Blood packs were evil things. He knew this now better than he'd ever learned it from his mother's table.

"They're the ones that have you under oath," he decided.

When Suzette looked up, the fear and hate in her eyes was gone. They were carved-out empty again. She shook her head.

"Who, dammit?"

She rubbed her temple, and in the tired lines of her, he sensed pity.

Thomas wasn't used to pity. He gave her his back when he couldn't hold those eyes. "Ridged Fang doesn't allow blood rites."

The quiet felt eternal.

"You've been gone from the mountains a long time, Thomas." That was definitely pity in her voice, near bitter with a wistful sorrow.

"No," Thomas heard himself say.

One of the oldest, wildest blood rites invoked the ring finger of their mates for the mating ceremony. Some said the flesh was to be burned, but in the secret shadows as old as the mountains, people whispered—in the old rites, the finger was eaten.

Surely hers was burnt. Oh, God, please tell him it was burnt.

"Thomas." Her voice sounded far away. If it hadn't been so out of place after all these years, he might have missed it entirely. "Thomas, look at me."

Hell, if Ridged Fang had turned to blood, they might have performed the rite to take her finger themselves. He knew plenty of wolves that had fancied her—his brother Jude among them.

Thomas stretched his neck and heard a slight tear in the seam of his shirt. All of the fabric too tight, too close, too hot.

The pine smell of her found him, fresh and calming like an autumn breeze. He must have looked half-wild because she came to him. Her hand brushed his forearm.

She kept her head bent and throat subtly tilted at a bared angle out of habit, which only fuelled his fury. But her skin distracted him: warm now and alive, here and safe. Ridged Fang didn't have her. Neither did Sun's Dagger. He did—which unfolded a different sort of anxiety in his mind.

"Listen, because I can only say this once," she whispered. He hadn't realised she'd moved him to block the room's one-way window until her hand slipped from his arm. "There are games you don't need to play. Beasts you don't need to hunt. People you don't need to save. Do you hear?"

Thomas caught her hand as it fell to her side, his thumb trailing the place her ring finger should be. "Do you need saving, Suzette?"

She changed their grip to wrap her small fingers around his wrist. Her nails pressed crescent indents in his skin; hadn't she felt cold before?

"I'm not the –" she began, and though she opened her mouth, the sentence was clipped short. Her head twisted like a dog with a muzzle.

I'm held on my knees. Two of them dig their heels into my calves to keep me bent double on the tile. I pay attention only to the pressure on my shins, not the taste of blood in my mouth.

"Easy." Thomas supported her by the elbows; the image in his mind coursing through his body as sudden and bright as a camera flash. He shrugged it off to help her to the chair.

"Fool," she said, the word crumpled and sodden like paper in the rain. She sat and tugged at her collar to easier breathe. "The longer you're here, the more I hurt. Just go."

"Hurt?" Thomas rubbed his wrist where her hand had been. "What hurts?"

The door rattled with an open-handed knock. Thomas' whirled, not ready to forfeit her back to the breeding office. He stalked to the threshold as the door creaked open, that brawler wall of protection locking his muscles in place like armour.

But it wasn't Marius, the head of the breeding office, that entered. Or any threat of reasonable size. She was much too short, and while her dress was brightly coloured, it was much to plain. The lavender linen matched the pigment she'd painted above her eyes and her hair was braided to her waist.

"Luna?" Thomas choked on his growl. A different sort of panic roiled up his chest and he moved to block her from Suzette's view. "What are you doing here?"

"I can be wherever the hell I want." Luna frowned and pulled the whingey door half-closed again. She bent around the handle to inspect the other side. "Did you do this to my wall?"

"You shouldn't be here, Luna," he said, and moved to usher her out of the room.

"Does she have a gun?" Her own trusty holster—custom-made for some anniversary or other—was strapped to her hip, fully loaded with the infamous Fur Splitter.

"No?"

"A knife, then?" Luna looked Thomas over. "I am trying to understand why the breeding office has run for cover. Why Beta's predator analyst knocked on my door. And what my enforcer is doing pulverising walls."

Thomas bristled, his hand on the door tightening enough to dent. "More than pistols and knives are used to kill packs in the mountains," he tried, but the dark fury of the mountains, barely bridled in manners and rules, was a beast too elusive to pin with words.

"I asked her to come, Thomas," said Beta from over Luna's shoulder.

Anastasia hovered at Beta's side, as did Uriah, Luna's guard. Other than that, the dim hall was empty of its former crowd. That was worse than the breeding office; Luna was only summoned for the worst of the worst cases, especially in her current condition.

Then he realised he'd been standing between Luna and Suzette, not quite sure whom he was protecting. He quickly stepped aside.

Luna pat Thomas' arm and stepped into the holding cell with a smile. "Good morning, Suzette."

Suzette stiffened at the sight of Luna's pregnant belly. Her eyes darted to Thomas in accusation; that pup was a secret on a national level. After seven years, Luna was rumoured to be barren. Her pregnancy ensured a strong generation of pups to the most prestigious pack in the nation—if she carried full-term. This news made her both a target and threat. Even the press was in the dark until next week.

"Suzette," Thomas said in tones of resignation. "Allow me to present Luna Lianne Finn of the White Pined Woods."

Suzette recovered with that cold mountain grace. As smooth as melting ice, she stood and lowered herself to both knees. "My honour, Luna." Her hands were folded one over the other to hide the missing finger. "Though I think I'd like to speak to a breeding officer before more conversation."

"Yes, well." Luna cocked her head, studying Suzette. "I'm afraid our brawler has scared them off. And don't mind Kate. She's obligated to stand by me in Alpha's absence. And while the breeding office can spare you from wolves, they have no laws against a chat, human to human."

Beta followed Luna inside and shut the squealing door.

"Bring me that table, Thomas." Luna gestured to the table in its exiled corner. "And sit, Suzette, by all means. We don't have much time before Marius arrives and ruins all the fun."

Suzette sat, keeping Luna in the corner of her eye with that hunted caution back in place. Thomas knew the feeling; there was something about Luna that cut through to the heart and then some.

He dragged the table to Luna's side and she sat with a pregnant sigh. "Well, Thomas," she set her hands on her belly. "Is the pup yours?"

Thomas' temper scratched like a broken record. "My- what?" he spluttered.

Suzette coughed, but mercifully retained the presence of mind to answer. "I know little of other breeds. But surely your scout beta heard the 'been seven years' part of our conversation."

"I did." Beta stood by Luna's side, as poised as a portrait. "Yet when a pregnant mate is left on our doorstep like damaged goods labelled under his name and he tears through doors to see her safe..." She gestured to the holding cell door as testimony; the handle had banged a hole in the wall that spittled crumbs of concrete. "You'll forgive the presumption."

Luna laughed. "Always said a woman would be the end of him."

Thomas' palms sweat. "She is a childhood friend," he explained. Except she was more than that. No, less than that. Thomas paced the length of the room. Dammit.

Suzette licked her lips. "The father of my pup is dead." The last word was clicked tight like a lock on a coffin. "As I told the breeding office."

A brief silence followed in a rushed funeral procession.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Luna said.

"Don't be." Suzette ran her hands down her skirt and refolded them. "I have severed all ties with that Pack."

Beta turned to face Suzette. "And will they come for you?"

"It's a big ask, Suzie." He plays with the hoop of gold in my ear. "A real big ask."

Suzette didn't so much as blink. "They will not."

Thomas stopped his pacing by the window; the mirror reflecting back to him his lopsided necktie and wrinkled waistcoat. "The mountains don't just let you go," he growled.

"The exile would know?" Suzette said, her eye catching his in the glass. Her presence here proved his point.

Thomas turned on his heel and crossed the room, but Beta grabbed the back of his sleeve. "Her fever is worsening," she told Luna.

"I'm sure it is," Luna said. Then rearranged her skirts. "I hear you're refusing a medical exam, Suzette. And if your pup is wolf, there shouldn't be anything the breeding office can't know."

Suzette twisted the third button in her shirtwaist collar like it was too tight. Her fingers shook again. With all his senses tuned on her, he could feel the shift in the room; that sticky fear that smelt like desperation rising on its haunches. Fever, Beta had called it; dread, he'd have said.

Beta moved her hand to his arm.

Luna nodded like the silence was an admission. "It hurts, doesn't it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Suzette said. Her voice was flinchless, but sweat beaded her brow.

"I see why Kate called me now." Luna swept her braids aside and leaned toward Suzette. "Do you know anything of my history? My first encounter with wolves?"

Those guarded eyes darted to Thomas for help. But Thomas had a premonition crawling into his chest, wide-eyed and defenceless. In all his years of enforcing, Luna's case seven years ago had been the worst.

Luna moved her hands to the collar of her dress and slipped loose the first row of buttons.

Suzette stiffened as Luna tugged the sleeve over her shoulder, but couldn't help but stare with the rest of them.

Luna's skin was the warm near-dark of sunrise; soft and smooth. Above her left breast, just under her collarbone, was the beast's mark—an ugly knot of flesh, pale and puckered and rimmed in red.

"Bled black for fifteen years before I crossed the river." Luna's thumb trailed its edge. "Still does sometimes, when the melancholy strikes."

Suzette's breathing shallowed, like waves too close to the shore. She didn't look away from the mark. "Was it your alpha?" she whispered. Somehow, she kept her tone flat and distant.

The implications for his alpha rumbled a growl in Thomas' chest, but the question didn't seem to offend Luna. Alpha's mark was on her wrist; she was the only Luna in history to be marked in such an absurd place. White Pine was proud of it.

"It was years before Ivan. One night; five wolves. I was thirteen."

Suzette refolded her hands in her lap, rubbing one thumb over the other. For a moment, she looked small and sad. The trembles spread to her shoulders, and she locked her spine to hide them. "You shouldn't tell me these things. I am not Pack and they are dangerous."

All information was power in the mountains; feuds played in petty games. A beast's mark—a territorial, selfish thing—was a chink in armour if leveraged right.

Luna clicked her tongue. "You think it still has power over me?" She righted her dress and redid the buttons. "I remember that feeling; so weak everything is a threat, so confused there is no one to blame. It's the shame that hurts the most, isn't it?"

The metal chair screeched against the concrete as Suzette stood. "Please," she said, moving so the chair was between them again. "The vow is one thing. This, another."

"I thought he liked me," Luna continued as if she hadn't spoken, something old and haunted in her voice. "Followed his and his friends to the river, giddy as a lamb."

"You were young," Suzette spat, near angry. "That mark damns his evil on your behalf."

Luna let a silence fill the room, its pressure building like a needle to a blister. "But?"

Suzette kept shaking her head, clenching and unclenching her jaw. "It was seven years I loved him." At the admission, she wrapped her fingers around the chair's spine tight enough to leech them of blood. "Please. I will make a good mate, I promise."

Luna stood, and Beta pulled Thomas aside to let her pass. "No one questions that, Suzette."

"No." Suzette rapped her knuckles on the chair. "My pup needs a wolf bond by the end of this week. That will not be threatened for mere morbid curiosity."

"No one is threatening anything," Luna said as quite as a promise.

The door burst open and the hole in the wall spat more crumbs of concrete.

"A pup!?" Marius, the breathless head of the breeding office, rushed in with an army of medics and officers on his tail. "So it's not human after all. And look at this place! No wonder she weeps. Someone get her a blanket. A meal, anyone? And you—check her blood pressure!"

The sound of the door against the wall set off an internal trap in Suzette. She pressed her hands over her ears. "Breathe," she said. "Breathe, Suzette."

Beta moved to block the intruders. "Marius," she said cordially.

Suzette looked paler than dead; her shakes unstoppable now. Thomas moved to cover her, helplessness wrapping his muscles like a cage. Was it a beast's mark she hid? It didn't feel right. It wasn't shame that sat on her shoulders; it was guilt and something twisted and hurt like betrayal.

Behind him, Marius' smile was smug in his voice. "Good to see you, Luna. Allow me to report that Beta Kate is in the wrong place. This is a breeding operation."

"Thank you, Luna," Beta said. "I can take it from here." The breeding office would pull rank otherwise, try to give the case to Luna instead.

"So be it." Luna didn't sound happy about the prospect, but didn't undermine Beta before the breeding office.

Marius turned to one in his entourage. "Go on, doctor. What's the pup? Tell me it's another mountain brawler, hey?"

Suzette looked up, her eyes hooking Thomas' in panic. "It hurts," she said, and her face twisted.

"What hurts?" Thomas kicked the chair out of the way and reached for her. Her skin scalded like the sun—some hellfire barely banked beneath her skin.

The small holding cell rattled with questions as Luna was shown out.

"How far along is she?"

"Are we sure it's not human?"

"What sort of Pack would let her leave with a pup?"

A gasp. "Is he the father?"

"Really, Beta. No order can be maintained if you ignore the most basic of legislation."

Thomas loomed in all his muscle and mass over Suzette like a partition in the room, trying to quell the shakes in her arms with a firm grip.

"I'm alright," she kept saying. "Saints, I'm fine." But her hand wrapped in the hem of his waistcoat and she swayed.

Thomas barely caught her.

"Beta?" he called.

Suzette's hand reached up to wrap in his collar. "I made a good mate, Thomas. I swear it."

"Of course you did," he was saying, clearing the tears from that beauty mark on her cheek. His hand brushed her neck and caught on something hot and wet.

Horrified, Thomas pulled her from him only to find blood, black as tar and thick as oil, down her neck, on his hands, all over his waistcoat.