The screams coming from behind the pack house jolted Aella from her fitful sleep. Wild instincts kicked in immediately and she rolled off from the bed and landed nimbly on her feet, her teeth bared in a growl and her fangs extended. Her eyes were glowing amber and darting around, looking for any intruder. She was almost halfway into her wolf form as white hair was beginning to sprout on her arms and legs.

A few seconds later, she realised that the screams were not because of any intruder. She slowly relaxed, her fangs and claws retracting and her fur going back to normal. Her fight or flight instincts were so sharpened from living in the woods all her life, that any alien noise or sound was enough for her to go into full wolf form and attack any moving object.

Aella took another good look around her room to be sure that it wasn't someone trying to attack her. When she confirmed that the sounds hadn't been from an invader, she sighed and wanted to go back to bed. But as she climbed the bed and snuggled into the covers, another scream, even worse than the first, made her ears ring again.

She groaned in discomfort and clasped her hands to her ears. The screams were terrible, the wailing of a tortured man. It pulled painfully at her eardrums and made the insides of her head ring with its intensity. 

She came down from the bed and closed her ears, tightly squeezing her eyes shut. The pain was unbearable, almost physical. She tried to hold back a scream that mirrored the one she was hearing. The noise rang through from her ears to the rest of her body and before she knew it, she was sobbing from the pain.

By the time the screams stopped finally and she opened her eyes, she saw that she was curled in the fetal position on the carpeted floor. She didn't realise that she had fallen to the ground.

Aella stood up slowly and dusted her body, then walked over to the double doors that led to the verandah and overlooked the lawn of the pack. She threw open the doors and walked into the verandah. She leaned over the banister and looked around, trying to figure out the source of the noise. She saw Logan and his beta from a distance. They were standing beside the kennels, talking to the man that was kept there. 

She continued to stare at them as they walked away from the cages and into the pack house. Her eyes wandered back to the captured man and she could see him lying on the hard floor, not moving an inch.

It took Aella a moment to realise that her tattoo was burning. She flinched as the pain registered, like a thousand angry stinging hornets. She moved from the verandah and went back into the room, dashing to her mirror and pulling down the strap of her dress until her left shoulder was exposed. 

She gaped as she saw her crescent tattoo. The black ink that had been used to draw it on had turned red and was glowing. The surrounding skin around the tattoo was reddish and burning too. She rubbed it frantically with her palm, but the pain did not stop. 

She knew what the pain meant, more than she had known anything else in her life.

A loud knock from the door jolted her from her thoughts and she almost jumped in fright. She turned abruptly towards the door and another knock, louder and more insistent, followed the first one. 

"Come in!" She called and the door creaked open. Louve peered inside, her green eyes bright with excitement and her face plastered with a genial smile. She wiggled her fingers at Aella and came inside, closing the door securely behind her. 

When Aella saw who it was, she quickly drew the strap of her gown up to cover the burning tattoo. Louve had seen the burn, however. She watched as the smile fell from Louve's face and the other woman moved towards Aella with her eyes widened in shock.

"Aella! What happened to you here?" She asked, forcefully pulling the strap down. The burning crescent was revealed again, as red as the first day Aella had been branded with it.

She shrugged and tried to put on a non-committal smile. "Oh, it's nothing. Probably an insect bite or something. It doesn't even hurt that much. It should be gone soon."

"No!" Louve insisted. She ran her fore finger over the burn and Aella flinched. "See? It hurts. We should take you to Dr Callister to check it out immediately."

"No, Louve–"

"Come on!" Louve grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the door.

"Louve!" Aella yelled with anger. "Drop it, please."

Louve stopped and she felt the woman stare at her in concern. "Okay." She heard her say. "I'll stop. I was only worried though. That looked serious."

"I'll be fine." Aella insisted, sitting down on the bed tiredly and putting her head in her hands. "Seriously, I will."

"What's really wrong?" Louve asked and joined her on the bed. "Wait, is it those screams? Yeah, I heard them too. You have nothing to worry about. It was only Logan torturing the captured wolf for information.

Aella looked up with disbelief in her eyes. "Logan was actually torturing a man like that? Why would he do that? I could feel the man's pain here." She touched her chest. "How could he not?"

Louve placed a comforting hand on her back. "Trust me, Logan is not doing that because he's a monster or beast or whatever you think he is. He's doing it for his people. He's being driven by anger. Anger at what those rogue wolves have done to his pack, to our pack."

Aella still did not look convinced. She got up from the bed and began pacing the room and chewing her nails. In her mind she was wondering how someone who was supposed to be loving and good could do that to someone just to extract information from him.

This was a side of Logan she had never seen before. She knew that there were two sides to a person: the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful. But to her she had thought Logan would be this perfect man with no bone of cruelty in him.

She looked back at Louve and saw that the other woman was looking at her with a concerned look on her face. She knew she was overreacting, but she couldn't ignore the restless feeling inside her.

Louve stood up from the bed and came closer to her, smiling.

"Tell you what. Logan asked me to supervise the underground bunker that is being built for children and women in case there's a battle or war. Let's go and check it out, shall we?" She suggested.

"I... don't know, Louve." Aella replied, shaking her head. "I think I'd rather stay in the room."

"Come on, Aella. Don't be a spoil sport. It would get your mind off things, trust me. Let's go." She insisted and dragged her to the door, opened it and led her outside.