Page 5

CONAN

Ruby stopped outside the cottage, and I stood by the door waiting for her to assess her options.

I’d had her scent for two days by now. Wet wool carries a scent. So does silver, if there’s enough of it and the person carrying it is sweating. She’d been sweating since the Wetherel crossing despite the cold, because she’d been walking a corridor she believed was hostile. For the last two days of her coming toward me, to kill me, I’d done nothing.

I hadn’t prepared for her arrival as I had for the others.

I hadn’t set up my pack to ambush her as we’d done to the previous operatives.

Part of it was because I was tired of this endless battle. Shifters killed. Humans’ throats slashed. We’d both lost countless on each side. And for what? Pointless.

The other part, the far more terrifying part, came from my wolf. He had strong opinions about her scent, deciding she was far more important to us than I realized. I’d told him the silver she was carrying was confusing him and messing with his senses.

Now she was outside my cabin and she did something unexpected. She hesitated.

She stood in an empty clearing in a cloak that was making her a target for anything with eyes, and she spent those extra seconds deciding.

I could have opened the door then, knocking her even more off-kilter, but I waited for her to decide.

Three raps on the door, pause, two. The Crimson Order’s operative was here to assassinate me.

Or at least try.

I’d argued with my beta, Imogene, over the arrival.

She’d said, “Put the folder right in her hands. Force her to see what she’s part of. Let the papers do it. Paper doesn’t get you killed.”

Imogene has counted more of our dead than anyone in our pack and doesn’t want to bury any more of us.

Death doesn’t scare me at this point. I’d seen enough of it. And I’d made my calculations after all I’d known about this one. I’d read her files, cover to cover, over the years. I had a sense we could reach her. Break through.

And despite what Imogene had said, paper wouldn’t have convinced her. An operative on the doorstep with a sealed order in her basket has one channel open in her mind: threat assessment. If I handed her a stack of papers with her grandmother’s handwriting, she’d instantly dismiss it as forgery and go for the kill.

I had to take the ground out from under her first.

Not just the floor. The entire corrupt foundation she’d stood upon her entire life.

So I opened the door and said hello to her by her code name. Her expression froze, remaining neutral. She’d been trained not to show emotion. But eighteen years of certainty went sideways in her eyes. No matter how much practice, eyes never lie.

Not even these ones, the gray eyes of a young assassin sent to eliminate me.

She didn’t draw a weapon. That surprised me.

But what happened next nearly took me out.

Her scent.

A fragrant bouquet of woodsmoke and rain with a hint of sweetness underneath. Feminine. Intoxicatingly feminine. I inhaled it and what my wolf had been insisting pushed its way right into my psyche.

She. Was. My. Mate.

I told you, my wolf hammered at me. I’ve been telling you for days and you refused to listen!

It’s just the silver, I replied, using my oft-repeated dismissal. But it was without conviction this time. Because what one glance of this woman did, and one hint of scent, had unraveled years of what I’d told myself.

That I didn’t want a mate. As alpha of a hunted pack, I couldn’t afford to focus on anything else but survival, to protect my pack.

I straightened, forcing myself not to reveal any signs of how she’d affected me. After all, I’d prepared for this encounter to throw her off guard, not me.