"Hello!" Harold shouted behind the closed door of the cabin. "I have urgent news."

"He won't give up, will he?" I hopped around to gather my jeans and shirt. The smaller the room, the harder it is to find things that are scattered, and my clothes fell off wherever last night.

"Do you want me to punch him?" Blake grinned crookedly, exposing his right canine. "Because I'm tempted to."

"No. Let him in, please. I'll be a minute." I dashed behind the curtain that screened the cabin's amenities. In this cramped corner, I wiggled into my panties, then the rest of my clothes, without tumbling through the curtain once.

The door banged on the wall since Blake threw it open with far more force than it required. "What's the urgency? Don't tell me you started another fire, Beta Harold."

"Good morning to you too." Harold suppressed a yawn, striding in. Two strides of his long legs—and he was out of room to stride. "Is there coffee? I could kill for a cup of coffee."

"Help yourself," I said, emerging from my hiding place.

The invitation was late, since Harold had already rescued the pot from the stove-top and splashed its contents into one of the two mugs we kept at the cabin.

Blake stared at Harold's actions with the intensity normally reserved for watching a bomb being defused. "Well?"

Harold lifted his hand up as he gulped the hot coffee.

The pause gave me a chance to appreciate how different the two most powerful men of our pack were.

Blake was already clean-shaven, his smoky-gray hair combed and his gaze steady. His fingers slowly pushed the buttons of his half-closed shirt into the proper button-holes, eliminating the slightest hint that he wasn't all put together.

In the same manner the crisp white fabric hid his chest hair and my mating mark, his pose hid any vulnerability I might have seen during the night. His muscle, and his stance, and his convictions—it was all solid matter.

For Harold, a sleepless night and a day with the rogues pushed his appearance even further into the disreputable territory.

Darker, coarser stubble covered his throat, which bobbed up and down as he swallowed coffee.

His features sharpened, deepening the shadows around his eyes and lifting his cheekbones out of more stubble. This, in turn, imparted a maniacal glow to his red eyes. Their glance used to be softer than Scarlett's.

Today, the ruby-red hardened to something like a laser beam of a lightsaber. He was in motion, fluid with the clearly disruptive energy that made me chew my lip. Was I right to trust this man?

Harold set down the empty mug. "In short, Alpha Blake, is that your Luna is right, we need to extricate her father."

My heart thumped in my chest. Did I just judge the Beta based on his looks? I shouldn't have had. "Dad is Scarlett's prisoner then?"

He bristled. "Mmgh, yes and no. From the clues I gathered, Scarlett treats Steinar as a guest of honor, but he's not free to go."

"A hostage then." A crease formed between Blake's brows. He tilted his head—hopefully thinking through the ways to save Steinar, not considering leaving him to his fate. "Where does she hold him?"

"Unfortunately, he hasn't been seen in public since the Muck's fire—" Harold directed a pointed glance at Blake, who snarled. Harold backed off a step, with a peculiar twist to his lips, half a smile and half a scowl.

"After that—well, I couldn't find him in any of the old haunts." Harold was obviously enjoying needling Blake about his interference, but at this point his amusement completely gave way to the scowl. "Him, or Scarlett."

He was after Scarlett, of course. How could he not be? The hurt when he mentioned the cursed woman's name was palpable in his voice.

Blake rocked from heel to toe. "Basically, you got nothing."

I shook my head slightly. "Blake, he wouldn't bang on our door and drink our coffee, if he didn't have more than that. Right, Harold?"

Harold squinted, as if deciding if my guess stole his thunder or gave him a fantastic opener.

"Well?" Blake poured the remaining coffee in the second mug and handed it to me. "Drink. You look like you need it."

Harold pulled out a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and shook it out.

"A map?"

"Not quite." The only surface large enough to spread his treasure was on our bed, so Harold went straight to it. He pulled the blanket over last night's messiness and crimps in the sheets—all with a painstakingly neutral face—and smoothed the glossy paper over it. "This is a nautical chart of the Puget Sound to the north of Seattle."

Indeed, it was, with the measurements and other useful information for sailing. Harold tapped an outline inside the blue. "Steinar will be brought here this weekend."

Blake never stopped frowning, but he studied the map. "An island? Why?"

"Because, Alpha, Scarlett is up to something big. So big, that my contacts wouldn't give me any details, wary of my divided loyalties. All I know, there is a secret gathering on this island, and Steinar is supposed to address it."

"Let me guess. His meteoric bloodline makes him someone worth listening to?" Blake asked.

"Yes. It's rare among the packs, and among the rogues—basically unheard of."

I gasped, covering my mouth. "Scarlett wants to exploit Dad's heritage to undermine my prestige as a Luna."

"I'm afraid so." I didn't expect compassion to flicker in Harold's eyes but there it was. He felt for me.

"But, but, but...why? She's an Epsilon now, she couldn't possibly hope that the Goddess would elevate her to Luna's rank again."

"She styles herself a rogue now, not an Epsilon," Harold corrected. "And they wouldn't say what it is all about."

"My gut feeling is that whatever it is, it's not friendly to our pack." Blake's shoulders flexed and his frown melted away. It was like a weight lifted from him when he sniffed that Steinar's matter gained a dimension closest to his heart—the protection of his pack.

"This information doesn't go beyond this room." He looked at us for confirmation. "Beta? Luna?"

Harold and I nodded. Speculation in the ranks was a dangerous thing.

"We need—" Harold started, but Blake raised his hand, forestalling him. "Yes, we do. The three of us will investigate the island gathering, and I'll put anything worth mentioning before the Council of Betas if the threat is credible."

"Blake?" I touched his elbow.

He sighed. "Yes, we'll extricate the scoundrel, if he needs rescuing. I'm not yet convinced he's under duress." Then he rubbed his chin and in an infuriating fashion of men proceeded to bond with Harold over the boats, currents and best place to land.

I stopped listening to them, humming an uplifting tune from no particular composer. The truth about my family was within my grasp, and an adventure with my fated mate! I could hardly wait for the weekend.

***

Scarlett's island was deceptively small on the nautical chart next to the mainland's shore looming along the side of the map, and nothing special in the scatter of the patches of dry land sticking out of the waves.

As our boat skidded on the still water at dawn, the shade of the rainforest canopy covered us while we were still out at sea. The surf grew louder, and Harold steered by its sound into the trees and shrubs, some ever-green, some bare. It was a small gorge, formed by a creek spilling through the cliffs under a crust of ice.

For a human, the rainforest would have been an impermeable mass, particularly in the winter, even though the snow only clung to the roots of trees here, rather than piled up like in the mountains. For a werewolf, this was a comfortable terrain to cross.

As soon as Blake, Harold and I dragged our boat as far upstream as it would go and covered it with spruce branches, we shifted.

"Crap," Harold uttered, slapping the palm of his hand over his forearm, where his beta mark glowed through his black fur. He looked us over, for similar give-aways as pack wolves.

Blake's alpha mark was obscured by the collar of the jacket he kept after his transformation—the rules for this specific aspect of shifting was a lottery I gave up on understanding. This time, I stood in a scarf and snow pants, but with no jacket and boots on. My white fur was striking even without my Luna's mark and the silver speckles of the Meteoric bloodline.

Blake shook his head in dismay at the sight of my werewolf form—the first for him, since he loved both the power it symbolized and its wild beauty. "Let's hope we can go as humans around the gathering, or you'll have to hide in the woods, Este."

"No names!" Harold barked. "Unless you want to go by Bob, Harry and Emma or something."

Blake and I shook our heads at this stupid suggestion.

"No names then."

We crashed through the underbrush in a sullen silence as the sun's pale rays slanted across the forest. Fortunately, the wood was full of movement and scents of the werewolves—Scarlett's invitation must have drawn dozens. Blake kept stopping to sniff the air uneasily and shield me from every suspicious rustle and snap of a twig. "Wish we had our wolves to help us."

"Oh, sure," Harold, who was growing surlier as we approached Scarlett's stomping ground, snapped. "Because they wouldn't give us away."

Blake growled, the bristled of the thick smokey gray fur rising above the collar of his jacket. Of course, he knew wolves couldn't swim across to this island, and that the rogues broke off their connections with the beasts, relying on their own warped worldview for a moral compass.

I stepped between the two men. "I smell campfires. It can't be far now."

"Campfires mean that some of them are in a human form," Harold said. "Or that they brought their human hangers-on, though why, I wouldn't start to guess."

Blake's eyes narrowed in distaste. "I thought you knew so much about the rogues, you were practically one of them."

The only sign that Harold heard Blake's barb was that he let his hand slip from his forearm, revealing his beta mark. His smile grew so radiant, it was like we were standing at the Olympian's lobby, not on a carpet of frozen leaves and needles in a hostile territory.

He leaned in to whisper into my ear, "Whatever the case, it means you don't have to skulk in the woods, all alone." Then he tilted back, smiling even wider.

A low growl rumbled in Blake's chest. "Stop ogling my mate."

I didn't appreciate Harold using me to get under Blakes skin, and Blake's teenage-like reaction even less. "Blake!"

"Tsk, tsk." Harold wagged my finger at me.

"Yes, yes, I remember. No names," I mumbled. "But, please, both of you, put a cork in it. We won't learn anything, if you keep this ah...measuring contest going."

"She's right, you know," Harold said and pointed at the gap between two trees, flat as a trail. He even sketched a mocking bow. "After you, my fearless leader."

"No, no. After you, our gracious guide," Blake answered.

I groaned and charged into the breach.

The men rushed to overtake me, exclaiming in alarm about the need for caution and not doing anything to blow our cover.

I gritted my teeth, because when Blake died, it would leave Harold with the distinction of being the worst undercover agent in the entire werewolf nation.

Before I could share this observation with the duo, the underbrush released its clutches and the glow of the campfires flashed between the trees. Wind carried smells of cooking, freshly chopped spruce logs and creatures similar to us.

Without as much as a glance at one another, Blake, Harold and I shifted into human forms.

I pulled my hood as low as possible and wrapped the scarf right under my eyes to hide my markings. It was so similar to what Steinar had done, a sigh lifted my chest. Was I missing him? It seemed impossible, yet...

"Let's see what they have there," I said hoarsely.

The rogues expanded a natural clearing until it resembled an illegal logging camp crossed with an open-air music festival grounds. It was big enough to hold five or six hundred people, twice the estimated rogue population in Seattle. However, Blake's earlier observation at the Muck's was spot-on—the number of humans mingling with the rogues was extraordinary.

Worse, not even five minutes into our excursion, one of those humans—a stern woman in a velvet cloak—ushered Dirk Steinar onto a pile of logs serving as an impromptu podium. Then she stood right behind him, like a dark shadow.

The rogues quieted, turning to Steinar, rapt expectation writ on every face, even the humans.

Something big, Harold had said about Scarletts plan, and I could sense the enormity of it in the air, even if I didn't know what it was. My breath hitched in my chest as I gazed upon Dad. Light breeze stirred his robes. He stood with his back to the sun. The overcast sky in the backdrop basked him in scattered, silvery light of the morning. The longer I stared, the more it looked like a halo.

"Brothers and Sisters," Stenar said, and my heart thumped. Something big is coming.