Another very gorgeous picture for you all today. It's Liam and Eva, of course, and once again you have LittleLoneWriterGirl to thank :)

We peered out from behind the trellis as we pulled our shoes on and obscured the rest of the bloodstains with mud. I had no doubt that we looked like we were fresh from a rubbish tip — and smelt even worse, but I didn't care much if it kept us from getting arrested.

The house itself was in disrepair. We were in a poor part of town, and I could see that the paint was peeling and the gutter was falling off. In the downstairs window, I could spy an elderly man and woman sat in armchairs. They looked like they were reading.

"It's some old people," Joel said. "Let's just go inside."

"And give them a heart attack?" I demanded. It was true that we'd have to go through a house to get out onto the street, but it didn't have to be this one.

"They don't need to see us."

I just shook my head derisively and looked around for some back-up. Liam had barely moved since he'd come over the fence. And it wasn't the fresh bite wound on his leg that was bothering him — instead, he was sat there, one arm held awkwardly against his body. It was the same arm which he'd injured at Haven. He hadn't even tried to put his shoes on, and it didn't take me long to put two and two together.

"It is still bothering you," I growled. "Come here. Let me have a look at it."

I felt along the bone gently, watching him closely for a reaction all the while. I got one as my fingers brushed the skin just above his elbow. I murmured an apology as I pressed a little bit harder. There was a lump in the bone and a ridge which shouldn't have been there.

"Liam, this is broken," I said accusatively. "And you've been running on it all day."

He just gave me a helpless shrug, as if to say what else was I supposed to do? And he had a point. The bone had clearly tried to mend itself, but one of the fragments was out of place, and now it was all a big mess that would need surgery.

"It's been okay mostly," he said.

"You heard him. He's fine," Joel muttered. "Now can we please go?"

I looked from Liam to the house and back again and heaved a sigh. "Alright, but we'll cross into the next garden. They've got their door ajar."

We hopped the fence. There was no shrubbery to hide behind in the neighbouring garden, so we tried to be quick. I had the knife tucked into my waistband and the tracker clutched in my palm. We had bought ourselves some time, but I knew all too well that Lowland was barely ten minutes' drive from here. The flockies would call in some well-dressed, gun-wielding reinforcements before long.

The back door led into a gloomy kitchen. We padded through on silent, steady feet. Through the wall, I could hear the sound of children playing and an adult's waspish rebukes. Joel took half a loaf of bread from a countertop as he passed, and I didn't try to stop him. My stomach had been snarling at me for the better part of twenty-six hours.

We reached a hallway lined with family photos. It ended in the front door to the house, thankfully. They had a few hooks on the wall beside the door, and they were using them to hang every bunch of keys they owned, by the look of it.

I snatched the first bundle of keys and resigned myself to a long process of trial and error. It was made more frustrating by the fact that I couldn't make a sound.

"Dave?" a woman's voice called from upstairs. "Have you seen my phone?"

We all froze in place. A moment later, I had unfrozen and resumed frantically trying each key in turn.

"No, love! Want me to call it for you?" 'Dave' shouted back from the adjacent room.

I winced. Evidently, he didn't wait for her to reply, because not two seconds later, I heard a faint chiming melody coming from a handbag which had been left on the stairs. Right next to us.

Ah, shit.

I was onto the second bunch of keys, and now I was properly hustling as I heard both the stomp of footsteps upstairs and the pitter-patter of Dave coming towards the hallway upon realising that he could hear the phone ringing. And to my unending relief, the third one turned into the lock.

It was excruciating to open the door quietly. We tumbled out onto the doorstep, and then I swung it shut behind us. Fast and then slooow as it neared the frame so it would be nice and soft. The handle went up and down in quick succession, and then we were hustling towards the pavement in case they had seen the door close.

I waved down the first car I saw. I could see the driver's reluctance as he rolled the window down to speak to me. I was filthy and bruised and looked like trouble, while he wore a suit and drove a sports car.

"Hey," I said. "You don't happen to know the way to Tesco, do you? We're not from here."

"Then it's your lucky day, sweetheart. Head down the road and turn left. You want to follow that road all the way to the end and turn right at the primary school."

I leant into the open window, offering him a sheepish smile. My shirt hung down a fraction lower than it should have to keep his eyes occupied. And meanwhile, I opened my fingers, letting the tracker fall down into the crevice beside the passenger seat where it would be safely out of sight.

"Sorry, I didn't catch that," I told him. "Left and then left again?"

He peeled his eyes from my chest for half a second to shake his head. "Left and then right at the primary school."

"Oh, okay. Cheers," I said, leaning back again and retreating to the curb.

I was greeted by Liam, who draped one of our jackets around my shoulders. It was too big for me, of course, and the lining was rough after so many washes, but it kept the wind off.

"I saw that," he said, the amusement shining in his eyes. "And I saw you flashing him. Thought you didn't show your boobs to just anyone?"

I folded my arms across my chest defensively. "I don't think he saw them. But I don't have a bra ... so ... who knows?"

I could sense Joel's hostility long before he shook his head at me, his lip curling upwards. "You pull shit like that, and then you take great offence when someone calls you a slut."

"It's usually you who's calling me a slut," I said mildly. "In fact, it's nearly always you. So it seems to me that it's a jealousy thing and not ... you know ... anything to do with the morality."

He just shook his head again, looking faintly amused. "There's not much to be jealous of."

"And how would you know?" I laughed. "Rest assured, Joel, that this entire town will get to see me topless before you do."

There it was. That familiar flash of cold, uncontrolled anger. It was easy to miss if you didn't know to look for it. A heartbeat later, he had moved his eyes away. Liam was restraining himself beautifully. He had been staring at Joel like he'd wanted to lay him out for the entirety of the conversation, but now he was looking at me instead.

"Now what?" he asked.

It was a good question.

***

My period was having a laugh — at my expense. I had my suspicions as we walked into the town centre, but they had proved very difficult to confirm. Tesco had kicked us out when I'd tried to use the toilet there, claiming that we had to be customers to use it. McDonalds seemed to guard the door to their restroom with a pin-code. And the public toilet in Wyst was charging money that we didn't have. So we'd gone and pissed in the bushes of a park, for lack of a better option.

And I'd been rewarded by the sight of blood. It really couldn't have picked a worse time. We'd retreated to an alley in the busiest part of town and pulled cardboard out of some massive industrial recycling bin to sit on. A few layers were enough to protect us from the rough tarmac and its tendency to leech all of the heat from your body. I was lying flat on it now — trying to remain as horizontal as possible so gravity couldn't do its evil work.

Joel came back from the street and sat on the edge of the cardboard, throwing his head back against the wall. I propped myself up on my elbows and looked at him expectantly.

"Well?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said irritably. "Sorry. They either pretend I'm invisible or claim they don't have any cash on them. Never mind that I can hear their bloody pockets chinking as they walk."

There was an older man across the alley with a Staffie lying across his lap. The dog knew there was something not right about us, and it had spent the first ten minutes barking until I had growled back to tell him to shut up. I'd thought the owner was asleep, but he lifted his head now to regard Joel with amused eyes.

"You really are new at this, aren't you?" he chuckled. "They're told not to give us any money. Because it's better to let us starve than risk us getting high on their money."

"Great," I said sarcastically. "Just great. Let's just hope Liam has some luck, then."

Joel just grunted. We had a long wait ahead of us, as it turned out. It was nearly an hour before Liam came back. The shadows were beginning to creep across the alley and throw us all into gloom. He had his hood up, but it was hard to mistake that imposing height and steady walk. When he was close enough, he threw a couple of packets down beside me. Pads and some salted peanuts.

"You didn't have to do that," I told him.

"Yes, I did," Liam replied, sitting down beside me. "I would've got more, but the security guard followed me around the shop. He wasn't even trying to be subtle about it."

I let out a heavy sigh. The shop staff tended to reserve those kind of underhand tactics for people of colour. I'd watched it happen to Rhodri a dozen times when we'd been growing up. They didn't often do it to white people, but Liam, like all of us, looked homeless, and that was excuse enough.

"And you still managed to nick stuff?" Joel asked him, sounding, if I was not mistaken, a little impressed.

Liam just shrugged at him. "You know I'm not actually a flockie, right?"

"Oh, I know. Easy to forget that, Alpha Vaughan."

"Stop bickering," I said absent-mindedly. "I need to ... um ... get sorted."

Liam held up his jacket to cover me from prying eyes while I got the pad in place. I felt a lot more comfortable when it was done. We started a long overdue feast on the little food we had. Joel was gracious enough to share the bread. We had two slices each. It wasn't much of a meal, and I ate the first of mine so quickly that I puked it up again, which was a miserable waste of food.

Liam had clearly stolen the peanuts for me, because I knew he didn't even like them. I ate as many as I could before realising that we didn't have water to wash them down. It wasn't like there was a stream to drink from. Humans took a lot of things for granted in their concrete jungles.

After the food, we went to sleep. We were all quite close together — for the warmth, but I made sure that I wasn't actually touching Joel. It was cold on the street, and the ground was as hard as rock beneath me, but it took me all of two minutes to get to sleep in the end. It had been days since I'd slept.

The next thing I knew, it was pitch-black, and I was being nudged awake by the tip of someone's boot. The boot was attached to a man, and the man was wearing a stab-proof vest and lots of shiny labels to inform me that the person disturbing my sleep was a police officer. He had a friend behind him.

"Wake up, folks," he said.

I pushed myself into a sitting position, making sure that my knife was hidden beneath my leg. It looked like Liam had reacted to being kicked awake more drastically than I had. He was on his feet and much too alert. Joel was quiet behind me. I suspected he was keeping his head down to be sure they didn't get a good look at his face.

"We've had a complaint from the building owner," the first officer said. "You all need to move on."

I made a disgusted sound in the back of my throat. "Yeah, well, the building owner is a prat. And so are you. We're just trying to sleep."

The police officer raised his eyebrows at me. "Sweetheart, if you continue to be verbally abusive, we can go down to the station and have a chat there."

"Verbally what?"

I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder, and then I heard the gruff voice which belonged to the older homeless man. "There's no point arguing, kiddo."

"Yes, there is," I muttered. "It's making me feel a bit better. I hope you're proud of yourselves, officers. What you just did — that's really commendable, that is. Wouldn't be surprised if you got a medal for it. Society will be so much safer when we're sleeping on a different pavement than we were before."

But I did pick up my stuff and follow the older man down the street. I would've flipped the police officers off if I hadn't been a little wary of the bored look in their eyes. They probably would've liked an excuse to put me in handcuffs.

We found another spot further down the road. There was a little strip of grass that made a more comfortable mattress than the pavement did. But no sooner had I dumped my stuff there than I felt the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. There was a figure lingering across the street. A man in a dark jacket and leather shoes. And I was pretty sure he was staring right at us.

I reached down to grab my knife, tucking it into the back of my waistband, just in case he was looking for trouble. The packs sometimes paid humans to spy for them. But if that was the case with this man, he wouldn't be standing around, waiting for me to spot him.

"I'll be back in a minute," I said. Joel didn't even lift his head from the ground. Liam gave me a curious look but said nothing as I crossed the road, heading straight for him. He was a well-dressed guy with a slim, lean build. A smile quirked his lips upwards as I drew closer.

"I've been watching you," he said.

I stopped a few metres away to make myself feel a bit safer and folded my arms across my chest. "Well, that's not creepy at all. Why?"

"You're sleeping rough, so you need money, right? How badly?"

I let out a gentle sigh. "Oh dear."

He wasn't deterred by that, surprisingly. He just gave me a suggestive smile. "I'll, um, I'll give you fifty quid to ... you know. We could do it in my car."

"Why are you asking me and not an actual prostitute?" I demanded.

"I thought maybe you were one..."

Fifty quid could have bought us some proper food and a taxi ride back to Silver Lake. It shocked me that I was even considering it, but I'd stopped caring a bit in the last few days. A part of me had died at Haven with all the others. And desperate times called for desperate measures, right? The guy could have been worse. At least he had some manners — for now, at least, and he couldn't have been older than thirty-five.

"Well?" he demanded.

I didn't know what to do. It should have been an easy no. But it didn't feel like we had a lot of other options. Lowland would realise that we'd dumped the tracker soon enough, and when they did, this was the first place they'd look for us. Wyst wasn't a very big town. We needed to get out of here by dawn. And the only alternative would be stealing a car and taking all the consequences that would come with it.

It wouldn't be so bad. Ten minutes of my time. Maybe less. I felt like I was trying to convince myself, which wasn't promising. But the truth was that I really didn't want to do it. It wasn't much consolation knowing I had the knife in case he did anything I didn't want him to do.

Oh. Wait. The knife...

Goddess, I was dumb.

"Yeah, sure," I said. "But I want sixty."

He nodded readily enough. And he turned away from me, probably intending to lead the way to his car. A tug on the mind-link was enough to bring the boys over. They got the idea quickly enough. As we turned into a dark side-street, Joel stepped into the man's path with his hood up and his hands in his pockets.

He didn't say anything, but the look in his eyes made it very clear that he was looking for trouble. Evidently feeling trapped, the man turned around. And he found my knife levelled at his stomach. I gave him a rueful smile to soften the blow a fraction.

But in spite of the knife, his eyes went sharply upwards, and I suspected that Liam was behind me. That suspicion was confirmed when I leant backwards into a warm chest and felt arms encircle me. He rested his chin on top of my head.

"Devious as ever, Luna," he whispered. "Well done."

That little rueful smile on my lips became something else entirely.

"What—" the man spluttered. "What's going on?"

"I'll be wanting my money upfront please," I said. "And ... perhaps a little bit extra."

"No. I'm not doing that."

My eyebrows went wandering upwards. "Goddess, you're slow, aren't you? We're mugging you."

He was still in no hurry to get his wallet out. Joel grabbed him from behind — pinning his arms in place and holding him still while Liam reached past me and turned out his pockets, one by one. The guy did try struggling, but Joel was an awful lot stronger than he was and seemed to find his efforts more amusing than threatening. I kept the knife pressed against his stomach to make sure he didn't get tempted to scream.

Liam turned up an iPhone, a fountain pen, a thick wallet and a pair of car keys. The latter was returned, considering we had no use for them. I didn't fancy a police chase tonight. And especially not with Joel driving. He didn't have much in the way of self-preservation.

"Cheers for all this," Liam said. "When we let you go, I suggest you leave nice and quiet, like."

The man said nothing, playing along nicely. I didn't know if it would last once he was out of stabbing range, so I lifted a hand to tell Joel to hang on for a moment longer. And then I leant in nice and close.

"There are some police officers down that way," I told him. "Go ahead. Go tell them what happened. I'm sure they'd be very interested to hear that you were trying to pay a seventeen-year-old for sex."

He looked absolutely stricken. "I—"

"He did what?" Joel asked quietly.

"Oh, for crying out loud," I muttered. It was easy, really, to predict what would happen next. I heaved a long sigh, but I didn't try to stop him.

Joel let him go. But he followed it up with a punch to the cheek that put the stranger on the ground. I rolled my eyes and turned away, already reaching for the stolen wallet. Unfortunately, it was so thick because it was filled with condoms, not money, but there was still a fair amount of cash in there. I counted at least two hundred pounds.

"Are you alright?" Liam asked me quietly, nodding back towards the man.

His eyes were worried, so I offered him a quick reassuring smile and a nod, even though the whole interaction had left me a little bit shaken for reasons I could not entirely put my finger on.

"She's half your age," I heard Joel snap from behind me. There was a thumping sound, and then an audible oof from the man he was assaulting. "I should kill you."

Shaking my head fondly, I uncapped the pen with my teeth. I took out most of the notes, and then I scribbled down the phone number for Silver Lake on a faded business card. Liam watched over my shoulder with a slightly bemused expression on his face.

"What are we paying humans for at the moment?" I asked him.

"Spying. Supply runs. Collecting prescriptions. All sorts of shit."

I nodded along thoughtfully. "Can we use an extra pair of hands?"

"Always."

"Cool."

I pocketed the pen, being careful not to slice my fingers open on the knife in the process, and then I wrapped eight twenty-pound notes around the business card. The homeless man had taken up residence on a bench. He couldn't lie down — the humans liked to deliberately put partitions across them to prevent that — but he was dozing off all the same, with the dog curled up neatly beside him.

I suspected he was looking so sleepy because he'd seen us mug that man, and he was pretending like he hadn't to avoid the trouble that would come with it. When I was close enough, I tossed the notes into his lap and watched how quickly he 'woke up.'

"Call that number in a few weeks if you want a job," I told him. "It's not the kind that requires a suit or punctuality or professionalism or ... hell, even a good work ethic. But it does pay well, it's legal, and you can even bring this small, angry canine along if you want."

He just blinked at me. And I was moving on before he had a chance to say anything. I was well aware that he probably thought we were a criminal gang of some kind, and to be honest, he wasn't far wrong, but I hoped he'd call, all the same.

Joel seemed to have finished beating on my would-be-client. He came to join us, wiping bloody knuckles on his jeans.

"Is he alive?" I asked. I didn't bother trying to act warm towards him. He was a prize ass if he thought I was going to be impressed by him beating up a human over something which was, in all likelihood, more to do with possessiveness than actual concern about me.

"Yeah."

"Great," I said dryly. "Let's go."

We found a taxi lingering further down the high street. The driver didn't look too happy about the state of our clothing, but he took a twenty readily enough when I offered it.

"I don't have an address, but we can give you directions," I told him. Liam had already got into the back, so I gave Joel a little push and nodded him towards the front seat. Best if we had some distance between us.

"Eva, wait," Liam said quietly. "If it was Mal, then it might not be safe to go back there. And we can't exactly take Joel with us. They would recognise him."

I paused for a moment, my face going slack. "Hang on. You still think it was Mal?"

We'd found the tracker, after all. My thought process had kind of ended there. I didn't give a shit that the taxi driver was listening to us. He wouldn't understand it, but it might give him a few minutes of entertainment to ponder over.

Liam shrugged at me, the wariness written all over his face. "I think it could have been. I mean ... Jace put the tracker on Hayden, and Jace is dead. How would the other Alphas have known about it? Let alone got access to the information?"

"I think that if Jaden went to Hayden's mam and told her that rogues killed her mate, she would have told him everything. About Hayden being a hostage, about the tracker, about sending us into Silver Lake. Everything. She'd have no reason to think he was lying. Jace was his brother."

"Fair enough," he said. "But here's the thing ... the direction they used to arrive at Haven wasn't the obvious route. It wasn't the road closest to the tracker. It was the road we showed Mal."

"I hadn't thought of that," I murmured. "Shit. Where else can we go? Won't risk New Dawn, because we have no idea if Hayden succeeded. Don't trust Shadowless or Ember. We don't have a camp to run to. So ... what? The middle of the bloody woods somewhere?"

"There is a place up north where you can usually find a handful of rogues and some shelter," Joel said quietly from the front seat. I hadn't even realised he'd been listening. "But I don't think you guys will want to go there."

I exchanged a bemused look with Liam. "No? Try us."

"Lle o Dristwch."

Oh. Well, he was right. I didn't want to go there. Not even a little. But I didn't think we had any better options.

***

It was too cold to be walking around. The rising sun wasn't offering us much in the way of warmth, and while the canopy was like a blanket above our heads, the sky beyond it was blue and clear as anything. Only an hour ago, it had been stars looking down on us, but they hadn't offered much in the way of light. The way my ankles were stinging, I didn't think there was a patch of skin left that hadn't been torn by the brambles.

"Still can't believe you've never been here," Joel muttered.

"For good reason," I replied. I preferred to use a more waspish tone with Joel, but I'd run out of energy. A few hours of sleep and a few mouthfuls of bread hadn't done the trick. If anything, they'd made me more aware of how tired and hungry I still was. "How much further is it?"

"Don't know," he said. "But at some point we'll have to cross a..."

His voice trailed off as we came through a break in the undergrowth. The woods came to an abrupt end. We were standing on the edge of a bank, looking down at a ten-foot drop to a huge, sluggish river. And beyond it, I could see wildflower meadows leading up to a small, man-made hill.

And on top of that hill was a castle. Or at least ... what remained of a castle. The walls looked impressive enough — sheer expanses of grey stone with some battlements and even a gate house. But it was all crumbling. Most of the rocks were charred. Where there had once been a moat, there was only a shallow, overgrown ditch. And a dozen young trees had made their home inside the castle, growing alongside the walls and peaking over their tops.

"...river," Joel finished. "Shit, that's wide. We'll have to swim it."

I didn't answer him. I was still too busy gazing at the castle. Over the years, I'd formed my own idea of what it looked like without even realising it. But the reality didn't quite match my imagination. The wilderness seemed to be slowly reclaiming it. There was more green than grey on those walls now.

"We're not going to swim. We'd die of hypothermia," I told him eventually. "Come on."

We followed the bank downriver until we found ourselves a fork in the river. It split around a little rocky island. On one side, a pair of tree trunks were lashed together to make a slightly treacherous bridge. Joel was right. There were rogues still visiting this place. I hadn't known that, all of these years.

Once we were on the island itself, we could see how the river spread itself thin on the other side. We walked across carefully, even as the current tried to knock our legs out from under us. I was aware of the man with the canoe before I was halfway across, but I didn't look at him. A look would invite a confrontation.

I pulled myself up onto dry land and then rolled my joggers down over a pair of very wet, very cold legs. We were in the castle's shadow now, and I was beginning to get apprehensive. I shouldn't be here. There were so many reasons why I shouldn't be here.

"I don't know you," the man with the canoe said. He seemed to be unpacking his things from it, but he had clearly stopped doing that and stopped minding his own business in the same breath. "I don't know any of you."

I would have been happy enough to walk on past him, but Joel stopped and laughed at him, shaking his head. "What does that matter? This ain't your castle, last time I checked."

The man's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. He took a box of cigarettes from his pocket and took one out, spinning it between his fingers as he looked us all over. "Just saying. No tattoos. Flockie haircut. It makes a man nervous — you know? Perhaps even nervous enough to do something violent."

I shifted my weight and tried to resist the urge to reach for my knife. I didn't have a tattoo to show him, and that was pretty damning amongst rogues. But Joel pulled down his shirt collar with two fingers to reveal a whorl of black ink. Casual as anything, he went over and took the cigarette right from the man's hand. That, more than anything, probably served to convince him that he was indeed dealing with a rogue.

"Clearly, you ain't looking hard enough, old man," Joel said. "Mind your own business. Yeah?"

The older rogue didn't look too upset about the loss of his cigarette. His shoulders were looser than they had been a moment ago, but his eyes were still wary. "And your friends?

Joel glanced back at the pair of us with thinly-veiled amusement and put the cigarette between his teeth.

"Of all the people you could accuse of being a flockie," he said, "I think Skye Llewellyn's daughter is probably one of the funniest. You got a light?"

Almost reflexively, the man handed over a lighter. He wasn't looking at Joel as he did it. He was looking me up and down. "You're shitting me."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Is this food for sale?"

He didn't get a reply, and he didn't wait for one. Joel just reached down and took a brace of rabbits, some fish and a few nondescript mesh bags, and then he stood up again, looking back at me expectantly.

I thought it was rich that he was spending my money without asking me, but we did need some food, so I bent down with all due grumpiness and tucked a twenty-pound note into the man's bag. I was walking away as soon as I'd done it, more intent on finding somewhere to curl up than on satisfying the man's curiosity.

Joel and Liam trudged alongside me. And the sound of a low whistle followed us soon afterwards. We'd passed the test evidently. That whistle seemed to serve as the trigger for a handful of children to sit up in the long grass, giggling to themselves. And there were suddenly faces peering at us over the castle walls.

I wasn't surprised that they'd known we were coming. The birds had been singing of our presence for the last mile. These were cautious people, it seemed. Further downriver, there were a dozen more canoes and several beat-up kayaks to allow for a quick getaway. Flockies couldn't follow them on the water.

The children ran from us as we got close. I'd been expecting badgering, so I was slightly surprised to see them all standing at a safe distance, watching us with big, wary eyes. The youngest was sucking her thumb. Someone had them well trained.

We reached the crest of the hill and, panting, we crossed under the entranceway. There were hinges on both sides, but the doors had clearly burned to ashes. We were standing in a sliver of shadow at one end of a big, messy courtyard. There were half a dozen 'stalls' set up within it. They were just blankets covered in things which looked like they might have been stolen out of flockie houses. Their owners gazed at us with a strange sort of curiosity — cursory and tired.

"These aren't raiders," I said in an undertone. Raiders would have stopped us and drawn a knife on us by now. I didn't know what to make of it all.

"No," Joel said. "I bet you only ever meet the raiders, don't you? People come here to trade mostly."

I didn't know what use they'd be, then. But sleeping amongst rogues was still better than sleeping in that awful human town. The rooms at the back end of the castle looked half-collapsed and full of rubble, and the towers were nothing more than heaps of stone, but there was a stretch of battlements above the gatehouse that looked stable enough. I preferred it to taking my chances on the ground, at any rate. They might not have been raiders, but they were probably still capable of robbing us and cutting our throats if it took their fancy.

It wasn't an easy climb, which was perhaps the reason that it was unclaimed. I found an alder which had forced its way up between the paving stones and used it to pull myself onto the ledge. It was about as wide as I was long. When I stood, I could see over the battlements — a breath-taking view that showed me miles of forest and the Silverstone mountains jutting up towards the sky.

Liam let out a slow breath beside me. He hadn't needed the tree's help to climb up. Now he leant against the rough stone, and I tried not to eye the sudden ripple of taut muscle in his forearms. His dark eyes roamed the skyline with open admiration, but there was a sadness there, too.

"Rhodri always wanted to come here," he said slowly. "I remember that. Although ... I think maybe, in his head, it was ten times this size."

"Yeah, well," I murmured. I wasn't in the mood to talk about Rhodri. "It's a bit late now, isn't it?"

Liam glanced at me and then went back to staring out at the horizon. The sadness wasn't subtle anymore, and his voice was quiet and hoarse. "I know. But ... a few months ago, when Rhodri was staying with Emmett. You know, when you two were being punished for the tattoos... I went up and joined him for a few days."

I looked up sharply. There was a crease in my forehead. "You never told me that. And neither did he."

"No," he agreed. "I wasn't supposed to be there. But Emmett didn't say nothing to your parents. He sent us both to scout around Blackwater Falls for campsites — said if I was going to be there, I might as well make myself useful. Rhodri wanted to blow off the scouting and come down here instead. It's only a few miles."

I could definitely believe that. If there was anything Rhodri had hated more than flockies, it was scouting. Never mind that his scent switch had made him perfect for it. But I didn't ... I just didn't want to think about him. Not now. I was going to start crying if I did, and I didn't have the energy to cry.

"I said wait for Eva," Liam said. "I told him we'd all go together. And now we're here without him."

I acknowledged that with a little shrug. "He would have got in a lot of trouble if he'd come here."

It wasn't allowed. It hadn't ever been allowed. There weren't many rules, growing up as a rogue, but the ones that did exist were the serious ones. The ones that were there to keep us alive. Staying away from the castle had always been one of those rules.

"It was Rhodri. I don't think he cared," Liam said.

"Why would he have been in trouble? Abandoned or not, it's your bloody castle," a voice demanded from behind us.

I turned around to stare at Joel, not feeling the slightest bit inclined to answer his question. He was still smoking, and I was grumpy enough to slap the cigarette out of his hand.

"Bitch," he snapped.

I let the word wash over me. If he'd been really pissed off, he would have called me much worse. "Have it later. I don't want smoke in my face."

It seemed we were back to bickering. That hadn't taken long. Joel swore at me some more, but he didn't try to light it up again.

We shifted to gulp down the fish. It saved us the trouble of cooking them, at any rate. And then I lay sprawled on the stones as the morning sun began to warm them. With a full belly and two days of exertion to make up for, I was half asleep in seconds.

Liam came to sniff at me. He was still keeping his weight off his forepaw. He licked at the half-healed puncture wounds over my sternum where the bear had caught me and then wagged his tail hesitantly, waiting for some kind of response. I just flicked my ears at him as though swatting a fly and closed my eyes completely.

A shadow crossed over my face, and then I felt warm fur pressed against my back and a heavy chin come to rest on my flank. We stayed like that for hours. Drifting in and out of wolf naps. We would wake to get up, turn a few circles and then flop back down again.

The last time I woke, it was because there was a cold breeze nipping at my back. It hadn't been bothering me before, but I realised now that I was missing my windbreak. He was sat up, half-dressed in the hot afternoon sun and skinning one of the rabbits.

I rolled onto my belly and crept forwards, inch by inch, until I could rest my head on his knee and look up at him with big, hopeful eyes. There was a gaping pit in my stomach now that I'd digested my fish.

"Wait," he told me. "I'm going to cook it."

I just let out a pitiful little whine. He set the knife down aside for a moment to smooth my fur down and scratch the spot just behind my ears. My wolf was basking in the attention. She adored Liam these days. But her fawning didn't stop me from lunging forwards to snatch a kidney and a chunk of liver. I had gulped them down in about three seconds flat and flicked my eyes back to Liam, innocent as anything.

He was fighting a losing battle with a smile. Slowly, I inched my nose closer to the rabbit and nipped at the hind foot, pulling it towards myself. He cuffed me across the muzzle before I could get far. It was a very gentle rebuke, all things considered. If he'd been sensible, he would have put me on my back until I'd remembered my manners.

I knew when to give up. I picked myself up and turned away, intending to shift. But I found myself face to face with a big grey wolf. Joel didn't look too much the worse for wear, despite the events of the last few days. He had a torn ear and a thin cut across his muzzle which was still healing. He wagged his tail back and forth lazily and then stretched out his neck to sniff at me, the picture of innocent curiosity.

I tolerated that for about half a minute, even going as far as returning some of the greeting, before I wrestled my wolf away from the controls. Then I sent him skittering backwards with a low growl and a flash of teeth. He had to learn. Sooner rather than later.

When I was back in my clothes, I grabbed our stolen phone and headed down into the courtyard. My hood was up against the afternoon drizzle. The traders had dragged their stores back under the shelter of the eaves. I picked a woman in her thirties with a beautiful silver headscarf. She didn't look like she'd shank me on a whim, unlike a lot of her colleagues.

I handed her the stolen phone and then leant against a charred, crumbling pillar while she appraised it. She'd have nothing to complain about. You could tell it was one of the new, atrociously expensive ones because there was nowhere to plug in your headphones.

"It's hot," I told her.

The woman sighed and eyed me from under her lashes. "How hot, exactly?"

"Taken off a human this morning. At knifepoint," I said sheepishly.

She just nodded. "I suppose I can work with that. What do you want for it?"

"A phone that I can use and some hot coals from your fire."

"It's gonna be a shit phone," she warned me.

I just shrugged at her, because I didn't really care. As long as it could send texts and make calls, I'd be happy. Even as I watched, she pocketed the stolen phone and dug out a beat-up burner phone from her bag to swap it for. I turned it over in my hand, checking that it turned on and that it had some battery life.

"Come and get the coals when you're ready. But — can I ask you something?"

I scrubbed at my face. "Yeah. Can't promise I'll answer, though."

"Fair enough," she said, a little smile flitting across her lips. "What's your name?"

That question was much too pointed to be a coincidence. I scratched at my shoulder and glanced around the courtyard, shifting my weight from foot to foot.

"People have been talking, have they?" I said dryly. "I'm Eva."

She eyed me, eyebrows slightly raised, clearly waiting for more. I wasn't forthcoming. She wouldn't have asked my name if she didn't already know the answer.

"Llewellyn," she finished.

It wasn't really a question, but I gave her a tiny little nod anyway.

I was the first Llewellyn to stand within these walls in nineteen years. And people were going to hear about that. And if they were especially stupid, they'd take it as a signal to congregate here again. At which point, the flockies would come and kill them all. Me included, if I was still here.

"I'm Azrah," she told me. "It's nice to meet you. And ... Eva?"

"Yeah?"

"Welcome home."

A frown creased my forehead. This wasn't home. This had never been home. And now that Haven had gone up in smoke, I was increasingly reluctant to give a place that title ever again. Home was wherever our tents were pitched. It was the smell of woodsmoke on the evening breeze. It was the sound of trees swaying in the wind. It was the tickle of grass under bare toes and the soft buzzing of insects and the gentle orange glow of firelight.

I didn't argue with her. I didn't see the point. But that crease in my forehead was still there when I dragged myself back onto the ledge.

Liam was still skinning the rabbits. He was doing it carefully — without the knife — so we'd be able to trade the hides. Nothing got wasted. It was one of the most sacred rules of hunting. Most of the less appealing parts could be gulped down in wolf form safely enough. The bones could flavour a stew or be cracked open for the marrow. The tendons would be turned into glue.

"There's not much meat on these," he told me, "but we'll get a meal out of them. After that ... we'll have to go hunting."

I nodded distractedly. I was already fiddling with the phone. Azrah had been right. It was shit. I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that it was a decade old, but I supposed it would do the job.

I knew most of my family's phone numbers by heart, but their phones had burnt at Haven or been abandoned there, so it wasn't them I texted. It was the burner phone which Maggie and Tom kept in their food truck. I reckoned my family would turn up at their hatch in the near future. They had food, and they had transportation, and they hadn't been parked very far from Haven.

I let them know that we were safe and where we were, and then I spent a good minute agonising to try and remember the New Dawn phone number. It took a few tries before I had the right amount of digits. I was eighty percent sure they were correct. We'd memorised it during those long weeks in the Lloyd family's lodge. It felt like a lifetime ago now.

Liam had set the rabbit aside. He wiped his hands on his jeans and looked at me curiously. "Who are you texting?"

"Right now? Hayden."

He nodded. "Okay. But we're going to need to talk to him properly. Sooner rather than later. He might know if Silver Lake has joined the losing side in our absence. It'd be a pretty good indicator as to where Mal's loyalties lie."

"I know," I murmured. "I really ... I just don't feel like talking to anyone right now. I'm letting them know where we are and that we're safe. That's it."

"Give me two minutes to wash my hands, and I'll talk to him. I don't mind."

I eyed him. I could see right through the pretence of being put-together and capable and okay. He was in the exact same state that I was, so where he would find the energy, I had no idea. But knowing that, it just wasn't fair to let him shoulder it for me.

So I shook my head. "No, it's okay. You're right. Of course you're right. But I'll do it myself. He likes me an awful lot more than he likes you."

"True," he said. "But only if you're sure."

In answer, I just deleted my half-written text and pressed the call button instead. It didn't ring for long.

"Hi," some random flockie said. "Can I help you?"

"I want to speak to Alpha Lloyd," I said.

There was a moment's pause. "Which one? We've got two of them here at the moment."

Oh, Goddess. That could mean Jaden. In fact, it probably meant Jaden, but there were three Lloyd Alphas in Snowdonia, so I decided to take my chances. I had to believe that the pup and my dad weren't languishing in a flockie prison, awaiting execution at Jaden's pleasure.

"Hayden."

"Sure. I'll get him now."

I tried not to audibly sigh in relief. It was perhaps a minute before the phoneline crackled, and then I heard an all-too-familiar voice.

"Who is this?" he asked.

"Take a wild guess, flockie," I replied.

Hayden wasn't slow on the uptake. There was a lot of amazement in his voice. "Eva? You're okay?"

"I'm ... yeah. Okay. And I'm guessing you are, too."

"Me? I'm good," Hayden assured me. "New Dawn is mine now. And so is Riverside. I've got my cousin and half of Shadowless Pack here to help me hold them both. So the question, really ... is when you want us to come off the defensive. I've got eighty fighters ready to throw at Jaden and Vincent."

A slow smile was spreading across my lips.

"It'll be soon," I told him. "A day or two, probably. We need time to regroup and get the other packs mobilised. Just try and be patient, yeah?"

"I can do that," he said. "You know ... I'm ... I'm really glad you're okay."

The smile grew wider still. We had an army. It still had some growing to do, but it was definitely an army. And more than that — we had a friend in the New Dawn Alpha. We'd lost a lot at Haven. A lot of loved ones. A lot of progress. But we hadn't lost everything.