“I was right!” Aidan hissed angrily as he helped his beta into the passenger seat. “It was too easy to quell the riots, because they were just a distraction.”

“So the real target was the Watchtower?” Brennan muttered.

“Exactly!” Aidan turned the van around and took the road south toward Wales.

They would have gotten there a lot faster if they had moved like wolves, but Brennan was in no shape to transform with that injured leg, he had to give it at least a couple of hours to heal.

“I don't understand. The Watchtower is supposed to be impregnable,” said his Beta. “How did they get in?”

“I have no idea.” And it was the honest truth, Aidan didn't even know it.

The Watchtower was a fortress of ancient magic, said to have been the royal palace of Isrion's lineage, and precisely for that reason, in over six hundred and fifty years, Aidan had refused to lay a claw there, but now he felt it calling to him. It was a strange attraction, as if they were two pieces of a magnet seeking each other out.

Aidan ordered Brennan to rest while he drove. The prison was at the heart of the Welsh reserve, and there were no roads or trails there. In that forest, only lycans could get in and out, so he needed his Beta in the best possible condition.

It took them four hours to reach the border of the reserve, and they could immediately notice the range of strange smells. Aidan left the van under some trees where the Guard was already waiting for them.

Both he and Brennan put their wolves through a total transformation, and they went into the woods followed by five other lycans appointed by the Beta.

The forest of the reserve was unusually dark even in daylight, but the scents were very distinct. In less than twenty kilometers they managed to locate traces of unfamiliar wolves. The scent of the guard was always mixed with the leather of their uniforms, but these tracks smelled of mold from the cells and the iron of the blood.

They followed them deep into the forest, and although Aidan had never been there, he could swear that their paws were headed straight for the Watchtower.

All of a sudden, a strange scent made him duck his ears and start running after an unexpected trail, the others followed as fast as he could, until they saw him stop and change.

“Enemies?” Brennan asked, rising beside him.

“No. Look.” Aidan pointed to a crag in front of them, and on it, Brennan could see a she-wolf of great size.

Well, “great size” was an understatement; the she-wolf was huge, as big as Aidan's wolf, and white as a lump of frost. There didn't seem to be room for a single spot on her fur coat.

“Is she a werewolf?” asked his Beta with trepidation because she didn't look like one.

“No, that's the strange thing. It's just an animal.”

“That size? And did it swallow a tank of radioactive waste or what?”

“I don't know,” the Alpha replied sternly. “I've always heard that there are very strange things in this place.”

The she-wolf perked up her ears and turned to look at them, and despite the distance, Aidan felt he could lose himself in those clear eyes.

Brennan heard the growls coming from the two of them and took a step back.

“Don't tell me you are going to become friends,” he said ironically, waiting for the fight.

“I don't think so; it's been centuries since wolves have paid obeisance to lycans. I don't know when, but that bond was broken... We'd better go.”

He turned around, assessing possible strategies.

“Take the guard to follow the trail of the prisoners that were freed. I'm going to the Watchtower.”

“Alone?” Brennan asked, worried.

“I don't think they've been waiting for me exactly,” Aidan muttered. “Meet me there a couple of hours before sunset. And Brennan! Don't put yourselves in danger. I don't know why, but I have a feeling there's something more important here than those prisoners that escaped.”

His Beta nodded, taking the form of his wolf again to follow the trail and lead the guard away from there, and Aidan turned toward that peak that was already discernible in the near distance.

Not an hour had passed when he reached the base of the Watchtower. It seemed as if all of his senses were guiding him there.

The structure was imposing; the stone castle, surrounded by its moat and watchtowers, seemed indeed impregnable.

As soon as he crossed the access bridge and the main gate, he felt as if the whole weight of the world rested on his shoulders. He shifted with difficulty as the only soldier that had been left alive in the prison came out to greet him.

“Sir...” the poor lycan didn't know whether to bow, kneel or tremble. “It's all I have. I hope they fit…”

He held out a pair of uniform pants, and Aidan put them on without protest. He had more pressing things on his mind than his clothes.

“When did it happen?” he asked dryly as he walked into the prison.

“Around four o'clock in the morning. We didn't see it coming... Everything seemed—”

“Why did you survive?” It might seem a cruel question, but the Alpha could smell the fear in that soldier. “Did you hide while your brothers fought?”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw him turn pale and didn't need to ask anything else.

The whole place smelled of death and blood. Aidan examined the bodies of the rebels who had fallen in the assault but could find nothing remarkable about them.

“Did all the prisoners escape?” he asked, stepping into one of the huge stone corridors, surrounded by cells.

It seemed impossible that these simple bars could contain a horde of angry werewolves, but every one of them was coated in silver. The proximity to it was not enough to hurt a lycan, but it weakened him, hindering a complete transformation.

“Well... almost all of them,” the soldier replied.

“Almost?”

“I checked the cells when they left and... there was one prisoner they couldn't release.”

Aidan frowned as the guard led him to a staircase at the base of the west tower of the prison. He climbed over four hundred steps, which must have put him over twenty stories up. On the walls all around there were blood marks, wolf tracks, and a pungent smell of... despair.

At the top of the stairs was a single room, and its solid wooden door was full of claw marks, it was battered and dented, but apparently, they hadn't managed to open it.

“Who's in there?” asked the Alpha, subjecting his wolf to a partial transformation.

“I have no idea, sir,” replied the soldier, backing away in fearful respect. “Captain Valak, the prison warden, was the only one who could come up here.”

The wooden door had only a small rectangular hole through which a plate of food could be passed through, but nothing else. There was no lock or anything to indicate how to open it.

“How did Valak get in here?” he grunted in frustration.

“He wouldn't come in... you can't get in or out of that cell, sir,” the lycan muttered.

Aidan turned to it, exasperated. He didn't know why, but he felt a strange urge to walk through that door. He put one of his claws on the wood and automatically the scar on his chest began to ache. It was not the deep, searing pain of the mark, but an intense feeling of desperation.

He banged on the door several times, realizing then why it didn't need a lock: it had a blood seal, used for the most extreme cases when something needed to be guarded, and only the blood that had set the seal was capable of breaking it.

The Alpha's eyes narrowed in thought. That was the lycan's most important prison; if anyone could have access to any cell in the Watchtower, it had to be the king, and he shared his blood.

Aidan clenched his hand tightly, cutting his palm with his claws, then placed it over the door. He heard only a soft hiss as it opened.

The Alpha's whole body, his instincts, his senses, were prepared to fight. His eyes turned a clear, bright blue, his claws reached their maximum length, every muscle in his chest in perfect tension seemed to grow and define itself even more... but as soon as he entered that cell he felt himself being thrown out of the transformation, until only the man was left, shocked and on the defensive.

The inside of the cell was pure silver, the floor, the walls, the ceiling; they looked like mirrors where the light that entered through the only window it had was reflected. No wolf could survive in there, at least not without going completely insane. Aidan felt it was painful, physically painful to be in there, and the small body lying in one of the corners of that torture chamber proved him right.

Even without subduing his wolf, the scent of that creature flooded his senses. It might seem strange, but he could have sworn it smelled like snow, and something about her made him shudder. She... was a girl... and without quite knowing why, Aidan lunged to reach her.

Her hair was dark and so long that it would probably brush the ground when she stood up. She was very small and petite, so much so that she looked like a fainting doll, and Aidan felt his heart shrink. Something was wrong with her, something was wrong with that girl and the Alpha couldn't understand why that upset him so much.

She was a prisoner, a simple prisoner, and there was no reason for him to worry about her, but he couldn't help it, it was as if suddenly the whole world had become a hostile place, and she was his last refuge.

He cleared her face to get a better look at her and felt all his...something! recognized her. He lifted her against his chest trying to wake her up, but the girl didn't make a single movement.

It was then that Aidan knew: why he felt like he was dying. Under the dirty, worn, and blood-stained tunic, the tip of a very white scar was peeking out. He pulled the cloth aside with a trembling hand and saw it, drawn on the girl's chest, a mark exactly like the one he himself had just received.