The gas station, parking lot full of pickups, becomes visible in the distance as the Suburbans crest a low rise. A worried expression on his face Brice comments, "Trip, this feels off."

"Shit" Trip thinks. Brice thinking something "feels off" is never a good sign.

Red's head snaps forward, a low growl emitting from him. The fracturing of bone and cracking sinew resounds through the vehicle as Red speed shifts to his werewolf form. Brice barely has enough time to grab the boy and restrain him before Red attempts to bolt out of the moving vehicle.

Alex almost swerves off the road when Trip's mental link slams into him. "Alex, don't stop at the station. Go past and park behind the billboard farther up."

Alex "What the fuck Trip?"

Trip "All hell just broke loose with Red."

Before the two vehicles can stop completely the side door to the 2nd SUV comes flying open; Red vaults out Brice hot on his tail. They are both in werewolf form, Brice has several lacerations across his chest. Brice manages to tackle Red but is having a hard time keeping him down. Alex and Trip come running up to the pair wrestling on the frozen ground.

Trip, gasping for breath, "I told Brice to knock him out but the big idiot doesn't want to hurt him."

Despite being half the size of the larger werewolf Red is putting up a fairly impressive show, rising from the ground with Brice's full weight bearing down on him.

Alex's command thunders out, "Shift now!"

Both wolves freeze and begin to shift back to human form leaving an ebony Atlas of a man straddling an equally exposed tear-stained strawberry blonde Adonis.

"Would you like to tell us why you chose to lose your shit back there?" Alex angrily demands.

Through gulps and half-sobs "The station, all those trucks. They belong to Thompson's family. I have to help Willie."

"Crap" Alex thinks.

Alex "Kate, get behind the wheel and keep the vehicle running, anyone other than us comes out of that building get out of here."

"I'm not staying here!" Red yells, Brice still holding him down.

Alex exasperated "I didn't expect you would. If you are coming with us you are going to follow our rules. Understood?" Red nods. "Let him up Brice."

Brice rises, but keeps a death hold of Red's wrist. Trip is already stripping his clothes preparing to shift.

Alex begins to disrobe, talking as he goes. "Stay with Brice. Don't get in his way. Watch his back. You can't hear me so you are going to have to take your cues from him. Brice gets hurt cause you go off halfcocked, it’s on you. Got it?"

Red looks over at Brice, finally noticing the now healing claw marks in the man's chest. "Yes, Beta." he replies sheepishly.

"Stop with the meek routine Red, now’s not the time. Take all that fury and rage, channel it to protect your partner. Trip, you're with me. We stay together, kill them quick. At this point, if they are acting like rogues, we treat them as such."

The four shift to werewolf form and head out to the station. The local pack members had stupidly not placed a sentry outside. "How many you think Trip?"

Trip sniffs the air, looks at the trucks. "Maybe a dozen, hard to tell with the fuel smell being so strong."

Brice motions towards a closed bay door, "I hear them on the other side of that." Brice goes to open the small front door, Red grasps his wrist pointing up to the top of the door where a bell hangs. "Well looks like we can ring the bell and bring them out or go through the bay door." Brice sends through the link.

Alex "Let's do both. Trip and I will go through the bay door, that should mask the sound of the bell and you two come up behind them."

Trip snips impatiently, "Can we get to it before they catch on we're here?"

Alex rips through the Bay door like tissue paper shocking the pack members assembled inside. A man that had been leaning against the door was ripped in half when Alex came through, his body thrown in two directions, a pool of blood marking where he once stood. Before the pack can react Trip has decapitated another with his powerful jaws and sunk his claws through the chest of a third pulling out the man’s beating heart.

Shock wearing off, some of the men begin to shift while others start to dart for the back exit only to be met by the massive Brice and a furious Red. Brice cuts the first down easily and Red guts the next, while the man is mid-shift, stringing intestines across the floor as he strides forward for the next opponent.

Willie is hanging by silver shackles from a motor wench above the mechanic's pit. His face is battered, eyes swollen shut, long hair hacked off, lacerations crisscross his back and rib cage.

The four werewolves cut through several more of the Bright Moon pack members before meeting any real resistance. The 7 remaining Bright Moon men have shifted to werewolf form, the realization they have to fight their way out firmly set. Two go after Brice, a third squares off with Red. Red and Brice back up to each other and prepare for the attack.

"Traitor!" Red hears in his head as the light grey werewolf in front of him hurtles forward. His opponent slices deep into Red's shoulder, but Red manages to get a swipe at his neck opening up an artery. "If this makes me a traitor, then I reject the Bright Moon pack!" Red snarls through the link.

Red feels dizzy for a moment, his pack link severed, silence descends on him. He can no longer feel his parents, the Alpha, the pack, he’s alone in his head for the first time. The grey werewolf spins around clutching his neck and is met by Red's fangs burrowing into his side, ripping his stomach open. Brice takes the head of an opponent off with a brutal swing but doesn't move fast enough to miss the attack of the werewolf's brother. The second werewolf stabs into Brice, just missing his heart, with a thin silver blade. Brice collapses, howling in pain as Red slams into the brown werewolf crushing his throat in his jaws.

Simultaneously three of the other four are dancing back and forth exchanging swipes with Alex and Trip. The fourth is standing off to the side, eyes going dark staring off blankly.

"We need to finish this now!" Trip barks "Reinforcements will be coming."

Trip hurls himself into the three attackers ignoring the damage they cause as he goes for their throats. Trip decapitates one and Alex rips the spine out of a second that was foolish enough to turn his back to the hulking Beta. Trip is raking the sides of the third, Alex steps in to close his jaws around the third one’s neck.

Flames erupt down Alex’s spine as he is slammed forward into Trip and the 3rd Bright Moon wolf by a massive impact. He had forgotten the last wolf and gotten a silver blade in his back for the mistake. Red had leapt onto the werewolf's back and bit halfway through his neck. The blood-spattered red golden wolf shook the body by the neck till it stopped twitching. Trip finished off the last wolf as Alex collapsed onto the ground.

Realizing the condition of his two companions. Trip leans down and rips the knife out of Alex's back. Alex releases an unappreciative growl.

Brice is laying back against a wall, knife buried in his chest. Red moves to pull it out, Trip stops him at the last moment and shakes his head “No”, pounding his chest slightly indicating too close to the heart.

Trip "Alex, can you make it back out to Kate?"

Alex "Yes."

"Get your ass moving then!" Trip commands "Kate, we have injured. Get the back of both vehicles ready and have them running."

Red is hovering over Brice, Trip pushes his shoulder and points to Willie hanging from the wench. Red runs over getting Willie down, cradling the old man in his arms. Red hesitates to move, so Trip gestures sharply towards the door. Red takes off at a run, the small omega not weighing enough to slow him down.

Trip muscles Brice up, "Come on man, you gotta walk for me. You are too damn heavy to carry."

Kate is helping Alex into the back of one of the vehicles when Red arrives with Willie. Red lays Willie in the center seat of the vehicle leaving the tailgate of the Suburban open. Red shifts to human form, jumps into the driver’s seat, and speeds back towards the station. The Suburban skids to a stop in front of Trip and Brice, tossing a battered Willie into the floorboard. Red hops out, wedges Willie in with some baggage as Trip eases Brice onto the tailgate. Trip stays with Brice as Red speeds back to where Kate and Alex are waiting. Kate pulls her truck out right in front of the one Red is driving. There is no time to stop. Speeding out of the town as fast as they dare, Kate leads the way to the protection of the Spokane pack.

Trip digs around in the luggage and manages to throw a shirt and boxers up to Red. There isn't much he can do for Brice at this point, so he dresses and turns his attention to Willie.

All Trip has at the moment is white undershirts and a bottle of water, but he does his best to clean the old man up. Willie is just barely breathing, his wounds aren't closing. Next to him, Brice has broken into a cold sweat, fever coursing through his body. The silver in his chest is preventing him from shifting back to human form.

"If a human trooper pulls us over shit's going to get real. Half naked boy driving, beat to hell old man in the middle, black man and big fucking wolfman in the back. Just fucking great." Trip thinks.

Red keeps his focus on the road, not wasting energy on questions about how their companions are. An hour driving at the breakneck speed and Kate slows down throwing her turn signal on. They leave the pavement and rattle up a winding gravel road slowing only marginally. Brice, teeth clenched, winces at every pothole they hit. Kate slows again and turns onto a dirt road that is really more just a rough trail leading farther up into the hills. There are old trailer homes tucked back along the roadside. Kate stops in front of a large log cabin.

"Wait here." she sends to Trip.

Red remains silent at the wheel. Kate runs up to the cabin. Before she gets to the porch an elderly woman comes out, shotgun across her waist. Trip can see Kate gesturing towards the vehicles frantically. The woman, wordless, regards Kate impassively. The woman nods, walks back in the house leaving Kate stunned and silent on the steps.

Seconds later dozens of giant wolves come out of the hillside. Trip tenses, they are in no shape for another fight and these guys look like pureblooded skin-changers, not the hybrid wolves they just dealt with. Kate is terrified. One particularly large wolf moves over to her and sniffs. Kate casts her gaze away and the wolf shifts to human form, a tall impressive indigenous man now towering naked over her. Kate keeps her eyes down, nodding occasionally, as the man speaks to her. The other wolves begin to shift. Trip and Red are staring at over 20 men walking around the sides and up to the cabin porch. They are grabbing clothes off the porch to put on, then making their way over to the vehicles.

Kate following the large man who had greeted her. "Don’t move unless they tell you. Don't challenge them, submit." Kate sends to Trip, Alex, and Brice.

Trip, "Play it cool Red, this isn't the time to challenge anyone, Kate says to do as they say." Red remains silent.

The back of Kate's vehicle opens and some men help Alex out and up the porch steps. Men surround the vehicle Red and Trip are in. Red grips the steering wheel tightly turning his knuckles white.

"I won’t let them hurt him." Red whispers out.

Trip isn’t sure which "him" Red is referring to, but after the outburst at the Station he knows he needs to calm the kid down.

"Red snap out of it, if you don’t calm down you are going to get all of us killed." Trip hisses.

Trip watches as Red forces himself to release the wheel, dropping his eyes into his lap. The doors of the vehicle open and hands lift Willie out gently. One of the men makes a sniffing sound and Trip barely makes out a low mumbled “Wolf’s bane.”

Red is pulled out, the boy winces when a hand grabs his injured shoulder too roughly. The hand releases when blood blooms through the cloth.

"Follow me" a gruff voice instructs. Red, keeping his eyes down, complies.

The back of the vehicle opens, another voice demands Trip get out. He does as slowly as possible. Hands grab Brice's legs and start to pull roughly.

"Wait!" Trip yells. He is knocked upside the head hard and falls down.

On his knees, blood running into his eyes, Trip continues, "He has silver near his heart!"

The men dragging Brice out of the vehicle stop. Trip can see one of them leaning in to look at Brice's chest. Someone pulls Trip to his feet and shoves him forward towards the cabin.

Inside the cabin Alex sits backward on a chair, leaning over the backrest as the elderly woman from earlier scrubs his wounds. Alex grits his teeth to suppress groans of pain. Red is off to the side, an elderly man dressing his shoulder.

A voice from behind Trip asks, "Are you hurt?"

Trip replies, "Other than the love pat on my head, all the blood on me belongs to the fuckers who attacked Willie."

Trip hears a low chuckle from the man behind him.

Kate is sitting off in a corner speaking in hushed tones to a devastatingly beautiful woman. Long mirror glossy black hair swept back over her shoulders, liquid dark brown doe eyes framed by thick black lashes, strong cheekbones, a delicate nose, skin a rich reddish brown. The ethereal creature is holding Kate's hand, stroking it reassuringly.

"Keep your eyes to yourself and sit down." the voice from behind Trip instructs.

Trip snaps his eyes to the floor sitting in the nearest chair, someone slides him a glass of water, he gulps it down never lifting his eyes. He never sees them bring Brice in.

"Kate, what's going on?" Trip sends through the link.

"Not now Trip." is all the reply she gives.