Wasn't going to update this until summer but all you guys voting and commenting made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, so I decided to write you this chapter ;)

Just to be clear, there's no time skip at the end of the chapter, that's just a bit of foreshadowing *insert evil cackle here*

That night, the three of us sat around a campfire, just as we had done every Friday night for as long as I could remember. I was perched on a log outside our hideout — a run-down hunter's cabin on a hillside. I had discovered it while stumbling around in the dark, trying to find a quiet place to piss. Over the next summer, we had fixed it up with scrap wood and materials from a junk-yard. My siblings and I spent every weekend there to relax and mess around.

"Skye, you next," Fion said with a lazy smile. She was drunk, of course. What else would teenagers do without adult supervision?

I raised an eyebrow at her, but threw my pebble at the target—an overhead branch. Having had a few drinks myself, my aim was a little off, and it fell short. Fion smirked triumphantly, taking another swig from her beer can.

"What'll it be?" Rhys asked, grinning

"Dare," I answered instantly. Truth was boring. It had always been boring, and no one ever answered it honestly anyway. At least, I didn't.

Rhys and Fion exchanged a glance. They didn't need words to communicate, or the mind-link. We just knew each other too well. Then my brother inclined his head towards the fire and gave me a look that clearly said you know the drill.

"This is so pointless," I muttered, eyeing the fire doubtfully. All teenager enjoy playing with fire, but even the bravest don't enjoy touching it.

"This whole game is pointless, or we wouldn't play it. Pointlessness is what makes it recreational," Rhys argued. But he seemed to sense my reluctance, because he poured a bottle of water over his own hand and met my eyes. "Fine — I'll go first if you're too chicken."

I snorted. He either genuinely thought I was scared or he was attempting to use reverse psychology, and unfortunately for me, it was working. I sighed then raised my eyebrows at Rhys, accepting the challenge. He splashed more water over himself and then watched with amusement as I copied him.

"Last chance to back out." Fion said as she poured the remains of her beer on the campfire. As the fire flared up, the resulting light reflected off her eyes, making them glow golden.

I really should explain myself at this point. It was almost midnight and we'd been drinking all evening, despite it being a tiny bit illegal. Irresponsible, yes. But Rhodric had never done anything except encourage our recklessness, claiming that we would only learn by making mistakes. It was probably true, but a good thrashing might have worked just as well.

So, without anyone to tell me no, I was about to put my hand in a fire, just because I had been dared to. Stupid? Yup. Dangerous? Very. Pyromanical? Little bit...

But we were Rhodric's kids, we were drunk, and most importantly, we were young.

Rhys went first — waving his hand over the flame before dunking it straight in a tray of water. He examined his unburnt fingers and grinned at me, daring me to copy him.

I eyed the fire for only a second, then plunged a hand in and out. But before I could put it into the water, my oh-so-caring siblings threw the entire canteen of water all over me. I sat there, dripping and outraged. It took approximately a minute of cussing to reach the appropriate level of offence. Then I flipped Rhys off and dived at Fion, tackling her off to one side.

Personally, I was surprised that my after-alcohol-coordination allowed me to miss the fire and actually hit my target. My sister and I wrestled in the undergrowth while Rhys laughed his head off on the other side of our camp.

"Oooh, girl fight!" he shouted, while continuing to laugh at us and roll around on the floor.

"You're next, Rhys Llewellyn," I growled back. The fight had been going my way, and even as I spoke, I blocked a good-natured punch with one hand, while drenching her in whiskey with the other.

Don't get me wrong — I wasn't really mad at them, this was just our average Friday evening.

I finished avenging myself on Fion and stalked back to the fire, where Rhys's smirk slipped right off his face. He scarpered backwards at an alarming rate until his back hit a tree.

"Skye, we can talk about this—"

Because that doesn't sound sketchy at all. Rhys was cut off by my all-powerful, withering glare of destruction. "Yeah ... no."

But even as I drew back my arm to cover his face in icy water, the sneaky little jerk twisted around to kick the back of my knee hard enough to make me stumble. With my balance destroyed, it was easy for him to knock me sideways. I fell face-down on the leafy forest floor, with all the air knocked out of me.

Any attempt to counter-attack on my part would end with a knee between my shoulder blades, which I knew from experience. Luckily enough, I had foreseen this particular situation and had a full-proof plan on how to deal with it. Well, it was mostly full-proof.

I lay completely still where I had landed, hardly even daring to breathe.

"Come on, Skye. You can get up now," Rhys called. From the sound of his voice, he hadn't moved an inch. I failed to comply.

And in 3...

2...

1...

"Skye?" This time there was a hint of genuine concern.

"You alright?" Fion added. I heard a soft thud as she dropped the towel she'd been using to wipe her face.

Rhys picked himself up noisily and a shadow fell over my face. I felt a warm finger brush my wrist, realised he was checking my pulse, and had to fight the urge to laugh.

"I can't find a pulse," Rhys told Fion. "It is the right hand, isn't it?"

It was both, but that had obviously not been featured in Werewolf First-Aid 101.

"Left, dumbass," Fion retorted. "It's Skye, though. She'll be fine. She always is."

And best-friend of the year award goes to ... drum roll please ... not Fion. For all she knew, I could have broken my neck.

The second Rhys's fingers touched my other wrist, I grabbed them and rolled over. His arm twisted awkwardly, forcing him to turn or dislocate his shoulder. At the same time, I dragged Rhys backwards, pulling him down while pushing myself up.

In the span of a few seconds, we completely switched positions. Not bad, drunk me, not bad at all.

Before he could comprehend what had happened, I pulled out the water bottle I'd been hiding in my jacket and emptied its contents over him. Now, we were even.

Rhys just lay there, laughing and spluttering at me. "Nice moves, but now you're the girl who cried wolf. Don't expect me to give a shit when you're really injured."

"Fion can do it." I shrugged and glanced at her. She was watching me and Rhys squabble, while munching on roast venison kebabs left over from dinner and sipping my whiskey. We'd caught, skinned and cooked the deer ourselves, before we'd gotten drunk. I had hoped it would last all weekend, but my brother had the appetite of a hungry shark.

My eyes began water inexplicably. I sniffed the air and caught a strange scent, almost like burning spirits. Then I noticed Rhys flicking his lighter on and off. Oh. That explained it.

"Are you sure you should be around an open flame?" I asked cautiously, thinking about how much he had drunk. That might have been a good idea to consider before we put our hands in the fire, but oh well.

Rhys just shrugged in reply, and for some reason, Fion started giggling weirdly.

Even I knew when enough was enough.

"Okay ... how about we get you two to bed now, huh?"

Rhys snorted and started setting fire to some leaves, while Fion threw the stick from her kebab at me. It missed by a good ten metres.

"Yeah, you definitely need to sleep. On your feet."

When they failed to obey, I walked over and chucked Fion over my shoulder. In response, she blew a raspberry and kicked me. Fion got a little ... weird when she was drunk. But there wasn't much of a difference between Rhys before and after drinking. I liked to tease him about having the natural personality of a drunk teenager. I was probably the most responsible of our family, Rhodric included.

Once I'd carried her into the cabin and persuaded her to lie still in her bed, I went back outside to get Rhys. While I was away, he'd only managed to start a forest fire.

Okay, that was a little bit of an exaggeration, but he had set fire to the top of a rather large bush, which could have started a forest fire if left unattended. He had obviously realised that and had wasted the remains of our water supply in a slightly futile attempt to put it out.

"Hey, Skye! Mind giving me a hand?" My brother was trying to keep his head out of the copious amounts of black smoke.

I picked up an old, fireproof tarpaulin we kept around for situations like these and manoeuvred it awkwardly over the bush. Remarkably quickly, the flames started to die down. Rhys stared at the bush with a thoughtful expression, then nodded grudgingly.

"Good work, little sister. Very good work."

Now came the challenging part—getting Rhys to bed so I could sleep without worrying about him destroying nature. I couldn't carry him like I did Fion, because ... well, he weighed a ton. I couldn't really trick him because he still looked relatively sober, so that left only one option.

I kicked earth over our campfire. The flames slowly died down, smothered out of existence. When we were standing in the pitch black, I turned to my brother with a furious expression.

My arms folded across my chest, and I let my wolf out just enough to worry him. "Rhys Llewellyn, you have exactly thirty seconds to get your ass into bed."

Rhys swayed slightly on his feet but frowned at me. "No thanks."

So I did the only thing left that I could do. I punched him.

He didn't make any attempt to stop me, or I would have ended up on the floor again, as it wasn't the best thought out punch I had ever thrown. But I actually managed to hit him, and I realised I was wrong — he hadn't been very sober. Oh well. He fell like a dead weight and passed straight out, which was probably more to do with the beer than my punching skills.

Meanwhile, I nursed my hand and thanked the Moon Goddess that no one was around to see that I had managed to do more damage to my knuckles than his chin. The next twenty minutes were spent dragging him across the campsite, into the cabin and up a ladder into the loft where we all slept.

Only when my brother and sister were safely snoring on their bunks, did I collapse onto my own mattress and fall asleep.

***

The next morning we were all very hungover, surprise surprise.

Once I'd dunked my head into a basin of cold water and changed into a hoody, shirt and jeans; I began fixing breakfast for all of us. We had brought a rucksack of food from camp, which mostly consisted of dried meat and staple food like potatoes, rice and pasta. Rogue food left a lot to be desired when we didn't have Maggie to cook for us.

In the end, I settled on cold leftovers from last night's dinner with our homemade hangover cure (water mixed with a special herb which Fion had discovered). It was disgusting and difficult to find, but it worked and it wasn't a drug, to the best of my knowledge.

I placed three mugs of herb water with our breakfast on a rickety table, then used a fork and mug to make a clanging loud enough to wake the dead, let alone my siblings. It only took a few minutes for Rhys and Fion to make their way down from the loft, both freshly changed and washed.

While Fion moodily took a seat at the table and downed her drink like she'd spent the last year in a desert, Rhys stood by the ladder, rubbed the back of his head and frowned at me.

"Did someone punch me?" he asked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.

I had to hide a smirk by taking a swig of the herb water—the bitter taste never failed to elicit a grimace. "Don't be silly," I replied. "No one punched you, Rhys."

He yawned and winced, which might have had something to do with the large bruise on his jaw. "I could've sworn..." Rhys mumbled. But he shook his head, dismissing the thought.

I handed around greasy kebabs and baked potatoes. It wasn't a perfect breakfast even by our standards; the venison was overcooked and the potatoes had been left out all night. But back then, we were hungry, growing teenagers and grateful for a meal of any kind.

As soon as we'd eaten our fill and drained the hangover cures, I stood up and didn't even wince at the loud noise the chair made as it scraped across the floor. My head was noticeably clearer, and the fog over my thoughts had lifted somewhat.

"We got work to do," I reminded them. We didn't just come up to this cabin for a weekend off; Rhodric always gave us at least one job to do. At the moment, (insert Ned Stark's voice here) winter was coming, so our job was to collect as much food as physically possible. With no source of income, we would otherwise starve.

Our rogue group made a monthly supply run to human supermarkets, but apart from that, we lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. If you couldn't hunt, you didn't eat. We would shift to hunt larger prey, and set out snares for rabbits and birds. It all became second-nature with enough practice.

When they failed to respond, I assumed assent and grabbed a burlap sack and opened the door of the cabin, then looked expectantly back at my siblings. "We ain't got all day. Bambi's waiting."

Rhys rolled his eyes and joined me by the door, then Fion sighed and tagged along as well.

"I swear to the Goddess, Skye, if you make us hunt wild boar again, I'll kill you myself," Rhys told me seriously, referring to a wild pig hunt which had gone slightly wrong when we'd realised after two days that there aren't any wild pigs in north Wales. Those were forty-eight hours sat in trees with rifles that I wasn't in a hurry to repeat.

I grimaced and bit my lip. "No pigs, I promise. Today we're only collecting edible plants."

"Go Team Botany," Fion muttered. But she swung a sack over her shoulder all the same. "So where do we start?"

***

So that's exactly what we did for the rest of the morning. By the time lunchtime came, we each had several sacks full of our food. I'd been hiking through the hills picking up wild garlic, blackberries, crab apples, elderberries, sloes and acorns (for acorn flour). Basically anything that was ripe and edible would get picked, preserved and taken back to camp.

This was the reason that packs couldn't stand up to the hunters and rogues — they were too soft. Maybe if they had to get their own food, worry about where their next meal was coming from, they'd be able to fight better. Maybe if they'd starved rather than watching their children starve when food was scarce like we had, they would toughen up.

But instead, every single Alpha inherited a fortune from his parents. The pack could live off the interest alone. The obscene amounts of money had come from years of stealing and plundering during the times of war. Werewolves had a natural edge in a fight, which they exploited to destroy human settlements and steal all their possessions.

If you thought about, they had used to be like rogues, except fighting humans instead of packs. And they had been too good at it, and grown soft and useless.

We weren't so lucky to be growing up in this day and age. I mean sure, we had each other and we were happy. Our rogue group was like a huge family — we had our disagreements, but at the end of the day, we'd die for each other. A pack in all but name.

I wouldn't ever trade my childhood for pack life, but it wasn't an easy way to grow up.

Now that I look back, I know just how lucky I was on that autumn morning. We lived on the edge of survival without a care in the world. And little did I know that within a month, everything I had come to know here would fall apart. Only in the chaos that followed, would Last Haven Pack be born from the ruins of my life.

Even then, I used to lead our little group. Rhys and Fion would look to me when there was a decision to be made. I couldn't remember ever doing anything to have earned that trust, but they gave it to me all the same. At the tender age of seventeen, I was already learning how to lead. Already starting to grow up. Because we all grow up at some point, no matter how much we try and fight it.

Over the next year — that was when I grew up. I remember what Rhys said to me nine months after this hungover morning.

"You've changed, Skye. You're not that carefree kid anymore."

And I still remember my reply:

"I've had to."