If the heir to a pack was discovered in the territory of another pack, then that could be considered an invasion and an act of war. Fortunately, I was so far down the line of succession – my father being pretty prolific when it came to producing heirs – that my being discovered there was unlikely to start a war, though it would still be considered a big deal. But I didn’t plan on getting caught.

I looked at myself in the mirror. It would be too much to say that the werewolves from different packs all have their own style of dress, but you can sometimes tell a wolf’s territory from their clothing. The MacKenzie were as old school as city wolves got, but they were also the poor relations. As the spoiled daughter of a Pack Leader, my wardrobe was not exactly filled with cheap clothing, but I managed to scrounge together a pair of torn jeans, a T-shirt and a jacket, all of which I bunched up and trampled up and down on a bit. I added a pair of scuffed sneakers that I had had for years, then untied my hair and bundled it all up on my head in an untidy mass. The girl who looked back at me from the mirror was still recognizably me, but to people who had only seen my picture in newspapers and glossy magazines, I fancied that this disguise would be good enough.

This time, I waited until night to slip away. My bodyguards slept in shifts, with one always awake to keep an eye on me. The windows in the bathroom and bedroom – the only rooms I was now allowed to be in on my own – had been nailed shut by an apologetic Colt. But I was a practiced campaigner at this sort of thing. At just after midnight, I knocked over a pile of books in my room, then clambered into the chest by the wall, putting the blankets over my head. The door to my room opened moments later as Colt came in to see what the noise was.

“Dammit.”

I heard him leave, calling for his friends.

“What is it? What’s going on?”

“She’s gone again.”

“What do you mean she’s gone again? How?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you sure?”

“Check for yourself.”

They didn’t spend long checking, knowing that I had already skipped out once, and the three were soon heading out on another bar crawl to try to find me.

On my way out the front door, I left my bodyguards a note, thanking them for the service and telling them I was quite safe, but that I preferred to be mistress of my own fate.

Although it was late by the time I hit MacKenzie territory, I was in no mood to wait. I had a plan and I was going to execute it now. I’d spent the afternoon online, looking up bars in the MacKenzie territory that might be frequented by Brotherhood types. Werewolf bars are not that different from human ones – there are a few more fights, but other than that, pretty similar. But even so, I felt suddenly like a fish out of water in this bar. It hadn’t really occurred to me how accustomed I had become to being surrounded by humans when I was out partying. It was like a safety blanket – I knew that there was no one in the room whose ass I couldn’t kick if the shit hit the fan. This was different. Here, there were wolves of all shapes and sizes, and at least half of them were bigger than me. I can take care of myself because fighting lessons are an essential part of the schooling of an heir to any pack, but for sheer brute force, many of these wolves – male and female – had me licked. There were still humans around, and I found their smell oddly comforting in amongst the raw aggression and pheromones of the wolves, but they were almost all women – playthings for the male wolves looking for a good time. The single solitary male human worked behind the bar, and I could only imagine that there was a story behind that.

Did the number of human females here suggest that this was not a place where I might find Brotherhood sympathizers? Not necessarily. Although The Brotherhood’s official line was that the purity of the species came above all else, they were fairly happy to turn a blind eye to male wolves sleeping around. That was forgivable, I was an abomination. That sounded fair.

I ordered a drink and took a look around. The problem was that The Brotherhood didn’t come with a uniform or badge saying ‘bigoted, misogynist jackass’. Part of the issue with The Brotherhood was that they looked like everybody else because, a lot of the time, they were everybody else. Your next-door neighbor who you’d known for years could turn out to have sympathies in that direction just because The Brotherhood had spoken out against the trend in youngsters to cook their prey before eating. Everyone likes traditional values, don’t they? And nasty stuff you can brush under the rug.

My plan, that had seemed so good a few hours ago, was starting to look pretty tatty.

I resolved to give it a bit longer – maybe people’s loyalties became clearer after a few drinks – and ordered another drink. But as I turned back to the bar, I felt a hand drop heavily on my shoulder.

Had I been recognized? Was I about to be dragged off to an uncertain fate?

In the event, both were kind of true, but not in the way I had expected.

“You know, I tried to stick up for you this morning,” said Colt, a hint of remonstrance in his voice.

“How did you find me?” I was genuinely gutted and surprised, I thought I had played this so well.

“Didn’t you think we might check your computer? Your search history was full of bars in this territory.”

“That’s how you found me?”

Colt shook his head. “No. We followed you. We may be pretty dumb when it comes to being bodyguards, but we were all young once and we know all the tricks about sneaking out after curfew. Where were you? Wardrobe?”

“Blanket chest,” I confirmed sadly. “If you followed me then how come it took you so long to come in and get me?”

Colt shrugged. “We had eyes on you. And we figured that you at least deserved a drink for trying. But now we’re going home, before you cause an inter-pack incident.”

As he had been speaking, I had started to pick up on something happening around the room. Call it an ‘atmosphere’. There had been a craning of heads and shifting of chairs, a turning of eyes in our direction. There was a muttering of disapproval getting louder and the scent of wolfish anger was heavy in the air.

I suddenly realized where my initial plan had gone wrong. I couldn’t spot The Brotherhood because they hide in plain sight amongst everyone else. If I wanted to make them shed that disguise then I had to provoke them. I snuggled up next to Colt, smiling prettily at him and putting my arms about his waist.

“Come on, darling, one more drink, then we can go back to mine.”

An expression of confusion crossed Colt’s face. “What are you doing?”

“Testing a theory,” I whispered into his ear before turning back to the barman. “Two more.”

“No more.” The barman had started for the drinks when the deep, bass voice came from my right, making him stop in his tracks. I looked to see a werewolf the size of a house glaring at Colt and me with undisguised disgust. “They don’t serve the likes of you in here.”

“Is this your bar?” I asked pertly, deliberately provoking.

“Get out of here, man-bitch, while you still can.”

I squeezed up closer than ever to Colt, trying not to be distracted by the hard lines of his body against me, and kissed his neck as I answered the big man. “Jealous.”

“I said, get out.” The man grabbed me by the arm, ready to drag me bodily out of the bar.

Colt moved like lightning, twisting the man’s wrist so he let me go, then bringing it up behind his back and driving the man’s face down into the bar hard enough to break his nose. It was a good show of strength, something that werewolves admire, and it probably stopped the man’s friends from attacking for about fifteen seconds.

Colt grabbed the first man to reach him by the collar and the belt, hoisting him up and over the bar. As a second made for him, I picked up a bar stool and spun it in an elegant arc to smash it over the man’s head. Dangerous though this was, deep down I was spoiling for a fight. I didn’t want to turn into wolf form if I didn’t have to because then my disguise became useless, and other wolves might well recognize me, but I could fight pretty well in human form, too.

Though, perhaps, not as well as Colt. Watching him move was an education, his fists were as unstoppable as a charging bull, yet he moved with the powerful grace of a tiger. He ducked a punch and swept the legs of one opponent, bouncing back up to kick another in the face, then spinning around to backhand a man, who had been coming up behind him, into the wall. He was a whirlwind of energy and strength, fighting skill and steel. But there was only one of him, and a roomful of angry werewolves who were now starting to transform.

“Shit,” I breathed. I might have pushed this too far.

But as I thought that, the door burst open and Jackson entered, followed by Clarke. They quickly joined the fray. There is a difference between a human who can fight, and a human who can fight werewolves. The guys did not even blink as they faced claws and teeth that could tear skin and rend flesh, they knew how to keep away from those vicious weapons. They also knew the werewolves’ weaknesses. A human, certainly in cramped conditions, can be much more maneuverable, so they kept the wolves on the move, tying them up in themselves and each other. It helped that werewolves in wolf form do not like to use weapons, and a bar is full of potential weapons; bottles, glasses, chairs, tables and so on. But more noticeable than any of that was something my father had alluded to.

These were city wolves, slightly the worse for drink; they were naturally extremely strong and fast, but they had not trained a day of their lives. They were fighting men who might not have had those natural gifts, but who had trained every single day of their lives, whose bodies were at peak fitness and whose skills were honed to a razor edge. I watched as Clarke sprang nimbly onto the bar to avoid a wolf diving at him, then somersaulted backwards off the bar to land behind his attacker and drive his elbow down into the wolf’s back. I saw Colt use a chair to block the slashes of a wolf’s claws before delivering a one-two punch into its snout. I gaped as Jackson stepped in front of me to confront one wolf, who thought I might be an easier target, he blocked one slash, grabbed the other arm and deftly twisted it to bring my assailant to his knees, before turning to yell in my face.

“Door!”

For once, I decided to do exactly as I was told and ran out into the night, with my bodyguards not far behind me. From inside, the sounds of the fight continued, because wolves don’t stop fighting just because the enemies have gone.

Colt rounded on me. “You did that deliberately.”

“And it worked,” I replied, not about to back down when I had clearly achieved something. “I mean, yes, it worked a bit too well, but this is good.”

“This is good?” Clarke threw an arm back at the bar in which the fight raged on.

“This is a way we can find The Brotherhood werewolves.” For the first time in my life, I had a genuine ‘plan’. And I was sure that it was a good one. “Come on, let’s get off the street, I’ll explain it all.”