The wolf padded softly, stealthily through the woods.

Every step was a testament to its lithe, agile form, every  tilt of its head gathered the smallest of sounds into its waiting ears; every sniff of the air detected even the faintest of scents. It was a creature of instinct and sensory power and never more at home than when it felt the sick squelch of mud under its feet and the thick overcoat of forest enshrouding it. Here, it was King and it disturbed me to see the usually bumbling, clumsy Philippe Charmonde, still in human form, but seemingly more at ease in these surroundings than he was in the city, when I had always thought him to be a real city boy.

Philippe was that guy that knew all the short-cuts through the urban sprawl of London town. He'd veer off down alleys and roads you never knew existed. He'd take a detour on a whim, just so he could explore more uninvestigated nooks and crannies. He'd always seemed so in tune with the hum of city life, fitting in seamlessly no matter where his wandering feet took him. Looking at him now, albeit from a distance of six feet apart, I wondered how much of the Philippe had been nothing but a lie. His face, his form was a lie of course, but what about the rest of him? What about all of the idiosyncrasies that had made him Philippe? How much of it had been forced, like some kind of Clark Kent smokescreen set up to fool everyone into thinking he was something that he really wasn't? Or maybe he'd forced himself to love the city, as a kick-back at being exiled by his clan, a mighty middle finger raised to Brandon for rebuking him when he dared to seek a life more human.

Only the sweat on his brow, the way his hands fisted into tight balls and sound of his rasping breath, which he exhaled in short anxious gasps, told me that whilst he was able to move through the woods as if he belonged here, he didn't actually want to be here, maybe even less than I did. I had a reason to be here, an unwavering purpose for leaving the relative comfort of the city streets and entering their territory. Philippe, on the other hand, was here for a person who didn't even exist anymore. He was here for the memory of a friendship that once was. For a life that none of us could ever return to. And what's more, he was risking everything to do it.

As we walked, I tried to bury that thought deep down in the cold earth beneath my feet and focus on Harper. I wasn't about to let anything or anyone stop me from finding him now; not my confused sense of compassion for my old friend, nor the fact that I knew Fenton was tracking us through the forest, despite my initial stubborn refusal to let him come along.

"You do realise there's absolutely no point in pretending he didn't agree to help you?" Fenton had said, as I'd joined him back at the car, feeling a mixture of joy and dread after hearing Philippe's response to my plea.

Silently cursing his intuitiveness, I'd turned to him, hoping with everything I had that he would, for once, just listen to me but the look in his eyes already told me this was yet another battle I wouldn't win.

"He told me I had to meet him on my own."

Fenton had rolled his eyes. "Well, of course he said that. But you're not going to because that would make you stupid, and you're not stupid, right?" The mocking tone in his voice made me want to punch him square in the smug mouth.

"When are you going to stop acting like a bad smell, always hanging around when you're not wanted?"

He'd grinned. "I'm glad I make your day stink. I practically live to make you wrinkle up your nose like that. You look very pig-like when you do it. It's quite comical."

"God, you're so bloody childish."

"And you're still labouring under the illusion that I'm about to let you rush headlong into some foolish act that's going to get you killed." He'd sighed then, turning on the ignition and curling his fingers around the steering wheel. "You don't get it, do you? You might think I'm being irritating by sticking to you like glue, and trust me, I'd rather be anywhere than by your side, but I was given a job to do and that job means keeping you safe at all times, whether you like it not."

"You were given a job? Who....?"

But the words had got stuck in my throat, because I knew. Of course, I knew.

What had happened after Tyburn, the insistent chaperoning when I met Philippe, it all made sense. The realisation that Harper had tasked Fenton with watching over me had hit me square in the gut. There had never been any love lost between them. It was a relationship filled with simmering throat-slitting tension and distrust, yet somewhere along the way, Harper had decided that when it came to me, he could trust Fenton. The fact that, in return, Fenton had dutifully done what was asked of him wasn't lost on me either.

Maybe that was why, in the end, I had agreed to let Fenton track us – albeit from a safe distance – because I knew that if he was willing to risk his own life to protect mine, it meant that he really did believe in Harper and he wanted him back just as much as I did. I afforded myself some small sense of comfort from the thought that when the time came, he would be here for me as would the others who I knew would now be waiting as close as possible to the outskirts of the wood, without alerting Philippe to the fact that I really hadn't come alone after all.

Despite how much I wanted – needed – Harper back, it wasn't easy to keep going. This place held a darker meaning for me. Take a route east and I might have seen the ghost of a memory, a dead woman running through the woods, hand in hand with her murderer, both petrified and running for their lives as they were pursued by monsters through the gnarled and twisted trees. I might have seen that look in her eyes, the one that told me she was falling, hurtling towards the ground so fast and the only one that would save her was the one who had taken that fatal bite. I might have witnessed the fear she held for a man whom she once trusted with her whole life. The same man who now held that life in his hands, no doubt tearing it apart just as he had helped to tear it apart before.

The knowledge that Weald Wood was so close to my old home gripped my heart tighter with every step I took, weighing it down with a leaden bind and conjuring up images of my old life that I didn't want to remember.

How typical of Brandon to force me back to the start, where it had all begun and where it had all died.

We'd been walking for twenty minutes already and with each passing minute we were going deeper and deeper into the wood and further and further away from the city. I didn't know this part of the forest so well and was struggling to maintain my bearings with the noise of the underworld crowding my skull. I always found it much harder to suppress the sound of their voices during times of anxiety, so focused I was on staying alert and too aware of the dangers pressing down upon me from all sides. All I knew was that we had headed north as soon as we'd reached the edge of Weald Wood and I was pretty sure that's the way we were stilled heading, despite meandering to avoid some felled trees that looked like they'd been trampled on by some Grimm's Fairy Tale giant.

The ground was boggy underfoot, tugging on my feet as I struggled through the mud and making it feel like I had already run a half-marathon. The air was thick with Varúlfur stench but much of it smelt like it was coming from Philippe himself. Last night, that tell-tale wolf odour had seemed stronger when I'd met with him and tonight it was even more over-powering; another reason to feel so disheartened by the truth about my old friend. Walking just six feet apart, or as much as the pathway would allow, he seemed further away from me than ever.

Since we'd started out, Philippe had not said much at all and I'd felt too anxious and determined to engage him in much conversation, but as the journey went on, I had begun to grow more and more unsettled by the silence that hung stagnant in the air between us. I knew he just wanted to get this over and done with, as did I, and I knew the closer we got to Brandon's hideout, the more precarious our situation would become, but the silence bothered me just the same, as did Philippe's refusal to even look in my direction. My presence seemed to agitate him and couldn't help but wonder whether it might be because it wasn't exactly natural for a Varúlfur to be in the forest with a vampire, without hounding them to their death.

"How much longer?" I said, as I tripped over a tree root, half-submerged in the ground and almost stumbled face-first into a cluster of fungal spores that spattered the forest floor.

"A little further," he grunted, his eyes fixed ahead.

"You walk these woods like you know them," I commented as he rounded a giant redwood and veered off north-westerly. "Every part of this place looks the same to me, every tree, every bush, every pathway."

"Well you would say that. This isn't a place for..." He finally looked at me, albeit very briefly. "...your kind." I winced at the bitterness in his tone and the way in which he dismissed me with one sweep of the eyes.

"Until recently I wouldn't have said it was your place either," I said dryly. "Seems like I got you all wrong."

"And I you."

I stopped, feeling the hurt gouge deep. "I never pretended to be anything I wasn't, Philippe. You were the ones faking it. You were the ones building a world around us that didn't really exist."

Realising I was no longer tagging alongside him, Philippe stopped also, staring at me in exasperation. Miniscule beads of sweat glistened on his forehead in the sickly lunar light. By his side, his fists grabbed at the fabric of his coat, tugging as if he might tear the fabric free from his body.

"Come on," he urged. "Keep walking."

Gritting my teeth and wishing my legs didn't feel so damn tired, I did as he said, soon catching up with him again.

"I wasn't faking anything," he muttered, after a while and I shot him a glance, hearing how his voice cracked around the edges. "My world was real," he insisted bitterly. "My life, everything I had, was real."

I saw the next tree root just in time and managed to step over it. "Oh Philippe, come on, you don't really believe that? You think that breaking away from the clan made it any less of a lie?"

"We were doing fine. Everything was fine until you betrayed him."

"Wait, what? You think I did all this?" My voice was louder than I had intended and we both held perfectly still for an agonising moment, straining to hear into the copse of trees that surrounded us. When the woods answered us with its silence, I moved closer to Philippe as we walked so I didn't have to raise my voice again.

"Do you really think this is all down to me? Do you?" I hissed. "He sold me out, Philippe and no matter what you said last night about him not wanting to go through with it, he still did."

"His back was against the wall. You forced his hand, Megan. If you hadn't betrayed him with the vampire...."

"What?" My brow furrowed in anger. "He'd have saved me and we'd have lived happily ever after? Open your eyes! I'm know what I did was unforgivable. I know that. But there was no happy ever after for me and Brandon. He was always destined to become Vánagandr, he told me that himself and just where do you think I would have fit in that life plan, Philippe? There was never any place for me in his world and he was just fooling himself if he ever thought there was."

"That's not true, he would have found a way, he would have...."

I shook my head, saddened by the defeated look in his eye. "He might be the all-powerful Great Wolf, but he can't defy nature, any more than any of us can."

Philippe looked away quickly, his face contorting with pain and I cursed my foolish mouth. He had clearly been struggling with his own true nature ever since Brandon had bulldozed his way back into his life and I knew it was torturing him. He'd worked so hard to build his dream world with his dream home and his dream wife. And he'd had it all for a while. It had been real to him.

"Philippe, it will be okay, you know? I'll find somewhere for you to go, I'll help you and Elizabeth escape London."

His head snapped sharply in my direction. "Why would you do that? You're a vampire and I'm a Varúlfur. Why would you help one of my kind?"

"Forget vampire and Varúlfur. You were....are...my friend. That makes you my kind."

A small, strangled noise came from his throat and he glared at me, wild-eyed. "Stop it," he gasped. "You don't know what you're saying."

"I do," I maintained, firmly.

"No," he whispered, shaking his head furiously. "Because if you did then you would know that we can never forget we are vampire and Varúlfur. Never."

"That's not you talking, that's him. That's them," I snapped angrily. "But you can escape this, Philippe, you can get away from them all."

"And just where do you think I would go, Megan?"

I frowned. "I don't know, what about Paris? You always used to talk about going back there."

I'd remembered his misty-eyed tales of patisseries and walks by the Seine. I could even picture him there, living out his days in the suburbs where he'd spent his childhood with his mother, but Philippe dismissed my suggestion with a violent wave of his hand and a disdainful sneer.

"Do you think I would be free there, Megan?" he scoffed. "Do you really think that the Varúlfur do not exist in Paris? Let me tell you something: my mother tried her best to escape from the confines of the clan, but they would never let her go, not until she was old and her womb was no longer useful to them. Before she died she told me to never go back there. It seems that two of my half-brothers rank high in the Parisian sect. Do you think my family ties would keep me safe there? I am nothing to them. A crushing disappointment that should have been drowned at birth. My connection to Brandon was the only thing that kept me safe."

"Safe?" I said. "He put you in hospital, Philippe. How was that keeping you safe?"

"I denied him, Megan. I denied all of them and what's more, I denied what I was. Do you really think that whelp's like me are usually allowed to live after doing that?"

"So you're telling me that Brandon stopped them from retaliating against you? All that time?"

"I am alive because of him. That's all I know." His voice took on a shrill tone, one laced with panic and he pushed the hair out of his eyes, his greasy palm slicking down his usually frizzy shock of red locks. I noticed when he lowered his hands, they twitched nervously by his side as he walked, fingers flexing as if the bones ached.

I swallowed hard. "Well after this, you won't have to need his protection anymore. Because he'll be gone and you and Elizabeth can live the life you want, safe from the clans and from him." I mustered up the best reassuring grin I could manage but Philippe only shook his head.

"You live in a fantasy world, Megan," he whispered, his voice trembling a little. "You always did."

Plunged into an uncomfortable silence once again, we continued on, twisting and turning our way along this path that Philippe seemed to know so well and I wondered how far we'd come, how deep into the woods we had travelled. Out here, in the dank belly of the forest, the mist crept stealthily between the trees, foggy tendrils entwining my ankles, dampening my jeans and making them stick to my legs. It was so thick in places that I could barely see my feet. I felt disorientated and prayed that Fenton hadn't lost the trail.

"Is it much further, Philippe?" I panted. My throat was sore and my chest was starting to ache with the relentless pace that he was forcing us to endure.

"S-soon, very soon," he stuttered, his face masked in shadow. "Just up ahead...just through the next copse of trees."

"Really?" I said, probably a little too eagerly. I wasn't keen to face what was coming, but I was glad this strange, nerve-racking journey was coming to an end. I needed to see Harper now. I needed that more than anything in the world.

Philippe easily navigated the thick wall of trees that seemed to grab hold of my limbs as I tried to shadow his steps through, snagging on my jacket and tugging cruelly on my hair, making me wince. When I finally managed to break free from one particularly persistent elm, I stumbled into a very small clearing, where the moonlight had found a pathway through the gaps in the treetops and found Philippe standing near the burnt corpse of an old fallen oak, facing me.

"Why are we stopping?" I said. "Is it near?"

Philippe scraped his teeth along his bottom lip, as if a loose piece of skin was bothering him there. He nodded slowly and gestured towards the way behind him, where the shadows seemed to converge one on top of the other, making it almost impossible for even my keen vampire sight to pierce the gloom.

"Through there? Are you sure?"

He blinked a few times, like some kind of nervous twitch was suddenly tormenting his face. "Yes," he said and I knew he was lying. I felt the lie reach across the clearing and plunge its cold truth into my heart.

"Where are we, Philippe? Where have you brought me?" My voice was low, wary and drowning in sadness. I was drowning.

A tear slipped slowly down his cheek as he looked at me, his eyes beseeching, pleading.

"You could turn back now, you know," he croaked. "You could just turn around and head back to the road. I won't follow you, I promise."

"I can't do that. You know I can't."

"Please," he groaned, wringing his hands. "Forget the vampire, Megan. Do what Brandon told you to do. Run away. Run as far away as you can. Please, you must!"

"I can't and I won't. I won't run from Brandon. I won't run from you."

"You should. You have to. I'm begging you. I don't want to do this, please don't make me do this."

He was free-falling. I could see it in his eyes. He scratched furiously at the skin on his arms as if a rash was bubbling to the surface. As if something was bubbling to the surface. I inhaled long and deep and took a step forward, holding out my hands in front of me, even though they were itching to reach for the weapons concealed under my jacket.

"Philippe, listen to me." I hated that my voice shook. Hated it. "You don't have to do anything, you understand that right? You are not one of them. You are better than them."

He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth as if a bad taste lingered on his lips. "I'm not, I'm not," he shrieked. "I am the same. I am worse. Much, much worse."

"You aren't! Why would you think that?" I cried out, alarmed at how his self-hatred was spewing out of him in thick, ugly torrents. "You did your best, Philippe. You tried so hard to have a better life, to have a good life. And you can still have that! You and Elizabeth can have all that and more."

"No, it is done, it is finished." He began to shuffle agitatedly.

"It's not. You can leave here, you can go to her, Philippe. Where did you say she was? She's at her mum's, right? You can go there, tell her that you won't give up on your marriage, show her how much she means to you. You love Elizabeth, I know you do."

"Oh stop talking about her, for fuck's sake!" he bellowed, as his face contorted into a hate-filled sneer. "Stop saying her name, I can't bear to hear it! I don't want to hear it again!"

He grabbed manically at handfuls of his ginger locks and I watched in horror as small tufts of hair came away in his fists, poking out from between his fingers.

"Philippe, please, it will be okay, I promise you," I implored him, distraught to see my old friend so clearly distressed. "You and Elizabeth will be okay."

"No, we won't. We won't be okay, we can't be....." He groaned then, a long drawn out wail full of suffering and pain. Shoving his fist half into his mouth, he turned away from me, hunched over as he swayed dangerously.

I stared at him as he rocked back and forth on his heels and it was then I heard the whispering. Philippe was whispering. That same number sequence I'd heard him whispering at his house the previous night. I knew what those numbers meant and my breath hitched in my throat to hear them.

Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten.

Over and over again he counted, never stopping in between each sequence until the numbers just became one awful, jumbled mess like some terrible demonic incantation, as if he was talking in tongues.

I remained absolutely still even though I wanted to run now. Oh god, how I wanted to run. But I couldn't. I had to know. I had to ask.

"Philippe?" I said, gently, carefully. "Where is Elizabeth?"

His head jerked to one side, as if the sound of her name had stabbed him hard and sharp in the ear. The faint tang of blood captured my senses and I knew he was digging his fingernails into his palms as hard as he could. Or maybe he didn't even realise he was doing it.

"We went for a walk," he mumbled, scratching erratically at his forehead and grazing the skin there. It must have stung like Hell, but if it did, he didn't seem to care. "I wanted to talk about us, I wanted to know that we could find a way to work things out. And it was such a beautiful night....so very beautiful...." He trailed off and looked up, his eyes searching for something in the bruised skies above.

"Philippe," I said again, firmer this time. "Please tell me, where is Elizabeth? Where is your wife?"

He shuffled back to face me, his motion slow as if every movement wracked his body with enormous pain. It was like watching an old movie, seeing how his body jerked, then stopped, jerked, then stopped as if the reel was getting caught in the projector and flickering images onto the screen in short staccato bursts of film. His eyes were closed, but rivulets of tears now streamed down his face.

"She is here," he said. "She is everywhere here. Can't you smell her? I can. I can hear her too."

My heart plummeted fifty storeys straight to the cold, unforgiving ground when his eyes snapped open to reveal deep pools of venomous amber, giving his usually soft features a malevolent and terrifying edge. I stumbled back in horror.

"She screamed so much," he said, with a sob that degenerated into a bilious growl, thick and congealed in his throat. "She won't stop screaming, Megan. I don't think she ever will."

Fenton had been wrong about me. I was stupid.

Too stupid to work out that getting Philippe to agree to this little midnight rescue mission had been too easy. So stupid that I'd put my trust in a friendship that had died the very moment I'd been reborn a vampire. Too stupid to spot the signs. The signs that had been literally screaming at me all this time, begging me to realise Philippe had never once escaped from being under Brandon's control. Never.

Once he has claimed you, everything you are belongs to him.

Yes, I'd been very, very stupid indeed. I'd read the fairy tales. I should have known. Out here in the woods, the wolf was lord and master.

Out here in the deep, dark belly of the forest, the wolf was King.