Jesse frowned, running her hand across the elaborate redstone tool set. And she thought Olivia's set was massive, this one had items in she's never even seen before!

"Found anything?" Petra asked her, her voice ripping Jesse back to reality.

"Just more redstone tools." Jesse said with a sigh, turning around to face Petra again. "Since when was Maya this into redstone?"

"As far as I know, she's always  known a thing or two about it." Petra said, pulling another drawer open to search through. "But never this much. I wouldn't be surprised if she's gotten this good at Aiden's will – you know he wouldn't keep them around if they weren't of some use to him."

"Then I wonder how Gill is still alive." Jesse muttered, making Petra snort.

The two of them were searching through what they assumed were Maya's 'bedroom'. They've already been through Gill's – which was pretty much a maze of complete and utter junk. Aiden's room, no doubt where all the good stuff were, was locked up just as tight as the cell.

"I don't think we're going to find anything in here." Jesse admitted. "Aiden wouldn't trust his friends to have items as important as the keys to Rascal's cell." She finished with a sigh, thoughtfully biting her lip.

"Jesse, look at this."

Jesse turned around, walking over to where Petra was standing. The redhead was holding what looked like the fur coat Maya had worn on their previous encounter. Her blue eyes were narrowed in suspicion.

"Wolf skin." Jesse said, realising what Petra was getting at the moment she touched the coat and felt the familiarity of the fur's texture. It was an awfully close shade of grey to Rascal's fur as well, just a tad lighter than him.

"Yeah." Petra said softly. "But that's not all."

She turned the coat around, running her hand across the fur to smooth it out. Carefully, Petra traced a faded shape on the coat with her finger, the patch of white fur being the only imperfection on the smooth grey coat.

"It was probably a birth mark." Jesse said thoughtfully. She shuddered slightly, hating the thought of the wolf the coat used to be.

"It is." Petra said softly, her voice almost distant. "But Jesse... Rascal has the exact same one."

It was quite for a second, neither of the girls speaking. They turned to look at each other, a mixture of emotions dancing in both their eyes.

"It's a little different, but the resemblance is there." Petra finally said, directing her gaze back to the coat. She gulped thickly. "Rascal was barely a few weeks old, starved and without a pack when we found him...."

"Dear god." Jesse breathed, leaning back against the wall and burying her face into his hands. "You think...?"

"His parents must have been hunted." Petra confirmed softly. "And somehow, the fur's found it's way over to Maya." She dropped the coat onto the ground, turning away from it. "I feel sick."

"This is... horrible and every synonym for it out there." Jesse said softly, glancing over at the coat. "This is worse than his parents abandoning him, or him getting separated from his pack like I had imagined."

Petra only gave a small nod in response, subconsciously wrapping her arms around herself. Jesse could tell that it rattled her, which wasn't something that easily happened to Petra. But then again, Petra felt about Rascal like she felt about nobody else.

Jesse glanced down, her eyes meeting the tracker she had in her hands. Two dots were moving across the scene, heading directly towards the home base where she and Petra was.

"They're on their way." Jesse said, looking up at Petra anxiously. "Aiden and Gill, Maya no doubt with them."

"Are we going up against all three, or try to get Aiden alone?" Petra asked, already unsheathing Miss Butter.

"Aiden alone." Jesse said firmly. "Two against three won't be a smart move. We go for the others afterwards, if at all."

Petra nodded at Jesse's instructions, before the two of them began creeping down the hallway. They stopped outside a close door, already hearing the footsteps of the Blaze Rods entering. Petra pressed her ear up against the wall, able to pick up on every step the blaze rods made, every breath they lead out. Just by listening, she was able to tell which footsteps belonged to which Blaze Rod – The ones that lightly dragged along were Gill, the light quick ones were Maya, and those heavy stomps had to be Aiden.

"You go put that back where it belongs." They heard Aiden bark and order at one of his friends. "And Maya, go make sure they left that wolf alone!"

Jesse and Petra exchanged glances, seeing their own horror reflected in each other's eyes. How did the Blaze Rods know their group was there?

Petra pressed her ear back up against the door. She could hear Maya and Gill's footsteps fading into the distance, while Aiden's stayed. Moving slightly to the left... then the right... he was pacing. Turning her head back to Jesse, Petra motioned the fingers on her right hand in a very specific way – one of the Order's oldest fighting signals.

The door flew open as both Jesse and Petra came right at Aiden. By some miracle he saw them just in time, rolling out beneath a blow from Miss Butter that probably would have ended his life there and then. Leaping to his feet and ripping out his clear, diamond weapon.

"I was wondering where the group's so called fighters were." He sneered at Jesse and Petra as the three of them circled each other. "Hung back for your wolf friend, didn't ya?"

"Oh, we hung back for more than just Rascal." Petra growled at Aiden. "We hung back for you."

A grin began to play on Aiden's lips, his green eyes glinting with something Jesse couldn't put her finger on. He twirled his blade in his hand, pointing the razor sharp tip right at them.

"Looking for some fun, I see?"

"Burying my sword as deep as possible into your chest will be fun, yes." Petra responded aggressively.

She launched forward, with Jesse a few seconds behind her. Aiden ducked out beneath Petra's blow, blocking Jesse's. He moved at the speed of light, clearly having more practice than the two girls could ever dream of having. Sparks flew between the weapons, diamond, gold and nether star grinding against each other.

Somewhere between his moves, Aiden managed to kick out one of his feet, his boot making hard contact with Petra's stomach.

"Petra!" Jesse called out as her friend was knocked back onto the floor, immediately recoiling in pain.

"One down, one to go." Aiden said as his sword came up against Jesse's again, her arms cramping with strain to keep the blade off her throat.

"Not that easy." She hissed at him, when she noticed the wall coming up behind her.

Using the move that had helped her win her last battle, Jesse jammed her foot up against the wall, using it to push herself forwards and shove Aiden off of her. He staggered back, only to recover himself before Jesse could make another move. He swung his sword at her, the tip of it's blade effortlessly slicing across Jesse's cheek.

She cursed, only just managed to duck below another blow from his sword. Ignoring the blood dripping down the side of her face, Jesse was quick to attack again. But as their blades were pressed up against each other, Jesse felt her grip falter, her movements weakening. Her breath hitched in her throat the moment she realised why.

Petra groaned painfully as she pushed herself up from the ground on one elbow, the other arm still clutching her throbbing stomach. Everything was shifting out of focus, but the world had stopped spinning around her and the echoing in her ears had subsided. What Petra saw through her blurred vision, made pulsing heart rate accelerate dangerously.

"NO!"

Petra threw herself on top of Aiden, moments before he could impale his sword into Jesse's collapsed form on the ground. Knocking Aiden to the ground was all Petra did before dropping to her knees at Jesse's said. Immediately she wanted to search for a deep wound, a gash in her friend's armour, something. But it only took Petra a few moments to connect the dots to the cut across Jesse's cheek.

"The command block, no." Petra gasped, feeling the colour drain from her face.

Immediately she got in front of Jesse, ready to cut Aiden to pieces if he tried to lay one finger on her friend. Aiden had managed to get a hold of Jesse's sword as well, standing in front of Petra with both the rare, enchanted weapons clutched in his hands. But the look on his face had that familiar hint of confusion, realising that the simple cut had been what bested Jesse.

"He lied to me." Aiden sneered under his breath. "That prick lied to me!"

Petra had no idea what Aiden was talking about, or if he had just managed to trip over the line between sanity and insanity. But she wasn't planning on finding out.

Reacting quickly, Petra wrapped Jesse's limp arms around her neck, hoisting the barely-conscious girl onto her back. Despite the condition Jesse was in, she weakly lifted one of hands. Aiden jumped back in surprise when the white blade disappeared from his hand in a small puff of smoke, reappearing in Jesse's.

"Running again, are we?" He asked, a grin beginning to play on his lips as Petra edged back.

Maya and Gill came running into the room behind Aiden, but he held one hand up and signalled them to stand back.

"My friend means more to me than my revenge." Petra growled at Aiden through gritted teeth. "But this isn't the last we'll see of each other."

"Oh, I know it isn't." Aiden said, his sly smile grinning. "Though I find it hard to believe that you're just leaving your mutt behind in my cell."

Petra's expression faltered slightly, but she didn't stop edging back from the Blaze Rods. However before she could stop herself, she let the unspoken question fall.

"Where did you get that fur coat?"

Aiden's grin grew even more at the realisation that Petra did in fact recognise Maya's fur coat. Petra felt suspicion boiling inside her, realising that Aiden made the same connection she did. But how?

"There's no way you've been back in out world for more than a year already." She said in a low voice. "Rascal was orphaned a little over a year ago."

"And how do you know we only came back now?" Aiden asked, a sly grinning playing on his lips.

"You would have come for us already." Petra said, although her voice was beginning to swirl with forming doubt.

"I planned my first attack on you for an entire year before I put it into action." Aiden said matter-of-factly. "I'm smarter than you think, I don't rush into things. Besides, I have bigger fish to fry."

Petra's heart thudded against the inside of her chest, adrenaline pumping through her system. She hid it well on the outside, but fear was rapidly building up within her at that moment.

"Who would have known-" Aiden smirked. "-that the wolves who got in our way back then, happens to be related to the fleabag of the losers who's been getting in our way since the days of Endercon. A coincidence in our favour!"

"You're sick." Petra growled at him. Then her eyes narrowed slightly in suspicion. "But you wouldn't kill Rascal... not yet. You need him, otherwise you wouldn't have kept him here in the first place."

"Clever girl." Aiden folded his arms over his chest. "Now run while you still can. And enjoy your last days, before things start falling apart."

Petra stood rooted to the spot for only a split second longer, before she readjusted Jesse's limp form on her back and promptly bolted.

"We're not going after them?" Gill asked in disappointed.

"No." Aiden replied in a low voice, his tone boiling with dark pleasure. "I just found a missing piece of the puzzle... and now we can have some real fun.

Because tearing out the bonds between friends, is the most effective - and fun - way to achieve what we want."

___

EDITING THIS CHAPTER WAS A NIGHTMARE KILL ME-

Not sure how many of you saw on my message board, but my laptop's keyboard broke.

That was a whole emotional roller-coaster I'm sure you guys don't want to hear about, but it's fixable! Just gotta wait for the new one we ordered to arrive, but meanwhile I have a keyboard plugged into my laptop and I KEEP PRESSING THE WRONG KEYS!

I write on muscle memory, I've used the same keyboard for 6 years now and I know exactly where everything is, so this was just weird- I was constantly pressing A when I meant to press shift, and pressing F12 when I meant to press backspace argghhh it was just annoying- but hopefully there aren't too many errors!

Also, next chapter will be out in 3 days again, because due to going on holiday for my birthday (ya girl's 18 now whoo), I fell pretty behind!

Anyway, a lot happened this chapter and a lot was revealed- We now somewhat know what happened to Rascal's pack before he was found by Jesse and Petra, and Aiden's been giving a lot of hidden clues as to what he's been up to. No sign of the others yet either...

Any new theories?

I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, and I'll see you in 3 days with chapter 18, assuming something else doesn't break as well!