Tefta, Kefta and Sefta, the Bronn sisters, sat waiting for the new arrivals. They eyed the three weary weres as they crested a knoll and threaded their way through the pine trees until they once again were at the foot of the Aarland Preserve.

"Left your companion behind?" Tefta asked making her presence known to them as soon as they broke through the trees.

"Yes," Liir replied.

He said nothing else and neither Mareena or Catcher were dumb enough to offer more.

"Come to ask for sanctuary?" Kefta asked as she made her presence known.

The three weres were surprised to see that the two sisters were identical in every way. They were both six foot tall with lean, muscular builds, dark brown hair that was braided on the right side and left to dangle over the shoulder of their matching knit sweaters, had the same faces, eye colour, and weathered but still beautiful scowling faces.

"I thought they'd be much older," Catcher confided in a whisper to Liir.

He did not react to the comment but he was just as surprised. After all the talk of the sanctuary they'd heard over the years, he was expecting three white haired sisters with shrunken postures and slightly feeble hands. He thought the Bonn sisters were as old as the sanctuary itself, which was rumoured to be hundreds of years old.

"Yes," Mareena spoke up. "We need sanctuary from our pack."

A woman like the other two, appeared seemingly from thin air and she caught Mareena's face in a firm grasp pulling the she-wolf's face close to her own. Where the woman had come from or how she had materialized out of thin air like a witch, was a mystery to Liir, Catcher and Mareena. They all exchanged nervous glances.

"Look here," Sefta ordered Mareena as she squeezed her chin unpleasantly and forced the she-wolf's attention back to her weathered skin and demanding brown eyes. They were as brown as her hair – almost black.

"We need ..." Mareena began again but was cut off by the third sister who hissed. Everyone fell silent.

"You've been bitten," she remarked. "By an abomination but you live," she stated.

Mareena said nothing. She simply looked the woman straight in the eye. She was ready to fight for herself. She was ready to argue why she should live, why they should care, why it was important for them to take her in.

"Another one," Kefta said as she drifted in some strange way over to Mareena and took her own close look.

"Are there more survivors like me here at the sanctuary?" Mareena asked with hope.

Tefta arrived now and also peered down into Mareena's face. The Bronn sisters were several inches taller than Mareena and she felt it as she craned her neck back awkwardly to look at them while they were crowded so close to her.

"We'll take you in," Tefta replied. "You three but not the other two," she indicated with a flick of her head towards the woods.

"The other two?" Mareena asked with puzzlement as she pulled her face from Sefta's hand and looked over her shoulder.

"We only take weres, you understand," Kefta said to the pines.

Mareena looked to Catcher and then to Liir. Both shrugged their shoulders. They did not see or smell anyone else in the area.

"It's just us anyway," Mareena offered up meekly.

Three sets of identical eyes looked down at her and three elegant left brows raised simultaneously at her impatiently. Mareena realized that the Bronn sisters saw or heard something out there that she and the boys could not pick up. They had strange skills of perception and movement that seemed beyond what normal weres possessed. She decided then that she would be better to keep silent in their presence than ever try to correct them again.

Tefta took Mareena's hand and pulled her toward a rock wall. The woman disappeared through it and Mareena raised her hand quickly to guard her face from crashing into the rock, but it was all for nothing. The rock had been an illusion. On the other side of it lay an immense preserve that unfolded in layers, upon layers before her.

Catcher appeared beside her suddenly and Liir appeared on her other side a moment later. The three of them stood gawking at the sanctuary that they had only heard of in stories. Mareena grabbed Catcher's hand and squeezed it. He smiled down at her. She reached for Liir but he was turning away – turning back - and looking at the pines.

Sefta appeared like a gentle breeze at his shoulder and linked her right arm with his left.

"You're of two minds," she observed.

"She'll be fine without you," Kafta told him as she appeared quite suddenly at his right side.

Liir looked at both women and frowned. He didn't understand how they moved so effortlessly and silently. He didn't like that their movements were not very were-like to him.

Tafta appeared in front of him and blocked his view. She assessed his face and then reached out and covered his eyes with the palm of her right hand. He would have stepped back to get away from her touch but Sefta and Kefta held him fast where he was. They were unbelievably strong.

"He's of two hearts," Tefta remarked.

"Staying will prolong her life," Kefta told him as she leaned her head on his shoulder.

"Whose life?" Catcher asked Mareena.

She shrugged a shoulder and guessed, "Raiden's?"

"That's not what he wants to hear," Sefta told her sisters as she squeezed Liir's arm gently.

"He wants to be needed," Tefta surmised.

"It's more than that," Kefta offered. 

But before she could say more Liir found the will power to break free of the peculiar power the sisters had over him just then. 

"Are you sooth sayers?" He asked as he put some distance between himself and them.

His mind was racing and his limbs were shaking a bit. He did not feel at all like himself. He was not in control of his thoughts or feelings or his body.

"Seers," Tefta replied as she moved toward him again. 

Liir nodded. "I understand. Please, don't do that again."

He put a few more steps between himself and Tefta. She stopped though when he made his wishes known. She turned back to her sisters. The three looked disappointed, maybe even a bit sad, but Liir wasn't going to give in. He did not want another experience like that ever again.

"Are you weres?" He asked feeling now, more than ever, that they were not.

The three women smiled beautifully at him and with a swish all appeared right before his face without ever having seemed to move a foot or a limb of any kind.

"No,' the said in unison. "Not the kind you imagine, at any rate," they replied with a little chuckle.

"Not weres?" Mareena asked anxiously as she reached for Catcher's hand again and came to stand even closer to him.

"We were bitten, not born," the three said together in perfect time with each other as if they shared the same mind and the same lips.

"We're abominations," they said soberly before laughing lightly.

"They sound crazy," Catcher whispered to Mareena.

She shivered and gripped his hand all the tighter.

"Everyone here is an abomination," a new voice chimed in. "Don't scare the newbies," he chided the three sisters. "I am Eegon," he told Liir, Catcher and Mareena. "I am the caretaker here. I'll show you to your accommodations and get you acquainted with the sanctuary." To the sisters he smiled, bowed slightly and said, "Please excuse us ladies."

The three vanished from sight right then and there.

Liir gaped. He couldn't help himself as he realized what was off about the women. It wasn't that they were seeres. It was that they were witches. Witches who had been bitten and turned into werewolves centuries ago.

"How do they not hate us?" Liir asked Eegon.

Eegon gave him a tired smile.

"I know you've been taught differently, but, witches are very empathetic creatures by nature. They hate to see anyone suffer."

Liir thought of Raiden, who fought so hard to keep Mareena alive – a total stranger to her and a werewolf at that - just because she knew that a wendigo's bite would kill her. He looked back the way they had come and regretted leaving her in the cave without having had a proper talk with her.

"Come," Eegon said to him gently. "There's plenty to show you."