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We watched the buildings get closer and closer, and Slade had to swerve madly to avoid chunks of brick in the grass, sometimes slamming into smaller ones that went unnoticed. Jack’s arm hadn’t loosened as he held me like I was some kind of comfort object.

“It’ll be alright, love,” he said when I looked around at him, but I saw the tension in his eyes. They dropped down to my mouth, then he leaned over and kissed me hard.

Maybe he was trying to distract me, maybe he wanted to take that one last opportunity to kiss me before shit went down.

It didn’t matter, since it worked. As soon as his lips touched mine, I could feel him seeping into me.

It was as if with stress, the psychic space we all seemed to be able to reach for was that much easier to touch.

I pulled back, and his brows creased as he stared at me.

“What was that?”

“Alright lovers, petting in the back seat is done. We’re going to pull in hard, hope the momentum of the stampede keeps those white fucks running along,” Slade said. “Jack, let the blokes in the tray know.”

“Done,” he said, and stood up quickly.

Once he’d done it and was strapped in, all our eyes trained on the ruined building that was emerging on our left.

“This is gonna be the biggest fucking handbrakie I’ve ever thrown, so hold on tight,” Slade snapped.

Arms shot out, grabbing onto seats, bracing against the dash, and then the whole world slid sideways. Slade had wrenched on the handbrake, causing the back of the truck to swing out and around in a dizzying turn.

“Out!” Brandon said as soon as the car came to a stop.

“Here,” Jack said, reaching under the seat and pulling out weapons. He tossed them and ammo to the guys as they got out.

“Down here, love,” Hawk said, pulling me to him and bringing me down to a crouch behind the car. “If those fucks come in, we’ll take them out.”

“You OK?” Aaron dropped down beside me, lifting my chin and inspecting me, as if an answer from me wouldn’t be enough.

“She’s fine,” Brandon said. “Nothing got through to us.”

“And you?” Aaron asked, his voice much lower. I smiled when I saw him reach out to the other man, rubbing a thumb across Brandon’s cheek.

“Never in danger. You kept us safe.”

It wasn’t just me that saw the smile spread across Aaron’s face. Jack and Hawk watched the exchange, then glanced at each other when they took the gesture in, questions in their eyes.

They didn’t get a chance to investigate this change in the pack dynamic as the other utes arrived. I searched them as they pulled up and created a little barricade between us and the plains beyond. My heart clenched when I saw the guys pile out, Finn among them.

“Johnno’s been hit,” he said, holding one of Aaron’s men, keeping him upright with an arm around his shoulders.

“Hicks, you got the med kit?”

“On it!”

“C’mon, mate,” Aaron said, helping Finn lay the man down.

“The fucking cunts shot me with fucking stone age weapons!”

“Not quite stone age,” Finn said, inspecting the brightly fletched arrow protruding from the man’s shoulder. “This has been well crafted.”

“Yeah, well, feel free to congratulate the maker after you get the fucking thing out of me.”

“Are they barbed?” Aaron asked the other men clustered around. One nodded. “Mate, this is gonna suck, but we’ve gotta push the bloody thing through.”

“What? Fuck off, just yank the bastard out.”

“I saw it in a doco. The barbs will anchor in your flesh and tear everything in its path coming out. You’re less likely to end up with a permanent injury if we do it this way.”

Aaron waited until the other man nodded before gesturing to one of the men to hand Johnno what looked like a bottle of spirits.

“Get a good mouthful into ya,” said one of the guys crouched down beside him, watching Johnno’s throat work as he swallowed the dark liquid down. Then, as he was passing the bottle back, they lifted his shoulders, snapped off the end of the arrow, and then thrust it through with all their might.

Birds I hadn’t noticed fluttered up into the air at Johnno’s screams. I focussed on them instead of the man, but the ragged sound tore at my ears.

I felt a warm presence at my back and looked up to find Hawk there.

He pulled me to him, holding me close, and for a moment, I just felt that, let my eyes scan the ancient building before us as I tuned out the sound of the men helping Johnno.

What if it had been one of them?

Of course, my mind went there, and I felt instantly guilty that that was more important to me than Johnno being hurt.

He had family, perhaps a mate waiting for him at home, or maybe he’d get one.

He might not go home to find one, none of us might return.

I’d been distracted by purple monsters and pack dynamics at Sylvan’s insistence, but that had left a glaring blind spot.

I turned within Hawk’s arms, loving the weight of them, feeling like I needed to initiate more of that, and rested my head against his chest as I watched the guys get the wounded man to his feet.

We were walking into the lion’s den, and one of us was hurt already.

“Jules,” Hawk said as he stroked my hair. “It’s OK.”

At his words, the world dropped away, as if he pulled me from the difficult reality to somewhere quite different.

Almost immediately, a sense of peace settled over me. We stood on the stony shore of a vast ocean, pine trees growing on the rise behind us, beyond the sand dunes. The sea filled the air with its soporific hiss, the waves tiny, lapping at the big polished stones beneath our feet.

“This is the place my uncle took me fishing,” Hawk said, looking about him. “How the hell did we get here?”

“We’re not actually here,” I said. “Brandon showed me. We have this psychic space that those within the pack seem to be able to go to.”

“So, this…” he bent down and picked up a flattish rock, “isn’t real?”

“None of it is, I think. You know how we were having those weird experiences in that landscape with the black sun? Well, this is our version of it.”

“Yeah?” I watched him toss the rock with a rapid movement, watching the bunch and shift of the big muscles in his shoulder as he did so. The stone skipped across the water’s surface until it finally ran out of momentum and sank. “So, why this place? Can I change it?”

“Of course.”

He smiled, his teeth bright against the dark of his beard, and then the world closed down into a muted whiteness. I blinked. I was lying down now, on a bed, if I had the feel right, and he lay beside me. I reached out a hand, and saw we were cocooned under the covers.

“This is where you think we should be?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It always made me feel better when I was a kid, hiding down under the blankets and shutting out the world. I think you need that right now.”

My eyes jerked up to meet his. “Is it that obvious?”

“No, I know because that’s how I feel. Seeing Johnno shot worried you. You thought about what it would be like if that happened to us.”

“How do you do that? How do you read my bloody mind? You and Brandon both.”

He shook his head. “Nah. Brandon, he sees way more than me, but it doesn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to guess, does it? How d'you think I felt? Jack sticking his head up through the car roof, inviting someone to blow it off. And you…”

“Me?”

He looked at me shyly, hand scratching at his beard as if needing something to do.

“Most blokes, they thank the Great Wolf and the stars for the opportunity for a mate. Well, I’ve got two, haven’t I?

Both of you rip my heart out just sitting there, bitching about who should be doing the dishes, until I want to do them for you just so I can continue to watch you.

You start to feel like the world’s gonna fix that, take one of you away for being so greedy for wanting you both. ”

“Hawk…”

He looked away, shaking his head, but his fingers tangled with mine. Then I was lying next to him, watching his eyes roam, the muscles around them tightening as he struggled to get the words out.

“Half the reason why Jack’s such a prick is this.

When you love someone, you gotta watch them go out into the world, face dangers, deal with the possibility that they’ll get hurt, and you can’t do anything about it.

I take my punches head on, always have. No point making a fuss about it.

You mighta noticed, Jack’s not one to take anything lying down. ”

Except your cock, my traitorous little mind supplied.

His smile was immediate, his eyes shining with amusement.

“Fuck, did I say that out loud?” He nodded.

“Like that, do you?”

“You guys are seriously hot together, you know that. But yeah, I feel privileged. You guys love each other in a savage way I’m not sure I’ll ever understand or be a part of, but I love to watch it play out.”

“You don’t have to be a part of anything. You can make your own path to each and every one of us. If you want to.”

I nodded and let out a long breath. Hawk had been right, the lack of sensory information by being huddled up in bed had settled me. He did that a lot, I realised, calmed me down, got me back on track.

“I think we can reach out to each other without touching,” I said. “Can I do that sometimes? Just being with you makes me feel a lot better.”

His face lit up at that. “Of course, Jules. Any time.”

“You two just gonna stand there?”

The world reasserted itself quickly—the vine-covered ruins, the chirp of insects all came rushing back. And Jack, looking at the two of us quizzically, fingers wrapped around his rifle.

“No,” I said, and on impulse, I bounced up and kissed Hawk on the cheek. “I need to see Finn.”

While we had our little interlude, it appeared everyone had decided to go into the ruins.

I heard conversations about Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider bandied around and realised that human or Tirian, when men see something mysterious, they gotta go and take a look at it.

I glanced at the dark entrance, the stone gate crumbling and looking much like a snaggle-toothed maw ready to swallow me up.

I walked past Aaron sorting out weapons and talking to his guys, Johnno still sipping from the bottle of alcohol, and searched for that auburn head, finding him finally behind the cars, scanning the plains beyond.

His name was on my lips, ready to call out as I came closer, but recent memories of how that’d gone stopped me.

Instead, I lifted a hand and looked at it for a second, cognizant that this was unlikely to go well, but not sure what else I could do to get through to my mate.

So I snuck up, and then placed a hand on his arm.

Reality was wrenched away and replaced by a chaotic swirl of impressions and memories.

My eyes burned as I held Mum’s hand as I watched my dads pack up to go.

It didn’t feel real. I’d come home every day to find at least one of them waiting for me.

They’d been there for every day of my life, and watching them fold underwear and t-shirts to put in a bag to take through the portal just didn’t feel real.

This was made worse by Nana, standing in the corner of the room, face as white as a sheet, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Nana was, no, had been, the alpha of Sanctuary since before I was born.

“Don’t, Jules.”

The vision dropped away, and there was only Finn standing over me, a thunderous look on his face.

“Finn, I only want to?—”

“I know exactly what you wanted, and I can’t give it to you right now.”

I could hear the guys behind me calling out to him, wanting him to come and join the expedition, but I wasn’t prepared to stand aside just yet.

“Finn, we talked about this. You’re my mate, and you’re martyring yourself over?—”

“Over what, Jules? My dads? The guys I sent through? The fact they…” He swallowed, the stony cool of his expression slipping for a moment, and what I saw beneath it devastated me.

Despite everything I’d tried, that rampant self-loathing was back and spreading vicious tendrils through the man I loved.

“I thought they were going to get another chance. I thought maybe they’d find a way towards a meaningful life, that they’d move beyond the mistakes they made, but they never got an opportunity.

They’re fucked to death, Jules. Starved, beaten, and thrown to the Volken women’s mercy, because of me. ”

I reached out a shaking hand. This is the last time , I thought. We don’t have to stay together, don’t have to be mates, not if the love isn’t there.

“So why do you have to keep shutting me out?”

“Because if I don’t, I’ll walk away from all of this, take one of the cars, bundle the rest of the pack in, get through that gate and go back home, and spend my life making sure nothing dangerous touches any of you again.

Now, I’m going into the ruins with the guys. You should stay with Johnno and?—”

“No.”

He stared at me with these cat-like eyes both him and Jack had that were just as implacable. Finally, he shook his head.

“Fine,” he said, and walked off.