The first thing I was aware of as I slowly drifted back into consciousness was pain. A sharp, persistent ache at the back of my head that was going nowhere. The next thing I was aware of was embarrassment. That sounds stupid, but I had been a private investigator all my adult life, only to be clobbered over the head in broad daylight. That's incredibly embarrassing.

Had all my better instincts been sapped by sexual excess? Probably not; I'd just gotten careless and stupid. And there was a decent chance that I was going to pay for it.

I tried to move my hands, and found they only got so far before being forcibly yanked back with a metallic clatter. Peeling my eyes open, my fuzzy vision focused on chains about my wrists, embedded in the wall. Great.

Inch by inch, my body complaining all the way, I levered myself up into a kneeling position and paused there while the room spun unpleasantly around me.

"Good morning, Miss Malone."

I started at the sound of the voice, which just made my head ache all the more. A blurred figure came into focus in the grim room in which I found myself - a werewolf in wolf form, their hair a gleaming white, shot with grey so it looked almost silver. While werewolf males quite like splitting their clothes open when they transform because it looks cool and means they can still have suits tailored to their human body - despite the expense - many females choose to have clothes made to accommodate the change and look equally good in either form. This one, I was sure, was equally well-dressed in human or wolf shape, the red material having slits built into it to allow for the expanded wolf muscles, through which the silvery mane of Arctic Venus protruded.

"You really are part-wolf aren't you?" she growled.

"So are you," I replied - I'd never met a wolf who could speak when changed before, there seemed no other explanation.

Venus waved a hand. "Distantly so. Not even a werewolf nose can pick up my humanity, while you stink of it. But that ancestry does give me some advantages."

"You can talk in wolf form."

"Less use than you would think. More importantly," Venus explained, "I can think." She smiled. It was not a comforting sight. "Werewolves, you see, are very stupid. Hang around them and you start acting stupid, too. You forget simple, basic things because you just think; wolves don't act like that. You assume loyalty in pack members and never think; someone might have been paid off. In your case, even after you made the discovery that Lennox had been disloyal to his Pack Leader, you still didn't think to watch your back in Kenai territory."

"You had someone keeping an eye on me." I had every right to be embarrassed - I was a fucking moron.

"Of course. Wherever you went." Venus laughed. "People are so obsessed with the idea that werewolves are loyal to the pack that they never even wonder. They never think about what bad habits we might have picked up from living amongst humans. Not to mention, breeding with humans. In my case, my human ancestry gives me the advantages of disloyalty, deviousness and cunning. In yours, your wolf ancestry has made you as dumb as a brick."

That was hard to argue with at this moment.

"The original assassin?" I asked - even if I was going to die here, I wanted to know.

"Now, she was one of mine," nodded Venus. "For a job like that, I wanted an Arctic werewolf. There's no point in your looking to find the one with the scar on her hand, she died the night of the last Lunar Hunt, shortly after returning to Arctic territory."

"The price of failure," I guessed.

"Fear works a hell of a lot better than 'loyalty'."

"The plan was to create chaos in the Kenai Pack, then you could move in?"

Venus nodded. "The brothers are too close for them to fight amongst themselves, but if everyone had thought that one of them had King killed, then there would have been total chaos, and I would be best placed to take advantage."

"Why not the other packs?"

"Jack would be too busy raging because he wasn't the one to kill King, and Sean is all talk. You presumably guessed as much when you visited them." She smiled. "And yet you still didn't guess it was me."

"Dumb as a brick," I agreed, and meant it. "You had me attacked on my way back home. You hired Lennox to attack me and 'accidentally' show his face, then show up at the Lunar Eclipse party."

"A good insurance policy."

"What if they had killed me?" I asked.

Venus rolled her eyes. "They were supposed to beat the hell out of you - make it look good - and then run off when the Kenai heirs arrived to save you. I didn't think those idiots would take that long. And then my wolves got a bit caught up in the fight. That's how it is with werewolves; stupid, stupid, stupid."

"I suppose things will be different with you in charge?" I suggested.

Venus shook her head. "Nope. I like things this way. Stupid people are easy to manipulate. Case in point." She indicated me.

"Thanks. And now you're going through with the same plan again?"

Venus shrugged, seamlessly changing form as she did so. "It's a good plan. No point in throwing it out just because of one careless wolf. Someone more reliable will do the assassination this time. And I know he'll be more reliable because I showed him what happened to the first assassin. King will be killed, and without you to save them, those three idiot brothers will be completely helpless. Chaos reigns."

"Till you step in."

She nodded. "Exactly. I did tell you that I wanted what was best for the Arctic Pack. Taking over the Kenai territory is what's best."

"Won't a whole lot of your wolves get killed in the process?"

"I guess 'best' is open to interpretation. You can't make an omelet without breaking skulls."

"I'm not sure that's the saying."

"Well, I'm not trying to make an omelet." She strolled over and placed a finger under my chin to tilt my face up to meet hers. "You're probably wondering what happens to you now."

I said nothing, but the question had crossed my mind.

"After your mates – yes, I know about that, too - saved their father's life last night, selling them as the assassins will be a little harder than before. I need some other event to make it plain that they can't be trusted. Everyone now knows that you were working for King, so after your mangled corpse is found in Heir’s House, I think people will start asking questions. Should be enough to seal their guilt. But," she strolled away again, "to really sell the idea, you need to die after King. These coroners can be so accurate nowadays. I won't be able to do it myself, I'm afraid, but don't worry, one of my guards will tear you apart later. He's under orders to make it quick. After all, I'm not a monster."

With that, she went out the door. Isn't it funny how a little humanity can make something as harmless as a werewolf into something truly terrible?

With Venus gone, I was left alone with the two guards who stood on the door, their gaze fixed on me. One of those werewolves was going to kill me later. It was not something that I wanted to think about, but that sort of thing does unavoidably concentrate the mind. I tried to turn my attention to the manacles on my wrists. I'm not what you would call an expert at picking locks, but I had taught myself the basics because this is the sort of thing that can happen to a private investigator, especially in this town.

"Leave it." The warning growl came from one of the guards at the far end of the room.

"I was just..."

"I know what you was 'just'. You 'just' do that again and you'll regret it."

"You're killing me later," I pointed out. "How much worse can it really get?"

A leering grin spread across the faces of both guards, showing sharp fangs. "It can get worse. Trust us."

I left the manacles alone - there was no way they would let me finish picking the locks anyway.

What now? I wracked my brain for ideas. I've been in some tight spots before with my life in danger, and I've always been able to get out of them using my wits. But I'd never been in quite as tight a situation as this before, and suddenly my wits didn't seem enough. Nothing was occurring, I couldn't see any way out. Short of some serious stroke of luck, I was going to die in this room.

To try to take my mind off of this depressing fact, and in the vague hope that there might be some cause for optimism located elsewhere in the room, I turned my attention to my surroundings. You could have described the room as 'empty', except that it invited the word 'abandoned'. The floor was presumably wood below the thick layer of dust that coated it. The walls were flaking plaster, augmented here and there by the tattered remains of wallpaper that had once adorned it. The door swung off its loose hinges at an angle that veered between drunken and suicidal, and the windows were broken. From the center of the ceiling hung a single bare light bulb that was on its last legs, providing only a sickly orange haze. As casually as I could, I tried to look out of the window, but one of the guards saw me and drew a sheet, that might once have been called a curtain, across it.

"We'll have none of that, neither."

Nothing in the decor gave me any escape plans and everything about the place suggested that it was not somewhere people were in the habit of dropping by, meaning, I was unlikely to be discovered, but there was one thing that interested me. Cautiously, afraid of transgressing another rule, I turned my eyes to where my shackles were attached to the wall. It had occurred to me that if this place had been regularly used by the Arctic Pack to detain prisoners, then there would have been a lot less dust. More likely, therefore, this was just a convenient and quiet location - so why would such a place have shackles attached to the walls? Unless the previous occupants had enjoyed an active and unconventional sex life.

My suspicions were confirmed as I saw that the bolts fastening my shackles to the wall were brand new, and a pile of plaster dust on the floor suggested that they had been added very recently, perhaps today.

So, what did that mean and where did it get me?

There was no way they would have brought me here rather than to a purpose-built prison if they had had a choice. Transporting a dead body to Heir’s House, even by cover of night, was not an easy task for a werewolf in enemy territory, the less distance over which you had to transport it, the better. Did that mean we were in Kenai territory? Perhaps near Heir’s House, if that was where my body was to be discovered. That made sense. If we had been in Arctic territory, then they could have kept me somewhere more suitable without worrying about being found out.

Where this revelation got me was the knowledge that if I yelled out the window at a passing werewolf that I had been kidnapped by Arctic wolves trying to kill Kenai King, then they would be on my side. I would likely get killed, but still. Secondly, the more I looked at the wasted plaster on those cheaply built walls, the more I wondered how securely those bolts were holding my shackles in place. My strength didn't compare to that of a werewolf, but I kept in shape and my part-wolf nature gave me a bit of an edge on other humans in the strength stakes.

If I were to really yank on those chains, then might they come out of the wall?

They might. But, of course, I would only get one try. If I failed, then the guards would be on me and then... I didn't want to think about that.

Though it had not yielded anything solid, this look about the room had gotten me thinking that maybe - just maybe - all these little observations might be made to come together in a plan. There was one more place to check for a possible escape route.

"Excuse me? I need the bathroom."

The guards met my gaze with blank-faced disinterest. "Don't let us stop you," said guard one.

"You're saying there isn't a bathroom?"

Guard two rolled his eyes. "Of course, there is. In the corridor. We're not animals. But you can't use it."

"Why not?"

"What part of 'prisoner' are you failing to understand?"

"So, I just sit here and wet myself? Then get killed. You know how to make a bad day worse."

Guard one shrugged. "Most people wet themselves when they're killed. Get it over with now and you can die with some dignity."

"I can't tell you how much better that makes me feel. Come on, man, be cool."

Guard two shook his head. "We've never been cool. Kurt, here, listens to ABBA."

"Hey, ABBA will never not be cool," guard one - Kurt - objected hotly.

"Will you at least turn around?" I asked, wondering if maybe there was a way I could give the chains a test yank without them seeing.

"No."

"I'm chained to the wall - what do you think I'm going to do?"

"Pee on the chains," said Kurt.

"So, what's that going to do? I'm not a fucking alien."

Guard two made a 'not my problem' face. "Well, be that as it may, the Pack Leader said we were not to look away from you for one second, so go ahead and do what you have to do."

"I'll hold it."

I slumped back and glanced at my watch. It was now lunchtime. Members of the Pack Courts would be laying out their best clothes - or watching their servants do it - ready for tonight's hunt. In Arctic territory, Venus would be preparing to lead her pack in the monthly event, confident in the knowledge that her agent was in Kenai territory, ready to assassinate King. King himself would be getting ready, feeling safe and secure, knowing that his attempted assassin was under lock and key, and wondering if the MacKenzie territory might be up for grabs. Four criminals who thought they had successfully evaded the law were preparing for a night out or a night in, not knowing that tonight they would be hunted and killed for what they had done. And three brothers... What were they doing now? How had they interpreted my vanishing off after last night? It doesn't look good when a woman does that sort of thing. If they asked around, they might find that I had been to the Pack Lodge that morning to see Lennox, but if the girl you slept with disappears before you wake up, do you ask around? Or do you keep it to yourself and pretend it was your decision and you never wanted to see her again anyway?

Perhaps I was being too hard on them. I was confident in the love of Tanner, Gray and Hudson. I was confident that they would try to find me. But how? I had left no note to say where I was. Where could they start? They had no way of tracing me, and with only a few hours until the Lunar Hunt, the chances against them finding me seemed astronomical.

It was early evening, following an afternoon of planning, re-planning and pleading to use the bathroom, that I reached an inevitable conclusion: if I was going to get out of this, then it would have to be by my own efforts. True, I would only get one chance at pulling the shackles from the plaster, but if I didn't at least try, then what the hell use was I? I might not be a full werewolf, but I had enough of my gran in me to have the courage to do this.

First up, I needed a distraction. My phone had been taken from me but my purse was still in my pocket - I seldom carry a bag, I prefer to have my hands free. I took a deep breath and hurled it through the window. The purse had all my IDs in it, so if it was found by someone, then maybe - and it was a big maybe - they would put it in the hands of the right authorities.

The guards stared at the window in disbelief, torn between running out after my purse and following their orders. As they stared, momentarily dumbfounded, I sprang to my feet and, throwing all of my weight and all of my strength into the effort, I yanked on my chains. For a second, I could almost feel my gran, in her wolf form, helping me, pulling with me, urging me on.

The bolt sprung from the wall in a shower of aged plaster dust. I seemed to have brought half the wall with me, but I was free. By now, the guards were rushing towards me and I swung my chain around as hard as I could, using the heavy end like a medieval weapon. The metal plate, bolts, and a large lump of plaster impacted with a satisfying sound into the face of guard one as he rushed at me. He was mid-changed as he hit the floor, his mouth filled with blood as I had caught him nicely under the chin. Next time, perhaps, he would let a girl use the damn bathroom.

I swung the chain again, but guard two was too close and I couldn't build up the same momentum. He grabbed the chain itself and I screamed as he wrenched on it, pulling me towards him, the manacles cutting into my wrists. He changed into his wolf form as I was pulled up against him, his breath hot on my face, his clawed hand closing on my throat. With his other hand, he grabbed my wrist to look at my watch, and from the look in his eyes, I knew what he was thinking; close enough. He was going to kill me now.

I felt the grip tighten on my neck, claws digging into my skin. I kicked at him and lashed out with my arms, but the blows felt weak against his thick hide, and they became weaker as his grip cut off my oxygen and the world turned red.

Suddenly, the door exploded in a shower of splinters, and in the empty frame stood Gray, snarling, his brown hair bristling across his body. The guard dropped me to the floor, where I lay, choking and trying to breathe and gulp both at the same time. The guard squared off against Gray, but then the Kenai heir was joined by Hudson and Tanner, looming behind their brother. The guard seemed to realize that, however terrible the wrath of Arctic Venus might be, that was theoretical, while a fatal ass-kicking from the Kenai brothers was very much here and now. He fled, crashing out the window.

I stared at my three handsome saviors as they changed back into human form and rushed to me.

"Are you okay?"

"Are you alright?"

"Did they hurt you?"

"Here's your purse."

I took the purse from Tanner and looked wide-eyed at him. "You found it?"

"It hit Hudson in the head."

"I'm fine," said Hudson.

What the hell were the odds of that? "I can't believe you were out there."

"We tracked you," said Gray.

"How?" Werewolves have a great sense of smell, but it's not that good - not usually.

Tanner smiled at me. "You're our mate. We'll always find you."

I hugged them all, feeling the tears rising in my eyes. How wonderful to be so loved that you stand out in a city of millions.

But we didn't have time for emotional reunions, the moon was rising and the hunt would be underway. As I spoke, I frisked the still prone and faintly groaning Kurt, found a set of keys, and unlocked my manacles. "We have to move. It’s Arctic Venus. She's the one who did all this and she's got another assassin ready to kill King at the Lunar Hunt tonight."

"Damn it," Tanner spat angrily. "The hunt is all the way across town, they left early."

"You go," I urged. "I'll catch up."

"What are you going to do?" asked Hudson.

"I gotta use the bathroom."