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

Kael found her an hour later, once the wounded had been tended and the fires checked, sitting

on the steps outside Elin's house with a cloth pressed to a cut along her ribs that she hadn't

noticed until the fighting was over.

"You're hurt," he said, crouching down in front of her without asking permission.

"It's nothing."

"Let me see."

She hesitated, then let him pull the cloth away enough to look. The cut wasn't deep, but it was

long, and it had bled more than she'd realized. Kael's expression tightened, something protective

flashing across his face that made her breath catch for reasons she didn't want to name."This needs cleaning properly," he said. "Come inside. I have what I need."

She followed him into a small room off the main hall that smelled of dried herbs and clean linen,

clearly some kind of healer's space. He worked with careful, practiced hands, cleaning the

wound, and Mara sat still and let him, watching his face rather than what he was doing.

"You didn't have to fight tonight," Kael said quietly, not looking up. "You could have stayed

hidden like Elin told you."

"I'm not built for hiding."

"No," he said. "I'm starting to understand that."

His fingers brushed her side as he wrapped the bandage, and something happened that Mara

had no name for a pull, sudden and deep, like a string drawing tight between them, like her

whole body recognized something her mind refused to. Kael went very still. His hands stopped

moving. His gold eyes lifted to hers, wide with a shock that mirrored what she felt.

"You feel that," he said. It wasn't a question.

Mara's heart was pounding too hard for her to lie convincingly. "I don't know what that was."

"I do." His voice had gone rough. "I've heard about it my whole life. I never thought" He stopped

himself, shook his head, pulled back slightly like the pull between them frightened him too. "It's

called the mate bond. It happens between wolves, sometimes. Rarely. Almost never with a

human."

"That's not possible," Mara said, too fast, too sharp. "I'm not I came here for" She caught herself

before the truth spilled out, but Kael was watching her closely enough that she saw him notice

the unfinished sentence.

"For work," he finished for her, though his tone made it clear he didn't fully believe it, not

anymore.

"For work," she agreed, and hated how unsteady her own voice sounded.

Kael sat back on his heels, putting distance between them that felt deliberate, like he needed the

space to think clearly. "The bond doesn't lie," he said. "Whatever else is true about you, Mara

and I think there's more you're not telling me that wasn't something either of us imagined."

"Bonds can be wrong."

"They can't," he said simply. "That's the whole point of them."Mara looked away from him, toward the small window where the last of the smoke from the

attack still hung faint against the night sky. Everything in her wanted to deny what had just

happened, wanted to fold it up small and shove it away like she did with everything

inconvenient. She had a sister dying by inches, a contract folded against her ribs, and a

Commander back at the outpost who would kill her himself if she failed. There wasn't room in

any of that for a bond with the man she'd been sent to murder.

"I don't believe in fate," she said finally. "Or bonds. Or whatever this is supposed to mean."

"You don't have to believe in it," Kael said, and there was something gentle in how he said it,

gentle in a way that made it worse. "It doesn't need your permission to be true."

He finished tying off the bandage, his touch careful, deliberately light now, like he was trying not

to trigger that pull again. When he stood, he kept a careful distance between them, and Mara

understood he was doing it for her sake as much as his own.

"Rest," he said. "We'll talk more when you're not bleeding through your own shirt."

He left before she could answer, and Mara sat alone in the small healer's room, pressing a hand

to her side where the bond still hummed faintly under her skin like something alive.

She thought of Amara. She thought of the contract, the Blood Moon, the eighteen days that were

now fifteen. She thought of Kael kneeling in front of frightened children, and the way the whole

village looked at him like a man worth trusting, and the impossible, unwanted truth sitting in

her chest now alongside all of it.

She had come here to end his life.

She no longer knew if she could.

Sleep didn't come, not really. Mara lay on the narrow cot in Elin's house for a long time, staring

at the ceiling beams, listening to the village settle back into itself after the attack — dogs barking

further of, someone crying softly a few houses down, the low murmur of pack members still

keeping watch along the fence line. Every time she closed her eyes she felt it again, that pull

beneath her ribs, faint but constant now, like a second heartbeat that wasn't hers.

She gave up near midnight and went outside.

The air was cold and smelled of char from the torches, but the sky had cleared, stars scattered

thick overhead in a way they never were back south, where smoke from the towns dulled

everything above the rooftops. Mara wrapped her arms around herself and walked without

meaning to toward the well at the center of the village, and she wasn't surprised, not really, to

find Kael already there, sitting on the low stone wall, looking up at the same sky.

"You should be resting," he said, without turning."So should you."

"I don't sleep much, the night after an attack." He shifted over, making room on the wall, and

after a moment's hesitation, Mara sat, keeping a careful gap between them that neither of them

mentioned. "I keep going over what I could have done sooner. Whether I could have stopped it

before it reached the fence."

"You got there in time."

"This time." His voice was quiet, worn thin in a way she hadn't heard from him before. "Rogues

don't usually attack in groups that size. Something's driving them together. Someone, maybe."

He glanced sideways at her. "You noticed it too. I saw your face during the fight."

Mara hesitated, weighing how much to give him. "They moved like they were being herded. Like

something worse than hunger was pushing them at the village."

"That's what worries me." Kael looked back up at the stars. "The Order says the rogues are just

wild wolves who lost themselves to the change. But I've fought rogues my whole life, and I've

never seen them work together like that. Not without a reason."

Mara said nothing, but her mind snagged hard on the word Order, and she was grateful for the

dark, because she felt certain her face would have given something away in daylight.

"Can I ask you something?" Kael said, after a while.

"You can ask."

"What are you running from? South of the Line." He wasn't looking at her, giving her the space

to answer or not, the same careful distance he'd given her earlier. "People don't cross into wolf

territory because they're looking for an easy life. You didn't flinch tonight. You've killed before.

Recently, I'd guess, from the way you moved."

Mara's pulse climbed, but she made herself breathe evenly, the way she'd trained herself to

under far worse pressure than this. "Everyone's running from something."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have tonight."

Kael accepted that with a small, tired nod, though she could tell it cost him something not to

push further. "Fair enough," he said. "You don't owe me your whole life in one conversation." He

paused, and when he spoke again his voice had gone softer, almost reluctant. "I meant what I

said earlier. About the bond. I know it's not something you asked for. I didn't ask for it either, if

it helps.""It doesn't, really."

That surprised a short laugh out of him, low and genuine. "No. I imagine it doesn't."

They sat in silence for a while, close enough that Mara could feel the warmth coming off him in

the cold night air, that same quiet pull humming steady beneath her skin, patient, unbothered

by how hard she was trying to ignore it. She thought about how easy it would be, in this

moment, to simply tell him everything — the contract, the Order, Amara's illness, the blade

hidden in her boot. The thought scared her more than the rogues had.

"Kael," she said, before she could stop herself, "if you found out someone close to you meant to

do something terrible — something they didn't want to do, but felt they had no choice — would

you forgive them?"

He considered the question with the same seriousness he seemed to give everything, not

brushing it off as idle talk. "Depends on what drove them to it," he said finally. "Fear makes

people do things that love wouldn't. I've learned not to judge someone only by their worst

moment, if I can help it. Especially not before I understand why."

Mara nodded slowly, throat tight, grateful again for the dark.

"Why do you ask?" Kael said.

"No reason," she said. "Just thinking."

He let it go, though she suspected — from the careful way he watched her afterward — that he

didn't quite believe her. Overhead, the moon was still days from full, pale and unremarkable,

nothing like the blood-red it would turn on the night the Order expected her to have already

finished her work. Fifteen days. She counted them again in her head, the number smaller every

time she did it, and beside her, Kael sat close enough that the bond between them pulled tight

and warm and utterly unwanted, refusing to care that everything about this was impossible.

"Get some sleep, Mara," he said eventually, standing and ofering her a hand up that she didn't

quite let herself take. "Whatever you're carrying, it'll still be there in the morning."

You have no idea, she thought, watching him walk back toward the hall.

She stayed at the well a while longer, alone under the stars, one hand resting over the place

where the bond lived beneath her ribs, and did not go back inside until the cold finally won out

over her thoughts.