In the blink of an eye, Rhys had dragged Cassidy behind him and taken her place at gunpoint. Rhodric had a different idea. He stepped straight up to the gun, and Malcolm's finger froze. They were too close, the barrel digging into my father's chest. Malcolm wouldn't have time to fire twice.

"I found records of your experiments a couple years ago," Rhodric mused. "There was one that stuck with me. The approximate time it takes a shifter to die when the heart is ruptured. Something like —"

"— between two and three minutes," Malcolm said softly. "I remember. But it's still certain death."

"For both of us. I'd have time to choke you out, let alone snap your neck."

The man's mouth twisted into a sneer. "And you're so fond of snapping necks, aren't you, Rhodric? Holds a special place in your heart, I'd imagine."

Those words hit some invisible mark. Rhodric's knuckles went white, his eyes pitch black — the first time I'd ever seen him lose control of his wolf — and a new expression slid across his features. It took me a moment to recognise it, because I had never seen him wear it before. Hatred.

"Come on, Scott," he taunted. "We were always supposed to kill each other."

Fear was a stranger to me. Pain, injury, danger — none of that had ever made my stomach twist itself in knots. But that lethal invitation and the way he offered it so carelessly... A spike of crippling, paralysing fear shot through the core of me, insisting somebody is going to die here.

"Yes," Malcolm said slowly, ponderously. "I think you're right."

He looked down the gun, his finger curled tighter around the trigger, and he gave this little haunting smile. And, as the shot echoed around the small room, someone screamed. Cassidy or me or one of the boys — I didn't know who.

Rhodric moved. One hand twisted the gun away from himself, the other brought a blade upwards and buried it to the hilt in Malcolm's chin.

The very next second, his legs gave out. They fell at the same time, tangled together and bleeding. By the time I got there, Malcolm's eyes had already glazed over, his mouth still set in that awful smile. Rhys and I dragged his corpse clear to reach our father.

He was half sitting against the wall, the front of his shirt soaked red. He looked at us in an apologetic, rueful sort of way. "Whoops," he managed to say. "That went off script, didn't it?"

There was a single hole in the middle of his chest, spilling blood in lazy pulses. I managed to crouch beside him before freezing. What could I do? I could see the shock in Rhys's eyes — and knew it was reflected in my own. We didn't understand. It was Rhodric. He never even got hurt, let alone ... this...

Leo was standing with Cassidy, keeping her away. He must have known that we didn't have long. I could feel our mind-link bond waxing stronger; he was trying his best to keep me calm, keep me rational. It helped a bit.

Rhys pressed his hands over the bullet wound, trying to stop the blood, trying to save his life. But even wolf healing wouldn't help here — the heart was the one thing which couldn't heal itself. How horridly, painfully ironic.

"Is he dead?"

The words were barely more than a whisper.

"Yes." I choked on the word, on a sob. "Very dead."

Rhodric's breaths were increasingly shallow rasps. "That's ... good. You'll be safe now. And I'll see Jessie again. Told you, kids — the mate bond..."

"Don't be stupid, Dad. You're not going to die," Rhys said quietly.

"I can do whatever the hell I want, thank you very much. Right now, I want to see your mother." Rhodric grinned again, but it was strained. Like he wanted our last memory to be of him smiling. There was that familiar gruff affection in his voice when he said, "Don't take it personally."

Rhys ignored the words but, when Rhodric struggled to sit himself up properly, he helped. There was a smear of blood on the wall where the exit wound had dragged. I couldn't stop looking at it.

"Doesn't even hurt, really. Know what? I think I'm feeling up to some memorable last words. I left the money ... buried under..." he began, obviously hoping to die midway through the sentence. But instead there was a pause, he realised it had failed, and he wheezed out a laugh.

I thumped his chest weakly. "Stop that. Please."

"Could you be nice to me for just a minute, Skye? This is your last chance, if you hadn't—"

He never finished that sentence. It was interrupted by the death rattle then, a heartbeat later, the light left those careless hazel eyes, and I felt the rest of the world fall away.

Rhodric had carried me out of here in the first place. He had saved me from my birth pack because I had attacked him. Rhodric, who had never stopped grinning. He had taught me to fight, raised me as his own, and laughed with me — at me, sometimes. Rhodric had been my father in all the ways that mattered. And the pain of losing him fractured me.

I don't remember much of the next few minutes.

There was only a void left where Rhodric had been. A hollow space I wouldn't ever be able to fill, with anything except anger and blood. For the first time, I understood why he had hated Malcolm so much. Because when someone you love is taken from you, hatred is all that can numb the pain. I had no one left to hate. Malcolm was dead. I couldn't even hate Rhodric for getting himself killed.

If Leo died, I knew I would wait only enough to rip apart his murderers before I followed him into the grave. Rhys might have done the same for Cassidy. Neither of us had any children to live for. And Rhodric knew that. He had saved his son, and how the hell was I supposed to be angry at him for that?

It had all been for Jessie. To protect her son, he had always been willing to toe the line. And now he'd crossed it irreversibly.

Mates. A werewolf's most valuable blessing and most terrible curse. They made us strong, while being our only real weakness. Poisoned fruit — it tasted sweet but would kill you all the same. But that didn't stop any of us eating it.

I was vaguely aware of Rhys wrapping me in a hug. He was just as broken as I was, but in a very different way. While I would cry and rage and get it all out of my system as quickly as possible, he liked to bury things. This grief would be channelled over years, maybe even his whole life. I wasn't sure which way was better.

As if things couldn't get any worse, old Jeff chose that moment to appear. He walked towards his son's body, muttering, "Wake up, boy, wake up, boy," over and over again.

Didn't he realise that Rhodric couldn't wake up?

He reached us, and I sat back clumsily to give him room. Rhys didn't budge — but he had always been safe from the old man. Jeff leant forwards to poke Rhodric's chest and brought his finger away red with blood. For a while he just stared at it, the whites of his eyes flashing, then he touched the blood to his lips and licked.

I was too broken to care about stopping him.

"Wasn't me?" he asked uncertainly.

"No, Jeff," Rhys said, choking on the words.

Jeff nodded, visible relief on his face. He stood, turned and, too calmly, walked back the way he had come. With his last shred of control, the old man chose to get away from us. And then he let rip in the corridors outside. I could hear the sounds of tearing flesh through the walls, bones crunching and splintering in those massive jaws. It was looking doubtful that any of the hunters would escape alive.

Good. Kill them all. Every last one.

***

We didn't dare leave the room until Jeff let out a very distant, ear-splitting howl. He was miles away.

We had to walk through the corridors. I could stomach almost any degree of carnage; it came with the werewolf job description. But even I averted my eyes to the destruction Jeff had wreaked on his way outside.

Cassidy had vomited when we turned the first corner. Now she walked with her face hidden against her mate's chest and arms around her. The human girl was still new to all of this, so I could hardly blame her for not coping. I was feeling a little queasy myself.

Even the hunters I had spared were in shreds. Old Jeff had torn the reinforced door off its hinges to get at them. A shiver ran down my spine. We did this. We brought him here, knowing full well what would happen. Our fault.

None of us had wanted to leave Rhodric with only Malcolm's corpse for company, so Leo and I carried him between us. When we reached the front door, the light was nearly blinding. The sun was setting, and we were facing west. The end of a day, and the end of a life.

It wasn't hard to find Kara. She was still in wolf form, wearing my armour. And, to my dismay, she crouched over Fion, who was curled up on the floor. I only took the time to lower Rhodric's body to the ground before running over. I didn't much care how Kara reacted to our return and all it entailed. She hadn't even known Rhodric.

Fion was deathly pale. Her ears and nose had both been bleeding heavily. The strain of controlling people across so much distance was too high. Kara immediately retreated for Rhys and me. While we silently panicked, only Cassidy had the sense to check for a pulse.

"She's alive," she announced. "We shouldn't move her, though."

"We'll have to," I said grimly. Jeff was still somewhere in these woods. I didn't trust him to keep his distance. And without Rhodric...there was only Rhys to keep him in line, and I wasn't all too confident how well that would work. I turned to my brother, eyeing his injured shoulder. "Can you carry her?"

"Yes," he said immediately. I knew it was a lie. His shoulder was probably killing him without fifty kilograms of dead weight slung over it. I needed Leo to help me with Rhodric — and even then we were struggling — Cassie was human and Kara looked weedy so, if we wanted to get very far, we'd need another idea.

A stretcher, I decided, might work. Two would work even better; we would be able to double the pace back to the car. It was in my best interests to get home quickly, because I needed to sit in a corner until I felt less like crying.

"Stay here," I told them and picked up one of the duffel bags.

There must be a few jackets in there which could help me. I had to walk into the forest to find suitable poles. The switchblade which Rhodric had used to kill Malcolm — my switchblade — felt heavy in my pocket. I had retrieved it from the hunter's brain, simply because I couldn't bear to leave it behind. It used it now to saw through a splintered branch, leaving smears on blood all over the wood.

After a clumsy attempt at arts and crafts, I had a stretcher. It should be able to hold Fion's weight, but Rhodric was a good deal heavier... I went to look for more branches, and I noticed a strange scent in the air, and my wolf was freaking out again, and this time I felt inclined to listen and look up. In the fading light, I could make out a pair of golden eyes watching me from the shadows ... and the massive feline body they belonged to.

"Hey, Jeff," I said with a calm I didn't feel.

He lifted his upper lip in response, revealing a mouthful of white fangs. Okay, he was pissed. Of course he was. So was I. Rhodric was dead, and he had been a son and father to us respectively. We had every right to be pissed.

So, when I next spoke, I stopped walking on eggshells around him. If you treat someone like a wounded animal, they are usually inclined to act like one. "We need your help. Fion's hurt. She needs a doctor."

Jeff couldn't reply, but he settled himself on his haunches. I took that as assent, threw him a set of clothes from the duffel bag, and turned around. It took him only a minute to get dressed. Old Jeff was more bedraggled than I had ever seen him. This was a whole new level of debauchery.

"My son is dead," he said gruffly. "All my children — gone."

For a second, I could have sworn his bad eye focused in on me. The next second it was spinning as if nothing had happened, but I knew what I had seen, and I found myself blinking back tears. He wasn't entirely crazy, I realised, but he wanted to be. It was easier that way — never any pain or consequences.

"Your oldest daughter is still alive," I said quietly.

Old Jeff just shook his head. He knew. Somehow, he knew.

"Will you help us with Fion?"

A short, sharp jerk of his head. I took it for a nod and tucked the stretcher under my arm. We walked back to the group together. When Rhys saw Jeff, he stood up instantly, biting back a grunt of pain. I held out a hand in a placating gesture. "It's okay."

They accepted his help readily enough, especially when we heard sirens in the distance. The last thing we needed was more time in a cell, after all. We eased Fion onto the stretcher, and Jeff hauled Rhodric over his shoulders. For his age, he was damned strong.

There was a brief argument about who would carry the stretcher. Rhys kept insisting he was fine, while drawing every breath through gritted his teeth. Needless to say, it didn't fool any of us. When Kara, who had shifted and got dressed in my absence, offered to help, we all just stared her down. There was a growing hostility to my twin, brought on by her nosing around camp. That she didn't complain only made me more determined to keep her at a safe distance from my family.

In the end, all of us — Leo, Rhys, Cassidy and I — took a pole-end. It was the longest mile of my life. But I knew I was going home, and somehow that kept me going.

Fion woke up halfway there. Before she was even fully awake, she mumbled, "I'm sorry. It was just too much. I tried to get in Malcolm's head. He was shielding... or something, I don't know. Then everything just went black..."

"It's okay," I reassured her, but there was nothing okay about today. "Not your fault, Fion."

She rose her head, looking around blearily, counting the faces. Looking for someone who was no longer there. "Rhodric — is he...?"

I looked down at her. There was a lump in my throat which made it difficult to talk, so I just shook my head. It was written all over my face anyway.

I got a front row seat to the disbelief, the shock, and the misery. She looked at Rhys, perhaps hoping he would deny it. Instead, she saw dried tear tracks on his cheeks. Then Fion lay back very slowly and didn't speak again for the rest of the journey. When we reached the car, we set her stretcher down gently on the ground.

"He wanted to be cremated," she realised suddenly. "That's the last thing he ever said to me."

"Then that's what we'll do," Rhys said immediately.

I was slightly more sceptical. "What, here? Isn't there anyone else who might like to be at the funeral? Anyone at all?"

That seemed remarkably depressing. For all the people Rhodric knew, there were so few close enough to see him off, and most of them were dead. Of course, hundreds and hundreds of rogues would attend if given the chance, but I wasn't going to wait around for them.

"His sister, I suppose," he suggested.

Old Jeff started shaking his head violently. It was only weeks later that I found out why. She wouldn't be coming to his funeral. Rhodric and Gwen died within an hour of each other, a hundred miles apart. Against all the odds, Jeff had outlived his mate, all three of his children and one of his grandchildren. I didn't envy him.

"Or not..." I said uncertainly.

Building the pyre took the better part of an hour. If he had a tree of his own, I had never seen it, and there wasn't time to go looking, so we gathered every log we could find and felled a few oak saplings. Fion rested despite her protests. Her recovery was more important than an extra pair of hands. When we eased Rhodric's body on top, it was at head height.

Rhys crouched down to light it. He seemed the obvious choice for the job, even though Jeff was here. Sons were supposed to bury their fathers, not the other way around.

"Shouldn't we say something? Isn't that what they do at funerals?" I had to ask, because I really didn't know. Rogue send-offs didn't quote count. And I had never buried anyone I cared this much about.

"There's usually a service in church," Cassidy informed me.

"He wouldn't have wanted that," I said.

Rhys kicked at the ground. "Who cares what he wants? He's dead. Funerals are for the living, so you do whatever the hell you like, Skye."

I decided to take that as an open invitation and turned to the fire to address Rhodric directly. I didn't have any idea what I wanted to say, but it poured out all the same. "You raised four kids, Dad. Seventy-five percent of us turned out to be mostly sane, which I'd call a job well done."

It was difficult to find the words, but somehow, I managed it. "I don't think I ever said thank you. For taking me in, I mean. It's too late now, but ... thanks ... and sorry that we were such a handful all those years."

"No need to apologise for that," Fion said joylessly. "He's the one who taught us how to be a handful. Unlike some people, I have manners — I said thanks years and years ago. All I've got left to say is goodbye."

That left only Rhys, who seemed far less in a sharing and caring mood. He just gave the pyre a tiny, broken smile. And that was it.

My eyes started watering again when the flames reach the top. I wanted to blame the smoke, but I knew better. Rhys, Fion and I sat together to watch the body burn. As usual, my brother was in the middle, his arms around both of us. Jeff wandered in lonely circles around the pyre. The firelight cast an odd light over his eyes, which were a worrying shade of gold. If he lost control out here, we were screwed.

Leo stayed with Cassidy a little further away: both of them probably felt they had no right to be involved in this. They were wrong, but I didn't have the energy to tell them that. And Kara kept her distance, wisely. I might have bitten her head off the first time she opened her mouth, just out of frustration.

It took another few hours for the pyre to burn down completely. By then, the moon was high in the sky and the stars shone down on us. There were all manner of creatures out in the dark that night, the worst of whom were supposed to be our friends.

We collected as many of the ashes as we could in an empty plastic bottle — the only thing in the car boot capable of containing them. The rest would be scattered by the wind through the forest. A little part of Rhodric would live on in every inch of these woods. And what a miserable place to be laid to rest.

"Where are we even going to scatter these? Where's Jessie buried?" I asked aloud. Somehow, it didn't feel right to put our father next to Brandon at Lle o Dristwch, especially as I was no longer sure if he had been feral.

"I — I don't know," Rhys realised, stunned. "He didn't talk about her."

I debated asking old Jeff, but he was preoccupied with squashing berries between his fingers. It didn't seem like a good idea to disturb him.

So we had to go home with that matter unresolved. The car was packed to bursting — seven people packed into five seats. None of us had the faintest clue how to drive, except Leo, so he was automatically nominated. Jeff called shotgun, and it didn't even to occur to us to argue. So five of us ended up piled into the back. Cassidy sat on Rhys's lap, which neither of them were complaining about, and I sat on Fion's, because my mate was unavailable. Kara was left awkwardly in the middle.

When we reached the fork in the road where New Dawn Pack split off from Last Haven, Leo pulled over. I caught his train of thought almost immediately.

"You can go home if you want. Our parents are avenged — you don't owe me anything," I told Kara.

Kara distinctly avoided looking me in the eye. "I think it would be best if I stayed for a while."

"Best for us, or best for whatever plot you're hatching?"

She seemed to crumple. "Look, I'm sorry about Rhodric. About everything, actually. You seem like nice people, but you're not my family. I only did what was best for them. For my mate and friends. You have to understand that."

Rhys's mouth set into an uncharacteristic snarl. "Is it Keith?"

"Keith?" Confusion flashed across her face. "You don't know? Oh, shit. I assumed they would have mind-linked by now."

After that, no matter what we did, Kara wouldn't open her mouth again. I spent the car journey running through the possibilities. If Fion had been at full strength, she might have been able to mind-link someone at Last Haven. But the rest of us were too far away to talk properly, and I wasn't sure how Kara didn't know that.

Leo broke the speed limit continuously on the way home. I didn't really give a shit if we were caught at it. This car was registered in Jace's name, anyway, and he was rich enough to pay any fine. We reached the forest around Last Haven in record time. But still, too late.

Even nearly a mile from the castle, I could see something was badly wrong. The smell of smoke and blood was heavy in the air. Something had been burning. Something like our camp, perhaps. The other thing I could immediately smell was packlings. An awful lot of them — maybe as many as four hundred.

We got out of the car at the borderline — we had to, because the road was blocked by the remains of one of my patrols. Corpses lined a path of blood, and the trail pointed straight to the castle.

I drew my switchblade and tossed it to Leo, instructing him, "Keep a knife on her."

Kara submitted far too meekly to her newfound captivity, like she knew we wouldn't hurt her — couldn't hurt her, maybe. The seven of us padded carefully through the trees, following the red brick road, as it were. I was close enough to mind-link now, not that it was much help. The link was full of screaming, panic and chaos. I couldn't hear myself think.

Ollie managed to break through the noise for just seconds. "Run, Skye, please."

Naturally, I ignored his advice. Someone had attacked my rogues, and I was not going to tuck my tail between my legs and leave them to die. Not now, not ever.

We wouldn't have got far, anyway. There were shifters out looking for me, and it only took a minute for a small pack of them to find us. Kara probably helped them. At the first sight of werewolves in the trees, most of my group shifted instinctively. Leo waited only long enough to pass Kara to me before letting his wolf take over. Rhys and Fion beat him to it.

I wasn't too worried — there were only eight of them, and my three friends could take that number without even breaking a sweat. But, all the same, I pulled Cassidy behind me and kept Kara very, very close.

They closed in ever so carefully. When one growled at Fion, who was still weak, I gave Jeff the slightest of nods. Our enemies didn't react all too well to his shift. I knew exactly how they felt, seeing a Shadowcat for the first time. It was, to put it mildly, terrifying.

The packlings formed a wary circle. They kept their eyes on old Jeff, but it was me they mind-linked. "Skye Llewellyn?"

"Yes...?" I asked cautiously.

"Come with us."

Confusing. It seemed they were interested in something other than mindless slaughter. That seemed unlikely from most of the packs, unless...

A single whiff of the air told me exactly which pack they were from.

Finally, I understood.

And I wondered if people would ever stop betraying me.

A/N

I'M NOT SORRY. I REGRET NOTHING.

You there, I see you. Put that knife DOWN, unless you want to be written in as a garden gnome. We shall have no bloodletting here. Return the shovels and body bags to their shelves, please.

You know what the worst part is? WE'RE NOT DONE YET. IT CAN STILL MOST DEFINITELY GET BLOODY WORSE.

Rhodric's fate was foreshadowed for a while. So was what happened at the end ... which none of you seemed to have picked up on yet. We've still got a few chapters left to go, so I suggest you start worrying.

No one is safe in this book. That's right. Not even you.

Another double update next weekend (Friday and Saturday). Things are about to get craaaaazy.