Page 2

He sat down very quickly quietly, and he stayed that way.

Around me the Merry Men worked with the ease of long practice, passing crates hand to hand into the trees. They emptied the wagons of medicine and coin while leaving the guards their lives and most of their dignity.

Within minutes it was finished and the wagons stood hollow. The guards sat bruised and breathing along the roadside, which was more mercy than the Crown had ever shown any of us.

I pulled a folded note from my pocket, pressed it flat against the lead wagon, and pinned it there with one final arrow driven deep into the wood.

When I was sure that it wouldn’t be going any where, I raised my fingers to my lips, kissing them before patting the paper gently.

Then I melted into Sherwood, and the forest closed behind me like a door.

By midday we had reached the hidden camp, and the sound of it found me before the sight did. Laughter rolled through the trees alongside the shrieking of children playing some game with rules that changed by the minute. All of it woven into the low music of a community that had learned to survive on hope and stolen bread.

They came out to greet us, their eyes shining as we carried the crates in. Mothers arrived with babies on their hips while elders leaned on carved walking sticks behind them, and among them moved some Omegas with the drawn, glassy look of people who had gone weeks without suppressants and had learned to endure what no one should have to endure.

I opened the first crate myself and started pressing vials into waiting hands before anyone could gather the breath to thank me. Gratitude sat strangely on my skin.

These people owed me nothing.

The Crown owed them everything, and I was only a thief returning what had been stolen first.

An elderly Omega with greying brown hair, caught my hand between both of hers before I could move on. Her palms were soft as worn linen, and her eyes were wet. "Your father would be proud."

My smile faltered before I could stop it. "I hope so."

She squeezed my fingers once and let me go, and I kept working until the crates were empty and the celebration bloomed up around the fires without me.

I slipped away to the overlook above the camp, where the ridge fell away into a green sea of canopy rolling toward the horizon. Up there, the noise of the camp faded into wind and singing birds. Slowly, I pushed my hood back and allowed the breeze to move through my locs.

For just a moment, I let myself be no one. I wasn’t the Ghost of Sherwood up on that ridge.

I wasn’t the outlaw with a price on her head or the legend the villagers whispered about over their fires.

I was simply Robin, a daughter standing in the forest her family once protected, missing her father so deeply that the ache of it lived in my bones like weather.

I drew the brass compass from beneath my shirt, the one my grandmother pressed into my hands the night I fled House Locksley with smoke in my lungs and soldiers at my back. The engraving had worn smooth in places from the pass of my thumb, but I knew the words the way I knew my own heartbeat.

Roots hold when kingdoms fall.

"Roots hold," I whispered to the trees, and the trees, as always, kept my secret.

Dusk was settling gold and violet over the canopy when Merry found me. She dropped onto the rock beside me with the particular energy of a woman carrying news too big for her body, and she didn't bother with a greeting.

"The Crown has doubled the reward on your pretty little head."

I raised an eyebrow. "Doubled? I'm flattered. Last month I was only worth a modest barn."

"Robin, be serious." She turned to face me, firelight from the camp below catching the worry in her eyes. "There's a rumor moving through Nottingham. The King is tired of waiting. He's taking the hunt away from the garrison commanders and giving it to one man."

The wind shifted through the leaves, and something in her tone made me still.

"Sheriff Guy Bisbane."

The name landed between us, and I considered it. The man was the Crown's perfect Alpha, cold and merciless and by every account too disciplined to bribe and too clever to fool, and his were the wagons I had been robbing and his the pride I had been wounding with pinned notes for the better part of three years.

I rolled my eyes and leaned back on my palms. "Good."

Merry blinked at me. "Good?"