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The day Rick reached Sanctuary was a quiet one. Ophelia and the matriarchs had been notified. We couldn’t risk any other families being used as ‘practice’ even if we knew he was coming for us. So we roamed the night with other packs in shifts, patrolling the streets, watching, waiting.

“It’s the dark of the moon,” Sen said, glancing at the sky.

I nodded as the night sky felt like velvet on my skin, stroking me, soothing me, bringing my focus back to the world around me.

“We better stay close to the house,” Peter said. “He’ll come tonight.”

He wouldn’t come to the house, I could feel that in my bones, but I just nodded and followed them back.

“Hey,” Cooper said, emerging from the gloom of the veranda, the rest of Aidan’s dads following suit. “We figured we’d need…”

His words trailed away, but Aidan walked over, putting a hand on his arm.

“I think we’re all feeling it.”

“The blokes have emptied out of the singles’ mess, the pub, and the club,” Smokey said. “Every bloke in the town is out on the streets. We’ll catch the fucker, Flick.”

“No you won’t, but I’ll need you to keep Kade safe. That’s very, very important.”

“Of course, love,” Cooper said. “I know you need to get involved after what happened, but, sweetheart, you can leave it to us. It’s what us fellas do.”

“Not this time,” I said, lifting my hands when I felt the stretch in the tips, and everyone saw the claws pushing through. “His sacrifice is mine. It’s how I got back here. I promised.”

My eyes shone red, I was sure of it, as did Sen’s, and the men stiffened around us.

“Then I’m calling the boys,” Vin said. “The sons have gotta come home, circle the fucking wagons. I’ll ask some of that tribe of Moira’s to come and provide back up.”

“Carissa’s too,” Cooper said, flicking his eyes over to the next-door neighbours. “We can consolidate what we have here. If he’s coming for Kade…”

“He’s coming for someone. The children, protect them,” I said, and then strode up the steps, into the darkened house and down the hall, flinching away from the light burning in the bathroom to open my child’s bedroom door.

Will he slink inside like this? I wondered, dropping down beside his bed, my hands sliding across the bedcovers.

Will he touch him like this? My hands curled around Kade’s.

I got no answers, just the steady rhythm of his breathing.

I glanced out the window, half expecting to see his silhouette against the glass, but that wasn’t right, was it?

Kade was endgame, his prize once he had what he wanted.

I got to my feet, striding outside without another look.

The men were clustered outside, talking in that spare, muscular way they do, leaving me with a feeling of satisfaction that the den, the cub was safe.

My pack peeled away from them without saying another word, following on my footsteps, as sure as the beat of my hair on my shoulders as I strode forth.

Rick wanted me, always wanted me. To annihilate me, destroy me, as I was evidence of something he could not bear.

He looked into me as one would a dark mirror and saw all of it—the obvious weaknesses, the pathetic inability to hold his temper, his confusion and fear at his inability to self-regulate, his lack of discipline when it came to alcohol and drugs, his vicious words turned in on himself.

Every fucking day, he got up and built that flimsy house of cards that was his identity, and I smashed it down by merely breathing.

I strode down the street, blindly moving away from my home.

I would not bring this fight to my son. I’d rip his eyes from his skull before Rick set them on Kade again, let alone anything else.

The moon shone so brightly for most of the cycle, bathing all of us in her glow, her love.

And that was me ninety-nine percent of the time.

I was a mother, a lover, a pack leader, a teacher, a caretaker.

But right now? My smile spread across my face, a quite different crescent.

Right now, she had turned her face away from the world, shrouding us in perfect darkness that only artificial lights could try to broach.

So many monsters of mythology were female, because who was more tied to the moon’s tide than us?

My fingers twitched, and my claws clicked dully against each other.

They stood waiting for us in the central square just outside the fenced off area. Ophelia and several elders of such advanced age, I’d never seen them before, stood together, as did a cluster of matriarchs.

“Bringing down the moon?” one snapped. “You want one tainted with him working this ritual?” She stabbed a finger at me. “It’s a bloody dangerous thing with proven members of the matriarchy, let alone an outsider. But that man of hers, with those red eyes…”

“There’ll be more of them,” Ophelia said. “You know that.”

“So you say,” another woman said. “This Brandon and his pronouncements. I thought all that had dried up for him, that a woman was to take his place.”

“She will, when she’s old enough.”

“Why are we doing this? For one woman, one child?”

“Pfft…”

The small sound from one of the eldest women, hunched over with age, silenced the group.

“Simple children. Too soft by half ye are. Think this place was formed on sweetness and light? All loving packs and pretty children? We knew this was coming. You had many good years with which to come to your power. Now you need to use it. ‘The line remains unbroken, when the balance is returned.’ You always forget the other half of it. Now, this raddled interloper is on the outskirts of town. You can either form the circle and draw him here, or let the diseased workings of his brain decide who he will attack first. This is what being a matriarch means. They have the children, the love, and we have the power. We use it to protect them.”

My spine pulled endlessly taller as I turned to stare up the long road that led newcomers in through the big gate, then down here to the square.

Dark things moved on the road beyond, but I couldn’t see if it was him yet.

I heard the women moving around me, linking up hands, caging me and the boys within.

Then yet more footsteps came. Arelia, the woman I’d met at the playground, and her sisters approached on one side.

“Let the mothers in,” an imperious little voice said, and the circle parted to admit Kiralee, one of my son’s friends.

“Sweetheart,” I said, walking over, feeling my claws recede, my voice softening. “This is not the place for you.”

“Isn’t it?” Her eyes flashed red in the darkness, something that raised a flurry of splutters from the circle. “Crone, mother, maiden. That’s how it’s done.”

“So it is.” The elderly woman, who had spoken before, hobbled forward with Ophelia at her side. “You know the words?”

“I heard them in the beat of my mother’s heart, before I was born.”

“So you did,” the woman said. “I am Flora, child. Your mother will bring you to me after this?”

Arelia nodded stiffly, but her eyes shone in the low light.

“But you don’t know the words, do you, Lady Mother?” Flora said, eyeing me. “Nonetheless, we have enough power within us. From death comes rebirth.” Flora grinned, her lined face transforming into a skull. “I’ll go first.”

The woman’s voice ripped through the still of the night in a hoarse and ragged tone.

It wasn’t precisely a song. There was no regular cadence, no determinable rhythm, the sound more a mix between an inarticulate cry and a rasping scream.

The guys clustered close to me, and I felt them brush against my skin as my claws reformed.

“So how does this go down?” Aidan asked in a hushed whisper.

“We back her play,” Noah replied.

“Fan out. Flank her. We ring this cunt and bring him down,” Sen said.

“No, we catch her when she falls,” Peter said.

“What he said,” I said, and strode forward, the circle fanning out, forming an honour guard as I went. The same ugly beautiful sounds erupted from their throats as I passed, joined by the crystal-clear notes of a young girl’s.

I wasn’t staying still, waiting for my prey to come to me. I was the motherfucking hunter, and I was taking the threat to my home down. I ran with shadow light feet, my mates at my back, until I sighted him.

My nightmare made flesh stood under the gate of Sanctuary, his eyes gleaming red.

But mine did too. We were each the Black Wolf’s puppets, and we were about to see who was gonna come out on top.

He shifted until he stood under a streetlight, the illumination unkind, picking out the ravages his excess had wrought as well as my violence.

“Hello, Felicity,” he said in his best bad guy purr.

I narrowed my eyes, noted his fingers twitching in time with mine, and then did the only thing reasonable—I laughed.

Many have said it was the laughter of women that drove abuse. That we could see all that an abuser was, with his puffed-up facsimile of real masculinity, and find it amusing. But rather than find real strength in themselves, they used it against us, as if that would stop the world laughing.

I circled Rick, moving in a lazy loop, inspecting every inch of him. Had he always been so small, flabby flesh with muscles lurking below? Those hands seemed fragile now, not capable of smashing into me, not capable of doing anything, despite the rings of rusty blood under his nails.

But he did, that was the bitch. So many men got up each day, looked themselves in the mirror, and decided they were OK after hurting, lying, brutalising their partners and kids.

I didn’t say “not all men”, that was obvious.

I had four of them at my back and a network of them roaming the streets, ready to take down anything that got in the way of their loved ones, and there were millions who’d do the same in your everyday suburban street.

But that men like this could be allowed to exist…