Brody had spent the day ready. He was sitting on the edge of his cot, silent and still, when the lights first flickered. He could sense his brothers near, something happening. He had never felt so awake in his life.

The lights went out, and there was a soft click as the lock on his cell door retracted. That was all he needed. Brody shot off his cot and out the door, sprinting down the corridor, pushing aside anyone in his way. He was much faster than any human, and he could see in the dark. Sensing freedom, he ran through the maze of Larkhaven, down one corridor and then another, toward the front lobby.

He had just reached it when the lights came on again. There were shouts, footfalls behind him. Humans were painfully slow. The front door—the door to freedom—was locked, sealed with a keypad. Swift and silent, Brody raced to the front security desk, knocked over the shouting guard sitting behind it, and ripped the emergency pass from his belt. These fools thought a dumb animal hadn’t noticed the emergency pass on every guard’s belt from the first day. They were wrong.

Shoving the guard aside, he ran to the front door, swiped the pass, and sprinted out into the front lot, heading for the fence. He was barefoot, wearing only scrubs, and he moved so fast that later examination of the security footage would show only a blur. The fence was still sparking, but the electricity hadn’t come back to it. Brody climbed it, hooking his bare feet into the chain link.

Behind him, some guard finally had the presence of mind to shoot at him. He missed. Brody hit the top of the fence, where there were coils of barbed wire. He vaulted himself over, catching the side of one calf on the wire, ripping his scrubs and ripping open the skin. He swung down to the other side of the fence, climbed down, jumped the last ten feet, and ran again, the wound already healing.

They shot at him some more. They missed.

Brody vanished into the trees, tore off the scrubs, then ran naked, faster and faster. At an inhuman sped he leapt into the air, and then he was his wolf for the first time in three long weeks. His wolf paws hit the ground and now he ran as his animal was meant to run, the rough terrain of the woods, the dark, the cold—all of it nothing to him. He tore through the forest at top speed, going back to his pack, his brothers, his mate, his child.

Overhead, Shep the eagle appeared again. Brody took note and followed him. They didn’t head directly for Shifter Falls, or for Brody’s house. He longed to go home, but it wasn’t time yet. His brothers still had other plans first.

He could smell his brothers now—all three of them. Their scents were growing stronger and stronger. They were close. Mixed in were two unfamiliar human scents, laced with fear. There was no blood scent. At least, not yet.

When he entered a clearing in the dark, he saw a neat pile of clothes on the ground. Shep wheeled sharply and flew away, toward home. Brody changed back into a human and picked up the clothes.

He put on the underwear and jeans, then picked up the shirt. It was his shirt, but it smelled like Alison. A deliberate gesture. She’d put this shirt on, then taken it off again before it was left here. Another message from her. I’m close. Keep going. Don’t quit.

He put it on, reveling in her scent. It was icy cold now, the cold of a late November night, but there were no socks or shoes in the pile, no coat. He didn’t need them.

When he had finished, he left the clearing and walked toward his brothers’ scents, which were strong now. He found another clearing, with all three of his brothers in it. All three were in wolf form: Devon’s hulking black wolf, Ian’s smaller and sleeker wolf, Heath’s lighter, handsomer wolf. They were standing guard over two men sitting on the ground, their hands tied, blindfolds over their eyes. The sources of the strange scents and the fear.

Ignoring his brothers—though he was very fucking happy to see them—he stepped forward and ripped the blindfolds off the men. He recognized them instantly as the Pierce Point mayor and the Grant County sheriff, respectively. He knew their faces from the news articles Alison had shown him, the press conferences.

This was his brothers’ gift to him, then. Escape, and now his enemies, tied up and helpless. Perfect.

The sheriff, Gary MacKenzie, was the first to recognize his captor in the dark, with his new-grown beard. “Brody Donovan,” he said, the fear even stronger in his voice.

Next to him, the mayor hissed a startled breath. “Jesus. You’re right.”

“Here I am,” Brody said, letting them see that he was free and unharmed. “Who wants to die first?”

Mayor Archer gave a frightened moan in the back of his throat.

His brothers circled the clearing. Brody saw Devon’s big wolf pad behind the prisoners, felt Ian pace behind him. Heath approached and sat next to Brody, his head almost as tall as Brody’s shoulder, looking at the prisoners as if waiting for a cue.

“We can do it quick or slow,” Brody said. “Up to you. I have to say, after three weeks locked up courtesy of you two, I’m not feeling particularly charitable. Especially after the electric shocks.”

“Listen,” MacKenzie said. “Donovan. What happened wasn’t personal, and—”

“Not personal, huh?” Brody said. “You mean, arresting me, locking me up without charges, then sending me to a fucking research lab—that wasn’t personal? Because it felt personal to me. Don’t get me wrong.” He stepped forward, dropped to a crouch, his forearms resting on his knees as he regarded the prisoners. “I know you two don’t hate me. The mayor has an election to win, and you, Sheriff, need the mayor in order to keep your job. Just politics as usual, right? Who cares if a wolf gets caught in the crossfire?”

“It wasn’t my idea,” the mayor broke in. “It was Gary’s. And now that Carson Dunne is dead—”

“Shut up.” MacKenzie glared at him. “You’re going to get me fucking killed.” He turned and saw Devon’s wolf, standing next to him, his gaze lowered and hungry. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Here’s what I think,” Brody said. “You two had an opportunity land in your lap when the Silverman got killed, and you decided to take it. Use shifters to win your election. Stir up fear and hate. Hell, even arrest the alpha as a show of power. Send him away where no one will ever find him again. That was Plan B when Carson threw himself on a bullet. How much money did you get for me as a research subject, by the way?”

Mayor Archer went white. “I didn’t—”

“Sure you did,” Brody said. “And maybe it worked, for a while. But not now. Because here I am.” He looked around at his brothers. “Here we all are. And all you’ve managed to do is piss us off.”

Archer squirmed. “We can—”

“Shut up,” Brody said. “Everyone is sick of listening to you. You humans—just talk, talk, talk all the time. Why don’t you ever stop talking long enough to listen?”

Archer went still. Brody could feel the fear coming off of him, could hear him breathing. He stayed in his crouch and looked up at the moon for a minute, thinking. Putting his words together. Then he turned back to the men.

“There’s a way out of this,” he told them. “Only one. Otherwise, my brothers and I will kill you, and no one will ever find your bones.”

“Oh, God,” MacKenzie said.

Brody looked at him levelly. “That’s how you know a werewolf didn’t do your other two kills, Sherlock,” he said. “When we kill, we don’t leave the bodies behind. Now listen. Are you listening?”

Both men nodded.

“Say it.”

“I’m listening,” MacKenzie said. Archer echoed him.

Brody sighed. “That will have to do. Like I say, there’s one way out of this for you two. And that’s to start acting like good neighbors.” He looked at the surprise on their faces. “Yes, idiots. We’re neighbors. Have been for a hundred years. And we’ve always gotten along like neighbors have. You don’t piss in my yard, and I don’t piss in yours. Am I right?”

Silence. Ian approached Brody and butted his forehead against Brody’s shoulder, impatient. Brody put a hand on his brother’s snout and patted it, then dropped his hand.

“My brothers don’t like this,” he explained. “They’d rather I let you go, so they can hunt you through the woods. That’s fun for us wolves. But this is my offer instead. You leave us the fuck alone, we leave you the fuck alone. It’s that simple.”

Mayor Archer’s voice was small and desperate. He was shivering with cold now. “I… I think we can do that,” he said. “We can make a deal.”

“You thought it would be easy,” Brody said. “Showing us shifters who’s boss. Well, it wasn’t. You can arrest us, you can come after us—but we’ll always win. We’re faster than you, smarter than you, and harder to kill. You can’t rule us any more than you can rule the ocean or the skies or the trees and put them all in prison. If you make enemies of us, we can kill you all without a minute’s remorse. So my suggestion to you is to make allies of us instead.”

“Whatever you want,” Mayor Archer said. “Anything at all.”

“Jesus, Mike, shut up,” MacKenzie said. “Didn’t you hear him?”

“Listen to your sheriff,” Brody said. “And consider this. Carson Dunne, with all of his bullshit so-called testimony, is dead. We can be enemies, or we can be neighbors. You’ve seen us shifters up close. Think about what it would be to fight us. And then think about what it would be to call on us when you need us. Which one would you rather have?”

“It sounds fine to me,” MacKenzie said. “I’d rather not have any of you in my jail cells, scaring my cops. But Mike has an election to win.”

Brody shook his head. “You promised the people of Pierce Point that you’d keep them safe from shifters. Tell them you tamed us. I really don’t care. It’s just as good a story as the other one. Maybe even better. Makes you look more heroic. Got it?”

“I got it,” Archer said. “I got it.”

“Then you leave us the fuck alone, as I previously stated. We clear?”

Both men nodded.

Brody scratched his beard. Fuck, he hated the thing—he didn’t know how his brothers lived with them. “If anyone comes after me for escaping, the deal is off and you’re both dead within an hour. My brothers will see to that. They all like to kill more than I do. I’m the only one keeping them in line, and even I have trouble sometimes.” Heath’s wolf growled. “Be quiet,” Brody told him.

“Deal,” Mayor Archer said. “We have a deal.”

“Agreed,” said Sheriff MacKenzie. “We have a deal.”

Brody stood and ripped the bonds tying each man’s hands. “Go home,” he said.

The men got up, stumbling and shivering. “We don’t know where we are,” MacKenzie protested.

Brody sighed. Humans were so fucking clueless. “Go that direction,” he said, pointing west toward Pierce Point. “And do it fast, before my brothers feel like hunting you, no matter what I say.”

The men began to run—slow and hobbling at first, then faster. They disappeared into the trees. The three wolves disappeared into the trees, too, but minutes later Brody’s brothers strolled back out in human form, putting their clothes on.

“That went well,” Heath commented.

“A pretty good show,” Ian said in a growl. “Even though it was mostly lies.”

Brody shrugged. He’d had no intention of killing either man. Werewolves never hunted humans; it was against their nature, so his brothers would never have hunted the men and hidden their bodies. But sometimes you had to say what you had to say to get results. Between lying and killing, lying was the lesser sin. “They believed it,” he said. “That’s what matters.”

“You think they’ll really leave us alone?” Devon said.

“I think so,” Brody said. “We pretty much scared them shitless.”

Heath brushed his hands off. “A good night’s work,” he said. “Plus we got Brody out of research hell. I wish I could have seen that fence go off.”

“It was good,” Brody said. “Shep did a good job. So did Devon with the shirt. So did all of you.”

Ian clapped him on the shoulder. “I, for one, am going home.”

“I owe you,” Brody said to his brothers, making himself say the words. “Thank you.”

“We owe you,” Devon said, “for putting Charlie down.”

Brody looked away. They knew now. Of course they did.

“I always said,” Heath said easily, “that whoever killed Charlie should get a parade and a monument in the middle of downtown. And I was only half joking. I might just do it.”

“I agree,” Devon said. “I’d have done it myself if I had half your balls.” He nodded. “Now you should probably go home to your mate. She’s waiting.”

He was right. Brody was free, and the work was done.

Finally, it was time to go home.