Kael did not take her to the village. Not yet.

He led her along a narrow trail that followed the stream, deeper into the trees, and Mara

memorized every turn out of habit, the way she memorized every room she ever walked into.

Exits. Cover. Places a person could hide or run."You're quiet," Kael said, not looking back at her.

"I'm careful," Mara said. "Diferent thing."

That almost-smile again. He didn't push her further.

They hadn't walked long when Mara heard shouting ahead — not the panicked kind, but sharp,

urgent voices giving orders. Kael's whole body changed in an instant. His shoulders dropped, his

steps went silent, and the calm, almost amused man from a moment ago was gone. What

replaced him looked like something built for war.

"Stay behind me," he said, and it wasn't a request.

Mara did not stay behind him. She followed close, low, using the trees the way she'd been

trained to, and what she saw at the clearing ahead made her stop breathing for a second.

Three travelers — a woman and two children — were pressed against a fallen tree, surrounded

by wolves. Not pack wolves. These were leaner, wilder-eyed, mange showing through patchy fur,

snarling with a kind of hunger that had nothing to do with food. Rogues. She'd heard the Order's

stories about them too, wolves who'd lost their minds to the change, dangerous to everyone,

human and wolf alike.

Kael didn't hesitate. He shifted mid-stride, and Mara had never seen a shift happen that fast —

one second a man, the next a wolf twice the size of the rogues circling the travelers, black-furred,

moving like something poured rather than run.

He hit the nearest rogue before it even registered him. The clearing became chaos, snarling and

snapping, the woman screaming and pulling her children back toward the trees. Mara's hand

went to the blade at her hip on instinct, and she almost moved to help before she caught herself.

Watch. That's all you're here to do. Watch.

But watching, she saw something that didn't match anything the Order had ever told her.

Kael fought like he was protecting something, not like he was enjoying it. He put himself

between the rogues and the children every time, took a bite meant for the woman across his own

shoulder, and when the last rogue finally broke and ran, he let it go rather than chase it down

and finish it. He shifted back, breathing hard, blood running from his shoulder, and the first

thing he did was kneel down to the children's height and ask if they were hurt.

Not the travelers. Not himself. The children first.

"You're safe now," he told them, voice gentle in a way Mara hadn't heard from him yet. "I'll have

someone walk you to the village. You can rest there tonight."The woman was crying, thanking him over and over, and Kael just nodded like it was nothing,

like this was simply what he did.

Mara stood at the edge of the clearing, her heart still hammering, and thought about the words

monster and massacre and hates humans, and none of them fit what she'd just watched.

"You're staring," Kael said, without turning around.

"You saved them."

"That's usually what happens when rogues attack travelers on my land and I'm close enough to

stop it." He pressed a hand to his bleeding shoulder, wincing. "Did the stories say otherwise?"

Mara didn't answer right away, and that silence told him something. His eyes found hers, sharp

again, reading her the way he had at the Line.

"You've heard stories about me," he said. It wasn't a question.

"Everyone has."

"And what do they say?"

She could have lied. She was good at lying. But something about the blood on his shoulder and

the way he'd knelt down to the children made the easy lie stick in her throat. "That you're

dangerous. That your pack burned villages, years ago. That you don't care who gets hurt."

Kael's jaw tightened, and for a moment the warmth was gone from his face, replaced by

something older and more tired. "That's the story the Order tells," he said. "It isn't the one that's

true. But I don't expect a stranger from beyond the Line to believe that in one afternoon."

He turned and started walking, and Mara realized he expected her to follow.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"The village. You wanted work. I could use someone who doesn't panic at the sight of blood." He

glanced back at her, and there was something testing in the look, like he already suspected she

was more than a hungry traveler. "Unless you'd rather turn back now, while you still can."

Mara thought of Amara, thin and pale, and the gold that would save her life. She thought of the

contract folded against her ribs, and the blade in her boot, and the man walking ahead of her

who fought like he had something worth protecting.

"I'll come," she said.She told herself it changed nothing. She told herself the mission was the same as it had been

three days ago at the outpost.

She was already starting to know that was a lie.

The North Pack village was nothing like Mara expected.

She had pictured something rough and half-wild, huts made of mud and bone, maybe. What she

found instead was a real village, wooden houses with smoke curling from chimneys, gardens

fenced against deer, children chasing each other between the buildings while their mothers

called them in for supper. It smelled like bread and woodsmoke, not blood.

People looked up as Kael walked through, and every single one of them relaxed at the sight of

him, the way a room relaxes when someone trustworthy walks in. Not fear. Relief.

"This way," Kael said, leading her toward a smaller house near the edge of the village. "You can

stay here tonight. Elin will get you settled — she runs the guest house for travelers who come

through."

An older woman appeared in the doorway, wiping flour from her hands onto her apron, and

gave Mara a look that was kind but not unguarded. "Another stray, Kael?"

"A traveler," Kael said. "Looking for work. Treat her well."

"Don't I always," Elin said, though her eyes stayed on Mara a beat longer than felt comfortable,

like she was cataloguing her the same way Mara cataloged rooms.

Kael left without another word, disappearing toward the center of the village where a larger hall

stood, and Mara let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

Elin's house was warm and simple. A fire in the hearth, a pot of something with herbs in it, a

narrow cot in the corner that Elin said Mara could use. "You're not from around here," Elin said,

ladling stew into a bowl and setting it down. It wasn't quite a question.

"No," Mara admitted. "South of the Line."

"That's a long way to walk for work."

"I go where the work is."Elin studied her again, and Mara made herself eat the stew, made herself look tired and

unremarkable, a traveler and nothing more. It was a role she'd played a hundred times before. It

should have been easy.

It wasn't, not entirely, because every few minutes her mind went back to the clearing to Kael

kneeling in front of frightened children, to the way the whole village had looked at him like he

was someone worth trusting.

That night, lying on the narrow cot, Mara went over her mission the way she always did before a

job. Get close. Learn his patterns. Find the moment he was alone and unguarded. Strike before

the Blood Moon.

Three weeks had already become less than that. She had, what, eighteen days now? She needed

information where he slept, who guarded him, when his defenses were thinnest. She needed to

move quickly and carefully, the way she always did.

Instead she found herself thinking about his voice when he'd told the children they were safe.

She pushed the thought away and made herself sleep.

In the morning, Kael found her near the well, watching the village wake up around her smiths

lighting their forges, hunters heading out with bows, an old man teaching two boys how to

properly sharpen a blade. It was so ordinary it made her chest ache in a way she didn't want to

examine.

"You're up early," Kael said, appearing beside her without a sound, which she noted with more

alarm than she let show.

"Habit."

"Elin says you barely touched your breakfast."

"Elin talks a lot."

That earned her a real laugh, short and surprised, like he hadn't expected her to have any edge to

her. "She does. She also doesn't trust easily. If she's decided to like you, that says something."

"Or she just likes having someone new to gossip about."

"Also possible." Kael's gold eyes moved over the village, the same way Mara's did reading it,

watching it, protecting it without seeming to try. "I have to meet with some of the pack elders

this morning. You're welcome to look around, if you want. Just " he hesitated."Just what?"

"Some in the village aren't as trusting of outsiders as I am. Stay near the well or the market, and

you won't have trouble."

Mara nodded, filing that away. Not everyone trusts strangers here. Someone might already be

watching me.

"Why?" she asked before she could stop herself. "Why let me stay at all? You don't know

anything about me."

Kael was quiet for a moment, considering the question more seriously than she expected. "I

know you didn't run when the rogues attacked," he said finally. "Most travelers would have. And

I know something about the way you watch a room, like you're always counting exits." His gaze

sharpened slightly, and her pulse jumped. "That tells me you're not just a hungry traveler. But it

doesn't tell me you mean harm. Not yet."

Mara held perfectly still, the way she'd trained herself to when a mark got too close to the truth.

"And if I do mean harm?"

"Then I'll deal with that when I have to." He said it simply, without threat, like a fact about the

weather. "Until then, you're a guest. We don't turn away people who might need help, Mara.

Even when it isn't smart."

He walked off toward the hall before she could answer, and Mara stood by the well a long

moment, turning his words over.

Even when it isn't smart.

She thought of the blade in her boot, and for the first time since she'd left the outpost, her hand

did not want to move toward it.

The attack came at night, three days later, when Mara had almost let herself relax.

She woke to the sound of horns long, urgent blasts that Elin bolted upright at even before she

was fully awake. "Rogues," Elin said, already pulling on her boots. "A lot of them, by the sound

of it. Stay inside, Mara, bar the doorBut Mara was already moving, pulling her cloak on, her hand finding the blade at her hip

without thinking. Years of training didn't switch off just because someone told her to hide.

Outside, the village had become chaos. Torches lit the dark in jagged patches, people running,

some toward their homes, others toward the treeline with weapons raised. Mara caught sight of

rogue wolves pouring out of the forest, more than she'd seen in the clearing days before, twenty

or thirty of them, eyes wild, moving with the kind of coordination that shouldn't have been

possible for creatures the Order called mindless.

That's not normal rogue behavior, she thought, even as she ran toward the fighting.Someone is

directing them.

She found Kael already shifted, fighting near the village's eastern edge where the fence had been

torn open, and she didn't think —she just moved, drawing her blade and putting herself between

a rogue and a young boy who'd frozen in the open, too scared to run.

The rogue lunged. Mara sidestepped, drove her blade up under its jaw with a precision that

came from years of practice, and it went down before it ever reached the boy. She grabbed him

by the shoulder and shoved him toward a nearby house. "Inside. Now."

He ran. Mara turned back to the fighting, and that was when she felt eyes on her not a rogue's

eyes. Kael's, mid-shift, watching her from across the chaos with an expression she couldn't read

in the dark.

She didn't have time to worry about it. Another rogue came at her from the side, and she moved

through the fight the way she'd been trained since she was twelve years old, blade finding gaps,

feet never planted too long in one place. She wasn't hiding what she could do anymore. There

wasn't time to hide it.

The fighting went on for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes. Pack warriors

poured in from the center of the village, and between them and Kael, the rogues broke and

scattered back into the trees, leaving three of their own dead in the dirt and the smell of blood

and smoke hanging over everything.

Mara stood in the sudden quiet, breathing hard, blade still in her hand, and became aware that

several pack members were staring at her.

A traveler who fought like that. A traveler who moved like a trained killer, not a hunter looking

for work.

Kael shifted back, blood on his arm from a bite he hadn't bothered to protect against, and

walked toward her slowly, his eyes taking in the dead rogue at her feet, the precise wound in its

throat, the calm, practiced way she still held her blade even now."That was no lucky strike," he said quietly, just for her.

Mara's mind raced through excuses, half-truths, anything that would explain away what he'd

just watched. Nothing came fast enough. "I've had to defend myself before," she said instead.

"Where I'm from, it isn't safe for a woman traveling alone."

It wasn't a lie, exactly. It just wasn't the whole truth, and from the way Kael's jaw tightened, she

suspected he knew that too.

"We'll talk," he said. "Later. Right now I need to see to the wounded."

He turned to go, then paused, glancing back at her with an expression that was harder to read

than his suspicion had been — something almost like gratitude, tangled up with something wary.

"That boy you pulled clear," he said. "That's my sister's son. Thank you."

Then he was gone, moving through the village checking on his people, and Mara stood alone in

the dark with a dead rogue at her feet and a truth she could no longer keep buried as easily as

she wanted to.

She had come here to kill him. And tonight, without thinking twice, she had put herself between

his family and a blade.

She didn't know what that made her anymore. She only knew the contract in her pocket

suddenly felt heavier than it had three days ago, and she didn't have eighteen days left to figure

out why