The TV was on in the bedroom when I finally reached bed. I wanted nothing more than to sleep. It had been a long day. But the mail had been piling up on the kitchen table for some time, and my curiosity was getting the better of me. Once upon a time, this had been something we looked forward to. It was a long played out joke by now.

I looked at the blaring TV. "The Real Lunas of Whitehaven? Is that still going?"

"Just got renewed for a seventeenth season." Laura adjusted the volume, not looking away from the TV. "It's ugly. But you can't look away."

"I thought you weren't into this kind of stuff."

"Sometimes, nothing else will do."

I held forth the pile in my hands. "Actually, I was thinking of doing the mail."

She just shook her head slightly, without taking her gaze away from the TV.

"Well it's been piling up, and I thought it would be better to get it over and done with. It would be more fun if we went through them together."

She grimaced a little.Just enough to get the message across. "That got old the first time you said it, Jim. Put it back on the kitchen table. We've got a whole day to get it over and done with tomorrow."

"I've got other things planned. Namely cleaning the house."

"I was going to do it in the early morning, before everyone else woke up."

"Well, I'm opening them anyway." I balanced the pile on my bedside table.

"It's probably the same old stuff." She refocused on the argument that Eva and Madison were having on-screen, over Madison's choice of decor for the master ensuite redo she was planning.

She wasn't half wrong. It was mostly the usual stuff. Bills and invoices and magazines we had long forgotten we were subscribed to. Then there were the letters from the Zirconians.

I opened and read the first letter. "Dear Alpha Jim. You make me hopeful that the Independent Territories has a bright future ahead of it. Keep on doing what you do. Love from New Brighton, your devoted fan, Courtney."

Of course it was from New Brighton. There was a reason it was called the Florida of Zirconia.

"Well, thanks, Courtney." Laura did not move her glance from the TV. "Some female fans. That's nice. We're going to have no problems when we move over there."

"We're not moving over there."

She gave me another look.

"A lot of these people also have very strong opinions about immigration from across the border, you know."

The next letter was short and to the point. "Dear Mr Jim. Fuck you, you chauvinist pig."

Laura sniggered. "Ok. No love lost there."

The next thing we'd received was in a large envelope. Inside was a laminated poster. It took me a few seconds to fully register what was printed on it.

My three predecessors were overlaid on the clouds, with me on the ground. There was text in capital letters, which was blood red for some reason.

The text said:

YOU WATCH THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

WE'LL WATCH THE SKIES

Laura did actually turn from the TV this time. She stifled a giggle at the sight of my face. "They took the effort to laminate that? Wow."

I put the poster back in the envelope as quickly as I could and stuffed it in the bottom of the pile. "I don't think I'll ever understand the conservative Zirconian psyche. We are not moving to the same side of the border as these lunatics."

She laughed, a full deep belly laugh, for the first time I could remember for a long time. "OK, you got me there. I mean I wasn't being completely serious... OK. But think about it, Jim. Are we just going to wait here to be picked off?"

"We've been through all this before," I said, wearily. "Nobody is going to come with us. Nobody."

"And why wouldn't they? They've got nothing to do here. Just waste away, become awful pricks like the people they look up to. The people they have to look up to because there's nobody else. Some of you pricks would sooner recruit human workers than create some jobs."

"You're mistaking boredom for resentment, love. Just because they never get to do anything exciting, like watch their arsehole Alpha go on a four-day bender and proclaim himself Alpha King. Just because they have to live their boring lives out, under boring old me."

"It's the truth, Jim. They don't know any better."

I briefly intended on directly rebutting her point but stopped myself just as the words were forming in my mouth. I was tired and in no mood for getting into an argument, we'd been through that too many times to count, and honestly, I wasn't even sure if her words were making sense.

I took in a breath before I continued.

"Really? We're just going to run? That's it? We've been through this before. We are not moving. This is my territory, this is your territory, this is all our territory. This is the territory my ancestors fought for. We're not moving over the border and getting someone to keep the toilet seats warm for when we get back. If there is a threat, we're going to stay here and we're going to defend it. We are staying, and that is final. I don't want to hear about it again."

There was silence for a few minutes. Even the argument on-screen seemed to have quietened down.

When Laura spoke again it was in a quieter voice. "You know what's scary? It wasn't one of those rogue attacks from the old days. It was planned. It wasn't just a random attack. They knew what they were doing. They didn't want them dead. They needed them dead. They're still out there. They could be anywhere out there now."

Maybe they knew something that they shouldn't have known. Or they saw something that shouldn't have been seen."

"Maybe they had something that somebody wanted."

"They did a lot of financial stuff for the other packs. That could be a motive."

I shrugged. "Who knows. There's a lot of shady stuff going on under the scenes. Cooking the books, dodgy deals, you never know. It could have been any of the big business packs. They've probably covered their tracks up already."

"So how's it going along? The investigation." She was only half-interested, I could tell. Her attention was still.aimed squarely at the TV.

"As usual, nobody knows what they're doing, everything is a mess, blah blah blah. You should have seen what tonight looked like. Just hi-vis vests and floodlights all over the place. But Thunder Falls have stepped in for some reason and they seem to have some kind of handle on things."

"Is that good or bad?" Laura was intently listening into the conversation between Madison and Eva, who were starting to yell over each other.

"They are actually doing a decent job. Which is more than I can say for most of us."

"Didn't they torture their own people or something?"

"They're just rumors. They never proved anything. They didn't have any evidence apart from those asylum seekers in Zirconia. Who were probably nuts, anyway."

I nudged her a little. "Anyway, what I said before doesn't mean we can't go there for a day trip or something. Just not permanently. Anyway. I was meaning to ask you about our 20th anniversary."

She shot me a confused look. "You never remember these things."

"And neither do you."

"So did-"

"Catriona did."

"How did she even know it was our anniversary?"

"She just remembers random stuff like that."

"We were in the same year in uni. But we never talked to each other. She was on another level.

Well, maybe we can organise something."

"She even recommended a place. The Briarleaf One."

"The one with the revolving restaurant on the top floor?"

I yawned. "I'm not sure, but I think so."

"She sighed. "Thinking about it now... I don't even know if I could go back. It's all changed so much, there's all this development going on... I don't think I'd even recognise the place anymore. Everything's probably changed. All the old cafes and bars where we went to back then... they're all probably gone. It's not the same city I grew up in. I'd probably get lost if I tried to go there."

I yawned again, this time with greater intensity. I was starting to struggle to keep my eyes open.

"We should call it a night. We need to get up early tomorrow. We can keep on talking about this tomorrow night." I turned off the lamp. "Good night."

"Good night." She turned off the TV.

And then, all was quiet. For a while I just laid there, with slivers of moonlight coming in through the curtains, the ambient hum of the outside world, and Laura's faint breathing from the other side of the bed. Then sleep took over and I remembered little after that.