"Alexei!"

Stephanie looked up to see their mother pushing through the stricken perimeter of people and stumble free of their grasp. The tall, proud woman stopped short. In that moment, Stephanie could see the breath as it was physically forced out of Laura's chest, as if she had been punched in the gut. The bottom of her shirt was torn and the tell-tale swell of bruising was already rising at the corner of her eye. Stephanie saw the moment the blood pooling around her youngest registered. She saw the way Laura clutched at her stomach as if some sort of thread originating there had been cruelly severed.

Through the tears, Stephanie saw all of this, and she knew that everyone around them could see it too. In her arms, on her lap, her sister – her sister's body was cooling. The blood had dried over the knife-thin wound through her throat. Her eyes were still staring sightlessly up at the sky, grotesquely frozen open.

It was nowhere near silent, not with wolves still fighting and windows being shattered and people yelling – but in that moment, Laura's cry of grief sliced through the shock that stilled the air around them. Stephanie flinched and squeezed her eyes shut, fingers curling instinctively tighter around her sister. Once Laura started crying, it seemed she would never stop, and it tore the remnants of Stephanie's heart apart.

Then Laura was on the ground in front of the sisters, completely blind to everything going on around her. She reached with shaking hands toward her only biological daughter, face crumpled in anguish and grief. Stephanie couldn't breathe, couldn't... her mom was still sobbing haltingly, unable to cross the invisible line between them and take her dead daughter into her own arms.

It would make it real.

There was nothing Stephanie could do, nothing anyone could do, to remedy that. Finally, a hand shaking like a leaf came to rest ever so gently on Alexei's milky-white cheek, and the damn broke. Laura caved in on herself and reached to hold her youngest. Stephanie didn't want to let go, didn't know how to, but she managed to uncurl her fingers and surrender her sister's body. The little girl's body was horrifically limp as Laura gathered it to her chest. Her hair was stringy with congealed blood and her limbs dragged along the ground until Laura had her in her lap.

Laura Armstrong smoothed the hair back from her daughter's face and screamed at the unfairness of it all. Stephanie knelt there and felt her head tilt back, hands dropped to the sidewalk, defeated.

What was there in the universe that could justify this?

Nothing. Alexei hadn't had to die. She hadn't deserved it. She hadn't deserved it. Jonathon Seymour hadn't deserved to die. Diana's dad and Caroline's mom and Dave's older sister – none of them had deserved any of it.

"She didn't deserve to die," Stephanie whispered.

Somewhere along the way she'd apparently struggled to her feet. Standing there, swaying, she was speaking to the man with the bloody knife at his feet. His eyes were wide and soft and scared. The malice was gone from his blood – had fled his face with the colour in his cheeks.

"I didn't mean to," he repeated fervently, forlornly. "Oh god, I didn't mean to kill her – I didn't mean–."

He sounded like he wanted to be sick. He stood there, shaking like the blood on his hands was poison to him. Stephanie laughed. She couldn't help it.

"How does it feel to be a killer?" she asked, stepping slowly forward, advancing on him. "How does it feel to know that you took an innocent life?"

The man stepped back unsteadily, stumbling. He raised his blood-speckled hands to his forehead and pressed them there like he could push the thought right out of his mind. But he couldn't, and Stephanie knew that better than anyone.

"Oh god," he moaned wretchedly. "It wasn't my fault, I didn't mean for her to die."

"And what good does that do, huh? What does that change?"

"I didn't – I wouldn't..."

As she walked forward, he shrunk back, and so did the following of people around them. Their eyes shone with regret as they watched Laura Armstrong, the untouchable, infallible werewolf, sob over her dead daughter. Stephanie looked over her shoulder and felt her whole body physically reject the sight.

In that moment, the man surged forward, his eyes wild with fear. Quick as a flash Stephanie turned on him, lips peeled back in a crude, human interpretation of a snarl. He fell to his knees in front of her, trying to grab at her hands, the hem of her shirt, anything.

"Please believe me, I didn't mean to. I didn't mean it."

"And what is that worth to me? What is that worth to my mother? What is that worth to my- my sister?" she spat. "You made your choice. You- not anyone else here. You decided to hold that knife to her throat to get at me, and you get to live with that decision.

"We all make our own choices. We can't put that blame on anyone else." Stephanie inhaled, closing her eyes momentarily. When she opened them, she steeled herself. "I killed that girl, I made that choice and it doesn't matter why I did it. She had a family somewhere, someone who loved her, and I took her life anyway. They have to live with that, I have to live with that and you- you get to live with this.

"We put the nails in our coffins, and now we have to lie in them."

The man's horrified eyes bore into hers as he knelt at her feet, the reality of what he had done sinking into his bones, into his soul. She didn't look away, only staring right back, feeling the disgust in her veins bleeding into her eyes.

Stephanie didn't know how long they stayed there, fixed in their tableau of condemnation. She was broken out of the spell by a change in the crowd. Unsettled shock had morphed rapidly into fear, and by what Stephanie didn't know. What she did know was that fighting had ceased.

Instead, the crowd was beginning to move away. People were looking over their shoulders in horror as they retreated, gaining momentum. Stephanie turned to see an advancing riot police unit heading toward them, a wall of strength devoid of emotion.

"Vacate the area. Anyone found occupying the street will be subject to arrest. I repeat, vacate the area or run the risk of arrest."

A river of panicked people surged past her. In the middle of the flow was her mother, still curled protectively over Alexei's body. Everything in Stephanie screamed at her to join the fray and get as far away as she could from those shields and the masked faces of the riot police.

The tell-tale hiss of gas canisters being released filled the air around them. Stephanie immediately felt the effect. Her eyes watered and her throat dried up as the air around her became saturated with gas. Frozen in the spot, she looked on as the front line approached.

She didn't know what would happen if they didn't leave. She only knew that they couldn't, not fast enough, not with Alexei... with her body in tow. And they would never leave her behind. Stephanie pushed against the flow of the crowd, coughing at the poor quality of the air and tasting the re-emergence of blood in her throat. By the time she broke free of the hordes of people, only she, her mother and a body stood between riot control and the mob.

Barely able to see, let alone stay standing, Stephanie wavered in her spot in front of her mother and sister. She jutted her chin out as much as she could and stood as a shield. Her knees were shaking.

"Disperse," ordered the bullhorn from somewhere further back in the throng.

A tear slipped down from Stephanie's swollen right eye. She shook her head.

"Disperse or you will be forcibly taken into police custody."

"Hold on!" Liam yelled.

He appeared beside her. Stephanie could smell the blood on him, and registered the way he was favouring his left leg. Hands in the air, he walked past her and toward the riot shields. Their progress slowed to a stop.

"Just hold on, her little sister – they – they need help, they didn't do anything wrong, they can't leave her."

Through the smoke it was difficult to see their forms, Alexei's and Laura's. But once the police were able to see, the demeanour of the group changed imperceptibly. The rigidity was still there, the distrust and hard lines, but Stephanie's gasping, painful breaths came a little easier.

The line advanced, but parted to engulf the four werewolves standing in the street. One of the officers at the back of the ranks knelt down with Laura and Alexei and called for medics to be let onto the scene. Stephanie gave in and let her knees buckle beneath her, dizzy with relief and suddenly very acutely aware of the pain she was in. Where they would go from there wasn't even a blip on her radar.

It was only when they took Alexei's body from Laura and herded her toward an ambulance that Stephanie started to get a feeling of wrong crawling along her spine, though she shouldn't have. That feeling intensified when they cuffed and restrained Liam, and then came for Stephanie herself.

"What's going on?" she asked. Her voice was wrecked and high with panic.

The cuffs closed tight over her wrists, but there was a familiar burning prick that accompanied it that shouldn't have. Stephanie remembered that sensation. Liam struggled against it, trying to pull himself out of the tight restraint three officers had on him.

"What the hell?" he snarled, but it was an off sound.

Dread curled low in Stephanie's stomach and threatened to crush her lungs.

"What are you doing?" she shrieked.

Laura turned, her puffy eyes and pale face masked with confusion at the scene she found behind her. She took in the handcuffs and tried to push past the police escort ushering her into the patrol car. They held her back.

"Mom!" Stephanie cried and pulled against the cuffs.

Sickness swept through her, a thousand memories rose unbidden. The silver spike embedded into the cuffs tore at her skin as she struggled against them.

"What do you think you're doing?" Laura demanded.

No one answered. An officer turned the two-way radio clipped to his shoulder toward his mouth.

"I'm going to need the Texas convoy to turn around; we've got two more for them."

"Texas?" Liam echoed.

Stephanie became very, very still.

"The largest compound," that agent had said, hadn't he? "In West Texas, is of the highest security and still has spaces left. I would like to offer you the chance to relocate there voluntarily, along with your family and friends."

No one answered, but Stephanie knew the second she cast a desperate look at Liam that he would understand. Laura caught on just that much faster.

"You can't do that," she growled, but made no headway against the officers holding her back. "What kind of people are you?"

The officer that had spoken on the radio remained impassive: he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Get her out of here, and get them to the pick-up."

Laura was pushed down into the back of the squad car, even as she protested and fought back. There was nearly no point at all. They shut the door and it locked on her.

"Mom!" Stephanie screamed.

"Stephanie! Liam!" Laura yelled back, her voice muffled through the glass.

The car reversed and then pulled out onto the street. Stephanie's breaths were coming in ragged gasps. She couldn't do this. She couldn't. She couldn't.

The officers restraining her dragged and wrestled her into the back of a van. She went kicking and spitting like an angered cat, screaming bloody murder. They had more trouble getting Liam onto the bench opposite to her, despite his limp.

They attached her cuffs to chains welded to the floor of the van, like she was some sort of criminal. They chained her ankles too. When the doors shut, she and Liam were left in the dark.

All Stephanie could hear was the combined sound that was hers and Liam's heartbeats banging erratically against their ribcages. Her harsh breathing was shallow and uncoordinated. She was starting to see bursts of light in her vision.

"It's okay, it's okay, we'll be okay, it's alright," Liam was repeating.

Stephanie didn't know whether he was trying to convince himself or her but it wasn't working in any case. She was whimpering, she realized belatedly, a constant low, hurt noise that she couldn't seem to stop.

"I can't," she managed to get out in between uneven sobs.

"It'll be okay, we'll get out of it – we have to."

Even Stephanie could tell that Liam was finally beginning to realize the emptiness of his lies.

She shook her head. "We can't, Liam, we – we can't," she gasped.

He sat back and screwed his eyes shut. Stephanie could see his chest heaving under his shirt.

"We have to."

--------

Two months of silence, that's pretty awful :P Sorry about that. Vet school is really... well, time consuming? Hope the chapter was up to scratch (though I'm pretty rusty at this point), and that you're all still looking forward to the finale. Got one more plot twist to serve out and then that'll be it for Instinct.

Don't forget to vote and comment if you enjoyed or just wanted to make a suggestion/ask a question etc. Thanks for reading, as always, and hope you have a great week!