MARKED BY THE ALPHA I CAME TO KILL

The invitation cost a man his life.

Nyra had taken it off his body an hour before the gates opened, and she hadn't felt a thing while she did it.

Feeling things got hunters killed.

She smoothed the parchment against her palm, taking in the thick cream paper, the black wolf stamped into the wax and the elegant handwriting that had belonged to someone who would never use it again. Then she handed it to the guard at the gate.

“Lady Ashwood,” he said, repeating the name she'd just given him. “Envoy from the eastern packs.”

“That’s me.”

He looked at her for a beat too long, and Nyra let him. A petite woman with a polite smile and mild manners didn't look like a threat, and she'd spent six years learning exactly how to look like nothing worth a second glance. The guard finally waved her through.

Blackthorn territory unfolded beyond the gates like something built to be imposing: stone halls veined with ivy, torchlight throwing gold across a courtyard full of wolves in human skin, music drifting through open doors and laughter carrying across the grounds.

Nyra walked at an unhurried pace, allowing herself to look like a guest taking in her surroundings while she catalogued every useful detail. Two guards stood at the main entrance, four more were positioned around the courtyard and a narrow side door sat near the kitchens. A low wall beyond the stables looked easy enough to clear, while the guard rotation thinned near the kitchens every twenty minutes. She marked the information automatically, the same way she had on every assignment.

The hall was even more crowded. Brighter, louder and thick with the smell of woodsmoke, roasted meat and too many bodies. Nyra kept to the edges of the crowd, holding a glass of wine she had no intention of drinking while her eyes did the work her feet couldn't. She watched the doors, the guards and the wolves who seemed more interested in the room than the celebration.

Then she found him.

She had studied Lucian Blackthorn for weeks. A sketch smuggled out by a contact inside the eastern packs had given her a rough idea of his appearance, though the likeness was unreliable enough to have belonged to any broad-shouldered Alpha with dark hair.

Lucian stood near the head of the hall, not on a throne or raised above the others, yet somehow the room seemed to arrange itself around him. Everyone knew where he was. A wolf beside him laughed at something and glanced back at Lucian first, as though the joke didn't quite count until his Alpha found it amusing. Two guards near the door straightened when Lucian's gaze passed over them, not from fear but from the unconscious discipline of soldiers around someone they trusted.

That wasn't what Nyra had been told.

The Order's information had described him as ruthless, feared and difficult to approach. The wolves around him weren't behaving like people afraid of their ruler. They looked comfortable. Some were laughing loudly. One young wolf nearly collided with another and received an affectionate shove for his trouble.

Nyra filed the discrepancy away.

She didn't need to understand Lucian Blackthorn. She only needed to kill him.

Her wolf, which had been silent and obedient for six years, was suddenly restless.

Nyra's steps faltered for half a second before she recovered. She told it to stand down, but it didn't listen. She tightened her grip on the wineglass and continued walking, putting three separate conversations between herself and Lucian while she assessed the room again.

She found the stairwell she would need later and the second exit, half-hidden behind a tapestry. She noted which guards carried blades beneath their jackets and which drank enough to be useless by midnight.

Her mission was simple. Get close. Wait for the right moment. Kill him before anyone realized what had happened.

She had three opportunities. The first would be during the toast, but too many people would be watching the Alpha. The second would be when the music changed and the guests began moving between the tables, but the shifting crowd made the escape uncertain. The third would come later, after the gathering thinned and Lucian withdrew somewhere quieter.

That was the one she would take.

Patience had been one of the first lessons the Order had drilled into her. A rushed assassination was an admission of incompetence. The best kill was the one the victim never knew was coming.

The music changed, and the crowd began to part.

Lucian was walking toward her.

Not quickly or with any obvious sense of urgency. He moved with the quiet confidence of someone who expected the room to accommodate him, and it did. Wolves stepped aside without seeming to realize they were doing it. Conversations softened as he passed, then resumed behind him.

He wasn't looking at anyone else.

He was looking at her.

Nyra kept her expression composed. Her pulse didn't spike. She had trained that reflex out of herself years ago, the visible kind of fear that betrayed a hunter before the first strike. What she couldn't control was the strange pressure of her wolf against her chest, as though it had suddenly become interested in the man walking toward them.

Up close, Lucian was even more imposing than the sketch had suggested. He was taller, broader and more self-possessed, with a faint white scar through one eyebrow that the drawing hadn't captured. His eyes settled on her with an attention that felt less like curiosity and more like assessment.

He stopped an arm's length away.

“Lady Ashwood,” he said. Her false name, in his mouth, sounded like something he was testing for weight. “Long way to come for a party.”

“Word of Blackthorn hospitality travels.” Nyra lifted her glass slightly. “I wanted to see it for myself.”

“Did you?”

It wasn't quite a question.

She allowed herself a faint smile. “The wine is better than the company deserves.”

Something shifted in his expression. Not quite a smile, but close enough that a low sound of amusement escaped him.

For one unguarded second, Nyra almost forgot what she was standing in the room to do.

Then his gaze dropped.

Only slightly.

To the place at her hip where the folds of her dress were a little too structured and a little too deliberate.

To the blade hidden beneath them.

Nyra's entire body went cold.

He looked back at her, and whatever warmth had been in his expression was gone. What remained wasn't anger. It was recognition.

“You know,” he said quietly, his voice low enough to disappear beneath the music and conversation, “I've had eyes on the eastern border for three weeks now.”

Nyra didn't move.

The information unsettled her more than the fact that he'd noticed the blade. Her briefing had said nothing about heightened surveillance along the eastern border. Nothing about Lucian expecting trouble. Nothing about him watching for an unknown threat.

“Have you?”

“Waiting.”

The word sat between them.

Nyra's mind moved through possibilities. Someone had warned him. Her cover had been compromised. The eastern packs had betrayed the arrangement. Or perhaps Lucian had known there was an intrusion without knowing who was behind it.

She kept her face calm.

“Waiting for what?” she asked.

Lucian leaned closer, just enough that no one else in the crowded hall could have caught the next words. His eyes never left hers.

“I've been waiting for you.”

Nyra's fingers tightened around the hidden blade.

Lucian's smile widened.