The chains bit into the skin of my wrist, chafing against my existing scars. It itched and it hurt, but it was much better than escaping and starting a killing spree. Rhys made an apologetic face.

"Tighter. I don't want to hurt anyone."

The apology deepened, but he did pull the chain a fraction tighter. Beside me, Fion and Leo had already received a similar treatment. It was a sensible precaution, since we had no idea whether we had ingested any of the drug. Fion said that, half-ground to powder as the pills had been, they could've entered the bloodstream regardless of whether we had thrown them up or spat them out.

It felt unfair. We had realised what was going on, and it might have been too late for us, anyway. It had definitely been too late for Ollie, who was chained to the next tree and still fast asleep. We had bullied a flockie medic into setting up an anaesthetic IV so he couldn't hurt himself.

No sooner had Rhys secured the chain and sat back on his arse than a familiar dark-haired pain in my ass approached. Jace had been doing the rounds of his freshly-turned packlings, and it hadn't taken him long to notice our merry band of outlaws.

"All of you?" he sighed. He made it sound like such an inconvenience — his favourite rogue ally losing her humanity. "Did you manage to throw it up, at least? I have four guys who did that, and only half of them have turned so far."

I grinned humourlessly. "I spat and vomited. The other two swallowed some of it."

"You didn't have any?" he asked my brother, oozing suspicion.

"No," Rhys muttered, "but if I turn, you're welcome to rip my throat out."

Now, if that happened, I had better not turn feral until it was over, because that was a fight I wanted to watch. Rhys and Jace had tussled a few times, to my knowledge, but none of them had ended in clear victory and I had missed all of them, anyway.

"I think turning feral might actually improve you, Llewellyn, but thank you for the invitation nonetheless."

Gallows humour? And ribbing? Jace must have been properly out of sorts. Rhys would have laughed if he hadn't been so worried. As it was, he barely managed a grin. Fion appreciated the joke less — I could hear her heartbeat stutter, and I found her hand and squeezed it, even as Leo was doing for me.

"Do we have a precedent for pregnant females turning?" I asked, since we had no idea what might happen to the pup.

Jace paused, and his eyes darted to my stomach, and I couldn't help smiling a little, even under the circumstances. "No, we do not."

"Oh." I was trying to put on a brave face for Fion, but the chance of a feral pup being carried to term, let alone delivered healthy and sane, seemed ... slim. As a distraction, I added, "Found the piece of shit who poisoned us?"

He nodded. "A human boy. He got to the food before it was even cooked. There were no guards."

I tried not to be annoyed about that. Rogue food stores were always guarded, because we were all thieves, and we were all in a permanent state of hunger. At least we had the culprit. Maybe we could even beat some information out of him.

"Well, if I haven't turned by the end of the hour, I'll want a word with him," I said pleasantly.

"Alright. But it'll have to be quick, because we're negotiating the prisoner exchange for four o'clock."

That gave us three hours. One to wait, and two to gather the raiders and make the poison itself. Fion didn't lodge an immediate protest, so I assumed that would be enough time for her. I nodded, and Jace left rather abruptly. I turned my steely gaze onto my brother next. "You should go with him."

He sat himself down a few paces away, just out of reach, and smiled wearily. "Nah."

I growled at him, curling my numbing fingers into fists. "Don't be stupid, Rhys."

"These chains might not hold us," Leo added.

"And you're bleeding," Fion pointed out sternly.

He shrugged. "I'll heal. If this your last hour of sanity, I'm not going to miss it."

"Don't be melodramatic," I scoffed. "We'll be fine."

I was bluffing. There were about a dozen of us who had eaten the pills and had yet to turn. But, ten minutes ago, that number had been twice as big. The timeline between consumption and going psycho was unpredictable, to say the least. We had been whittled down, one by one, and now the survivors were overwhelmingly female (with the exceptions being Jace's two vomiters and Leo). I knew there was some kind of pattern there, but I was too distracted to work it out.

Rhys stayed. I was chained up, so it wasn't like I could do anything to evict him. He nicked a pack of cards from the nearest tent and we played cheat, naturally. I found it difficult to slip cards up my sleeves with the chains there, so I came last. Well, second to last. Leo was still too innocent to cheat unless he absolutely had to.

While we played, we had to watch both of the remaining sane males start to thrash against their chains, until eventually the flockie medics arrived to sedate them. It had taken them almost half an hour to turn, but they had turned all the same. Leo was the only male left, and my fear for him was twisting my stomach into knots.

But he didn't turn. His eyes didn't budge from their shade of horse-chestnut. And while I experienced a range of emotions from frustration to contentment, I didn't feel any blinding rage, and I certainly didn't feel the two halves of my mind being ripped apart. The whole hour passed without any of us turning.

It was only when Jace returned that it began to sink in. We were fine, and it was over. But the question was — how? What made us different? Or had we just thrown up soon enough? I just sat there, letting my mind race in little circles, while our visitor frowned at us.

The New Dawn Alpha seemed surprised that Fion and I were okay, since about half of the females had turned. But it was Leo who astonished him — the only male who had eaten a pill and wasn't trying to kill anyone.

"What's so special about you?" he demanded.

"Yes, I'd like to know that, too," Leo replied quietly. "I mean, I'm distantly related to you..."

Very, very distantly. Rhys, Leo and Jace all shared a great-great-grandparent, and that was it, so I didn't want Jace getting any inflated ideas about his importance.

I narrowed my eyes. "No, that can't be it. Doesn't explain the females."

"You're right, but we'll worry about that later," he said and snapped his fingers at Rhys. "You can let them go."

Rhys looked straight to me, and the Alpha didn't bother to hide his annoyance. I nodded my head ever so slightly. He tossed me the keys, and once I had freed my wrists I handed them straight to Leo. I stood up, rubbing the life back into my numb fingers. My mate joined me a moment later, and then my sister found her feet.

"On a schedule," was all Fion bothered to say before she disappeared in the direction of the tent. I got the sense she would have to rush the poison, and perhaps that was for the best. There was no point dwelling on what we were going to do.

"Yes, we are. You wanted to see the prisoner?" Jace asked me, one eyebrow cocked.

I nodded slowly. My fingers were beginning to tingle, so I stuck them in my pockets to warm them up. With a nod of his own, Jace led the way back towards camp, with me in his wake and Rhys and Leo in mine.

As we left, I threw one last, lingering glance at Ollie. He was still sound asleep and, with his eyes closed, it was hard to tell that anything was wrong. His tawny hair was matted with dried blood, and there were dark circles under his eyes, but his face wasn't twisted by that unnatural hatred. We needed to fix him — there was no doubt about it. So Goddess help the prisoner, because there wasn't much I wouldn't do to them for information on a cure.

Jace led the way to a secluded part of the camp. From there we moved inwards, to the very heart of the New Dawn sector, which stank of their pack — sandstone and wild-garlic and bluebells. We attracted a great deal of hostile staring, us three rogues in the Alpha's wake. I was getting used to that, and it was incredibly easy to ignore, since my wolf didn't take their challenges seriously.

Our destination was a single light blue tent. There were two guards posted at the entrance, but neither of them looked particularly alert until they spotted their Alpha. After that, it was feet together, chins up and eyes straight ahead.

"Did you say it was a human boy? How old?" I asked as we approached, because I had a sudden suspicion as to whom we might find within.

Jace shrugged. "Goddess only knows. Younger than you."

"Blonde hair?"

His sharp eyes fixed on mine, and he stopped abruptly by the entrance. "Yes. You know him?"

"We're acquainted," I sighed.

Shouldering past him, I ducked into the tent and scowled at its sole occupant — a blonde human boy of about fifteen years who was now officially a serial pain in my ass. His name was Carter, and he was a self-declared hunter.

"Hello, murderer," I said pleasantly, letting the hatred bleed into my voice and my expression. "Ready to die?"

Carter blinked at me. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and there was a bite on his forearm which had barely scabbed, so it was safe to assume he hadn't come quietly. His gaze slid past me, to whomever had followed me in — Jace, I reckoned, just because my wolf was on edge. There wasn't room for anyone else, so Rhys and Leo were left to interact with the random guards.

"Yes," Carter muttered, although his hesitation had painted a truer picture.

"Well, you'll have to wait. We've got a few questions."

We would have to at least try an interrogation. The veteran hunters would probably have died before they told me their name. Carter, though, was young and easily intimidated, and there was some part of him, very deep down, that was beginning to realise he didn't want to die for this cause.

"I'm not going to tell you a damn—"

"If you don't talk to me," I said lazily, "I'm going to give you to the mates of the men you murdered today."

Oh, I could feel Jace's raised eyebrows burning a hole in my back. We might have had Carter first, but he was New Dawn's prisoner now. Killing him would've been an act of war. But honesty had never been one of my strong suits.

And Carter believed it — his eyebrows furrowed, and he chewed on his bottom lip. Fifteen sounded very young, but Owen had only been half a year older. Carter wouldn't be the first child to die in this war, not by a long way, and it wasn't like he was innocent. He'd killed eleven shifters and doomed twenty-three more.

"I can tell you some things," he offered. "Some things that are harmless."

He wanted to tell us, to reveal how clever he had been to keep us fooled this whole time. The truth was simpler — I hadn't ever seen him as important. He hadn't mattered, spy or not, liar or not. He couldn't have gleaned much more than names and faces and camp dynamics.

I waved him on carelessly. "Well, go on then."

"I was just following orders. Our spy disappeared in Brandon's coup, so they sent me in to get information." A slow smile spread across his lips, although it didn't quite reach his eyes. "They said you wouldn't kill me if I had my sisters with me, so ..."

It was true. But it begged the question — how did humans I'd never met have any idea about our weakness for kids? How had they been so sure?

"What information did they want?"

He shrugged. "Nothing specific. Anything I could find out."

Nothing specific? You didn't risk the life of a fifteen-year-old for nothing specific. Whoever had sent Carter hadn't given a shit whether he lived or died — they'd spent his life on whatever tiny snippets of information he could glean. Who the hell could be that ruthless?

"Do you work for Malcolm?" I asked him. There was a whisper of feet on earth as Jace shuffled in place behind me.

"Ah, ah, ah. No questions like that. I can talk about myself — that's all."

"Fine," I spat, forcing a pleasant smile onto my face. "How'd you get out?"

"The full moon," he smirked.

Of course. We'd all been so distracted by the ferals that night, it would have been easy for a human to sneak through the border and open a cell. And I wouldn't put it past my fighters to keep their mouths shut about losing a prisoner, especially such an insignificant one. Shit.

"They hadn't expected me to do so well. I earned another assignment." He spread his hands out, gesturing abstractly to the newly-turned ferals and the kills they'd made. "And, once again, I'd say I've exceeded expectations. They gave me all morning to infiltrate your camp, but I managed everything in two hours."

So he had served his purpose in watching us, and that hadn't been enough. He had been sent into danger again, this time without his baby sisters to hide behind. And what did the hunters care if he got himself killed, as long as he managed to take a few wolves with him?

"I'd say you did," I agreed, sick to my stomach. He seemed to think that this was some sort of game. He hadn't yet realised that he was a pawn, and he had just been sacrificed to take out a few more, equally insignificant pawns. I was sure now that he didn't know anything useful about the hunters, or he wouldn't be here. But maybe he knew a little about other things.

I squatted so I was at eye level with him. "I ate one of your pills, kid. It didn't work. Why?"

The stench of frustration leached from him. "I don't know."

"Does it happen often?"

"No. Not often, and only ever with the girls. It's why we don't bother turning them," he muttered.

We had thought as much. But ... Leo — he was the anomaly and the key to figuring all of this out.

"But it works with some of the females?" Jace tried.

"The younger ones turn. Once they get to her age, things get more sporadic."

Then it wasn't a gender thing. But we were getting closer. And Carter was willing to tell because he didn't realise the information had any significance.

"Okay ... has a male ever ... not turned?" I asked.

He scoffed, shaking his head. "It always works on men."

Always? What did Leo have in common with older females, exactly? It had to be a physical trait, I supposed. If my age was the turning point, maybe that was the only clue I needed. I stood up, frustrated, and decided to turn my focus to that. If we could work out what made them immune, we might be able to find a cure. Forget Leo for now — he was just complicating matters.

"That's enough," I decided, sticking my hands into my pockets and stepping back. "We can thrash it out somewhere away from this little piece of murdering shit."

Carter looked horrified. He had realised this went past idle curiosity — he had realised that he had helped us, the evil wolf monsters. I would have laughed at him if I hadn't been so furious with him.

"You go. I have a few more questions," Jace replied.

"Suit yourself."

I ducked out of the tent to find Rhys and Leo waiting for me. I followed them to the edge of camp, where the tents blended with the trees, and it was there that we found a quiet place to talk behind a patch of gorse.

"You heard all of that?" I asked, and they replied with a pair of matching grins. "Good. So what happens at eighteen? What changes?"

Leo shrugged his shoulders. "You become an adult. But I doubt that would trigger an actual physiological change..."

"Yes, and you can drink legally," I went on, "but rogues start much earlier than that... No — can't be alcohol. More like a gradual thing. It happens for some people, not for others."

It felt like it was staring me right in the face. And as that thought had crossed my mind, I realised how literally it could be interpreted.

"It's you," I told Leo and nudged him with a shoulder. "We find our mates at eighteen. Some do, some don't, so it's gradual. Sophie ... yes, she was mated. And Fion, and me..."

"So it's something all mated females have in common, even if their mates are dead?" he asked.

"Seems that way."

"You haven't even finished the process," Rhys pointed out, speaking up for the first time. "Neither did Fion. It must come somewhere between finding your mate and—"

"—marking!" I exclaimed, and I thumped Leo's collarbone for good measure. "It must be the mark."

He pulled down his shirt collar and stared at it, that smudge of tooth marks. It wouldn't fade to white like other scars, not unless someone else marked him. And that would never happen. I stared at the mark with a new wonder — somehow, it had saved his life. We had done it on a whim, and it had saved his life.

"It must protect you somehow," I guessed, chewing on my bottom lip. "I dunno, some biology shit."

"So the question is — would it work if you marked a feral?" Leo finished triumphantly.

"If it does, we have a cure," I offered. But it was doubtful. Once you had turned completely, your human side was dead. Gone. There was no reversing that. "But maybe it doesn't have to work. Maybe we just need to get the wolves under control. Mates are an anchor point — they might keep them sane enough to live in society."

Either way, Ollie was still turning. If his human side wasn't dead yet, then we had a chance to save him. But that would require his mate ... and we didn't have time to find her. She could be anywhere. We would need a way of hurrying the process along — of exposing Ollie to as many unmated females as we could round up.

"It doesn't matter," Rhys cut in, shaking his head. "It might save Ollie, but it won't save us."

I felt a chill run through me as the meaning bit. We didn't have time to find the mate of every single feral. And even if we had them all, lined up and waiting, we didn't have the manpower or the equipment to restrain all three hundred of them while they were marked.

"We've still got to kill them," Rhys finished as my thoughts reached the same conclusion. "That's screwed up."

I squeezed my hands into fists until I felt my knuckles popping. "Well, there's no bloody choice, is there? We can kill hundreds of people or we can let them turn the rest of the north feral."

"Damned if we do, damned if we don't," Leo muttered, staring at the ground. "How long do you think we have? If they stay put for another few days, we might be able to pick off their scouts and cure them."

"They'd be stupid to stay put. If I was in charge, I would have attacked at lunch, right when everyone was turning. So ... why didn't they?" Rhys demanded, and I had to admit he had a point. The freshly-turned ferals had been an amazing distraction, and amongst all the pandemonium it would have taken an age just to realise we were being attacked, let alone mount a defence.

What had Carter said? They gave me all morning to infiltrate your camp, but I managed everything in two hours. If he had been supposed to do the poisoning in the afternoon, it wouldn't have taken effect until dinner, when the sun would be beginning to set and most of the camp would be going to bed.

And wouldn't that just be the perfect time to kill us all?

"Tell Fion to hurry up, and I want the prisoner exchange brought forward," I told the boys. "I don't think we have very long."