They had been at the sanctuary three days and were still living on high alert. Every time they heard an unfamiliar sound, met someone new or smelt something strange in the air they would look for each other and wonder if the pack had come for Mareena. None of them could settle in and their sleep was restless too.

But Liir was the most restless of all. It had something to do with the way the sisters had spoken to him. All that talk about being of two minds or two hearts had his brain spinning.

Mareena came into the dorm-like room he and Catcher shared. She had two steaming cups of tea in her hand – one for each man. 

"One of the girls in the kitchen said it'll help us sleep. She says everyone has trouble sleeping when they first arrive," she explained.

Liir took the cup and sat with a sigh in a chair by an open window. It was well into the evening now. The world was dark outside their little view of a small garden.  He yawned and then blew on his cup dispelling the steam out the open window.

Mareena was cuddling up to Catcher who was sitting on his bunk and holding the cup she'd brought him in both his hands. He grinned down at her as she linked her arm with his and leaned her head on his shoulder.

Not a word was spoken between the three of them for the next five or six minutes as Liir and Catcher sipped quietly on the piping hot tea.

But, the silence was eventually broken by Mareena who heaved a heavy sigh and asked, "Did they make her that way on purpose, do you think? Or was she bitten and transformed somehow by a wendigo?"

"Wendigo bites kill," Liir commented as he closed his eyes and saw Raiden's half transformed wendigo-like face. "I suppose they cut and spliced the DNA of a wendigo and a witch together and Raiden is what they came up with."

"What do you think Osred is?" Catcher asked curiously.

"I saw him transform once," Liir confessed, "when we went out hunting."

The other two's eyes widened with surprise.

"What was he like?" Mareena asked.

"He was beautiful. Like a Greek god almost. Certainly as tall as one," he said with a slight smile. "But his skin took on a hideous reddish orange colour," he explained with a frown. "So, he looked beautiful and grotesque at the same time." He paused and took a sip from his cup.

"What could that be?" Catcher puzzled aloud.

"I thought maybe he had the DNA of a werewolf or a were of some kind," Liir remarked thoughtfully. "But, his transformation is like the reverse of ours. We are beautiful and transform into disfigured and dis-proportioned creatures of immense physical strength and he is already disfigured and powerful and transforms into something perfectly proportioned and beautiful."

"And without all the hair and fangs," Catcher put in wryly.

"Do you think there are others like them?" Mareena asked. "Other genetically modified supernaturals?"

"Monsters?" Liir said quietly.

Mareena frowned. Osred was certainly disfigured and hard to look at but he was kind and a bit silly. She would hardly call him a monster. And Raiden, even as a half-wendigo, had not harmed a hair on their heads when she could have ripped them limb from limb. No matter how she thought about it, Mareena really couldn't bring herself to think of Raiden as a monster either.

"I'm tired," Liir suddenly said and the conversation came to an abrupt end.

"I'll see you in the morning," Mareena spoke quietly to Catcher just before placing a sweet kiss on his cheek. She hopped off his bed and gave Liir a friendly nod as she crossed the room.

"Sleep well," he called out to her slightly regretting the way he'd abruptly ended their night. But talk of engineered monsters, and thoughts of Raiden, unsettled him so much that he just wanted to sleep and forget about everything they'd seen and experienced in the last week.

When Mareena was gone he set his mug on the window sill and crawled into bed. Catcher was asleep on his bunk before Liir had time to close his eyes.Liir watched the other were's chest rise and fall in a steady pattern. He took in a deep breath, exhaled slowly and then closed his eyes. They were safe and that's all that truly mattered at the moment. Everything else they could figure out in time. Even what to think and to feel about Raiden.