Chapter 11

Wren

The first joint patrol with Ironfang happened two weeks after Rurik's visit, and it went about as well as anyone could have hoped for two packs that had exactly one prior conversation's worth of trust between them.

"You take east, we'll take west, and we meet back at the ridge before dark," Wren said, laying it out for the combined group — six Nightshade wolves, if you counted generously, against eight of Rurik's, all of them eyeing each other with the specific wariness of animals deciding whether the new pack smell in the air meant ally or competition.

"Or," Rurik said, falling into step beside her instead of peeling off toward his assigned half, "we could mix the groups. Two Nightshade, two Ironfang, spread across both routes. Faster trust-building, and if either half runs into trouble, they're not facing it with strangers at their back."

"That's not the plan I gave."

"It's a better plan than the one you gave, and I think you know it, or you wouldn't still be standing here instead of already walking east." Something easy about the way he said it, no challenge in it, just the plain confidence of a man who'd led long enough to know the difference between being right and needing to make a point of being right.

Wren looked at him a moment longer than the situation strictly required. "Fine. Mixed groups."

The rogues found them before they found the rogues, which was either bad luck or a sign that whoever was running these incursions had gotten bolder since the last time Nightshade had sent them running — five of them this time, more organized than the last group, spreading out fast the second they scented the mixed patrol.

"Five," Wren said, low, to the wolf beside her — one of Rurik's, a lean gray-brown female named Kess who'd barely said six words all morning. "That's more than usual."

"They usually run in packs closer to twelve, where we're from." Kess didn't sound worried about it, exactly, just factual. "Five means either they're testing something specific, or they got split off from something bigger and haven't found their way back yet. Neither one's great news."

They didn't have time to speculate further. The rogues came in fast and coordinated, and for a handful of chaotic minutes it was teeth and momentum and Wren's power flickering unreliably in and out at the edges of her control — enough to buy her an opening twice, not enough to trust completely, which she was starting to understand was simply the nature of a gift six weeks old and largely untested under real pressure.

It was Rurik, in the end, who took down the last of them, pinning a rogue twice his own weight with a kind of unhurried, economical strength that told Wren more about how he led than any conversation could have.

Afterward, catching her breath against a tree with her pulse still hammering, Wren watched Rurik crouch over the last downed rogue, checking something at its collar — a marking she couldn't make out from where she stood.

"What is it?"

"Brand." He held it up so she could see: a rough symbol burned into a strip of leather at the rogue's throat, deliberate, not something a lone wolf would bother with. "I've seen this before. Not on rogues, though. On wolves who used to belong to somebody, before whatever happened to them happened." He frowned at it a moment longer, turning it over. "Somebody's organizing packs of these. Feeding them, arming them, sending them out in coordinated waves against small packs that can't fight back. That's not rogue behavior. That's a strategy."

"Whose?"

"Don't know yet." He straightened, tucking the strip of leather into his jacket, expression gone more serious than Wren had seen it all day. "But I intend to find out, and I'd guess you want the same answer I do, given how many of these you've already run off your own land." He held her gaze a moment, something steadier and more direct in it than the easy charm from before. "This is bigger than either of our packs handling it alone. I think you already suspected that. I think that's part of why you said yes to mixed patrols."

Wren didn't confirm it out loud, but she didn't deny it either, and the look that passed between them said the rest of it clearly enough.

Ezra's face went carefully blank when she showed him the strip of leather that night, which was, she was learning, exactly what his face did right before he said something he didn't want to say.

"I've seen this mark before," he said finally. "A long time ago. Long enough that I hoped I'd never see it again in my lifetime." He wouldn't elaborate further that night, no matter how she pushed, just told her to get some rest and that they'd talk properly once he'd had time to think it through — which told her, more than anything he actually said, that whatever this was, it was old, and it was bad, and Ezra needed time to decide how much of it she was ready to carry.

She didn't sleep well. Somewhere behind her ribs, the old ache stirred faintly, as it did sometimes at night when her guard was down enough to let it, and she found herself thinking, unhelpfully, that whatever was coming, she wanted to be strong enough to meet it without flinching — for Nightshade's sake, and, though she'd have denied it if anyone asked, for the sake of proving something to a version of herself that had once stood in a clearing and let a room look straight through her.

She was done being looked through. Whatever this brand meant, whoever was behind it, she intended to make sure of that.