Less than thirty miles from Elmwood’s borders, the Blackridge wolves had worked well into the night to prepare for their assault. Blake and his lieutenants made sure every detail was planned to within an inch of its life. Using the knowledge they'd gleaned from their diplomatic visit and the input from Kaden, they'd mapped out the best routes, the strongest defences and the locations of each and every safe house.

It would take longer to reach the border if they approached from the east, but the rising sun at their backs would provide them with a much needed advantage against the patrols. With any luck, Blake knew the disorientation might give Kaden cover to slip silently around the patrols in search of warriors he trusted. From there, he could attempt to end the attack before there were too many casualties.

With the final preparations in place, Blake retreated alone to the far side of the clearing. As they had every night since she'd appeared like a siren from between the trees and fallen into his arms, his thoughts inevitability turned towards Hannah.

“I miss her,” he spoke aloud to the sky. “I thought the worst pain was watching her leave.” He sighed heavily. “I was wrong.” Blake’s gaze slid across the empty air, seeking a break in the clouds that hung like a veil in front of the moon.

Rothan echoed his agreement with a small whine.

“Living without her, not knowing where she is and what's happening to her? There's no torture like it,” he admitted morosely. “I can't fight it. I can't escape it. I can't accept it.”

He'd been right to send her away, he reminded his wolf. She hadn't been safe in the pack.

His skin began to itch as Rothan's fur bristled with indignation, but Blake remained firm. Since the first moment of her arrival she'd faced danger after danger. In the end, she'd nearly died... because of him. He'd failed to protect her.

"They never should have been able to take her. She should never have been left exposed." The fault was his and his alone, he refused to deny it.

The guilt consumed him.

The look on her face just before he fell from the cliff edge still haunted him whenever he closed his eyes. Framed by a vivid autumnal landscape, she'd refused to flee, standing her ground against the horror that fought tooth and claw to tear her apart. He remembered every detail. The wild tangle of red hair caught in the wind, her skin pale as the frost decorating the leaves, emerald eyes wide with terror and his name torn from her lips as he felt his paws leave the security of the ground...

The moon chose that moment to obligingly peek out between two rolling clouds, the light drifting down towards the earth, creating a cold and ethereal halo around the clearing.

"You gave me the gift of patience,” Blake continued, his voice low, muttering a jumbled prayer to his Goddess. “The ability to lead my people. But, without her I have lost – " His fists clenched, the skin cracking in the cold. “I cannot – ”

The moons soft glow dappled the mossy rocks around him, a silent witness to his turmoil.

He swallowed hard and cast accusing eyes upwards. “I made a vow to always put my pack first. I kept my word. I sent her away. I chose my pack. I chose my duty. Please,” he appealed to distant orb in a harsh whisper of desperation. “Give me the strength to see it through. I have no patience left to give, and I am afraid – ”

That we made the wrong choice, Rothan finished for him.

"How much of a choice did either of us have?" he asked. The moon did not reply, the light caressing his face like a mother calming her child. He closed his eyes. Cool to the touch, it soothed his turmoil like balm to a burn as he mulled it over.

Plenty, Rothan answered for her, flicking his tail. Even true mates have a choice.

Blake glanced up at the moon and shook his head, remembering the way Hannah had buried her head in Dylan's shoulder, refusing to look at him. She had made her choice... hadn't she?

Doubt clouded his thoughts once again and he thought back to their final meeting, running their conversation through his mind.

Had he given her a choice? Had any of them? Drowning in guilt, caught up in his fear for her safety and distracted by the rogue attack, Blake had thought only of getting her as far away from the danger as he could.

So focused on the Macleiry's obnoxious demands, and what they might mean for his pack, he'd overlooked that Hannah wasn't Eleanor.

He'd rambled to her about duty, about responsibility, about expectations. His eyes widened. "I didn't give her a choice."

He couldn't fail to miss the hard roll of Rothan's eyes.

“I'm an idiot,” he muttered.

Rothan snorted an agreement. Are we done?

Yes, we're done, Blake conceded, watching the clouds snare the light from the moon, trapping it once more behind a descending curtain of fog.

He turned towards the glowing embers of the pyres and the soft murmur of hushed voices, suddenly craving company.

Once Elmwood was secure he'd travel to Scotland, he assured himself. Maybe they'd get there in time to offer her the choice he'd denied her before they parted. Maybe...

The pyres had been burning since sunset, tendrils of smoke rising up to meet the heavy clouds forming a canopy of darkness over the camp. At roughly the same time the warning bells had begun to peal over Elmwood, and with several hours still to go before the dawn chorus, a dozen bodies still lay on the frozen ground.

Much to the disapproval of many of his warriors, Blake had ordered all the sacrificial victims, rogue, human and wolf, be burned together regardless of status or race. There had been protests, of course, especially amongst those who had lost loved ones in the rogue wars. But the Alpha had been firm.

The callous disposal of the bodies had taught him much about their foe – Not only did he seem recklessly fearless of discovery by the humans, he also held a complete disregard for the sanctity of life, even within his own ranks, and the realisation chilled Blake to the bone. No one, not even the rogues deserved what had been done to them in these caves.

One glance at his bleak expression had been enough to discourage further argument, but it didn't escape his notice that over half the remaining corpses were rogue, and no pack wolves at all were yet to be burned. He let out a huff of dissatisfaction. It irked him that his orders had been only half-heartedly obeyed.

You can't blame them, Rothan advised, and Blake felt the tug of admonition behind his words. Rogues are rogues, regardless of how they died.

Blake’s brow furrowed and a heavy silence fell between them. He could feel his wolf's perplexed curiosity and tried hard to ignore Rothan rummaging through his thoughts. He could barely remember what it felt like to be alone inside his head, but it was still disconcerting how easily his wolf could access even the darkest corners of his mind.

He glanced again at the corpses. But the dead are the dead, and pose the same problem, regardless of their origin.

The last of the funerals would have to wait until the following night when the black sky would more easily camouflage the rising smoke.

As eager as they all were to be done with these caves, Blake simply couldn't risk exposing the caves to humans until his pack had erased all traces of the supernatural from the area, and the tell-tale tendrils of smoke from a suspected forest fire would be far too much of a temptation for curious eyes. Between the pyres behind his own borders, and those he knew would be alight within the monastery ruins, they were risking more than enough exposure already.

While most of the warriors had bedded down at Tungl for the night, a small group had remained with their Alpha at Clinthorpe. His two lieutenants, accompanied by the young warrior Charlie, and Doc, who had remained to continue his examination of the bodies pulled from the depths of the cave.

Shaking off the leaden gloom that surrounded the southernmost cave, Blake picked his way over to where they hovered near the pyres, huddling close to the last, glowing embers that staved off the worst of the chill. He glanced surreptitiously at the eldest member of the group with concerned eyes.

Doc had struggled during this latest excursion. He hadn't ventured beyond the borders for years, much less camped out in the forest and his old bones creaked and groaned as they protested against the increasingly harsh conditions. The old man acknowledged his arrival with a bow of respect and wrapped his scarf tighter around his neck, his eyes dancing in the firelight.

"Kidnapping humans, slaughtering pack wolves..." Marcus was saying. "I get it. It's what they do. But, killing their own kind?" He shook his head. "Madness," he muttered.

"It could be construed as madness, to those who don't understand their warped thinking." Doc rubbed the side of his nose thoughtfully, choosing his words with care. "But there are hundreds of records stretching all the way back through history of human sacrifice in the name of pagan Gods and Goddesses. The Mayans, the Vikings... the Egyptians to name a few. It's not a new concept."

"You're a fountain of random information, Doc," Alex noted dryly. "You simply must tell me where you get you learn it all.”

The stoic old man raised his eyebrows. "I read."

Alex rolled his eyes. “Anything interesting?”

“All books are interesting,” Doc murmured passively. His eyes lit up. "I could lend you a few?"

Alex sighed. "It was a rhetorical question, Doc."

Marcus growled softly, cutting him off. "Alex! Not now," he snapped. He turned back to the medic who was regarding Alex with an almost microscopic interest. "You can't actually be justifying all this death?" he accused, his voice filled with condemnation.

Doc shook his head, peering over the rim of his tiny spectacles in the dim light. "No, my dear Beta, I'm not. All I'm saying is; most religions have their own strange idiosyncrasies, especially those with cult-like tendencies. Understanding their reasoning is the first step to unravelling them."

Marcus grunted and turned away. "I don't want to understand them," he bit out. "Killing them will do." He moved away from the group, his expression dark and forbidding.

While Blake pondered over the wider implications of the sacrifices, and Doc focused on the scientific facts, Marcus had reacted to the discovery as a father. Openly and unashamedly weeping as the unnamed child was laid on the pyre, he’d mourned her death as he would his own daughter – the emotional trauma dredged up by their discovery of the traitor responsible for his own near demise mingling with his natural compassion and the knowledge that the child's parents were doomed to never know her fate.

Doc cast him an understanding look and turned his attention back to the Alpha. "Speaking of rogues, there's something you ought to see. Come here," he beckoned, making his way back to the pile of corpses and seeking out the, by now, familiar tattoo inked onto the greying skin. He crouched down next to the stiff body of a dead rogue. "Shine that torch this way," he instructed Charlie impatiently. He waited for the young wolf to direct a thin beam of light on the pallid face of the corpse.

"I noticed there's something different about the rogues they killed." With scientific precision, Doc peeled open one of the eyelids. The movement produced a noise best described as sticky and disturbingly wet. "Look." He gestured to the milky white cornea.

Blake shuddered and crouched beside him, trying his best to look unmoved by the sightless stare the corpse now offered him. "I don't see – " He paused as he examined the cloudy surface. Despite the obvious lack of life, behind the cloud lay a faint red ring, almost undetectable to the naked eye. "What is that?" he murmured.

"Don't you recognise it? It's the mark of a feral wolf," Doc said. He poked the eyeball with his little finger – it rolled upwards with a squelching sound that made the hairs on Blake's arms stand on end. The ring followed the dead cornea, the red glistening as the light changed.

"Must you?" Alex asked, a sick look on his face.

"I thought you were blessed with a strong stomach?" Charlie teased.

"I am," he swallowed, averting his eyes from the Doc who, with an almost perverse interest, continued to manipulate the eyeball back and forth. "But that's an eyeball and eyes are just – "

With a faint pop, Doc eased the entire ball out of its socket.

" – Nope." Alex turned to follow Marcus back towards the pyres. "That's it, I'm done."

Doc watched him leave with a puzzled frown. "What did I say?"

Blake passed a weary hand over his face, his eyes dropping to the wavering beam from the torch and travelling upwards to observe the slight shake to Charlie's hand.

Bit squeamish, aren't they? Rothan observed in a voice filled with amusement.

“So the sacrifices were feral wolves?” Blake prompted, before they lost their only source of light.

Doc looked blank. “hmm?”

Blake took a deep breath and tried again. “I assume there's a reason you're cradling an eyeball between your fingers, Doc?”

Doc flicked his eyes back to the jellied orb, realisation dawning on his wrinkled features. His face folded up into smile of amusement. “Oh yes, take a closer look. You're still not seeing it. Not surprising, I almost missed it myself.” He offered up the ball for closer inspection and Blake fought the urge to flinch.

Rothan chuckled softly in his head, as usual quite unconcerned by the harsh realities of death.

You're enjoying this, aren't you? Blake accused.

Naturally.

Biting back his response, Blake leaned reluctantly closer, staring at the eyeball in mild disgust. It was only as Doc rotated it back towards the light that he spotted the source of Doc's interest. The red halo had a ring of its own. Like a stain on the white of the eye, yellow, pale and almost invisible behind the cloudy film.

His face must have betrayed his surprise because Doc nodded sagely, finally relinquishing his gruesome discovery back to the body it belonged to. “Interesting, isn't it?” he murmured.

Blake raised his eyes. “It looks like... some sort of jaundice?”

“That’s exactly what it is,” Doc agreed. “These rogues were already dying before they were sacrificed.”

“But that's impossible. Wolves don't get liver disease."

We don't get any illness that can cause this, Rothan confirmed.

“These ones did.”

“But, how?”

“I have my suspicions,” Doc admitted. “There were rumours amongst the medical community, oh, seven or so years ago now... a new experimental drug targeted at feral wolves in an attempt to reverse, or at least prevent the inevitable.”

“Why?” Charlie asked with perplexed frown.

Blake could guess.

With Galen's death the rogue wars had fizzled out in a tidal wave of disorganised chaos, as the tentative cooperation between the different factors faltered and returned to the infighting they knew so well. Defeated and demoralised, a surge of rogues had reassessed their desire for freedom and begged to return to pack life.

Doc shrugged. “A weak wolf thrown out of their pack might not be able to find a new one before the madness sets in. A drug like that would give them a chance at redemption.”

“I've never heard of a feral returning to a pack before,” Charlie frowned.

No, he wouldn't have. Those already showing the first signs of turning were lost souls, doomed to remain rogue until their deaths. No Alpha wished to risk such chaos on their packs.

“I take it the experiment failed?” Blake surmised.

“No, that's just it, it worked, if the rumour mill is to be believed. The project was abandoned because the side effects turned out to be deadly in their own right; inflicting irreversible damage to the liver and kidneys that not even our advanced healing could compensate for. The subjects all died anyway, the drug bought them no more than a few more months reprieve at most.”

“And you think this could be it?”

“I've heard of nothing else that could cause this type of damage,” Doc said gravely.

Charlie frowned. "Am I the only one seeing a pattern developing?"

Blake gave him a quizzical look.

Charlie shrugged. “At the monastery, those behemoths were on something wild. That would make this the second experimental drug we've come across recently.”

“The third actually,” Doc corrected. “Don't forget the pheromones targeting the Alphas. And that's my point." He turned back to Blake, his expression unusually grave. "Someone out there is dabbling in things they shouldn't be, and leaving chaos in their wake.”

“I'll look into it,” Blake promised. “In the meantime, see if you can find out where the drug trial originated from.”

Stalking back towards the pyre, his skin still crawling in protest, he sought out his lieutenants. They looked up expectantly, one grim and controlled, one with muscles rippling in anticipation.

"Head back to Tungl, tell the warriors to prepare to move out in two hours."

Alex flashed his Alpha a tight grin and punched Marcus lightly on the shoulder. "I'll race you," he challenged.

Marcus cast a dour look in his direction. "Really?"

“Really.” Alex shifted in a shower of tattered cloth, and lowered his muzzle to the ground, his hind quarters raised in playful puppishness. Come on. I dare you! he teased over the link. What's up? Afraid I’ll beat you?

Despite himself, the Beta's lip twitched. "Not in this lifetime.” The whistle of a sigh escaped his lips as Alex bounded up and down across his field of vision, trembling in his eagerness to get going. “Okay, okay,” Marcus gave up the fight. “Give me a minute though, will you? If I have to explain to Ophelia why she needs to buy me yet more shirts, I'll be relegated to the sofa for a month."

Blake watched with concealed amusement as he sauntered towards the packs with deliberate slowness, the Gamma bounding alongside him like a child about to receive a reward for good behaviour.

Do you think he’s ever going to grow up? Rothan mused.

I certainly hope not, Blake replied as the phone in his pocket began to trill. He glanced down at the screen, surprised that the weak signal had penetrated the valley long enough to connect the call.

Now what?

"You have a problem." Asher got straight to the point as soon as he answered the phone.

Blake sighed inwardly. He had so many problems right now, he was running out of fingers to count them on. "Can it wait? We're kind of busy right now."