I limped through the trees, feeling increasingly sorry for myself. My leg hurt less than it had, but I still struggled to put any weight on it. It was ironic that a car braking had done this, with all the danger I had been getting into recently.

"Are you holding up okay?" Cassidy was eyeing my awkward movements with growing concern.

I growled at her, a clear enough answer. Cassidy sighed at me. She hefted the knife in her hand — my knife — and began to grimace. I hadn't wanted to leave her unarmed in case we did run into trouble.

"Hey, I'm only asking because I need you to be well enough to do all the fighting. Holding a knife doesn't mean I know how to use it..."

Through the link, I grunted. "It's easy enough. Use the sharp end."

"This is your last warning. If you're depending on my ability to kick ass, we're both going to end up dead," Cassidy said.

"I can fight," I promised her. "Adrenaline is the best painkiller on earth. But let's not worry about that, because what we're doing right now is just taking a nice gentle stroll through the woods. We're not in any danger."

She looked a little exasperated. "When are you going to stop pretending you aren't following their scents?"

I considered her through stormy grey eyes. There had been a lot of rain recently, and even at such a slow pace, my midnight fur was flecked with spots of mud. The amount which had splattered onto my head and muzzle told a damning tale of how close they'd been to the ground. Yes, I'd been following their scents. Of course I had.

But not anymore. Just minutes ago, Rhys's scent trail had stopped completely. And it had spooked me enough to stop following Leo's. It shouldn't have been possible to just stop leaving a trail. Yes, I knew from previous experience that Rhodric could do it, but surely Rhys would have told me if he had the same talent?

After a moment of companiable silence, Cassidy spoke again. "I think I see something."

Calm as she sounded, I caught the hem of her t-shirt in my teeth and used it to drag her behind a holly bush. Rhys wouldn't thank me for getting her killed. Luckily, she was too surprised to fight back. With her safely hidden, I went forwards to investigate.

What she had spotted was a flash of red through the trees. It was graffiti on a tree trunk, so I focused on checking the surrounding area for scents, footprints — any evidence that we might not be alone in these woods. I didn't find anything, but the whole clearing carried a stench which put my hackles on end. It smelt profoundly ... wrong, like the essence of death itself.

"You can come out," I told her through the link. "There's no one about."

I stopped in front of the tree that had first attracted our attention. The red markings had been written in spray paint, but beside them was a handprint in a muddy brown colour. And that, I knew, wasn't paint. It was dried blood.

"What the hell does it mean?" Cassidy asked.

I reached into her mind, feeling more and more uncertain by the second. "Werewolves — well, rogues especially — use symbols like this to communicate and warn each other."

"And what does this one say?"

"The part on the left means werewolves. And the part on the right is hunting," I began hesitantly.

The ground crunched under her feet as she walked up to the tree and pointed to the centre. "And this?"

I met her eyes before responding quietly. "War."

Cassidy shuffled in place. "Your people are declaring war on the hunters?"

"It looks that way."

It must have been a shifter who had written it. Hunters didn't use this language. It was born from centuries of communication under the noses of humans. You usually didn't have to walk far in the forest to see a sign for prey, shelter, roads, human settlements ... or even danger. More recently, packs had begun using them to mark their borders.

The blood on the tree was human — my nose told me that much. Probably, it had belonged to a hunter. But it wasn't the blood that was stinging my nose. No, it was the stench of rotting flesh.

Cassidy made to return to me, but her foot caught on something. I thought it was a root, until her eyes widened in horror and she jumped back. A human thigh bone protruded from the ground. I kicked back the leaves around me, looking to confirm my suspicions.

A crushed ribcage was hidden a foot away from me. Half a spine in the opposite direction. Everywhere I looked, there were human remains buried under a coat of leaves and mud — at least a dozen skeletons in this clearing alone. And some of them were werewolves. I recognised a canine skull at the base of a tree.

This wasn't recent. Oh no, this fight had taken place months and months ago, for the remains to be so far decomposed. Years, even. I had always thought that the battle against the hunters was fought by my family alone. I had thought wrong. And all of a sudden, I felt part of a much, much bigger picture.

Who had fought here? Died here? Was it simply hunters against werewolves, or much more complicated? Had it been before or after Rhodric blew up their base? Who, what, and above all else, why?

Cassidy looked as if she was about to be sick, so I nudged her out of the clearing, telling her to wait elsewhere. This needed investigating. I sniffed at one of the skulls, even going as far as turned it over with my paw. That hole in the top could have been made by a tooth ... maybe.

"It was Reverend Green with the candlestick in the dining room," Rhys drawled from a few metres away.

I resisted the urge to throw the skull at his smug face. I wouldn't have stood much chance of hitting him without any hands, but it was still tempting. I settled for growling at him. He shouldn't have been able to sneak up on me so easily. Leo was nowhere to be seen, though — I supposed that was a point in my favour. Having both of them out-stealth me would have been far more embarrassing.

"Leo's back at the car, before you ask," Rhys told me. He came towards the skull and picked it up, turning it over in his hands. "This one was a bullet. There's an exit wound."

"Yeah, well, I couldn't see that, could I? Wolf form has its disadvantages. Speaking of which, where did you get those clothes?"

Rhys tugged at the hem of a sports jersey. "Oh, these? Borrowed them from a washing line."

"Where did you find a washing line?" Cassidy asked, finally re-entering the clearing. She looked a lot less pale.

"In a hunter's back garden," he sighed. My forehead creased, and Rhys was obliging. "We tracked them to some buildings a few miles away. No sign of Malcolm, although his scent was everywhere."

I sniffed the air and frowned upon realising that Rhys's scent still didn't exist. "How are you doing that?"

"What?" he asked, the picture of innocence.

"You don't smell," I told him.

"Why thank you, Skye. I took a shower only this morning."

"No, seriously. You don't smell."

Rhys took a whiff of the air and froze, eyes widening in astonishment. He even backtracked a few paces, trying to pick up his trail. The look on his face told me he had absolutely no idea what was going on. "The hell...?"

"It disappeared halfway here. So how are you doing it?"

"I'm not— I didn't do—" Rhys spluttered, desperately sniffing the air.

I resisted the urge to laugh. "Use your words, little brother. You must have done something."

His eyes flickered to Cassidy before meeting mine. "I suppose on the way over I wondered if you were following us yet. It occurred to me that hiding my scent might be a good idea, but we didn't see any rivers."

Hmm. Very interesting indeed. It obviously didn't work for most wolves, so this had to some genetic talent. The only question was, where did it come from? As far as I knew, no other werewolves in the Llewellyn line had been able to do it, save Rhodric of course. And wait ... hadn't old Jeff been with him the night the scent trail first disappeared?

"Concentrate on turning it back on," I advised him. "And what do you mean yet?"

He grinned. "Oh, come on. Neither of us really believed you'd stay in the car."

"So why did you let me be the one to stay with Cassie?"

"Because I knew you'd look after her." He smiled at his mate, who leant against a tree and tried to avoid looking at the bones under her feet. "Now, how's that?"

I took a whiff and grinned. "Oh, Goddess. Turn it off again. You reek of sweat."

"This scent-toggle is going to come in pretty useful," Rhys murmured. "I'll never have to wash again."

I snorted and padded back in Cassidy's direction. "Come on. We should get home. The longer we stay here, the greater the risk."

Rhys grabbed my scruff, hauling me bodily to a halt. "Hold on just a minute."

I shook myself, giving him a disgruntled glare as he walked over to the tree and cut open his own palm on a sharp branch. Cassidy winced, feeling the pain through the mate bond on some deep level. Even though it was self-inflicted, every one of my instincts went into overdrive as the sharp scent of my brother's blood hit me.

Underneath the old message, he began to draw another symbol. The blood stood out clearly against the silver birch bark. Once it was finished, Rhys turned and left without looking back. Cassidy followed meekly, not able to understand. But I stayed to stare with growing unease at the crossed-out circle he had drawn over the mark for hunting.

Prey.

Rhys wasn't stopping at declaring war. He was announcing that it was time for us to hunt the hunters — that they were no more than prey to be killed.

Did he know more than he was supposed to about their role in his mother's death? About what they had done to Brandon? Rhodric had taken great care to keep that from all of us. But I wouldn't put it past my brother to have wormed the information out of someone.

Trying to shove down my inhibitions, I ran after the others. Yes, we had been the foxes in this game for too long, letting the hunting hounds nip at our heels. And yes, it was time to turn the tables. But this felt ... personal. Rhodric had gotten caught up in his revenge. I wasn't going to let Rhys fall into the same trap.

It didn't take long to reach the car again. I took great pleasure in running large circles around Rhys and Cassidy now that my shoulder was no longer bothering me. The trees rang with warning songs as I scattered birds in all directions. Wolf form was a rare luxury these days. I never seemed to have time for runs in the forest.

Leo was waiting patiently near the car, fully dressed and ready to go. I jumped up at him, wagging my tail. Leo stumbled backwards, nearly falling on his backside from the weight of a fully-grown wolf. Then he shoved me off him, laughing all the while.

As I had no desire for another seat beltless car ride, Cassidy dug around in the boot for some spare clothes. I settled with one of Leo's shirts, frayed jeans and a clean hoodie which probably belonged to Rhys.

My wolf wasn't happy about shifting back. I had to fight her about it. It seemed the mere promise of death hadn't sated the bloodlust, after all. She didn't understand why we needed to wait and think it through. It was all very foreign to her — and understandably frustrating.

We took a long detour to avoid the police blockade, zigzagging through a maze of country roads. It had been a long and tiring day, but we had found the hunters' base, and we even had one of their daughters as a hostage (of sorts). Given another few days to plan, I knew we could finally take the fight to Malcolm. I just hoped I could stop Rhodric and Rhys taking their revenge too far.