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I ground my teeth. He was the Crimson Order’s most wanted, that much was true. I knew that others had died before me. But how many? How powerful was this alpha that he was still here, looking at me with curiosity, as if I hadn’t come here to eliminate him? I pressed down on the blade, feeling the assurance of its cold strength under my palm.

I snorted. “That doesn’t reveal much.” I nudged my chin up.

He dropped his gaze an inch. “Everything a dead operative was carrying, I still have. Years of it.” He tipped his head toward the folder on the table. “That’s not even the interesting part. Those are simply receipts.”

My muscles coiled with unease. “Bullshit,” I spat out. “What you’re admitting is that you’ve got a stack of stolen documents.”

“Stolen?” He moved his head an inch to the side. “Or taken off operatives the Order sent to kill me.”

Unease slithered beneath my skin. He had information on the Order.

The fire moved in my periphery. I wouldn’t dare take my attention off this alpha while I assessed what he revealed. What did he have in that folder?

My hands trembled, so I clutched one around the warm mug while forcing the other to stay steady over the knife. No way would I let my mark rattle me like this, with lies.

What I needed to do was get a hold of my emotions, control my reactions. The way to do that was to follow the hours and months and years of training.

Section four. Field discretion. Where a target holds material of operational value, the operative is authorized to delay resolution for the purpose of intelligence recovery.

My gaze flickered down. “What’s in that file?”

“Drink your tea.” He sat back in his chair and took a sip of his. “And we’ll talk.”

I glanced down at the steaming tea. I’d seen him pour it into the mugs, so he wouldn’t have been able to slip anything in mine without me seeing. If he was drinking his, it was safe.

“I assure you there’s no poison in there that would harm you,” he said, as if reading my mind.

“As if I’d believe you.”

“Have you not seen me drink mine?” He took another sip.

I leaned back, assessing him. “You’re a shifter. You could have put poison in there that a shifter’s immune to.”

His mouth twitched with the slightest movement. “True. I’ll give you that.” He tapped his mug with his index finger. “But I don’t know of anything that would accomplish that task.” He leaned back in his chair again. “Do you? It would be quite useful.”

I snorted. “You must think I’m stupid. Or you’re playing with me, to think I’d even answer that question.”

He didn’t reply or even smirk. I was hovering on a knife’s edge. If he had, I would have launched across the table at him, and one of us would have ended the other, one way or another.

He took another sip of his tea and then stood, leaving his back exposed as he walked toward the fire. Utterly foolish. I could leap up and sink the blade right into the side of his throat.

Or maybe it was confidence. He moved with the assured bearing of an alpha, unhurried and in control. A flicker of admiration rose, which I quickly squashed.

He kneeled down and adjusted logs with a poker. I kept my awareness glued to him, my wariness heightened, until he put the weapon down.

I exhaled slowly through my nostrils, racing through so many thoughts.

Here I was with my mark, who knew more than he should.

I went over the facts. Everything I knew. What he’d told me. I repeated the word intelligence in my head to convince myself I was responding to this development properly.

He had the Order’s property and its property must return home. I hadn’t run verification yet to confirm that he was my intended mark, and you don’t resolve a target you haven’t verified.

I wasn’t about to run the protocol at the end of a three-day walk on four hours of sleep with my hands shaking from the cold. This shifter had information. I needed to get it from him. I’d do so the way my grandmother taught me, every checkpoint in its order.

I took a sip of the tea. Hot. Minty. Warming. Quenching my dry mouth and throat. Nothing burned or poisoned, not yet anyway.

“Good.” He returned to sit opposite me, appearing pleased. “I assure you, if I wanted to harm you, it wouldn’t be through a cup of tea.”