Quinn Shalom...

It took the whole morning and into the afternoon to get back. I walked into the cottage without looking behind me. I knew Saul didn't like me staying the night here alone, but I didn't care about anything he thought or said now. I told him I wanted the album of the pictures of my children Ken made for me, since all the pictures in my home were destroyed except for the few Saul salvaged when he buried my family.

"Shalom, you need to come to the school. It isn't safe to stay alone," Saul said from behind me.

He moved so quietly, I often teased him about being a cat instead of a wolf, but I couldn't see myself ever teasing him again. I thought Saul was my friend, but he had been lying to me the whole time. And now William was here, Molly's mate, the one I killed her to save her from.

"I'll come tomorrow," I retorted quietly. I put a kettle on to make some tea. "I just need a night alone."

"What if the Ravers come?" He demanded. "There is safety in numbers. You saw... "

"I am sure what I saw was a bear. If you want to run the perimeter to check for Raver signs, then do it, but I am going to stay in the cottage. My husband made for. Me... And I am spending the night... Alone!" My voice rose and fell with the words I emphasized as I spat the fire of my temper at him. "Now get out of MY house and take YOUR filthy Raver cousin with YOU."

Will backed out the door, looking guilty. Saul looked ready to explode, but he knew from my expression that I wasn't budging. He turned and stomped out to the Hummer, coming back and laying my rifle down on the table, before leaving and slamming the door behind him. I didn't watch them drive away.

Later, I packed the things I wanted into the luggage I stole from a retiree in Oklahoma City. There was nothing in my room at the school that I couldn't replace. I had a full tank of gas in the old Jeep I was driving now, a box full of cash thanks to Ken's preparations, and I would be gone once it got dark.

I planned to head north to Alaska, to see the brother of an old friend. I wasn't even sure they still lived there or if they moved to western Canada like they planned. I lugged the bags out and put them in the back of the jeep. I went back inside and pulled out Ken's letter. I had read it so many times. Tears fell down my cheeks as I got to the last page, I still hated reading it, but my wolf reminded me that even if we forgave him, we would never forget what he did. I knew he would do anything for me and the kids, to keep us safe, logically I understood, but it still hurt my heart. My wolf was less understanding.

My hand cupped my bump as my wolf reminded me how lucky we were to be having this baby after what Ken had done to us. She was impressed with Will's descriptions of Jake, but I was not so easily swayed. I couldn't imagine a time when I would be comfortable in my mate's presence. I read the first page again and again, memorizing the page where Ken described how we met, and what it meant to him to be my husband. I would always love him, even if he betrayed me. I missed how he made me feel. I missed feeling loved and safe.

Finally, I folded the letter up and tucked it back in a drawer with clothes I couldn't wear anymore. I decided to leave it here, maybe someday I might return and live here in the house he left for me. Maybe someday I could read the letter without feeling like my heart was dying. I walked through the house Ken made for me, preparing myself to leave this place behind.

There was movement in the trees as I looked out, something reddish-brown vanishing into the evening shadows. My bear was back. I had seen glimpses of its reddish-brown fur through the trees for almost a month. I worried for the poor bear living in a forest now filled with Ravers.

My wolf was violently, almost painfully, resisting the idea of leaving Westcliffe. She considered the survivors here to be our pack, this valley was our land. She flashed me repeated images of how unsafe it was to travel alone and the risks of Ravers, but I knew we could be out of Raver territory by midnight if we drove straight south, before heading to the west coast, and then north.

March was mild this spring and the roads were mostly clear. Once I got out of state, I could find a place to hide where no one would be able to take my child. My wolf was bombarding me with angry demands not to leave, insisting we were safer with our pack, but I ignored her. I wouldn't get another chance, if Saul suspected I wanted to disappear. I carried the last crate of food from the cottage out to the Jeep and went back to lock the door.

My head was starting to pound as my wolf fought me about leaving, pushing vivid images of Ravers to the forefront of my mind. A twig breaking had me turning around to see if my bear had finally come into the yard. To my horror, it looked like Jake's Raver was standing there in the twilight. I wanted to believe that I was hallucinating because it made no sound as it stepped toward me. My wolf wouldn't let me move because it didn't smell like any Raver we had encountered. It didn't smell mangy or sick with infection. I could only smell the forest. When it reached toward me, I fainted as my wolf pushed forward.

VvvvvV

I woke on the sofa with early morning light streaming in the window. Saul was sitting in the chair he preferred in the living room, re-reading one of Ken's favorite books. He was wearing Ken's sweatpants, so I knew he had come here in his wolf.

Hearing me sit up, he looked over at me, and gave me a smile. "Hey, you're awake. You know I could have loaded the Jeep for you this morning, you didn't have to do it yourself." He laid the book on the windowsill.

"I... uh... I wanted to be ready to go," I lied. "Just let me go to the bathroom, then we can turn off the water and power and leave."

In my head, I angrily demanded my wolf tell me what happened last night. I was sure she made me hallucinate Jake's Raver.

'You went to sleep. We are staying with our pack. There is safety in numbers.' Is all she would say and then she refused to answer again.

Saul stood up and replied, "Well, it's a good thing you did. The sooner we leave the better, I found Raver marks only a mile away and a dead elk that it ate."

VvvvvV

Two weeks later...

The snows were melting and our hopes that the Ravers would stay on the prairie seemed to be mostly fruitful. We still had the occasional stray Raver that wandered into our remote town. Luca and Saul had failed to find the one that ate the elk close to my house, so I lived at the school full time with everyone else.

"Cookies!" I shouted out the window of the industrial school kitchen.

We turned the local high school into a pack house of sorts. Everyone lived here now. I was baking again. When I stressed, I baked, and I was so stressed that I baked every day. It really was a compulsion, but I loved this kitchen.

'How did I ever live without 4 ovens? When I think of all the bakes sales I struggled through with a single oven.' I stopped the thought because it led me to the reasons for the bake sales; Molly and Miles.

A tiny foot tapped my belly as if to say, 'Don't cry mommy, I'm here.' The life inside me was my courage now that his siblings were gone.

Everything was changing and I was seriously feeling the need to just disappear. Not that it would be possible now, with Saul or Will always lurking over my shoulder. Grayson and Lance questioned Will for hours about every detail he could remember and, as usual, we were back to the sweet-smelling snow and what was in it. Will even suffered a few relapses into his Raver, which freaked me out to the point of hysteria. Luca almost killed him the first time. Greyson assured me that this was part of his recovery and got Will back to his human form. We had seen Rand and Clark go through the same thing, but Will's change was different because of who it was, and how he looked. I couldn't control my panic, and Greyson spent as much time calming me, as he did treating Will for the Rage.

When I wasn't baking, I threw myself into organizing the data on the Revelation Night with Lance, who was turning the largest hanger at the airport into something that looked like a giant science fair. We made what Lance called 'case boards' on every aspect and every survivor. I even had a board, which I didn't like. The information we got from the lab in Denver only yielded one new clue. The H.P.P. were using modified planes and trucks to spray A.S.H. in the air. The day the blizzard came in, the mosquito planes and two air tankers were sent into the oncoming storm to spray something that was not A.S.H... We didn't know what the other chemical was, only that it was part of something called Project Elm Street.

The frozen samples I brought back of the Monarch Mountain males showed unusual levels of the hormones testosterone and adrenaline, and the brain I brought back, showed limbic system damage that Greyson couldn't explain. Lance wanted to go find the planes and swab the insides of the tanks for chemical trace, but we didn't know if they were even in the state, or if the pilots knew about the attacks and flew to safety. The other thing was, only he and Greyson could go if we found them, because we didn't know what the Elm Street chemical was or how it would affect the werewolves and vampires of our community.

I heard cheering from the Media room. College basketball playoffs were winding down. I was not a fan myself, but it lifted everyone's spirits to watch sports playoffs after the Revelation Night. It was a sign the world beyond the QZ was returning to normal. Will and several of the younger males had drawn their brackets on whiteboards. Luca was winning so far. I couldn't stop thinking about Miles and Kenneth and their crazy poster boards for March Madness and the April NBA championships. I pulled the last pan of cookies from the ovens and slid the parchment paper onto the counter, trying not to cry. I missed them so much, part of me still wished I died with them.

Bump was kicking me more than usual today. He didn't like it when I was anxious, but I couldn't help it. I felt like trouble was coming, like a March blizzard was raging on the horizon, and Will's news upon joining us didn't help. The Werewolf Monarch, his brother James, wanted me brought before him as a rogue alpha female, and held until Bump was born. It made me so angry, I was not a criminal.

Rogue Luna, my stretch-marked butt! I did not ask to be made into a werewolf. Why am I to be punished while nothing happens to him?'

I did not ask for his brother to do this to me or put this child in my body. I understood that they lost control, but drunks and addicts were still held accountable for the lives they ruined when they didn't have control. I didn't have a choice in becoming what I was now and every day I struggled with that.

'If the Monarch captures me, will anyone ever know? Will I ever be free again? Will they even let me keep my son? I was so afraid for my baby, I couldn't put it into words. I no longer trusted anyone, not even Saul. All I dreamed about was how three times in my life, werewolves killed my family and how they were a threat to the only family I had left, my baby. I wanted my life back with my children and my husband before I knew the truth. I just wanted to be a normal mom expecting a normal baby and not some heir to a kingdom of monsters.

"Goddess, Shalom!" Saul's startled exclamation brought me back from my anxious musings.

He was pulling my hands out of very, very hot water. The skin was pink, but not blistering as human skin would have, one of the advantages of my new biology. His need to hover was getting annoying, he was worse than Kenneth had ever been.

I slapped him away, "Back off, Saul. I'm just doing the dishes."

"No, you're not. You're standing here, staring at running hot water with your hands in the basin. You're burned. You've shut me out since we found Will and lost Rand. Talk to me." With his arms folded across his chest, he seemed taller. Saul was a really big guy, but he didn't intimidate me like he did everyone else. I used to be terrified of big, angry males. Now, I just got mad because he was trying to boss me again.

"What do you want me to say, Saul? Thanks for lying to me for months? Thanks for not turning me over to your cousins yet? Or better, thanks for telling your monarch, he can expect the bastard son of his rapist Raver brother to be the next heir to his freaking werewolf monster kingdom?"

Will was standing on the other side of the pass through, with a cookie in his hand, as I ranted but I barely spared him a glance.

Sarcastically, I spat, "Ohhh, I can't wait for them to come take me so they can steal my son and cover up that werewolves killed members of my family thrice."

"Shalom... I didn't..."

"Look, Saul, I don't know what you expect from me, so just leave me alone." I slammed the cooking sheets into the water and stormed off toward my room. I was falling apart again, and I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and scared.

The worst part was Will kept insisting that the reason I was sick and tired and moody was because Jacob, my Raver mate, wasn't here with me. Some bullcrap about werewolf females needing their mates during pregnancy. Will refused to understand that I didn't want Jake anywhere near me. I thought Saul felt the same way I did until two nights ago, when he gently suggested that it might help. Now, I was terrified, I would return from scavenging for supplies with Herlinda and Anita or working with Lance and Greyson to find HIM here.

I needed to get away from both of them. I needed to start running and never stop if I was going to keep my son from their clutches, but my wolf wouldn't let me leave. Every time I had a chance, she'd give me a headache so bad I'd pass out and wake up on a couch with Saul hovering over me.

"Shalom," Saul's voice followed me, as I turned down a hall and slammed the door to the classroom converted into living quarters that was now my home, aka prison cell.

'Our pup is safer with our pack.' My wolf said for the millionth time.

'I hate it here and we aren't safe, you... you, stupid mongrel.' I screamed back at her, as I sat on my bed and sobbed raggedly.

My emotions were all over the place. One moment I was sad, the next happy, the next raging, the next hysterical. One moment, I was sweet and everyone's mom, and the next moment, I was spitting fire like a hormone-raging demon. It reminded me of a song Molly used to sing all the time called Borderline. There was a light tap, and I didn't need to look up or go to it, I knew it was Saul. He was as hurt by what he did as I was, but it was his job. I was his job who became his friend, but we weren't friends anymore. Neither of us seemed to know where to go from there.

"Shalom, please. Let me in," Saul begged from beyond the door.

"Not now, Saul," I retort tiredly.

He opened the door and came in anyway, he shut it lightly behind him, "Then when? We have barely spoken in two weeks. You aren't eating, you aren't sleeping. You look like crap, darlin'."

"Gee, thanks Saul, you really know how to make a girl feel special. Now get the heck out of my room." I snapped caustically. My wolf wanted to bite me for yelling at him. I promised her she could if she would let us leave and she rolled her eyes at me.

"I can't do that. I won't wait for you to get over whatever this is. What is going on with you? This is more than losing Rand to the Ravers or Will showing up on Molly's birthday or him having the Rage and reminding you of the Revelation Night... And you haven't lost your family twice, I won't let them take your son, they wouldn't do that." Saul sounded so sure about his family.

Staring at him, I decided to tell him about the source of my anxiety. There was no point hiding why I hated what I had become, why I ran for my whole life, not anymore. I was a monster now, a murdering, bloodthirsty monster. And just maybe if he knew the truth, he would let me go.

"Not twice, thrice as in three times, Saul! What Will said about my whole life before I married Kenneth being a lie is true. He and I created it, so I wouldn't be investigated too deeply if he needed government clearance. When I said werewolves killed my family thrice, it is because they have. I had been on the run and living underground since I was ten years old because werewolves killed my parents and baby brother. Only I didn't know it was werewolves until after the Revelation Night."

My hands hurt from clenching them together so tightly. "My brother wasn't even a year old when they slit his throat in his crib. My mother looked like she was attacked by a pack of badgers. She died baking my birthday cake! My father was left hanging, naked, in his workshop, covered with bruises and cuts that were really claw marks. They were all over his body. He looked like every bone he had was broken. And the police claimed it was a double murder-suicide. That my father killed my mom and Beau before he hanged himself. His feet were higher than my head, we didn't have a ladder, and there was no way he could have climbed up there with his arms chained behind his back." I closed my eyes against the images.

"What happened then?" He whispered.

"Mom's great-aunt took me and fled, so I never found out. But when I was fourteen, I came home from school to find her house trashed and her throat cut the same way as mom and Beau. After the police lied about it being a home invasion, I had a nervous breakdown. They locked me in a mental institution, you have no idea what that place was like, what they did to the girls who didn't have any relatives there. But I escaped with the help of a friend's family, and I ran until I met Kenneth. He made me feel happy, he promised me we'd be safe, and then werewolves killed him and our children too. And that makes three times."

I hugged my huge belly. "Three times that wolves have taken everyone I love away. That is why I am so upset, because everything I have learned these past months makes me wish more and more I had died that night instead of becoming one of you. Werewolves are horrible creatures who maim and murder innocent lives. They lie to cover up for each other, and then brush off their crimes as their nature because they are predators."

I was no longer crying when I finished, whispering, "I don't want that life... Not for me, not for my son. I can't help but be anxious and terrified every moment of every day that Jacob is going to turn up here, because you and Will decided to hand me over to him. I understand that I am pregnant with your heir, but he's my son first! I don't feel safe, and my wolf is driving me crazy."

Saul knelt in front of me and put his hands over mine. His eyes were pained now knowing what I suffered before the Revelation Night. He seemed sincere.

"Shalom, I would never let them take you away if you didn't want to go. I am sorry about your family. I can't imagine what it was like growing up that way. Not all werewolves are like that. You're safe, no one is going to hurt you or your son." His voice was so calm, and I really wanted to believe him, but I didn't. I nodded because I knew that was what he expected, but it wasn't true. I knew I wasn't safe.

"I can try to find out what happened to your parents, can you tell me what you remember?" He asked gently.

I knew this was his way of trying to make things right between us. Typical Beta behavior; solving problems and protecting the weak, but it was pointless, because I now knew the police who lied about my parents and aunt were probably nonhumans hiding the truth in a human world. They lied about the deaths, and probably just forgot about my family. I told Saul what I knew anyway, maybe it would distract him.

"I remember we lived in Texas when I was little, then we went to Tennessee, that was where they died. Aunt Judith and I left the next day, we moved a lot, but she was killed in Ontario when I was fourteen." I sighed. "I don't know why anyone would want to kill them."

"What was your parent's and Aunt's last names?" He asked.

I eyed him warily for a moment. Aunt Judith had said to never tell anyone my parents last name before we went to Tennessee, but I supposed it doesn't matter anymore, but I promised her. "Aunt Judith's last name was Pence. She said I was to use the name Smith after. Our last name was Woods in Tennessee, but when we lived in Texas it was something else, something Jewish sounding, I don't remember."

He nodded, "It sounds like your dad was a rogue or lone wolf, and your mom was his human or changed mate. I don't know why they would kill them, or your baby brother, or aunt. Since the Monarchy started 200 years ago, it has been illegal to kill rogues outright, without a trial and the Monarch's council being notified. The only exception is if the rogue is caught committing a violent crime. Is it okay for me to ask Jake to look into it?"

"I don't care, it doesn't matter. My family is dead, and werewolves did it. Just like my aunt and my family with Ken, just like my son will be. They won't stop till we're all dead." I knew I sounded like a petulant child, but I didn't care. Morning sickness twenty hours a day, aches in every joint, moodiness, sleepless nights, and the fact that I felt like in a month I would be as big around as I was tall. I never hated being pregnant until now. The Revelation Night robbed me of every hope and thing I loved.

"Shalom, I know this has been hard, but maybe I could..." he started.

Eyes narrowed as I cut him off, "If you say call your cousin one more time, I will force feed your heart to my wolf," I threatened. "Or chain you to a tree and leave you for the Ravers."

Saul just smirked at me, "I was going to say, I'll bring you some tea and let you have a nap. I like my heart where it is, and it's too tough for your little wolf to chew."

My wolf bared her teeth at his flippant attitude. Trying to make peace, I remarked, "Good save, Saul, but my wolf says her teeth are sharp enough. Tea and a nap would be nice."