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Or use her as an excuse to hunt us. They’d done so countless times before. We had to be prepared.

Ruby stood at the map table in the longhouse from morning until the lamps were lit, marking approaches and dead ground, arguing sentry rotations with wolves who’d sooner bite her than listen. More suspicious glances followed her every time she moved. From the runners coming in off the watch posts. From the elders mending nets by the hearth. From Imogene, most of all.

Ruby ignored them. She simply kept working, her braid falling over her shoulder, her finger tracing the ridgeline where she said they’d come. When Bram argued with her about the river crossing, she didn’t raise her voice. She just walked him through it, step by step, until he went quiet and nodded.

The quiet held until midday.

Doran came in off the western watch with frost in his beard and his brother’s knife on his belt. He was twenty-six, broad as a door, and he’d carried Kell’s body up from the bottom of the Harrow himself. I’d stood beside him at the cairn. He hadn’t spoken for a month afterward.

He stopped at the end of the map table and looked at the ridge Ruby had drawn, at the small stone she’d set where the push had broken our line six years ago.

“That’s where Kell went over,” he said.

The longhouse went quiet. Hestia’s needle stopped in the net across her lap. By the door, young Fern, who’d been pretending not to listen while she laced her boots, stopped pretending.

Ruby looked up. “Imogene told me.”

Doran grunted. “And you drew it in the dirt like a game of stones.” He planted both hands on the table and leaned across it. “How many times did you practice that in the Order? How many of us did you push off an edge in some training yard before you ever came here?”

“None,” she replied. “The Harrow was before my time.”

“But you know how it’s done.”

“Yes.”

It hit him hard. His eyes flashed gold, his lips pulled back off his teeth, and the stone she’d set on the map went skittering across the table and onto the floor.

Ruby’s hand rested on the table edge, a hand’s width from the knife at her belt. Her gaze dropped to his throat.

She’d already decided how it would go if he came over that table. So had I.

I stepped forward. “Doran.” I put the alpha in my voice, and it rippled through the pack bond.

He turned toward me slowly, shoulders straining. His wolf fought to get to the surface. He struggled and then lowered his head.

“She’s here to help the pack and is under my protection,” I said. “Any hand lifted to her is lifted to me. Any tooth bared at her is bared at me.” I let that settle. “Does anyone need to test that?”

No one moved. Bram looked down at the map. Hestia went back to her net, though her needle didn’t make a single stitch.

I eased the pressure off the bond, and Doran straightened, breathing hard.

“Kell died because someone in the capital,” I said, quieter now. Just to him. “Not because of her. She’s the first person willing to tell us how they did it, and how we can stop another bloodbath like that.” I held his gaze. “Grieve him. Hate her if you have to. But you’ll do it without baring your teeth.”

Doran worked his jaw, then looked at Ruby as if trying to understand what she was.

He bent, picked the stone up off the floor, and set it back on the map where she’d placed it.

Then he walked out into the cold.

The door banged shut behind him. Somebody let out a low breath.

Ruby picked up her charcoal again as though nothing had happened, but I could hear her heart thundering.

My wolf paced hard beneath my skin, hackles still up after Doran had bared his teeth at her.

From her stool by the hearth, Hestia let out a rough laugh. She was older than anyone in the pack, and she’d refused to go up to the caves with the other elders.

She jabbed her netting needle toward Ruby. “You. Order girl. Come here.”