Dawn came wrapped in mist, and with it, Dorian's voice cutting through her meditation.
"Something breached the western border last night."
Aria opened her eyes to find him crouched at the edge of her sleeping hollow, a bone knife turning slowly in his hands. She'd learned to read his moods through such gestures—the knife meant business, its slow rotation meant danger.
"Rogue?" she asked, rolling to her feet with the fluid grace two weeks of training had carved into her muscles.
"That's what you'll determine." He tossed her a strip of cloth that smelled of pine resin and old leather. "Track it. Learn its shape, its purpose. Don't be seen. Don't be known."
"And if it sees me?"
His gold eyes held hers, cold as winter suns. "Then you've failed."
He pressed the bone knife into her hand—her first weapon since arriving in Ashfang. Its weight was negligible, its edge wicked sharp, its purpose clear: tool first, weapon only if silence failed.
"Be back by moonrise," he said, already turning away. "Or don't come back at all."
No map. No directions beyond 'western border.' No backup if things went wrong. Just her, the knife, and the skills he'd beaten into her through endless repetition.
Aria wrapped the scented cloth around her wrist—it would mask her scent partially, make her harder to track if she needed to run. Then she moved into the fog, letting it swallow her like a second skin.
The western border was a two-hour walk at normal pace. She made it in three, moving with the careful deliberation Dorian had taught her. Speed was nothing if it announced your presence. Better to arrive late and unseen than early and exposed.
She found the first sign near a creek bed—a boot print in mud, too fresh for yesterday's patrol. The pattern was familiar, regulation pack issue with the reinforced heel that warriors favored. Not a rogue, then. Not a wanderer or trader.
Pack.
Her chest tightened, the hollow ache flaring like an old wound in bad weather. But she breathed through it, let the emotion pass like wind through leaves. Emotion was noise, and noise was death.
The trail led deeper into disputed territory, where pack borders blurred and only the brave or stupid ventured. Broken twigs at shoulder height—someone tall, moving with purpose but not stealth. Fabric caught on thornbush—dark blue, the color of enforcers' cloaks.
The birds told her the rest. Their silence created a moving bubble of quiet that marked the intruder's path as clearly as blazed trees. Whoever this was, they'd been trained for combat, not concealment.
Aria smiled, dark and thin. Two weeks ago, she'd been just as loud.
She found him an hour before noon, resting in a small clearing where two game trails crossed. Young—maybe nineteen summers—with the kind of muscle that came from training yards rather than real combat. Dark hair pulled back in warrior braids, enforcer tattoos fresh on his neck.
Recognition hit her like ice water.
Marcus. The Gamma who'd tried to give her supplies the night of her exile. Roth had struck the bundle from his hands, but Marcus had tried. A small kindness in an ocean of cruelty.
Now he sat with his back to a tree, unaware that death crouched twenty feet away in the undergrowth.
Not death, Aria corrected herself. She wasn't that. Not yet. But she could be, if she chose. The bone knife lay cool against her palm, and Marcus had left his throat exposed, trusting in pack territory and daylight to keep him safe.
Stay silent. Stay still. Learn.
She settled into the earth like just another shadow and waited.
Marcus pulled dried meat from his pack, chewed mechanically while studying a piece of parchment. His lips moved as he read—still learning his letters, then. The wind shifted, carrying his words to her hiding spot.
"...flame-bearer reported in Ashfang territory... silver fire witnessed by corrupted survivor... considered extremely dangerous... capture alive if possible for Council questioning..."
Her crescent mark burned cold against her skin.
"Alpha wants her found before the Moon Trials begin," Marcus muttered, folding the parchment. "Goddess knows why. Just another mad rogue playing with—"
He stopped. Sniffed the air. His hand moved to his blade as training kicked in, recognizing wrongness even if he couldn't name it.
Aria held her breath, became stone, became nothing. Just another part of the forest floor, no more threatening than moss or fallen leaves.
Marcus stood slowly, eyes scanning the undergrowth. "Who's there?"
Silence.
He took a step toward her position. Another. His blade cleared its sheath with a whisper of steel, and Aria's options narrowed to sharp points: flee and fail, fight and reveal, or—
A rabbit burst from the bushes to her left, white tail flashing as it bounded away. Marcus laughed, sharp with relief, and sheathed his blade.
"Jumping at rabbits," he said to himself. "Roth would have my hide."
He gathered his things, prepared to move on. But something made him pause at the clearing's edge, looking back with the unease of prey that sensed a predator but couldn't see it.
Then he was gone, crashing through the forest with all the grace of a wounded bear.
Aria waited a full ten minutes before moving. Not because she feared he'd return, but because the urge to follow—to hunt—was so strong it frightened her. This boy who'd shown her kindness was now just another loud thing in her territory. Another threat to be assessed, catalogued, eliminated if necessary.
Is this what I'm becoming?
But no. If she was becoming a monster, she would have killed him. Instead, she'd watched. Learned. Discovered that her former pack was hunting her, that they called her 'flame-bearer,' that the Council wanted her alive.
Information was a weapon sharper than any knife.
She moved to where Marcus had rested, studied the marks he'd left behind. Then, with careful deliberation, she added her own.
Not a challenge. Not a threat. Just... presence.
She scored the tree with three precise cuts—a crescent moon tilted at an angle only rogues would recognize. Below it, she wove grass into a pattern that meant 'watched' in the old forest language. Small things, subtle things, but enough to unsettle anyone who knew how to read them.
Let them know someone had been here. Let them wonder who could get so close without being seen. Let them fear what they couldn't understand.
The journey back took longer—she swept a wide arc to avoid Marcus's return path, laid false trails in case he brought others. By the time she reached Dorian's territory, the sun was kissing the horizon and her muscles ached from maintained tension.
He waited where she'd left him, working the same piece of wood with the same bone knife. As if the entire day had been just another breath in his endless existence.
"Report," he said without looking up.
"Pack wolf. Young enforcer. Scouting for someone they call the flame-bearer."
"You?"
"Me."
"Did he see you?"
"No."
"Did you kill?"
The question hung between them like a blade. Aria thought of how easy it would have been. How her hand had tightened on the knife when Marcus spoke of her like just another mad rogue.
"Didn't need to."
Dorian's hands stilled on the carving. He looked up then, those gold eyes searching her face for something she couldn't name.
"Why not?"
"Dead scouts bring armies. Missing scouts bring questions. Nervous scouts..." She thought of the marks she'd left, the subtle wrongness that would gnaw at Marcus for days. "Nervous scouts make mistakes."
Something shifted in Dorian's expression. Not quite a smile—she'd never seen him truly smile—but a softening around the edges. An acknowledgment.
"You didn't choose violence," he said slowly. "Even when the past walked into your present. Even when revenge would have been sweet." He set aside the carving, rose to his full height. "That means you're not prey anymore."
"Then what am I?"
He moved past her, heading toward the deeper forest where night already pooled between the trees. But his words carried back, soft as silk and twice as dangerous.
"You're what watches from the shadows. What leaves marks in the mind deeper than any wound. What makes strong wolves check their backs and bar their doors." He paused at the tree line, glanced back with those ancient gold eyes. "You're becoming what the Alpha King should fear most."
"Which is?"
His almost-smile was sharp as the crescent moon rising behind him.
"Patient."
Then he was gone, leaving her alone with the knife and the knowledge and the terrible understanding that he was right. She could have killed Marcus. Part of her had wanted to. But the stronger part—the part growing like silver flame in her chest—had chosen to wait.
To watch.
To let them know, in the smallest way, that the hunted had learned to hunt.
And that was infinitely more terrifying than any beast that killed in passion.
The crescent mark behind her ear pulsed once, warm as approval, cold as promise.
Somewhere in the direction of pack lands, Marcus would be making camp for the night. Would he sleep well? Or would he lie awake, wondering what had watched him from the shadows? Wondering if those strange marks meant what his instincts screamed they meant?
Aria cleaned the bone knife on moss, tucked it into her belt, and followed Dorian into the darkness.
She had been nothing. She was becoming something.
And her old world had no idea what they'd created when they threw her away.