Read the first chapter of Ruby and the Wolf
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.
I didn’t do so. Instead, I went inside. Every instinct in me heightened with awareness, and I held my hand close to my weapon.
He had been expecting me.
After days of travel on foot, the warmth inside cradled me. The scent of burning logs in the hearth drew me closer to the heat where the fire crackled. Beyond it came the scent of freshly baked bread that called to my stomach. The cottage had two rooms, including a kitchen with a black kettle hanging over a low fire that cast a thin line of steam above it. The main room had a wooden table and two chairs and a rocking chair in front of the hearth. A ladder led up to a loft, with a corner of a bed peeking over the edge.
The cottage was clean. Not what I’d expect in a hermit’s hut. But the floor had been swept, the rug in front of the hearth shaken out. Even the chairs were pushed neatly across from each other at the table. I noted it and moved on.
On the table sat a leather folder, string-tied, as thick as a brick.
It had a seal on it. Ours. The wax was broken.
I straightened and clamped my teeth together. “Where did you get this?”
“The chair with its back to the wall’s yours,” he said, motioning to it. “I’d have taken it, but I’m not the one who’s outnumbered.”
By whom? I resisted giving him the satisfaction of watching me search around the room, since I’d already scanned it. “There’s one of you.”
“There’s one of me in the room.” He lifted the kettle off the arm and set it on the stone. “Sit down, Raven.”
“That isn’t my name.”
“No.” He took two white mugs that didn’t match off a shelf. “It’s what’s used by the Order.”
How did he know this?
The question needed answering. I needed more information before I took action.
I took the chair with its back to the wall and set the basket on the floor at my right foot, ensuring it was unlatched with the cloth folded back, in easy reach.
Then I took the blade out of my sleeve and opened it and laid it on the table under my hand.
He glanced at it briefly but didn’t react. “Good,” he said in the same calm voice. “Keep it out. I’d rather you did.”
“You’d rather?” I arched my brows at the strange wolf. Was he so assured that I wasn’t a threat to him? He might reconsider that before this conversation was over.
But I had questions and he had answers. So I listened.
He poured from the kettle and the scent of mint filled the room. I kept my eyes on the weapon in his hand. Boiling water and iron. Either could be used to maim badly. He didn’t make any quick movements.
Steam came up between us and the room smelled of mint and something I couldn’t identify. That smell drifted through me, stirring a memory. One of me in a third-floor office in the capital with a river outside the window. It was winter, I was eight, and my feet didn’t reach the floor. Another day of training.
The alpha set a steaming mug in front of me and sat down at the other end of the table with his, in no hurry. He didn’t hide his hands under the table.
“You take it without honey,” he said. “Which I’d call a shame, except there’s no honey, so it works out.”
More information about me.
When a target has operational knowledge they shouldn’t have, protocol dictates that the operative gather more information before proceeding to verification.
Instead of following protocol, I skipped to my question. “How did you get my info?”
“Which?” He wrapped both hands around his cup. “The training assessments, six years. The field record, four. The commendation for the widow at Calloway, about eleven months, and I’d like to talk about that one eventually, but not today.”
Calloway.
Nobody talks about Calloway. It’s a sealed action. A name I’ve never said out loud, not even in the report, where she’s a designation and a date.
“You want to ask me how I know this,” he said flatly. “You’ll ask it four or five different ways over the next hour as you’ve been trained, and I’ll give you the same answer. So I’ll give it to you now and save us the daylight. Your Order sends people up that path to kill us. Specifically me. They’ve been doing so for over a decade.”
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.”
“You should want to hurt me.” Considering he knew why I was sent here.
The alpha studied me from his amber gaze, with faint lines appearing around his eyes.
His nostrils flared again ever so slightly and he gripped his mug. The amber in his eyes brightened with gold.
“Aren’t you tired of all this, Ruby?” His voice lowered. “Being the Order’s blade?”
I flinched. This time I couldn’t stop it. Those words took me off guard. Nobody asked me what I wanted. Especially using my name, as if I were a person, an individual.
Ever.
Wolves had killed many of us. Even my parents. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing that.
Still, his question rolled through my head, demanding an answer. The sound of my name in his low rumble echoed.
Aren’t you tired of all this, Ruby?
Was I? It was what I’d been trained to do. It was the only life I’d known. The wolves killed many of us, including my parents.
But yes, it was a life of killing and death.
And I’d asked more questions this past year. Why?
Never to get an answer. At least not one that satisfied me.
Maybe—
No, I wouldn’t let this target get into my head.
Swallowing the unexpected emotion, I trained my voice to remain steady. “Why would I be?”
“I am.” His voice tightened with weariness. He exhaled, glancing toward the window. “After all this time. All these killings. So many lives lost. And for what?” He returned his gaze to me, watching me, as if keen to hear my answer.
The back of my neck prickled. All my life I’d been told who to eliminate. Rarely why. But the wolf shifters were at the top of the list, because they’d killed so many of us. But his question made me think.
Why?
He waited while I wrestled with his question.
Remembering who I was and why I was sent here, I straightened. “Because you’ve killed many in the Order.”
“Who’ve been sent to eliminate my pack.”
That part was true. The Lockridge wolf pack were our enemies. We’d been fighting them my entire life.
“I have orders. Many signed by the same person.” He paused, studied me. “Would you like to know who?”
My neck tensed. Skin prickled. I didn’t reply.
He straightened. “Wake up, sweet girl.” A pause. “The kettle’s on.”
Her words. Seven of them, in the way she’d said them every morning of my life, her hand on my shoulder, the room still dark.
Nobody else knew those words. Nobody.
He’d pitched it higher, softer. Not her voice. An impression of it, close enough that every muscle in my body tensed.
“Where’s my grandmother?” I bolted out of the chair, grabbing the knife. “What did you do to her?”
