old oak tree and started grinning. The tents were a blur of green and brown beyond it, and the wind was blowing a thin haze of smoke through the trees towards us.

We walked right into the camp itself unchallenged. And the nearest fire happened to belong to my family. Most of them were sat around it, passing around a mess-tin full of popcorn, while my mother had another pot full of kernels on the fire. She was the first to notice us, and I watched a slow smile spread across her lips even as she beckoned me closer with one finger.

I went to claim my hug, stunned as always that I had grown taller than her at some point. And once she had released me, it was only to clap me on the back and then turn to my aunts and uncles and siblings and cousins.

"Let's give a warm welcome to the Alpha and Luna of Silver Lake," she said.

They all obliged her with a chorus of loud, enthusiastic jeering and booing. It had been a mistake to go near the fire, because I was caught right in the middle of everyone, and I had twigs and wet leaves thrown at me from all sides. Liam had to duck a particularly well-aimed pinecone, and he threw me a bemused look.

"Yeah, yeah. Very funny," I muttered. "Do you all want your hugs or nah?"

They were already climbing to their feet, which answered my question, but Uncle Rhys couldn't seem to resist making a face and wrinkling up his nose. "I dunno, really. Is being a flockie contagious?"

I rolled my eyes even as they all laughed. There were a lot more jokes like that, and I made sure to give as good as I got. They all had their turns for a hug - Dad first, and then whoever was closest to me at any given moment. By the end of it, my hair had been thoroughly tousled, and I was pretty sure I smelt like a rogue again.

Liam wasn't very good with hugs, so he got fist bumps from most people, and then Sam foisted the toddler into his arms. He stood there happily enough with her perched on his shoulders while he said his hellos. I kept one eye on him, half to make sure they weren't crowding him too much, and half because I loved seeing him smile.

When it had all subsided a little, my mother found her way back to my side. She looked me up and down carefully, her eyes lingering on the fresher bruises. She lifted my chin ever-so-gently with two fingers to frown at a particularly nasty graze on my jawline.

"Training," I told her by way of explanation, half-smiling. "With the flockie girls."

In the pack, I didn't have much cause to fight, which was probably why she was worried. But she nodded now, albeit with her eyebrows raised and a faint look of surprise on her face.

"You look well," she said. "If a little tired."

I was tired. It was partly the work, and partly because Liam and I had not been making any effort whatsoever to keep away from each other this past week. But like hell was I going to admit that. At the pack, we had to pretend that we were in love. Here, we had to pretend that we weren't.

I rubbed the back of my neck. "Yeah. I guess. Where's Rhodri?"

He was turning eighteen in two days. It was our excuse for coming back. We were going to stay long enough to celebrate with him, and it would probably serve as my eighteenth birthday too, even though that was technically in a week's time.

"Next fire over," Mam said, giving me a nod in the correct direction. She didn't look at all surprised by that line of questioning. "He'll be pleased to see you."

Perhaps. But I was a bit wary of seeing him again. I was afraid that he wouldn't be much better, and that I'd feel the return of the overwhelming guilt which had haunted me since we'd got him out of the cells. The guilt that he had got hurt because he'd been trying to help us, and that we'd sat oblivious for an entire day before realising he was being tortured.

I let Liam finish saying hello to everyone before I caught his eye. And then I let him know where I was going with a quick jerk of my head. He nodded, adjusting the toddler's weight on his shoulder, and then he held up a few fingers to let me know he'd follow me later. So I was alone for the walk to the next clearing. We tended to arrange our tents in rings around each fire, and the fires were located wherever there was a convenient break in the trees.

A pair of wolves came bounding out of the ferns to harass me before I'd got very far, no doubt summoned by the link. The bigger, lanky one was Bryn. I'd recognise those mischievous eyes anywhere. But the smaller one made my breath catch in my throat. Eira didn't shift very often. These days, it was one of the things that often triggered seizures. But since today was the full moon, and she had to do it sooner or later, she must have decided to risk it.

They came up to me with their tails low and their ears flat against their heads. Here were two people that were still below me in the pecking order. Although I wasn't sure how much longer that would last with Bryn, now that he was getting so damn tall.

He dropped a rabbit at my feet in order to greet me properly. I gave him a good scratch behind the ears, and then I thoroughly messed Eira's fur up, and before long, they had gone racing off again. There was a lot of playful growling and a lot of snapping, and I snorted to see Eira tackle Bryn into a bushy hogweed. He was, of course, being so very gentle with her that he didn't stand a chance of winning their fights.

I found Rhodri at a big, smokeless fire. He was sat up, which was very encouraging, even if there were a pair of crutches leaning against his chair. He was saying something to Hannah - smiling at her, the picture of innocence, while she was giving him the most murderous look I had the misfortune of seeing on a person. They weren't getting along any better, then. It was good to know some things would never change.

When he laid eyes on me, that smile became a grin. I was still getting used to how he looked now. The injuries on his face were scarring, and they would take a few months to fade properly. A cursive glance at the rest of him told me that the missing skin where his tattoo had been was still open and weeping and that his arms were a mess.

"Hey, flockie," Rhodri said. "Fancy seeing you here. Come sit."

He sounded tired. But there was a note of quiet delight in his voice that reassured me a little. He wasn't angry at me. All the same, I didn't dare try to hug him. He wasn't half-dead anymore - he wouldn't have let me, I didn't think.

He had the only chair, but there were plenty of cut logs, so I plonked myself down on one of them and huffed a relieved breath out. Dumped the rucksack onto the ground beside me. Fixed my stare on Rhodri.

"How are you?" I asked him.

He shrugged at me, his lips twisted into a smile that was lacking all humour. "Oh, you know. Great. Today I managed to piss all by myself, so that's pretty cool."

It was encouraging that he was even finding the energy to joke about it. I suspected it meant he wasn't as resentful of his new state of existence as I'd been expecting him to be. Rhodri had never been built for sitting quietly. But pain and exhaustion had a way of changing that. Eira had been one of the bounciest, most outgoing people I'd known when she was little. Now, nine days out of ten, she was happy enough to lie in bed from dawn until dusk.

"That is pretty cool," I said. "Poor Hannah still can't do that, so don't go taking it for granted now."

"Only because you don't let me," she said waspishly. "And speaking of, I need to go in a bit."

She didn't even look up as she said it. She was scribbling in a notebook and periodically scrunching up her entire face, the pen pausing on the page. I'd seen her do that often enough when she was trying to calculate her insulin doses without the help of a calculator.

"Can you take her?" Rhodri asked me. "I'm not allowed to be alone with them anymore. In case ... you know."

That, he did sound a little bitter about. And it was probably because this decision had come from someone else. If our hostages decided to make a run for it, he was in no fit state to stop them, and being told that had clearly hurt his pride more than everything else combined.

"Sure," I sighed. Standing guard while she peed was not my favourite task, but someone had to do it. "Does Hayden want one too?"

I asked because he was asleep beside the fire. He was using a jacket for a pillow, and he hadn't woken up even with us all talking over his head. He looked way more innocent when he was sleeping.

Rhodri regarded him with something that looked dangerously close to affection. "Dunno. Kick him and find out."

I didn't have the heart to do that while he was sleeping so peacefully. So I just raised my eyebrows at Hannah and nodded towards the woods.

"Yeah, two secs," she said. "Just gotta inject this so I can eat when we get back."

The thought of food made my stomach growl. There was a pot of stew simmering over the fire, and it smelt pretty damn good. It had been a while since I'd got to eat proper camp food. Even if it was Hannah's fiercely guarded cookpot - no foraged foods, just meat and potatoes and vegetables she was already familiar with.

Hannah glanced one last time at her sums and then reached for her insulin. She had a proper pen for her long-lasting stuff, but she was having to cope with syringes for everything else, because that was all Aunt Fion had been able to get hold of. I dragged the sharps bin closer while she drew it up and then injected into the skin around her stomach.

It was never a very subtle procedure. And Hannah rarely made any effort to be secretive about it, because why should she? But I had never realised that there might be consequences to that until a young raider who had been passing the fire saw what she was doing and stopped in his tracks.

"Hey! Are you shooting up?" he demanded. He didn't give her a chance to answer before turning to Rhodri instead. "Oi, Llewellyn. Who's been giving our prisoners drugs? And where do I get some?"

Hannah didn't look the least bit surprised, and I suspected it wasn't the first time someone had mistaken her life-saving medication for a cheap high. Instead of snapping at him, she smiled broadly and drew up an entire syringe-full of insulin before extending it towards him. "Here. I'm willing to share. It's really good stuff. Promise. Just takes a while to kick in."

The raider reached for it, looking more than a little bit pleased with himself, but Rhodri shoved him away before he could take it, snapping, "It's insulin, you carrot. And if you took that much, you'd probably die, so just sod off, yeah?"

The raider let his hand fall. He regarded Hannah with wide, hurt eyes, even though they had probably never met before. And then he wandered off with many a mournful backwards glance.

The moment he was out of earshot, Rhodri sighed at Hannah. "I know he's a prize jackass, but you didn't need to try and kill him."

"Yeah, well," Hannah said icily. "He's a rogue, isn't he? So who cares?"

Rhodri eyed her sidelong. "Extra grumpy today, aren't we? Did you get out of the wrong side of the sleeping bag?"

She didn't answer him. She just sat there, staring off into space, with an incredibly unhappy look on her face all of a sudden. Her eyes were much too still, and her lips were downturned at the corners. It only lasted for a second before she looked up at me, but it was long enough to make me think there was something going on with her.

"Can we go now?" Hannah demanded.

I let out a really long sigh, and then I clambered to my feet. "Sure."

We didn't bother with the handcuffs much anymore. Cuffing their hands behind their backs was just plain impractical, but it was the only way to stop a shift. And if they did manage to shift in handcuffs, you had to make them pretty tight to the skin, or they'd just wriggle free, because paws were smaller than hands. And the constant pinch of metal had left both of them with bruising and pressure sores which needed time to heal.

So I let her walk freely into the woods with me, but I did make sure she stayed a pace ahead. Easier to keep an eye on her that way. I would rather have stayed by the nice warm fire. And that feeling was only compounded when I heard a cheerful, "Oi, Kendrick, over here," behind me and knew I was probably missing out on Rhodri and Liam being all cute and friendly with each other.

Before we'd got past the zone around camp where the guys tended to piss, Hannah grabbed my arm. She didn't seem to be bothered by the smell, but I was wrinkling up my nose and not keen to linger.

"I don't actually need to pee," she told me without hesitation. "I need to talk to you. Is there somewhere private we can go?"

"Well, Hannah," I said slowly and somewhat uncertainly, "weirdly enough, I was gonna take you somewhere private to do the peeing. So how about we just walk into the forest like normal, and then we'll go from there?"

She didn't look happy about it, throwing a worried glance back towards the camp, but she did walk a little further at my encouragement. I used my eyes and nose to make sure there was no one around us before raising my eyebrows at her.

"So you need pads ... or what?" I asked her. "You know you can ask in front of the guys, right? They know we have uteruses. It's not a big deal."

Hannah couldn't seem to stand still. "No. I have some. But I'm not even on my period. It's not like that. I guess ... well, I guess I need your help."

"Uh oh," I murmured. It was my turn to glance over my shoulder - almost like I was looking for help. Anything she had to drag me out into the woods for was not going to be a quick, easy favour.

Hannah didn't correct me. She ... well, honestly, the more I looked at her, the more I thought that maybe she was on the verge of tears, which was not like her at all. Her chest was rising and falling a little too fast, and her eyes were red, and she kept swallowing.

"I need to get out of here," she said.

Well, yeah, I wanted to say. No shit.

Because she was a hostage, and that was the whole point, wasn't it? But she looked upset enough that I didn't feel inclined to be a smartass. I just watched and waited.

"I don't mind if you have to send me to a different camp," she blurted. "I could even go to Silver Lake with you and Liam. I wouldn't try to escape or anything. I'd do whatever you told me. Honestly, I wouldn't care if you locked me in a cell day and night. I just can't stay here."

"Hannah," I said cautiously. "What's going on?"

She was worrying me a little. Mostly because I couldn't work out why she would possibly need to get out of here with such haste.

"I told you. I need to leave."

I eyed her for a moment longer, wondering if an explanation was forthcoming. But she was just standing there with desperate, expectant eyes. Eventually, I blew out slowly. "Look, I can talk to my mam. But you need to tell me what's going on. It's really hard for me to help if you don't."

I seriously doubted that Mam would send her to another raiding team. We were deliberately camped a long way from New Dawn to stop them mind-linking home. The other rogues wouldn't be. And if my mother wanted to order one of them to move their entire camp, she'd have to come up with a damn good reason. They didn't obey her blindly.

But Hannah just shook her head firmly. Evidently, she didn't want to tell me what the problem was. "Can't I just tag along when you go back to Silver Lake?"

"I dunno. I'd have to ask. But there's plenty of time to talk Mam around. We're not going back until Wednesday. Let me see what I can do."

"No, that's too long," she said quickly. "I need to be gone by tomorrow."

I could only shrug at her. "Sorry. Rhodri's turning eighteen, and we're all going to the pub. It's the whole reason we came back. If you want to be gone quicker than that, you'll have to go to another raiding team."

She swore quietly and ran a hand through her hair, looking closer to panicked than upset now. But she didn't say anything else, and all I could do was frown at her. Something was off about this whole thing.

"Why tomorrow?" I asked. "If it's so urgent, why not tonight?"

Hannah just stared at me. Her eyes were wide, and I could see the whites of them, like she was afraid of something. It took her a moment to snap out of it. And even then, it was only to force a very unconvincing smile onto her face.

"Look, just forget I said anything, okay?" she said. "If you don't want to help me, I'll figure something else out."

"I didn't say I wouldn't-" I began indignantly, but she had already brushed past me, heading in the direction of the camp, and I was left to stare after her. It was safe to say I had never been so confused in my entire life.