Aaaah look!! more art!! This is our setting for the chapter, brought to life by LittleLoneWriterGirl on some very short notice.

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I wasn't avoiding Liam in a nasty way, but I was definitely avoiding him. We'd both been in turmoil ever since he'd marked me. And the closer we were — touching was out of the question now — the worse it got. Neither of us had realised that there would be such a ... free exchange of thoughts.

Liam didn't like the new feeling of exposure. Not one bit. And him getting upset was bouncing across the bond and getting me upset and so on, which was then eternally perpetuated, as far as we could tell. It wasn't ideal.

Because of the openness, I knew why he didn't like it. The problem was, Liam hadn't actually told me that of his own free will. I couldn't help seeing it any more than he could help sharing it now. Tapping ran in Liam's family, so most of his brothers had been able to do it to some extent. And it seemed that Mason had been one of the worst offenders for using the link to inflict pain, so Liam had learnt to keep his walls up at all times.

And now I was getting a front-row seat to several of those inciting incidents on re-play, and I didn't have any choice in the matter. The whole arrangement was very screwed up, in my opinion. The Goddess clearly hadn't been thinking about traumatised people when she'd decided mates should almost share a brain.

"Sorry," he murmured. "The more I try not to think about things, the more I end up thinking about them."

I closed my car door and gave him a half-hearted smile. "You don't need to apologise. I don't mind it ... much. But I know you mind, so we'll just go and see Nia, and she'll fix us. Hopefully."

There was five metres between us, and even that felt dangerously close now. It was hard to read his expression, but I didn't really need to, given that I could feel across the bond that he was even more sceptical than I was. I blinked and looked away, trying to force my walls up, for all the good it did.

Our fighters were also exiting their respective vehicles and gathering in a large, rowdy knot behind us. We weren't the first ones here. The road was filled with cars and minibuses as far as the eye could see. We had quite the walk ahead of us. And this was only two packs' worth, by the smell of things. Ours and the folks from Ember. Hayden and Zach weren't here yet.

"Stay here. Behave yourselves," Liam told the fighters. "I don't want you picking fights with rogues until after they've helped us kill those bastards from Riverside. However tempting it may be. Alright?"

We went onwards alone. Even Mal was left behind — to supervise, I'd imagine. The plan was to keep the flockies as far away from the rogues as physically possible before, during and after the fighting. And besides, I'd rather they didn't see us meeting with our family. It would just be plain weird if we had to pretend to hate them.

We had to round a bend in the road before we stumbled on a very informal meeting on a verge. Vik Lloyd from Shadowless, his rogue mate, Lewis Fletcher from Ember, and last but by no means least, my mother. I'd been right. We weren't last to arrive.

I was greeted by an actual smile. And it wasn't from one of the Alphas. My mother stepped away from them to say hello to us a little more privately.

"Happy Birthday, Eva," she said.

I didn't know why I was so surprised that she'd remembered. With everything that was going on, even I'd barely remembered. I rubbed at the back of my neck ruefully. "Cheers."

Her eyes slid downwards and stuck on the fresh toothmarks on my shoulder. They had scabbed, but they were still pretty obvious.

"Hm," she said. "A very happy birthday, by the look of it. I'll be expecting you at my campfire when this is all over, Liam. And I'm sure Cass and Rhys will— Ah. Just Rhys now, I suppose. He'll be wanting to see you, Eva."

I nodded along obediently. Uncle Rhys and Aunt Cass had taken Liam in, so it was their branch of the family that I'd have to integrate myself with. It was very easy for me. They all knew me already, and they were incredibly chill. Liam would have a slightly rougher time with my mother, I reckoned.

He leant in close to me once her back was turned to whisper, "That means she ... approves? Right?"

"Yes," I told him. "If she didn't, she wouldn't have invited you."

It was a rogue custom which some people took more seriously than others. When two people marked each other, they would each spend a day with their new in-laws. No mate to soften the awkwardness. Once you'd hunted and worked and eaten alongside their families, enduring whatever social torments they decided to throw your way, you were considered 'part of the family.' Sometimes, if you were unlucky, you ended up fighting them. I had literally no doubt that Uncle Rhys and Bryn would make sure I partook in that particular part of the custom, but it wouldn't feel right now that we were missing Rhodri and my aunt.

The bond was sparking. I didn't want my grief bludgeoning Liam, so I took a few steps away from him and waited there, hands in my pockets, staring down at the ground while I waited for it to pass.

If only the war effort could have waited with me. Mam had consulted with our Alpha guests, and now she came back to speak to us. She frowned ever-so-slightly when she saw how much space there was between us, but she didn't ask.

"Have your flockies line up along the verge," she said. "Here will be safe enough — the raiders are half a mile into the woods. And I'm leaving soon."

"Sure, sure," I said. "Where's Nia?"

"With the raiders. Doing her job. If you want to talk to her, it'll have to be over the link," Mam said.

I groaned aloud and turned back to Liam to shrug at him. We'd have to wait until after all the chaos, it seemed. And yes, it was going to be distracting having his thoughts in my head, but I reckoned I'd cope. As long as we stayed a safe distance apart.

"Jess and Bryn — are they okay?" someone asked from behind me.

I turned to see my uncle sitting on the verge. I hadn't even noticed him until then — I'd been much too busy eyeing the Alphas. But I would have done well to pay attention, because he had an old, jaded man beside him. The last time I'd seen Jeff, he'd been stuck in his Shadowcat form, so this was quite an adjustment.

"Sorry? Jess and... Oh, yeah. Right. They're okay," I murmured. "We found Jess an iPad, and it didn't take her long to fall in love with it. Our doctor friend looked Bryn over and gave him some antibiotics. And it's worth remembering that they're both much safer now that most of the fighters are here and not at Silver Lake."

He took the reassurance with a quick nod, but his body language remained tense. "I don't like having them there."

"Yeah, speaking of which..." I began quietly, "should Mr Walking-Talking-Nuclear-Bomb be here?"

My uncle cast a long, wary glance at Jeff and shrugged. He was talking quietly now. Very, very quietly so as not to let the old man hear him. "No. Probably not, but I don't know what else to do with him. He's ... very disorientated. Doesn't remember the last forty-five years, as far as we can tell. I don't have the heart to tell him that his mate and kids are all dead."

Those words seemed to stick in his throat a bit, because he'd lost his mate and a son in the last few days, and he knew all too well how it felt. Even as I watched, he reached up to scrub at his face, looking thoroughly exhausted.

"See for yourself," he murmured. "It's quite unsettling, if I'm being honest. He's acting like ... well, a rational person."

I just continued standing there, staring at the old man warily. And he stared right back. Eventually, my uncle got tired of waiting and nudged me a little closer. He kept a hand on my shoulder as he caught his grandfather's attention.

"Jeff, this is Eva. She's Skye's daughter. You've met a few times — do you remember her?"

Old Jeff frowned at me. It was an earnest expression, and it unnerved me coming from him. He'd barely glanced in my direction in the past. It wasn't long before he shook his head. "I'm sorry. I don't. But it's ... um, it's nice to meet you, Eva."

It felt like my brain had ground to a very abrupt halt. His voice was very hoarse, as if from disuse, but I could understand him well enough. I was gaping, and I couldn't seem to stop. Uncertainly, I looked from the old man to my uncle and back.

Uncle Rhys returned my baffled look with interest. He evidently didn't understand it either, which was a little reassuring. I'd only spent a few hours with the old man, but in all that time, he had not said a single sentence which wouldn't put him on a fast-train to an asylum in the human world.

"I'll try to remember your name," the old man went on, "but honestly, I'm ... um. I'm struggling? Yes, that's the word. Struggling. I'm struggling a bit. With things like that."

He was clutching a handkerchief in his hands, and every now and then, he would wipe his mouth with it. He was looking without seeing most of the time, as far as I could tell. You only had to look into his eyes to know that he wasn't 'all there' mentally. But when you did have his attention ... well, he seemed normal enough. If a little slow.

Liam had been watching. Quietly, as always. But now he nodded towards Jeff and asked in a low voice, "You said he's acting like a person now? Well, maybe it wasn't a 'person' that you were all talking to before."

"You mean ... it was his wol— Well. Not wolf, I s'pose. It was his animal half?" I murmured. It was hard to believe. He had been speaking to us. A wild animal might not deign to do that, unless, I supposed, it was an exceptionally clever wild animal.

Liam shrugged helplessly at me. He didn't know either, clearly. But it was plausible but not likely that my own wolf would manage extended human communications without my input. She wouldn't want to bother.

"I don't have a clue what's happened to him," Uncle Rhys said. "He just seems like a nice, well-mannered man with a brain injury now. He asked me for a cup of tea this morning. But it took him two hours to actually drink it. Whatever happened at Haven ... it seems to be permanent. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing."

I wasn't sure either. But if he was no longer spontaneously homicidal, then it had to be a good thing. Right? I supposed time would tell.

While we'd been talking, Mam had disappeared off, and the Silver Lake fighters had started trudging down the road. Seeing them, my uncle turned to leave, too. There was a risk they'd recognise him as one of the most infamous, prolific raiders in Snowdonia and react poorly.

The old man seemed happy enough to walk with him, but there was no proactivity there. He just allowed himself to be led while gazing about himself in that slightly dazed, slightly vacant manner.

The only rogues left in the vicinity were a pair who had climbed right up onto the verge. One of them had set to work with an axe — cutting a wedge low in the tree-trunk of a spindly ash that was already halfway dead. His friend had rigged it to be absolutely sure it would fall across the road, because it would be a little embarrassing if it didn't.

They only had the back-cut left to do now. Sensing the danger, I moved to stand between them and the Silver Lake men. Liam was beside me. A little too close for comfort, when the bond was taken into consideration. I could feel his apprehension strengthening my own. Our fighters had no idea how to be civil with rogues. The only thing that would stop them attacking was Vik Lloyd's gut liquefying stare and the threat of a tree falling on their heads.

It was beginning to sway. The flockies were herded backwards — shooed as if they were just a group of overly-curious pigeons. And the rogue with the axe let out a loud whoop as the tree toppled down onto the road with an almighty crash. It was blocking the lane quite decisively, and it would stop any oncoming car in its tracks. Which was, after all, the whole point.

It was lucky my mam had cleared off. She had a thing about trees falling. Something about a long-standing grudge against a poplar tree which had tried to kill her and left a horrendous scar on her leg. It was the same reason that she would stubbornly remain under cover whenever there was a storm blowing.

Their job done, the two rogues buggered off down the road to join their friends, with many backwards glances at us all to be sure they weren't about to be attacked. One of them was whistling a raiding song, which was an unnecessary provocation, all things considered, but it did make me smile.

Since we were here to carry out an ambush, and standing out in the open was a little contradictory to that, Liam sent the fighters over the bank. And then we joined them. There were some nice ditches to sit in amongst all the hawthorn and brambles. We settled down to wait there.

It was ten minutes, maybe less, before there was the distant sound of car engines, and then new voices were coming down the road with echoing footsteps to match. I had a suspicion as to who it was because the air suddenly reeked of sandstone and wild garlic, but I had to poke my head above the bank to be sure.

Hayden was walking with Zach Lloyd — the Shadowless Alpha. They had two packs' worth of fighters behind them, and that amounted to more than a hundred men. I watched Vik and his mate ease up from where they'd been basking in the early morning sun and go over to greet their son.

They looked pleased to see each other, which wasn't surprising, but I was surprised to see them greet Hayden with equal warmth. He was pulled into a rough and tumble embrace by the older flockies while Zach watched on, and then they exchanged a few quiet, solemn words.

I watched Hayden turn to his fighters. Dad was amongst them, playing at being a flockie. I'd blow his cover if I greeted him, so I settled for a smile. Hannah was near him and looking more at ease than I'd ever seen her. She was watching her cousin with bright, alert eyes.

"Spread out," Hayden said. "Find some cover, but stay in your patrol groups if you can. And watch your manners around the Silver Lake guys. They're here to help us, and I'll have your heads if you pick fights with them."

I scratched at my chin. In my eyes, he'd been a grumpy, oversized kid, still finding his feet, but it certainly sounded like he'd found them now. Either that, or he was putting on a very good show for the adults who had found themselves under his command a few months early. They dispersed obediently enough.

Dad clapped Hayden on the back, murmuring something in his ear which made the boy smile, and then he slipped past the others to head down the road. Going to join Mam, no doubt.

And since Vik's chosen patch of grass was only a dozen paces away from mine, I found myself face-to-face with the lot of them as they clambered over the bank. I muttered a couple of choice swearwords. Hayden, I liked. But the other two could go and screw themselves, for all I cared. I didn't want this to become the Alpha executive lounge. And yet, even as I looked on helplessly, Lewis Fletcher saw us all converging and crossed the road to join us, lest he find himself excluded from any decision-making.

Hayden managed an unconvincing smile when he saw me. He gave Liam a very quick nod. Minimal eye contact and then none at all — the safest way to interact when your wolf liked to throw their weight around.

"Hey, Luna," Hayden said. "How are you?"

"Okay. And you?" I asked him.

He gave me a little shrug.

"That good? I see. And how's your mam doing?"

Hayden blinked at me, not bothering to hide his confusion. He was slow answering me. "Oh? Yeah, she's fine. Why?"

"Well ... she lost her mate..." I said quietly.

"Right," Hayden replied. "Yeah. Obviously, she's upset about that. But you know ... she's hanging in there."

I eyed him uncertainly. I didn't even have to glance at Liam to know that he'd found it weird, too, because the bond was making that very clear. But I didn't think it was fair to needle him about his family's very fresh, very raw grief, so I just rolled over onto my back and let out a heavy sigh.

"When can we expect Jaden?" I asked.

Hayden shrugged a shoulder. "Soon. Once he finds out I've left his pack unguarded, he'll be quick to move. His mate and son are there. I doubt the Lowland fighters will join them. Nothing in it for them, you see. And they won't want to leave their own pack defenceless."

That was good. We had four packs and dozens of raiders here, but it would still be a lot easier to fight Jaden and Vincent separately. Right now, we were lying in wait on a road that went nowhere. Well, nowhere except Lowland Pack, if you followed it for long enough. Alpha Jaden and his men were currently holed up there and had been since Hayden had occupied their home. Now, we were hoping to lure them out.

I rolled back over and found myself staring aimlessly at Liam. Unlike me, he was sat up and had been ever since the Alphas had appeared. He wouldn't ordinarily sit so far from me, but today was not an ordinary day. He saw me staring and held my gaze. The barest hint of a smile on his lips. It was easy to overlook it amongst all the chaos, but we were mated now, and that counted for something.

I pressed my eyes closed, but my own smile was painstakingly obvious. I heard the faint whisper of clothing against grass, and then there was a warm body alongside mine. I curled up against him, using his shoulder for a pillow, and his fingers traced gentle circles on my back.

In moments like these, when everything was quiet and both of us were just basking in each other's company, the bond was almost ... nice. It amplified the feeling of connection between us. But the second either of us had a Bad Thought or got stressed out, we were right back to living the nightmare. It wasn't very sustainable.

It was almost fifteen minutes before we heard the car engines. I rolled onto my belly and edged up the bank, ready to peer over the top. One hand dug my knife out of pocket and the other flicked it open. It remained to be seen whether we would be fighting as humans or wolves, so I was just going to be ready for either.

Brakes squealed as the first of the cars reached the fallen tree. I was amused to hear a chorus of horns soon afterwards, since the flockies were just that impatient, apparently. It took them an embarrassing amount of time to realise the car in front had stopped for a reason.

Beside me, Hayden was on his stomach with a handgun lying beside him. One look at his face told me that he was in the mood to kill someone. His uncle was in one of those cars, and it was safe to say he was holding a grudge.

"What's the hold up?" a man's rough voice asked. I wasn't the only one who recognised it as Jaden's. A sneak peek over the top showed me that most of the flockies were exiting their vehicles, and Jaden in particular was climbing out of the third car.

Hayden's jaw had tightened. His eyes were now burning with a level of hatred which I wouldn't have thought he was capable of. Beyond him, Zach Lloyd was reacting very differently. He was sat up and calmly loading his gun in a smooth, well-practised motion without so much as a glance in Jaden's direction. He looked disinterested, for all intents and purposes, but there was a lazy kind of malice in those cold brown eyes. I remembered how they'd put him on his knees after they'd killed Jace, and I had a feeling he remembered it, too.

"Tree down," one of Jaden's men said. "We'll have to find another way."

"There is no 'other way,' you idiot," he snapped. "Not by road, anyway. We'll try moving it, and if that doesn't work, we'll have to turn back to Lowland."

Somewhere in the distance, I heard a crash as the rogues brought down a second tree. This one to cut off their retreat. We had half a dozen cars and two vans pinned between the two tree trunks now. Jaden's head turned sharply towards the sound, but he seemed to dismiss it a second later.

If he'd been a rogue, he would have recognised the axe marks on the stump. He would have realised that the ash wasn't dead enough to have split. He would have known that the day was still as the grave, and that trees rarely decided to topple over without at least a little help from the wind.

But he wasn't a rogue. He was pack-born and pack-raised, and he kept walking. Relaxed. Clueless. He stopped beside the fallen tree to light a cigarette. And it was another half-minute later, when he was taking the first drag, that I saw him go very still. He'd inhaled more than smoke. Our scents were all over the road. Not even the constant, unending stench of air pollution was strong enough to disguise that entirely.

The cigarette fell from his hand. But before he could open his mouth to shout a warning, someone in the ditch opposite hurled a metal cylinder high into the air. I had no idea where the flockies had got smoke grenades, but they were very effective. It landed with an explosion of thick grey smoke that quickly engulfed an entire car. The next of the grenades followed within a second, and so on until the entire convoy of cars was hidden from view.

And the Riverside fighters with them. We could hear their desperate, panicked shouting, but we couldn't see them. If Jaden was trying to give orders — to organise the chaos — then they were lost in the ruckus.

"If you come out of the smoke, we'll shoot you," Alpha Lewis shouted from beside us. "Fair warning. There's nearly two hundred of us out here. If you want to stay alive, put your hands up and get on your knees. If you want to die, listen to your Alpha."

The shouting was fast giving way to hacking coughs. A few figures drifted into the fringes of the smoke, but none of them dared leave its cover. We had a clean shot at the road from where we were lying, and we had the shelter of the grassy bank, while they had nothing. If they ducked behind the cars, they would only become targets for the flockies in the opposite ditch.

It was perfect chaos, really. The flockies couldn't use their guns, because they couldn't see two feet in front of themselves and were as likely to hit their comrades as one of us. They couldn't tell if their friends were obeying the order to kneel — and so they started to worry that they would be the only one standing when the smoke cleared. And best of all, they were so thoroughly distracted by their inability to breathe that they weren't managing any rational thoughts.

One guy came charging out of the smoke very close to me. He scrambled up the bank in his desperation, and a bullet tore through his shoulder but failed to slow him. It was Liam who caught him and brought him down with a messy, rough tackle.

I was dashing towards them without a second thought. It took a few good, hard stamps to make the flockie release the gun in his hand. And then I pulled it clear while Liam got a firm hold of his arm. He was trying and failing to shift. I had lost interest by the time one of our pack members rocked up with some handcuffs for him. He wasn't the only one who had tried to run for it, but he was the only runner who was still alive. There were bodies scattered over the verges.

Across the road, one of the Riverside men had managed to pick up a smoke canister and throw it over the bank. It had promptly been returned to sender, but not before leaving a gap in the wall of smoke. Through it, I could see Jaden's men stumbling around. None of them were on their knees.

I reached into the link. "They're not giving up. Let's have the tear gas."

Our fighters were very obedient. Another dozen canisters went tumbling onto the road, releasing an entirely new kind of danger-air. The coughs were quickly turning to shrieks. I watched on with no small amount of satisfaction as their meagre attempt at organising themselves fell apart.

And yet I found myself on the receiving end of a furious stare from Zach Lloyd. "You're not in charge here, darling. Don't bloody overstep. Alright?"

"Please die," I said. "Please just go out there right now and die."

Oh, that had pissed him off. That had definitely pissed him off. The eyes staring me down were now pitch black, and he was looking at me like he wanted to tear me limb from limb.

"Eva," Hayden murmured. Ever the eager little peacemaker. And I was easier to reprimand than his much older, much more terrifying cousin.

I turned towards him, narrowing my eyes, and then I let his conscience do the rest of the work. It didn't take very long. He looked away, a little ashamed of himself and a little nervous, and then he turned to Zach to even the scales.

"She's a Luna," he told him grudging. "Same rank as us. And it was a good call."

Zach gave him a disgusted look, but he didn't argue. He liked Hayden, evidently. And he redirected his anger towards the flockies on the road a heartbeat later, having apparently remembered that we were still in the middle of something.

"Last warning, Riverside," he snapped. He wasn't shouting, but his voice carried anyway. "If you're not on your knees when this smoke clears, you die."

And it was starting to clear now. Further down the road, I could see that some of the flockies had come to the very edge of the smoke with their hands up, and they were now waiting there at gunpoint, coughing their lungs out.

"Good decision," Zach told them. And that, of course, was entirely tactical, because it made the stubborn ones wonder if they were going to be fighting us alone when the smoke did clear.

The wind was blowing it all further down the road, but some reached us in our ditch, and I found myself fighting back a cough. My eyes were stinging. I was glad I didn't have to do much, in all honesty. I didn't have a gun, so I could only watch as our men began shooting into the dregs of the smoke. They were trying to scare the Riverside men, and I reckoned it was working.

It helped that they were being faced with pack wolves. They would never have surrendered to rogues. The longer the gunfire went on, the more of them were setting down their weapons and lifting their hands. A lot were too incapacitated by all the smoke to fight back in the first place. And only about a third had even been carrying a gun.

I poked my head up above the bank. It was becoming very obvious where their Alpha was. A handful of Riverside men were taking shelter inside one of the cars and returning fire through shattered windows. I recognised the Beta amongst them. One by one, they were all picked off. But Jaden himself was hunkered down behind the front of the car. He clearly thought he'd thought himself a nice, safe spot, out of our line of sight, but the reality was that our fighters had been ordered not to shoot him. We had a pair of vengeful Lloyd Alphas who wanted to do the honours.

He would peer out from behind the car, loose a shot at anyone who happened to be poking their head up, invariably miss, and then duck under 'cover' again.

"That's fifteen shots," Zach Lloyd murmured after a while. "Watch him now. If he has another mag, we might be here for a while."

But Jaden didn't reload. I doubted he'd brought any spare ammunition. He just threw down the gun and looked over his shoulder, as if debating making a run for it. All of his fighters had either surrendered or died. It was quite satisfying seeing him hunkered down there, helpless and in fear for his life. Made a nice change.

Hayden was on his feet before anyone could stop him. He climbed over the bank and began walking towards his uncle, the gun hanging loosely at his side. I wasn't slow following him, and neither were the other Alphas.

When Jaden saw his nephew, I watched the horror spread across his face in slow motion. A muscle popped in his jaw, his eyes darted from side to side, and he straightened up, dusting off his clothes as if he hadn't just been cowering on the ground. His eyes were red from the tear gas, making it look like he'd been crying.

"Hayden," he said distantly. "Why am I not surprised?"

Hayden didn't rise to it. There was an uncharacteristic emptiness in his eyes as he regarded his uncle.

"Are you going to shoot me, pup?" Jaden asked next, nodding towards the gun in his hand. "Can't say that surprises me, either. You don't even have the guts to fight me fair."

"What, like you did?" Hayden asked. His voice was impressively steady, but his eyes were betraying him. "Maybe I should shoot you. Maybe I should wait until your back is turned. It doesn't get much braver than that, does it?"

A little smile flitted across Jaden's lips, but there was a tightness to it that made me think those words had hit their mark. "Traitors like your father don't deserve any of the usual courtesies."

"Bullshit," Zach laughed. "Jace scared you. We all knew it. If you'd fought him fair, he'd be standing here today, not you."

"Yes, well, unfortunately, we'll never find out, will we?" Jaden said slyly.

I could feel Hayden's anger lapping at my mind. It was relentless, and it was also accidental on his part. But outwardly, nothing had changed. He was still staring at the older Alpha with that lethal calm.

"I'll fight you, uncle," he said. "Unless that prospect is too terrifying for you?"

A new kind of smile was spreading across Jaden's face. It lit up his eyes most of all. "Oh, no. Not at all. I'd love to kill you."

I was a little uneasy. And so was Liam — I could tell that much without the bond's help. He was watching Hayden steadily, as if he was thinking about intervening. But it was Zach, unsurprisingly, who stepped half in front of Hayden to confront Jaden. "You wanted a fair fight? You'll get one. The boy is half your age. But I'm not."

Yes. Please. That was a bit better.

"He asked first," Jaden said quickly. Not so keen on the idea of fighting his cousin, then. But what more could you expect from a coward? "He doesn't need you sheltering him, Zach. He's a big boy now."

"I can do it," Hayden insisted, rather unhelpfully.

I still didn't like it. Zach was right. He was still so young. His uncle had an extra twenty-five years of experience, and he'd probably be able to kill Hayden. There'd be no triumph in this if we lost the pup to a few moments of stubborn stupidity.

I was eyeing him. But so was Zach, and I missed the decision being made behind his disinterested brown eyes. He raised his gun and shot Jaden in the thigh. It was sudden enough that the gunshot made us all jump. Jaden most of all. It wasn't necessarily a life-threatening wound in a shifter, but it was enough to put him on the ground, groaning and writhing.

Hayden rounded on his cousin furiously. Because an injury like that ensured that any fight that followed wouldn't be 'fair.' It had taken away his chance to tear his uncle apart. But it had also taken away any chance that he would be harmed in the process.

Zach just shrugged at him. Unapologetic. He didn't seem to care that he wouldn't get to fight Jaden either now. I fidgeted idly with my knife and reflected it was the first thing he'd ever done that I approved of. We didn't need to make some huge point here. It was enough to win.

"You're right, Jaden," Zach said. "Traitors don't deserve any of the usual courtesies."

Jaden was too busy swearing and gasping to answer that. It looked like the bone might have shattered under the impact, and honestly? Good. He needed to suffer a little before he died.

Zach made a gesture at Hayden, as if offering him the chance to finish him off. Hayden just stared at him. Still angry, I'd wager. So Zach shrugged, the picture of indifference, and lifted his gun again. This time, the bullet found something a little more vital. His skull, to be exact. And all of the noise Jaden had been making was cut off quite abruptly.

I didn't need to see the mess that had been made of his head, splattered against the road. I pocketed my knife and turned away. We had one, maybe two casualties, and we'd already taken an entire pack out of the equation. Rogue tactics combined with flockie resources had worked a treat. But I didn't think Lowland would be as easy as this. We'd just lost the element of surprise.

Behind us, Lewis Fletcher was quietly organising all four of the packs. They would take the rest of Jaden's men prisoner until this was all settled. He'd taken the initiative while we'd all been watching the show.

The Beta was still alive. He had been shot in the hand, and he was clutching it against his belly, leaving a stain of red spreading down his front. The other was raised in supplication as he approached us, somewhat slowly and cautiously. He knew it was over. That was so painfully obvious that none of our men lifted a finger to stop him.

He fixed his eyes on us and then nodded around himself, motioning his packmates, most of whom were still on their knees. "I trust you won't harm these men. They were following their orders. No more, no less."

It wasn't just a statement. It was almost a demand. He was doing his job well — looking out for the fighters under his command. He had spoken very loudly and very publicly, and I reckoned he was appealing to the regular fighters more than anyone else. They were soon shifting their weights and looking uncomfortable. None of them liked the idea of being persecuted for simply doing their jobs. Flockie solidarity ran deep, apparently.

"As long as they haven't murdered any children recently, they'll be absolutely fine," I told him simply. A lot of what had happened at Haven was actually illegal under pack law, but the Alphas had made a point of ignoring such deviations as long as they were directed at rogues. But not any more. Between Liam and Hayden, they would be held to account.

Hayden was in a 'holding people to account' mood right then, as it turned out. He tore his gaze away from his uncle's body and levelled a cold stare at the Beta. "Is that what you were doing? When you helped Jaden murder my father in cold blood? Following orders?"

The man didn't flinch, but he did sigh. "It's a Beta's responsibility to challenge poor decisions. But only to a point. And in all honesty, Jaden's decisions were incredibly poor. I surpassed that point a long time ago. He stopped listening to me."

"But at no point, clearly, did it occur to you to stop listening to him," Hayden said. But he looked away a moment later, his entire posture slumping. The poor kid looked exhausted. I doubted he'd slept since the packmeet. Hannah pulled him into an embrace.

Meanwhile, I caught hold of the Beta's sleeve and dragged him to the verge, where I sat him down and put pressure on his hand to stop the bleeding. He was so astonished that he didn't try to resist me. I was a little astonished, too. The medic instincts which Seth had drummed into me were strong, evidently. He was here today — one of a team of doctors, but they would be tending to our own guys before they went anywhere near the enemy.

Liam had come, too. I didn't think the Beta would have tried anything anyway, but that was near guaranteed while he was standing beside me, staring the guy down. I flicked out my knife and used it to tear a strip from the bottom of his shirt. I certainly wasn't going to wreck my own clothing. Not for a flockie. The cloth was wrapped round and round the grisly remains of his hand until the stream of blood began to ebb.

I was trying not to think about the fact that he had probably been at Haven. And he had probably killed people there. Right now, all that mattered was making sure he didn't bleed out. He might have been innocent — well, as innocent as a flockie could get. And if not, at least he would live to stand trial.

"Tell us what's going on at Lowland," Liam said, once I'd finished the bandaging. He was quite obviously not talking to me. I stood up and let out a little yawn. The lack of sleep was catching up with me, but this conversation seemed important, so I would try to listen.

But our prisoner did nothing but sit there, mouth firmly closed, his eyes fixed somewhere distant.

Liam looked at me and found no help whatsoever. All I did was shrug, and so he tried again. This time, his tone was a little sharper. "It's four packs against one. We're going to win whatever you say. But the more information you give me, the more chance I stand of limiting the casualties. On both sides."

The Beta heaved a long, unhappy sigh. He looked at the carnage on the road. A dozen of the Riverside men were dead, but it could have been worse. A lot worse. And so he opened his mouth.

"Vincent knows you lot'll try something," he muttered. "He's tight on security. And he knows what happened here. We linked him. Right now, the westerners are camped off his territory, but he might let them enter if he gets spooked enough. That's another forty to add to your calculations. In theory, he could call on Pine Forest to help him, too, but they won't come. I promise you that much. Their Alpha wants nothing to do with this."

Of course Pine Forest wouldn't come. They weren't real. And their so-called Alpha didn't want his little charade exposed to the world.

Liam was thinking more sensibly than that. "The westerners. Vincent is paying them, right? How much?"

An amused shake of the head. "Your predecessor was the one paying them. I imagine they're still billing Silver Lake for their services, but Vincent and Jaden and the old Ember Alpha were all contributing. I imagine it was a tidy sum. Hundred thousand? More? Who knows?"

I blew out. Of course it had been Mason who'd hired the trained killers. But I really wished one of the elders had thought to mention that at one point. Liam must have agreed with me — he swore quietly. "You mean I'm paying them?"

"Yeah? Far as I know. Could be they've changed it since they worked out that you're ... well..." He cast a wary glance in my direction. "In bed with the rogues. So to speak."

I just grinned at him.

"Have you got a phone number for the westerners?" Liam asked.

I really hoped he was thinking what I was thinking.