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RUBY

Nine paces from the cottage door, I stopped and scouted the location. My target was inside. The alpha of the Lockridge wolf pack.

First, the cottage itself. One exit. The timber door hung on iron, opening inward, judging by the plates. The shuttered window facing north was too narrow for a wolf shifter’s shoulders, but wide enough for mine.

The roof was thatch on a timber frame. One chimney with smoke drifting out in a thin gray thread.

Next, cover. A pile of wood four paces away, stacked to chest height. The wood looked green enough to stop a thrown blade. Nothing else. Someone had recently cleared the ground down to bare earth in a ring around the cottage, and they’d done it well. Not even leaving one bush within twenty feet where a person could crouch behind.

Weapons check. My folding knife was in my left sleeve. A vial of silver was in my basket. Wolves hated silver.

The two field rations that remained were now as hard as slate, but hunger would drive me to risk chipping teeth. The folded order was also in the basket. I’d read it five times on the walk here, and it read the same thing every time. Lockridge, C. Alpha, Lockridge pack. Last known location: hermit’s hut, northeast of the Wetherel crossing. Resolve. A signature, the same one I’d studied to learn how to write letters.

I ran through the checklist twice because something seemed wrong. Not wrong enough to abort the mission, but off just enough to heighten my awareness. I studied the location once more, searching for an orientation that could be the cause of my unease.

I’d spent the last three days walking here. The path in was an operational corridor, sigils cut into the bark every fifty paces, and I’d counted every one of them. That was the first unsettling sign. The Order hadn’t held that corridor in over a decade. The sigils should have been gouged out or grown over by now. But they were clean. Which meant someone had been keeping them legible.

The second unsettling sign was that I hadn’t been stopped.

I shifted the basket to my left hand. Wool dragged at my shoulders, heavy with three days of damp, the red gone brown at the hem where the forest floor had gnawed on it. I’d worn some version of this cloak since I was six years old and didn’t own a coat that wasn’t red.

In the stories, the girl in red gets lost in the woods.

I’d never been lost in my life. I’d been scouted and trained since I was young to ensure that didn’t happen.

Nine paces. No more time for hesitation. I counted the remaining steps as I walked to the door and knocked. Three, pause, then two. Not soft. Determined. The Order has made a decision. I’m here to carry it out.

The door opened right after I pulled my hand away, as if he’d been standing there waiting for me.

“Hello, Raven.” His voice was measured, in a low baritone without a threat in it.

What. The⁠—

How did he know that?

I didn’t draw my weapon.

Why not? My hand knew where the blade was. My weight was already on my back foot. Everything in me that Grandmother had built and trained was ready and reaching, but it didn’t make it to my hand because I stopped. Raven isn’t my name; it’s my code name. How did he know?

Conan Lockridge said it to me as if greeting a neighbor. Like I’d simply stopped by to say hello and ask if I could borrow salt.

My target filled the doorway. Tall and broad through the shoulders in the way most wolf shifters carried themselves. His dark hair had gray dusting the temples. His jaw was sharp and hard. He held both hands where I could see them, loose and open, as if showing he wasn’t a threat. Like he wasn’t going to fight back.

Not yet.

His eyes were a warm amber, but when he moved his head a fraction, studying me, gold shone through. He looked at me without any concern or hurry.

He inhaled deeply and his nostrils flared. His expression froze.

Damn wolves and their senses.

I’d have to confirm the tells to ensure he was my target. Conan Lockridge. Twelve years alpha of the Lockridge pack. Forty-one confirmed Order dead at their hands. Or claws.

Two of them had been my parents, leaving me an orphan at six years old. He hadn’t been alpha then, but he was still a Lockridge wolf. And the wolves were enemies of the Order.

“You’ve been on the path since Tuesday,” he said in that same low rumbling voice. “There’s a well round the back and I’ve had the kettle over the fire since dawn. Come in or don’t, but if you contemplate while standing there, you’ll soon be doing it in the rain.”

He stepped back from the door to allow me in, turning his side as he did, which is an invitation to stab a kidney.