So we're all being spoilt today. TWO drawings?! Kindly bow down before your Official Illustrator, LittleLoneWriterGirl (who is also illustrating her own book now, if you're interested). First is baby Eva, and second is baby Liam. This will make more sense when you read the chapter, I swear.

Trigger warnings: scenes involving physical abuse against a child + refusing food.

***

I knew I was going to start crying if I stayed there — something that would have been damning in itself. So I slipped out of the bed, and I made my way towards the door, stopping only to grab a jacket along the way. I knew better than to look back, but I did it anyway, and I found Liam's eyes fixed on mine. Upset. But not very surprised. It wasn't the first time I'd run out on him.

"I'm going to get some air. I'll see you at four, yeah?"

Liam rubbed at his jaw. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but all that came out was a quiet, unhappy, "Okay."

I hadn't known where I was going when I'd left our room, so I had simply wandered around the pack house for a bit. I didn't really remember making a decision on where to go, but an hour later, I was sat on the floor in a quiet corner of the pack's medical wing. Seth had said I could stay as long as I liked. He knew something wasn't right, but he hadn't pushed me about it.

What a way to spend my eighteenth birthday.

I'd found a leaf on the floor. It was an alder leaf, which was why I'd picked it up. It must have come off someone's clothing. Now I was turning it around in my hands, folding along the veins, and generally doing my best not to cave to my instincts and tear it into little pieces, just for the sake of it.

I'd been stupid to keep hoping, all these years. Even when I'd been younger, I'd always known the chances were slim. The Goddess didn't take into account whether you had a massive crush on anyone when she decided who was mated to whom. But there was a part of me which had always argued that I might like him so much because he was my mate. It wasn't unheard of for people to be drawn to their mates.

And I'd certainly been drawn to him. I remembered that first chaotic day in snatches. There had been a footprint in the mud. I had hardly been a master of tracking at ten years old, but it had been an easy trail to follow. The ground had been soft that morning. It had rained the night before, and the soil there had a lot of clay in it.

It had been a child's footprint. A child's footprint with the sort of pattern you'd expect from a trainer, not a proper pair of walking boots. So I'd known I was tracking a flockie kid from the beginning, in all honesty, but it hadn't really occurred to me to call my family. They didn't even know I was gone. I'd only left the group to hunt for goose grass to stick to Rhodri's back.

I'd followed the footsteps all the way to a ravine. I could see the boy they belonged to through the leaves. He was sat beside a little stream, drinking from cupped hands. A discarded jacket lay on the grass beside him. I stopped in the fringe of the bushes to stare at him. He was a little older than I was. Dark-haired and dark-eyed and bruised, like he'd been fighting. He was wearing clothes that were too big for him. Clothes that looked well-worn. I would have wondered if he was a rogue after all, had it not been for that unmistakable Silver Lake scent.

And then I'd heard the crunch of twigs behind me and scrambled into deeper cover. Not a moment too soon. I hadn't been the only one following that trail. A pair of big flockie men came down the path where I'd been only seconds before. I'd mind-linked my family then. More out of panic than anything else. I wasn't far enough into the bushes. If they looked closely, they would see me lying there, but moving would have made a noise, and that was even more dangerous.

But they weren't after me. The boy had never stood a chance. He tried to run, but the ravine ended in a cliff, and I watched them catch him without much effort on their parts and put him on the ground. And all his fighting had only earned him a back-handed blow across the face. There was a knee across his back to keep him still while the second man fiddled around with his phone. Texting, probably.

"You think we haven't got better things to do than chase after you?" he'd demanded.

And the question had been accompanied by a boot to the ribs. The boy hadn't even made a sound, let alone reacted, which should have been my first clue that he was getting the same treatment at home. But I'd only been ten. In all honesty, I'd had no idea that some parents beat their kids, let alone the warning signs of it.

He was just staring at the ground. Eyes empty and lifeless. Lying still. His entire body language had changed when the kick had made contact. And it seemed like one of the flockies was responding to it.

"We were told to take him home, not punish him," he said. "Leave that to the Alpha."

The second fighter just shook his head. "It's not the first time he's done this. He needs to learn. And it seems the usual methods ... are ... not ... working."

Between each word was another kick. I'd had enough of watching. Quietly, I leant over to grab a short, stout branch and flicked out my knife. But it must have caught the sunlight, because the boy's gaze snapped towards me. He'd seen me. I could tell that in a heartbeat from the way his eyes widened, and my heart was suddenly pounding in my chest. He looked from the flockies to me and back again warily, and yet ... he didn't say a word to them about the rogue girl in the undergrowth. Maybe he wasn't from a pack after all.

They dragged him onto his feet. He stood quietly, no longer offering the slightest bit of resistance. His head was down, and his chest was rising and falling at speed. The taller man had a death-grip on his collar. I could see that their backs were turned, so I crept out of the undergrowth. I didn't think I was going to get a better chance than this. I pushed myself onto my knees and then found my feet.

My family was close. I could feel their worried questions through the link, but I was ignoring all of them in favour of padding silently over the damp grass. One of them started to turn around. I panicked and closed the rest of the distance at a run, cracking him around the head with the branch before he could lay eyes on me.

He dropped to his knees, swearing like a sailor. But his friend wasn't slow to reach for the back of his waistband, drawing a gun on me in the blink of an eye. I hadn't thought of that. I hadn't been thinking at all. I would have died there and then had the boy not crashed into the flockie's arm.

He was a lot smaller than the flockie fighter, but he'd been vicious in his attack — clawing and punching and scrambling for the gun. He managed to pull the man's arm wide, taking me out of the crosshairs a split second before the gun went off. It nearly deafened me, but it didn't kill me, and I stopped standing there like a rabbit in the headlights and went to help the boy. My knife would have ended it in seconds, but the man had seen it, and one good, hard twist of my hand had sent it flying.

I settled for gouging his eyes instead, but I'd forgotten about his friend, who had unfortunately not lost consciousness. I hadn't hit him hard enough. I was picked up by my jacket and wrenched backwards. I landed hard on the slate of the stream bed, the left side of my body screaming a complaint, but I didn't stop to lick my wounds. I just scrambled to my feet and took off running before he could reach me, my heart pounding in my chest.

I'd known they would chase me. I was a rogue, and I was the bigger prize by far. It had been stupid to get involved. I hadn't helped. I'd probably just earnt the boy another, even more vicious beating.

Even at ten, I'd been fast on my feet, but the footfalls behind me had gotten louder and louder. Especially when the second man had joined the chase. So it was lucky, really, that I ran right into my family. My parents, Rhodri's parents and Nia's parents. They'd come ready for a fight. I crashed into my dad's arms, and he kept me safely out of harm's way, wrapped up in a fierce hug, while the others dealt with my pursuers.

I didn't watch them kill the men. I was too busy staring at the flockie boy. There was blood under his nose now and a cut across his chin. He was still trapped by the end of the ravine. His attempt to scramble up the side ended in a rockslide and a couple of nasty grazes. For him, the prospect of being caught by rogues was much, much worse than being caught by his packmates. I'd pulled him out of the frying pan and into the fire, as far as he was concerned.

The adults had tried to reason with him. They'd tried to calm him down. But it turned out that he'd picked up my knife, and he'd let Uncle Rhys get very close before trying to stab him with it. So the negotiations had ended there, and instead, the knife had been wrestled away from him. Uncle Rhys had got hold of him from behind, trying to restrain him without hurting him. I'd watched on from Dad's arms with wide eyes and no small amount of guilt.

After ten minutes of that, he hadn't stopped fighting. If anything, he was getting more worked up, more panicked, and more violent in his attempts to get free. Instead of waiting for him to exhaust himself, which could have taken a very long time, my aunt had ended up drawing up a syringe full of propofol and using it to knock him out. He'd been carried back to the car with a coat over his head. So yeah. That had been the first time I'd met Liam, and it would have been hard to forget.

The second time I'd seen him, it had been three o'clock in the morning. My uncle had fallen asleep in front of the door, and I'd been lying awake, peering through the cracks in the floorboards. I'd waited a few more minutes, just to be safe, and then I'd slipped out of my bed and padded towards the ladder.

"Eva?" Rhodri had asked, his voice groggy with sleep. I was on Bryn's mattress, as usual, so he'd always woken up when I did. "What are you—"

"Shh, you idiot," I growled. "Either come with me or go back to sleep."

He let his head fall back against the pillow, and he heaved a long sigh. But when I snuck down the ladder, I found him not far behind me, as usual. We'd been inseparable at that age. Like a pair of very mismatched twins. When he saw which door I was heading towards, however, he caught my arm and gave me a look.

"Really?" Rhodri asked me. "You know we're not supposed to."

I just ignored him. Of course we weren't supposed to go near him. But I reckoned I needed to. Because we'd had the flockie boy at Haven for a week now, and in all that time, he hadn't eaten anything.

The adults had tried everything. Talking to him. Not talking to him. Bribes. Veiled threats. They'd proved over and over that it wasn't poisoned or drugged or anything. They'd offered every type of food they could dream up over the course of the last week, and he'd left every single plate untouched. He'd been on the skinny side when we'd found him. Now he was painfully thin.

It was a mess. They couldn't let him go, because he'd starve out in the woods even quicker. They couldn't send him back to Silver Lake — not after they'd seen the scars on his ribs. But it didn't feel right keeping him when he didn't want to be here. The adults had been arguing about it for days now, getting progressively more stressed and never reaching a solution.

I cracked the door open and peeked inside. The boy looked a lot better than the last time I'd seen him. His wounds had scabbed over, and the bruises were fading, but there was a new hollowness to his cheeks. He was sat on a mattress in the far corner of the room, his legs drawn up to his chest.

Today's offering was a plate of Nutella sandwiches. It was untouched. There was a glass of water beside it. He would have died by now if he hadn't been drinking, but he was always careful to take so little that it was hard to tell that for certain.

"Hi," I said. It took a little courage to step into the room and close the door behind me. He was a flockie boy, and he was bigger than me. And we'd learnt the hard way that he was quick to use physical force when he felt cornered.

He stared at me. He'd never given away much on his face, but it was easy to see that he was surprised in that moment. He'd been expecting one of the adults, not a scrawny little ten-year-old sneaking around in the dead of night.

I took a few hesitant steps towards him and watched every muscle in his body tense at once, ready to get up and do something.

"It's cool," I told him quickly. "Don't panic, yeah? I'm not going to touch you or anything like that. I'm just gonna sit down by here, and we'll talk. Is that okay?"

He didn't say anything, and he didn't relax, but he also didn't move when I edged closer still and sat myself on the floor. If I'd known who he was, I might have been a bit more cautious, but it had been another month before we'd worked that out. I crossed my legs. I was close enough to see him properly, but not too close.

Rhodri was restless in the doorway. He didn't like this. "Goddess sake, Eva. Leave him alone."

"If you're not going to help me, go keep watch," I snapped at him. "And stop staring at him like that. You're scaring him."

I'd thought that might get the boy to open his mouth. I'd thought he might deny it. But still ... nothing. Not a word. Rhodri had traipsed his way to the doorway to keep an eye out for his dad. He kept the other eye firmly on our guest.

"I'm Eva, by the way," I said. "I didn't really get a chance to introduce myself the other day. And I didn't get a chance to say thanks. Think maybe you saved my life."

Still nothing. He was a puzzle that I wanted to solve. We'd adopted a few kids from packs by then, and none of them had been slow to warm to us. I was curious. And I felt like I was responsible for him.

Shrugging, I leant over and picked up the sandwich. He'd scowled at me then, his eyes darkening. Confused and defensive. Not because he had wanted to eat the food himself, but because it was still his. Taking someone's food was one of the rudest, most provocative things you could do as a wolf. And of course, he didn't want me coming any closer.

So I'd felt the force of his wolf for the first time, and I'd felt like I was suffocating under the oppressive weight of it. Rhodri had been halfway across the room before I'd leashed him with a few choice swearwords. He'd listened to me back then. I'd been ... different. More assertive.

I set the sandwich down again, showing the boy my hands in an appeasing gesture. Perhaps it would be better to explain first.

"Our parents are getting worried about you," I said. "They reckon you'll get ill if you don't eat something soon, so they're thinking they might have to knock you out and put a drip in you. For nutrients and shit."

The scowl had become something else. A wide-eyed expression that reminded me a lot of panic.

"Yeah," I sighed. "I didn't think you'd like that idea. I don't like it either. If I eat this, I can buy you a few more days ... but that's all. You don't want to starve to death. Trust me. It's slow, and it's really painful."

I reached out again, and this time there was no scowl. Not even a blink of protest. He watched me with that unnerving, soul-sucking intensity, of course, but he let me take the plate and start scoffing the sandwich. I ate three of them before making a show of setting the last one back down on the plate with an apologetic smile.

"I'm stuffed," I said. "Maybe you could help me out?"

It was the tiniest shake of his head. And it meant no, but at least he was communicating. Sort of. I'd confused him with my visit. Well, he wasn't the only one who was confused. It wasn't easy to refuse food for a week. He must have had a reason.

"You know it's not poisoned or drugged or nothing," I told him. "They've proved that over and over. So you're just being stubborn, ain't you? I get that. I'm stubborn too. Maybe instead of breaking, you could just bend a tiny bit?"

Silence. I was starting to understand why the adults were getting so frustrated. They'd been trying to get him talking all week and got nowhere at all. I'd only been trying for five minutes so far.

"What if he gets hungry now?" Rhodri asked me. "You ate his bloody dinner."

See, he pretended like he didn't give a shit about anything ever, but here he was, caring whether a flockie boy got hungry in the night. I dug in my pocket and produced a chocolate bar which was probably half-melted but better than nothing. And I'd set it on the plate where the sandwich had been.

"There you go," I said. "You don't have to eat it, but you can. No one would know that you had. Not even me."

Rhodri had made a disgusted noise behind me. "They're going to see that, and we're going to get in trouble."

"When are we not in trouble?" I'd laughed.

I realised now, in hindsight, why that had worked. For Liam, 'getting in trouble' meant something entirely different. We'd woken up sometime after lunch, and there had been no shouting, because the adults were none the wiser. All they had seen was the empty plate, and there had been a huge amount of relief that Liam was eating now and absolutely no suspicion. They still had no idea that I'd been the one who'd eaten those sandwiches, and I'd never felt any inclination to enlighten them. It had always been our secret.

To this day, I didn't know if he'd eaten the chocolate or just hidden it, but it didn't matter, really. The next night, he'd taken the last sandwich when I'd offered it. And the night after that, he'd managed a few spoonfuls of rice, and eventually, I'd got him eating the whole damn plate. My doing. It had been another week before he'd spoken to me — and even then, it had just been to tell me his name.

Slow progress. Excruciatingly slow, sometimes. The first time I'd gotten him to follow me outside, the others had all crowded around, too rowdy and curious and over-eager, and we'd ended up right back in that cramped little room. It had always been two steps forwards, one step back with Liam.

But I'd always been there to take the steps right alongside him. That was why Mam had sent me here.

So why was I sat in a dark corner while he was alone in our room, probably wondering if I was ever going to speak to him again? It didn't matter if we were mates. Well ... it did matter. But it didn't matter nearly as much as our friendship. I wasn't going to lose him over this.

The leaf had crumbled in my hands. It was inevitable, really, but I slipped the fragments into my pocket, all the same. And then I did the brave thing and went back downstairs to our room. Except I didn't get as far as the corridor. Soft voices interrupted me. There were shadows moving on the walls.

My wolf was on edge, so I flattened myself against the wall and peered around the corner, ever-so-carefully. There were flockies outside our room. A group of seven or eight of them at least. All of them were fighters, and by the look of it, several were Deltas, which didn't bode well.

I warned Liam through the link first. He had a knife in there, even if not a gun. Although what good that would be against seven of them, I had no idea. My next mind-link went to Mal.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, I peered around the corner again. For the moment, they were just standing there, but it didn't take a genius to suspect that their intentions were not good, because they seemed to be making a huge effort to stay quiet.

I felt a hand touch my shoulder and jumped out of my skin. I turned to see Mal. That did nothing to calm my thundering heart. He was in a t-shirt and his boxers, and he was carrying a short rifle and a handgun.

He made to offer me the rifle, but I just shook my head. I didn't really know how to use it. My knife, on the other hand ... that was reliable. It couldn't jam. It couldn't run out of ammunition. There was infinite stabbing potential in those few inches of jagged metal.

Mal didn't look happy about it, but he turned and gave the rifle to Kelsey instead. She had come with him. She was wearing a dressing gown, and her hair was damp from the shower.

"Careful with this," he breathed.

Kelsey just beamed at him and readied the rifle with terrifying familiarity. She lifted it to her shoulder, ready to step out from our hiding place. But then a door opened behind us. Kelsey swung around, the rifle swinging with her.

All of us let out a collective breath when we realised it was just a sleepy-looking Lilah. She was wearing one of Mason's old hoodies over her pyjamas, like she'd just thrown it on, and her hair was more tousled than I'd ever seen it. Even as I watched, her eyes widened, and she obscured a yawn behind her hand.

"What the hell is going on?" she demanded.

Too loud. They'd have heard that. I pressed my finger against my lips all the same and tried to shoo her back into her room with a pair of wide, alarmed eyes. Lilah was having none of it.

"Oh, Goddess," she groaned. She'd noticed the guns now. "You're not starting a shoot-out in here. My daughter is trying to sleep."

And with that, she pushed past us all and walked down the corridor, straight towards the would-be murderers. Like a complete dumbass. Mal swore and followed her. I put a hand on Kelsey's arm to stop her doing the same. Best if they didn't know exactly how many of us there were, in case it came to a fight.

"Hey, Jonathon," she said. "I think you should probably leave. Access to this corridor is restricted, and it's really late, and I'd hate to see you get into trouble."

"Luna," a man's voice said. It was forcibly low, as if he was trying to keep the volume down and avoid waking Liam. "We were just ... We ... uh. We were patrolling the corridors. That's all."

Lilah looked down, eyebrows raised, and I assumed she was drawing attention to whatever weapons they had brought with them. "You know ... Felix never actually admitted to murdering Mase. And if you lot keep creeping around in the dead of night with guns in your hands, I might think you had something to do with that. It seems like too much of a coincidence to me."

"No," he said quickly. "No, Luna. We'd never have laid a finger on the Alpha."

"Well, you see, that's where I'm finding it hard to believe you. Because Liam's the Alpha now. And it's his room you're standing outside."

Silence for a few, long moments. And then the man lowered his voice even further.

"Come on. You must have heard. Our friends in Lowland and Riverside have been saying that he's working with rogues. Some of them are even saying his mate is a rogue herself. We can't let that go."

Oh dear. Those rumours were a little too accurate for my liking. The other Alphas were clearly working off whatever Hayden's mam had told them. They didn't even have to lie to discredit us. I poked my head out of my hiding place to peer at them, using Mal as cover to be sure they wouldn't spot me.

"You don't seriously believe that, do you?" Lilah asked with obvious amusement. "Look, I know those packs were our allies. But that's clearly not the case anymore. They'll say anything to divide us. Eva's a close friend of mine, and Liam's my brother-in-law, and I promise you that neither of them has ever been remotely friendly to a rogue. Cross my heart and hope to die. Alright? So why don't you all go to bed before you do something that can't be undone?"

It was nice that she was so loyal. Like, it was really nice. It made the guilt about taking her mate away from her rear its ugly head all over again. And given who she was, given the calm confidence in her voice, the fighters were starting to believe it. They exchanged a series of wary looks.

"Alright," their leader said. "We'll clear off. Sorry to wake you, Luna."

"Glad to hear it," Lilah replied. "And ... please at least try to remember that I'm not the Luna anymore."

They let out little chuckles, the tension utterly diffused. It was impressive that she'd done all that without any violence. I'd been ready to kill them all, if that was what it took. The Delta who'd been talking to Lilah jerked a hand, and they all followed him down the corridor like a faithful pack of dogs.

I stepped into the corridor properly, scratching at my head with my knife hilt as I watched them go. The door to our room eased open, slowly and somewhat cautiously. Liam was looking sleepy, tousled and confused.

"What ... exactly ... was that about?" he asked.

At the sound of his voice, the last of the fighters stopped walking. He turned slowly around. Looked at Liam with a slight downwards curl to his lips. And then he raised a gun. I shouted a warning a heartbeat too late. The shot was loud enough to make my ears ring, and I was at the other end of the corridor.

I didn't see what had happened to Liam. The whole world narrowed to that man and the gun in his hand. I have no idea if I moved or not. All I knew was that Mal was between them before he could squeeze the trigger a second time, raising his own gun. But in the end, it wasn't Mal who stopped him. It was the guys behind him, who wrenched his arm back and put him onto the floor with the same lethal efficiency that they would usually use against rogues.

"The hell is wrong with you?" one of his friends hissed.

The man on the floor said nothing at all. It was the other members of the lynch mob who wrenched his arms behind his back and handcuffed them, one by one. Even they recognised that he'd crossed a line. I didn't pay them much heed. I was too busy heading towards Liam. He'd stayed on his feet, so he couldn't be that badly hurt.

But he wasn't unscathed, either. There was a red stain spreading across his shirt. It seemed to originate from his shoulder. That bastard had actually shot him. Lilah had let out a horrified gasp, her hands flying to her mouth. Liam's own reaction was a lot closer to annoyed than shocked.

"Ow," he said. More to make a point than anything else. His breaths were coming short and forced as he tried to ignore what I imagined was a considerable amount of pain. "Shit... I don't think he was aiming for my shoulder. Is it bleeding a lot?"

"A fair bit," I said. "Stand still. I need to look."

I pulled his shirt collar back to see exactly where it had gone in. It was below the collarbone but far enough from the centre that I wasn't worried about his heart. There was another danger to that kind of wound, though. Seth had made sure I knew all about the chest cavity. It needed to have a vacuum if you wanted your lungs to expand properly. A bullet hole was a sure-fire way to break that seal.

"Shit. That's over your lung," I muttered. "Put your hand by here. Hold tight. And let's get you to the medical wing."

I wanted to take him while he could still walk. It would be a lot slower carrying him. I put a gentle hand on his back, guiding him down the corridor. I was looking for an exit wound as I did it, but he didn't have one. His shoulder blade must have stopped it.

"Is he going to be okay?" Lilah demanded.

"Yeah, yeah," I assured her. "He'll be fine. We just ... we didn't really need this tonight. Go back to your kid. Get some sleep, if you can. Mal, can you come with us? And bring that gun? Just in case there are any more of these dumbasses roaming the corridor?"

It only took one glance at Mal to determine that he was already deep into worried-Beta-mode. "Of course I'm coming. And so is Kelsey."

We walked straight past the shooter, who was face-down on the floor, swearing like a sailor at his friends. He'd go to the prison, but that wasn't much of a consolation when Liam's blood was all over my hands.

***

Twenty minutes later, I was watching with my arms folded as Seth listened to Liam's chest with a stethoscope. We had a room to ourselves, probably so the pack didn't have to see their Alpha bleeding everywhere. Mal was sat outside the door with his gun on his knees. Someone had found him some joggers and a jacket. Kelsey was still shamelessly walking around in a dressing gown and not much else.

"Do you want the technical explanation or the kiddie one?" Seth asked as he put the stethoscope back around his neck.

Liam couldn't really reply. He was sat hunched up, a mask over his face to let him breathe a little better. He was well enough to be bored, but even with the oxygen, he was struggling a bit — those breaths were coming loud and with a little too much effort on his part. So I decided to answer for him.

"Kiddie," I said. "For sure."

"Okay," Seth replied. "There's stuff in your chest cavity that shouldn't be there. Air. Blood. A bullet. You know how it is. Your lung is going to collapse into a sticky little heap if I don't fix it soon. So what I want to do is knock you out, put a drain in, find that bullet, and then sew you up nicely."

"Can you fix his arm while he's under?" I asked. "Just seems more efficient than knocking him out a second time..."

Seth let out a little groan. He looked from Liam to me and back again in quick succession. "Um. Hang on. What's wrong with his arm?"

I looked at him a little sheepishly. "He broke it a few days back. It didn't set right, and now it's all crunchy."

Seth's jaw was as tense as I'd ever seen it. But his voice was just quiet and slightly despairing. "And when exactly ... were you going to tell me that? Or Goddess forbid ... get it fixed?"

Liam just shrugged at him. I made a face. It hadn't seemed like a priority. When you had fibre-optic healing, it was a little too easy to ignore any wound that wasn't — one, causing you constant, debilitating pain, or two, about to kill you.

"Right, well. I can do my best, but it's hard to know until I take an x-ray," he muttered. "Your chest is still the priority. I just need your consent, and then I can put you straight under the anaesthetic."

Liam sat there quietly for a long, long moment. Long enough to worry me. And then he lifted the mask away from his face just long enough to say, "No."

Silence. Excruciating silence. I didn't know what to say. He must have had a reason to be so ... well, stupid felt like an unkind word for it.

"No?" Seth repeated somewhat incredulously. "Look. That dressing is stopping your lung collapsing, but it could also kill you, so... We need to do something a little safer and more permanent. I do not want to deal with a tension pneumothorax at one in the morning."

"No," Liam said again. His face was set. His posture was rigid. And I felt my heart sinking in my chest.

Seth's mouth was hanging open, rather unhelpfully. I gave him a pointed look and nodded towards the door. We weren't going to get anywhere with an audience. Seth let out a long, unhappy sigh, but he did make himself scarce. And once the door closed behind him, I sat down on the end of his bed, legs crossed, and I regarded him with wary eyes.

"Do you know who that guy was?" I asked him. "The one who shot you?"

He gave me a humourless smile. "Yeah. I do. Half-brother. Unacknowledged. Was good friends with Micah. Got into a lot of fights with me when I was a kid. Would be one of the main candidates to replace me should I end up dying suddenly. Do I need to go on?"

"No, you don't," I told him. "So from the sounds of it, he really was trying to kill you. Let's not oblige him, then. I don't know what I'd do if you died. Honestly, I don't. So talk to me. What's the problem with the surgery?"

Liam made a face and turned away from me to fidget with the catheter in his arm. "I don't know. Just ... being unconscious, mostly. And knowing there will be other people in the room. I get that I have to do it. I do. But I really don't want to."

"Okay, well, we can't avoid the unconscious part," I said softly. He didn't need to be pushed. He just needed patience. "So how can we make it a little bit less awful?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, thinking it over in a grudging, resigned sort of way. It was a long while before he looked up at me, almost shy. "Can you stay?"

"Yes, of course I can," I said softly. Why had he been so hesitant to ask? Did he think I was mad at him? I'd run out earlier, but I'd thought it had been obvious that it hadn't been anything he'd done.

Liam managed a fleeting, unconvincing smile. "Okay. Stay. The whole time. Seth can do it, but I don't want anyone else in the room. And no morphine."

"That all seems fine, except ... Seth'll need a proper nurse to monitor you. I'm not trained for that stuff. Is that okay?"

He fiddled with his oxygen mask and looked up at me unhappily, but he did give me a tiny little nod. That was all I needed.

I got up to talk to Seth. He was very used to compromising with his working conditions. He wouldn't mind. In fact, I was pretty sure he would just be ecstatic that Liam was agreeing to the surgery. Right now, he was pretending to check an anaesthetic machine, but I could see him directing a highly agitated, highly stressed stare at us through the crack in the door. Best to put him out of his misery.

***

Liam was still very, very sleepy. They'd taken his breathing tube out a few minutes ago, once he'd started coming around, but that was as far as we'd gotten for a while. I'd kicked Seth and the nurse out before he woke up properly. The fewer people, the better. We had the lights dimmed and the door closed for as calm an environment as physically possible.

I was curled up in a chair beside him. His laptop was balanced precariously on my knees. I was flicking through the pack server, trying to find the log of activity from a few days ago. Liam was much better with this stuff than I was, so it was a shame that he was only half-conscious.

All the same, it didn't take a ridiculous amount of time to pull up the locations of all the pack cars. They were all neatly parked up outside, by the look of it. All except the one we'd given Joel, which he must have sold, because it was over in Birmingham, parked on some residential road. I resisted the urge to snort.

Because I was using Liam's password, I had admin privileges, so I could see exactly who had viewed that information and when. Helpfully enough, there was only one set of login details on the list. Unhelpfully, it said Mason Vaughan. I knew he hadn't been looking at the location of cars. There wasn't any wifi in the cold, hard ground.

Who on earth would know his password, save for Liam? Lilah? She wouldn't have done that, would she?

Liam's eyes opened properly for the first time and drifted over to where I was sat. He looked confused, more than anything. Confused and drowsy.

"Hi," I said. "Welcome back."

"That was fast," he mumbled.

I set the laptop aside and went to sit on the edge of his bed, allowing myself a tiny smile. It was good to see him awake. "Eh. It was a few hours. Seth drained some very sketchy-looking fluid from your chest. Can you breathe properly now?"

"Yeah? I think so. I don't know. I just feel weird."

"Any pain?" I asked him. "I'm allowed to give you this entire syringe. It's not an opioid. Promise. It's something even better."

"Yes please," Liam said, which I took to mean that yes, there was pain, and quite a lot of pain, if the strain in his voice was anything to go by. The truth was, there was no better painkiller than opioids, but it would be better than nothing. It was always good to sound enthusiastic about the drugs, I'd found. It reassured the patients.

"Okay. I'll have to touch your arm to get to the catheter."

He nodded, and I pulled the cover gently aside to reach it. There were neat dressings on his arm and collarbone, and beneath them, I was sure the wounds were already scabbing over. The perks of being a werewolf were minimal stitches necessary and incredibly fast recoveries after operations. He'd be fit to fight in a few hours.

Liam watched me the whole time I was giving him the injection, but I was used to that. Even a healthy dose of sedatives couldn't knock the wariness out of him, apparently. When I was done, I went back to the laptop, giving him some time to wake up properly. It took nearly half an hour before he could keep his eyes open for any extended length of time.

"Are you working?" Liam asked me.

"Sort of," I said. I showed him the screen. And I watched him start frowning in the same way I had. I handed the laptop over, and he took it with his uninjured arm. The other one was in a sling until the freshly-rearranged bone healed itself.

"Either Mase is haunting us — and I wouldn't put it past him... Or this was Lilah," he said slowly. "Shit. Why would she do that?"

"She wouldn't," I replied. I was pretty sure of that, given that she'd sent those Deltas away with such speed. "Can we see which computer it came from?"

He nodded, already clicking a button that I didn't recognise. Yes. He was definitely better with the laptop than I was.

"Um," he said. "Whoever did it was in Canada."

"That's near Greenland," I said wisely. "It's a ... country?"

"It's really cute that you've never had a geography lesson in your life, Eva. Yes, it's a country. A very big country, full of people we've never pissed off ... well, as far as I know. So maybe this is a dead-end."

I made a soft hmm sound. Someone had used Mason's login to hide who they were. Was it so far-fetched that they might have hidden where they were, too?

"Look up what a proxy server is," I said.

"Uh, okay..." Liam replied, eyeing me strangely. "It says it's some kind of bridge between a computer and a website. It can get around firewalls and ... oh. Yeah. Make you look like you're somewhere else in the world."

"Interesting," I said. "Because Charlie Owens said no one else in this pack knows what a proxy server is, let alone how they work. And you put Mason's login details into his laptop. Goddess, I'm actually ... I'm quite good at this detective stuff."

I hesitated then, because Liam had stopped moving. He stared at the screen blankly, as if he could change what it said just by sheer force of will. He liked Charlie. But whoever had shared our location was a traitor to the pack, and they had contributed to getting our family killed. There would be no forgiving and forgetting that.

"But ... why would he do that?" he asked quietly.

"I don't know. Maybe we should ask him."

I crossed over to the door and opened it just long enough to exchange a few quiet words with Mal, who was still faithfully sat outside, even if he was starting to look a bit sleepy. I liked him. Yes, he'd tried to throttle me when he'd worked out that I was a rogue, but he was unwaveringly loyal, and that was a trait I could admire.

I went back inside. And I'd only been sat there for half a minute at most, staring listlessly at splatters of Liam's blood on the bedsheets, before he caught my eye and gave me a wary look that spelt trouble.

"We're not going to talk about what happened, are we?" he asked me.

I swallowed back a sudden, most-likely-unrelated lump in my throat. "No. I don't think so."

To his credit, he didn't let me scare him off. Probably because he was a little more grown-up than I was, when it came down to it. He said, "The way you ran off ... it makes me think you wanted us to be mates?"

"Maybe," I mumbled. "Is that wrong? We get along pretty well ... and it would be simpler, that way."

Coward. I was such a coward. Like it was just about logistics.

"I don't think that's wrong," he said. "But ... I am starting to think we shouldn't have slept together."

I didn't deny it. He was right, in some ways. I didn't know how I could explain to my future mate that yes, there was a mark on my neck, and yes, I was a Luna, and yes, Liam and I had been sleeping together, but the two of us were strictly friends and he had nothing to worry about. Because he would definitely have something to worry about. We'd lost plausible deniability.

"Yes, okay. Technically, we shouldn't have slept together," I agreed. "But we knew that at the time. And it didn't stop us."

"No, it didn't," he agreed. Smiling, all of a sudden. And I loved that smile. I didn't get to see it very often, but it was so full of pure, juvenile happiness that it was both infectious and made me want to jump his bones.

The door opened a crack, and I saw Mal's face appear. He looked between the two of us warily, lingering on Liam. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I? I've got Charlie out here. He's half-asleep and very angsty."

"No, you weren't interrupting anything. We'll be out in a second."

The door closed again. Liam sat up properly and reached for a shirt. Some kind soul had taken his bloody one away and replaced it with a fresh one. He tried to pull it over his head with one hand, only to realise very quickly that he didn't stand a chance. I bit back a smile.

"Help?" he asked.

I stood up and pulled it over his head for him. It took us some time to get his bad arm into the sleeve and then rearrange the sling over it. Halfway through, Seth came in holding a tray of medical equipment.

"Oh, good," he said, blinking at Liam. "You're awake. And ... what are you doing? You're not leaving, are you? I want another few hours of monitoring first."

Liam just gave him a sheepish smile. He pulled his jacket on, leaving the sling tucked underneath it. "Uh ... cheers for everything, Seth. I feel fine now. Would stay, but I've got a war to start. I'm sure someone will bring me back here if I pass out, though."

"I should have been an NHS doctor," Seth mumbled to himself. "Humans don't run away. They wouldn't dare. Not after they've spent months on a waiting list. I'll bet they sit in their hospital beds, all nice and well-behaved, and I'll bet they do exactly what they're told."

"I think that's a little optimistic, Seth," I said as I passed him. "I'll make sure he doesn't rip his stitches, if that's what you're worried about."

And with that, we were gone, and he was left to clean up the mess we'd left behind. Mal had picked a quiet part of the corridor to leave Charlie. He was standing alone, his hands in his pockets and his hair tousled from sleep. He was missing his glasses, so he stood there, blinking at us all.

"Are you alright?" he asked Liam earnestly. It was a fair question. There was blood on his jeans and the side of his neck where the surgical scrub hadn't quite reached.

He was answered by a hard stare. "I'm fine. No thanks to you. Where in your job description does it say you can share sensitive data with another pack? And where does it specify that you don't even have to consult me first?"

Charlie flinched. But to his credit, he didn't waste any breath denying it or pleading ignorance. "Look, you weren't here. I was worried. I thought... I mean, Vincent said that you were in danger. I was trying to help. Believe it or not, it's true. I only took the call because they said it was urgent. I thought I could take a message for you. But he was telling me about how Alpha Jace had been murdered by rogues at the packmeet, and how you'd probably be next..."

"You're not nearly as clever as you think you are, Charlie," Liam said. "Vincent was the one who killed Jace. He was lying to you. What you did nearly got me killed. It nearly got Eva killed."

And it really had got a lot of our family killed. That was the heart of this issue. It wasn't often that I saw Liam angry, but he was angry now, even if it was a careful, restrained kind of anger. I let my fingertips brush against his, and when he didn't move, I gave his hand a quick squeeze to let him know that he wasn't the only one who was upset.

Charlie, meanwhile, gave me a wary look, then glanced over his shoulder at Mal. "Um, Liam ... can we talk privately?"

"No."

He swallowed, and he looked distinctly uncomfortable, but he did go ahead and say it. "Vincent told me that Eva was in on it. He said she's a rogue. And I thought ... since she's so ... well, unladylike, that it sounded plausible."

Ah. So this was where the rumour had come from. Charlie had probably been walking around telling everyone that I was a rogue. I would have been more annoyed, but ... well, he wasn't wrong.

"Of course he did," Liam snapped. "But you didn't stop and think. You didn't try calling me. And you didn't talk to Mal. You just went ahead and told him everything he wanted to know."

Charlie looked like he wanted to melt into the tiles, but for some unfathomable reason, he kept talking. "Well, Mal ... he's ... Everyone knows about ... you know. Where he came from. I didn't think I could trust him."

Mal choked on a laugh that was not even the tiniest bit amused and took a step towards Charlie. I shoved him back again because we didn't need his help. Liam had already decided what he was going to do. I could tell that much from the link. His jaw tightened a fraction.

"Your intentions were good," he said. "Your actions were not. You're suspended. And you'd be wise to stay away from me for a few weeks."

Charlie was standing very stiffly. He inclined his head, the tendons in his neck standing out, and curtly, he said, "Yes, Alpha."

He left. Liam stared after him, the frustration still oozing off him. He glanced back at me after a moment, and there was almost a question in his gaze. The link told me that he was wondering if he'd been harsh enough with the punishment.

I just shook my head slightly. I didn't think locking him up would solve anything. The problem was not Charlie. The problem was this pack and its obsession with stamping out anything that smelt even faintly of rogues without wasting any time on rational thought.

***

There were a lot of fighters in our pack. And when they were all gathered in one place, there was a stench of cologne and old sweat which ruined breathing for me. I was sat on the roof of a car, trying to inhale as little air as possible while I listened to Liam along with the rest of them.

"I think it's pretty messed up that I'm having to clarify this, but there you go," he said. "That's what happens when you all gossip with each other like high school kids. I hope you're all very proud of yourselves."

Some of the fighters had the good grace to look abashed. But only some. More of them were confused or indifferent or somewhere in between. Maybe they hadn't all heard the rumours. Maybe they had never believed it, unlike some of their friends. I knew we had never been hugely popular with the fighters, but their mates were keen on us, and that bought us some benefit of the doubt.

"Eva was born and raised in New Dawn," Liam told them. "Anyone who claims otherwise is welcome to say it to her face. She'll be only too happy to correct you. And I am not working with rogues. You insult me and my entire family by repeating that filthy lie. We're going to let them attack Lowland with us, because we'd much rather they died than you did, but it'll be business as usual straight afterwards — and by that, of course, I mean war. Is that clear?"

There was a chorus of mumbled yes, Alphas. And then the fighters were piling into the cars. I knew from experience that it would take them a long time to be ready to leave. They loved to faff. Someone always needed a last-minute piss. Someone had always forgotten their water bottle. Someone always fell out with their patrol mates and spent the next ten minutes trying to find another car that would take them.

"Was that convincing enough?" Liam asked me.

"Mm. I think so. You were using your big, scary voice."

"My what?" he asked, visibly bemused.

I bit my lip to hide a smile and jumped down from the car roof. I ended up standing a little too close to him. We had fallen into some bad habits at Silver Lake, and the being-too-close-at-all-times was certainly one of them. His eyes flicked down to my lips and came back up again just as quickly. Even yesterday, that would easily have led to a kiss, but ... things had changed.

"I know you're soft," I said, taking a tiny step backwards to put some space between us. For safety reasons. I wasn't very good at impulse control, and when all it took was one tilt of my head ... well, that was dangerous. "And I still get the shivers when you use that voice. Dread to think how the rest of them feel."

"Okay," Liam replied. "Then maybe I'll be very quiet and very gentle when I ask if you want to come to the lake with me. So you know you can tell me to screw off, if you're so inclined."

I just snorted at him. He stepped back to let me go first, and I led the way into the trees. The lake was barely twenty paces away. It was hardly a day trip. But I'd be glad to go. Some of the women had come out to see us off, and a few too many of them were eyeing Liam. He'd been getting a lot more attention from the opposite sex since he'd become Alpha. And while I didn't begrudge them looking, as long as looking was all they did, it tended to make me edgy. Mal lifted his head to watch us go and then went back to a bowl of steaming porridge.

We followed an overgrown animal trail to the lake shore. The sun wasn't up yet, so it was just a vast, dark body of water. I stood in the fringe of the undergrowth and watched as he eased the sling off to test his injured arm. The bone must have healed by now.

He must have been satisfied with how it felt, because he took his shirt off next, and all of a sudden, I was inexplicably, annoyingly flustered. He left his jacket and his shirt on the grass and washed the last of the blood from his neck and shoulder. I folded my arms across my chest, still waiting — and incredibly patiently, I might add — while he gulped down some lake water.

"That's better," he told me. "Now I'll look less like a murderer when we see the other Alphas."

Already, he was pulling his shirt back over his head. It was probably for the best. I'd been staring in a not-very-platonic way, and he'd seen. When I walked over to join him, it wasn't exactly a cover-up, but it was close. I knelt beside him to rinse away the last few flecks of blood. The ones he couldn't reach or see.

He tensed every time the icy water touched his skin — shivering, almost. It wasn't long before a smile was tugging at my lips.

"Don't be a baby," I told him. "It's not that cold."

Liam raised his eyebrows at me incredulously. And then he sent a handful of water flying at me just to prove that yes, it was in fact very cold. I spat out a few droplets and grimaced. Since I was now officially an adult, I did the mature thing and refrained from splashing him back.

"Did you invite me here for a water-fight?" I asked dryly.

"No," he said. At first, he was smiling, but then he was not, and I felt the apprehension rising in an unstoppable tide. "I want to talk to you about the thing we're not going to talk about. And I had a feeling that if I waited any longer, I was going to be a coward and just ... not do it."

"Yeah, I skipped all that rational thinking and went straight to the coward stage," I murmured. "Hence why we weren't going to talk about it."

Liam scratched at the dressing on his shoulder. "But I can, right? You're not going to flip on me?"

"Yes, you can. No flipping. I promise."

"Okay," he said. "Here goes then. I ... don't care."

"You don't care about what?" I asked cautiously, heart pounding in my chest.

Liam gave me a weary shrug. "I just ... I don't care. I don't care that you're not my mate. I'm not sure that I ever cared. I mean yeah, it would be easier that way, but it doesn't change anything."

I sat down beside him and hugged my legs to my chest, hardly daring to glance at him. "I do care. At least a little bit."

"I know. Which is why I have to say the rest of it ... so just... Please?"

I nodded, and I went back to staring out across the lake. My heart was jittery and treacherous. Liam took a minute to open his mouth again, but when he did, it was not at all what I'd been expecting to hear.

"I think that maybe," he began, "I'm a little bit in love with you."

Oh.

Oh, okay. That was fine.

Or was it? What did I say now? Was I supposed to say something? What kind of facial expression should I make? It was hard to decide when my stomach had suddenly become home to a flock of very cold, very fluttery butterflies. I didn't know whether I was feeling delight or fear or panic or a strange combination of them all.

My eyes were on Liam now, and he was looking almost ... calm? Or at least something close to calm.

"And that ... it's my problem, not yours," he was saying. "If you don't feel the same way, I'll find a way to get over it. I wouldn't do anything to risk our friendship. Like, I wouldn't. Ever."

Well ... shit. Now I had to make a decision. I'd been trying not to do that for weeks now. I knew what I wanted to say. I knew where my heart stood on the subject. It was my brain that didn't have a clue. But it was probably good that Liam had started this conversation, because I wouldn't have, and there was a time pressure to the decision which I hadn't considered before.

In a couple of hours, most of the men in the Snowdonian packs would be in one place, and I'd be amongst them, and if I was going to find my mate, it would be then. There was one boy in particular who was certain to be there. One who I would rather avoid for the rest of my miserable life now that I was eighteen.

And even putting him aside, I didn't feel excited about the prospect of meeting my mate anymore. I felt terrified. And I'd felt that way ever since I'd realised that it wouldn't be Liam. That was pretty telling, wasn't it? Maybe this wasn't such an impossible decision after all.

"You really found the safest, most unassuming way to say all that, didn't you?" I said quietly.

He'd made my life very easy. I wasn't backed into a corner. I could say yes as easily as I could say no. I knew it was probably because he'd been majorly overthinking it, unwilling to make me even the slightest bit uncomfortable.

"Well ... yeah," he said. "But I mean it. I'm happy with 'friends.' But I'd also be happy with more."

He'd done his part. He'd done his share of the work — more than his share, probably. I knew I was going to have to be brave now. And suddenly, it was all so very, laughably easy.

"I think ... that maybe ... I'm not happy with 'friends,'" I told him.

"No?"

"No," I agreed.

It had been a long time coming, but I tilted my head up and let our lips brush together. It was only the barest of touches. An invitation, almost. And he certainly took it. He kissed me with enough fervour to send a tingle running down my spine. It wasn't long before his tongue was in my mouth and his hand was on my thigh.

It was the sort of kiss which usually meant we would end up in bed together. We didn't have the privacy or the time for that today, and more was the pity. It didn't mean we couldn't have a little fun, though. Liam's hand had come to rest on my hip, and he tugged me closer now, making it pretty obvious that he wanted me on his lap.

I'd always tried not to do that in the past. I wasn't very heavy compared to him, but that was still a substantial weight to shift if he felt trapped. But I took the invitation and moved to straddle him now. It was easier to kiss from this new, improved angle, but he was sitting on the bank of the lake, so there wasn't much room for error on my part.

We broke apart for a moment to breathe. My forehead was resting against his, and I knew I was smiling in the goofiest way possible. I'd just leant in to kiss him again when I heard a soft splash from behind us. Liam craned his neck to look and swore softly.

"What happened?" I asked him with poorly concealed delight.

"I, um, put my foot in the lake."

I wasn't a giggly person, but that did the trick. Before long, I was smothering sniggers behind a hand while he stared forlornly at his foot. He'd probably just been trying to get comfortable.

"It's not funny, Eva," he told me. It would have been more convincing if he hadn't been fighting his own smile. "My shoe's all wet now."

I bit my lip in delight. "No, it is quite funny, actually."

"One tiny little nudge from me, and you'd be in the lake too."

"Except you wouldn't do that."

That was a dangerous thing to say. He tipped me backwards until I let out an indignant little squeal and clutched at him, but I'd been right. He didn't quite let me fall. All the same, I decided it would be safer to stand up before I fell victim to another fit of giggles, since there was a chance he might not be so tolerant next time.

But when I tried to rise, he just tugged me back down and started kissing his way along my collarbone, dangerously close to the mark there. It was hard to argue with that. I could have happily made out with him all day. I could quite happily have made out with him for the rest of my life.

That realisation felt ... important. And ... yep. It probably was. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was.

"I don't want to find my mate," I told Liam.

Well. There it was. My turn to go out on a limb. It was one thing saying that in a normal conversation. It was another thing saying that when his lips were on my collarbone. I saw him pull back slightly. Hesitate. He looked up at me like he was wondering what I wanted him to do.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm sure. I don't have to meet him to know I like you better. Are you sure?"

Liam nodded. By the look of it, he was a long way past sure. Screw the mate bond, Nia had said. I wondered now, in hindsight, why that had been so shocking to me. I liked him. I liked the way I felt around him. And we had fun together. At the end of the day, it really was that simple.

He had gone back to kissing the sensitive skin below my collarbone, but he stopped and looked up at me now. "If I do it over the old one, it might hurt more..."

"I think I'll be okay," I told him with no shortage of amusement. Having two would be weird and suspicious, so it would have to be there. It had been messy before, and it would be even messier afterwards, but that wasn't the end of the world.

"Well, I don't want to hurt you," he said.

"We'll be here all day if you don't."

I saw him smile against my neck. "Would that be so bad?"

No, it wouldn't. Not in my opinion anyway. But given that we were due to meet Mam and the other Alphas in less than an hour, it would probably be best to pick up the pace.

"Shift," I told him. His wolf wouldn't be so hesitant. I knew that much. I had to unbutton my shirt, but soon I could feel the change coming over me. There was a strange tugging as my spine and pelvis elongated into a tail. My shoulders rearranging themselves invariably gave rise to a low, throbbing pain. My ears popped under the pressure of my skull remoulding itself. And most of all, there was the sudden, overwhelming itch of skin flaking into fur.

When it was done, I said hello to the big, silver-grey wolf who had beaten me to it. He was calm this morning. His tail was low and sweeping back and forth in a slow, steady pattern, his ears were down, and he didn't lift his lip at me once.

There was always a way I wanted to do things, a way my wolf wanted to do things, and a way that was somewhere between the two that we ended up compromising on. Not quite wolf behaviour or human behaviour, but rather somewhere in the middle. Us shifters had a language of our own.

Today, I turned my back on him and sprawled out at the water's edge. Ignoring him. And then simply waiting. He came to sniff at me. First, it was the scruff of my neck, then the sensitive patch under my chin, and finally he stood over me — a great looming shadow, snuffing at my muzzle with hot breath against my whiskers.

I snapped at him lazily and missed by an embarrassing distance. He flopped down where he stood, and that meant I was unfortunate enough to be underneath him. I squirmed enough to earn myself some breathing room and then lay under all that weight as he nosed the place where my existing mark was. It would hurt less in wolf form. This way, he could break the skin without catching anything else in his teeth.

There was a questioning nudge through the link, and I answered it affirmatively. I'd been right. His wolf wasn't nearly so cautious. He closed his teeth so fast and efficiently that I didn't even feel any pressure. It just jumped straight to the pain. But even that was fleeting and not incredibly impressive.

He was licking the mark within a heartbeat. And then he lay flat on his belly and licked beneath my chin, too. Apologising. Even though I'd asked him to do it. I sneezed to show him that I was okay.

It took a little while for the aftereffects to kick in. And when they did, I watched him freeze with no small amount of apprehension. We had a problem. It was like our minds had melted together. Where there had once been a meandering path, there was now a highway.

I could feel every emotion coming across the bond. Some of them so keenly that I had to stop and check that they didn't belong to me. And at the moment, most of that emotion was cloudy and grey and also a little alarmed. I felt Liam's walls slamming up reflexively, but they weren't the formidable barrier that they had been. At least, not for me. I could still see in.

"Ah, shit," I said through the link, only to flinch at the volume of it. What had been a normal projection was now the mental equivalent of shouting. I had only needed to think it.

"Shit," Liam agreed quietly. His wolf was slowly edging backwards, more out of instinct than any conscious decision. And the further away he got, the easier it became to manage this new, near-constant stream of information. So ... what? Was that it? Did we have to stay apart now, just to cope? That was the very opposite of why I'd let him mark me. And why, oh why, had no one ever warned us about this?