Mag-log inMylaThe first rider stepped into the road before Myla reached the fallen tree.He wore a dark wool coat with no Council insignia, but the leather case at his hip carried the stamped brass corner used by the secretary’s office. His horse stood square beneath him, trained well enough not to react when the bay mare slowed.The second rider waited near the ridge, half-screened by pine branches.The third held the western side, where the road dropped towards the watercourse. His grey gelding kept shifting away from the bank. Each time its hindquarters moved, the rider corrected too sharply.Myla kept the mare in the centre.The hostile pressure gathered around all three men, broad and deliberate. It gave her no names and no exact positions. She did not need either now. The horses, the terrain and the way the men had arranged themselves told her enough.The lead rider raised one hand.“Myla of Bloodstone Ridge. You are ordered to stop.”She stopped beyond his reach.“I already have.”His m
AlecThey stopped at the northern break in the road because the maintenance track was two miles ahead and one of the horses had begun to blow.The others adjusted while the animal caught its breath. Seb crouched beside the rear pair to check hooves. Luis loosened the girth on his spare mount while two of the Crimson River wolves passed the water skin between the horses. Snow had thickened during the last hour, small dense flakes settling into their coats and whitening the shoulders of every rider.Alec stayed mounted.He watched the road behind them.The wind carried two hoof-strikes from the south. Alec turned in the saddle, one hand settling near the pommel.“Rider coming.”“Alone?” Seb asked, straightening.“So far.”A dark horse came around the ridge. Its rider wore a road hood pulled low against the snow, but Alec recognised Dena before she was close enough to call out.He did not release his breath until she pulled up beside them.Her mare’s flanks were dark with sweat, though D
Myla By the time the relay shelter disappeared behind the trees, the bay mare had begun choosing her steps.Myla brought her back to a walk and let the reins lengthen. The horse had carried her since first light without refusing anything, but sweat darkened the hair beneath the saddle flap and her stride had shortened since the last rise.“Easy,” Myla murmured.The mare flicked one ear towards her and continued.Snow caught in her mane and gathered along the frozen road. It filled the deepest wheel ruts first, softening the marks left by older traffic. When Myla glanced behind her, the mare’s hoofprints still cut clearly through the thin white layer.For now.She kept moving north.The hostile pressure had not disappeared when she passed the rider at the relay shelter. It had spread, becoming less concentrated and harder to separate from the cold gathering beneath her skin.Her ability offered no faces and no distance. It did not tell her where anyone stood.It told her only that the
SebastianSnow began as a fine grain against Seb’s coat.It did not settle at first. The flakes struck the frozen road and vanished, leaving dark pinpricks in the pale surface before the cold swallowed them. The horses felt it before the riders did. Ears turned. Shoulders tightened. Tomas’s road horse shortened his stride beneath Alec, testing the change in the ground.Seb kept them moving.The eastern road had been easy to read when they left Crimson River. Six horses, two spare mounts, fresh iron on frozen earth. Farther north, older traffic crossed and blurred the surface, but Myla’s mare had a narrow left hind shoe and a slight outward turn that showed every fourth or fifth step.Seb had found it within the first mile.He had not lost it since.“She held a steady pace here,” he said.Alec looked down at the road beside him. “How long ago?”“Half a day. Maybe less.”“That is not an answer.”“It is the best one the ground has.”Alec accepted that with a brief nod. He had the folded
MylaShe had been on the road since first light.The bay mare had held her pace through the morning without complaint, but by late afternoon her ears were flicking sideways at every branch snap in the trees, and Myla had learned enough about the horse over the course of the day to know that the mare was listening to something she could not name yet.Myla had been listening too.The Council road did not sound the way a Council road was supposed to sound.The road carried the signs of regular use. Frozen wheel ruts. Wooden markers at each crossing. Weathered notices nailed beneath the Council insignia.This afternoon, no one else had used it.No merchants. No Council riders. No fresh hoofprints travelling towards Ashford. The notices on the marker posts were faded, their corners curled by weather. Nothing had been added recently.An emergency classification should have left some mark on the road. A courier. A changed notice. Fresh tracks from the receiving station.There was nothing.Th
SebastianThe rotation board was already covered when Seb reached the study door.Rowan had cleared the morning list and pinned a new one over the top of it. Six columns, in his blocky handwriting. Border. Gate. Infirmary. Supplies. Training rounds. Message runners. Every column had names. Every name had a second name beneath it.Seb stopped in the doorway and looked at the board for a long moment before he understood what he was looking at.He had been at that board a hundred times.He knew every name on it.He knew, because he had watched Myla put them there over the last four days, that most of the backup names were hers.That was the whole point of what she had been doing. Every task carried by one person now carried two. Every rotation had a shadow. Every responsibility she had quietly redistributed was exactly what allowed Crimson River to keep functioning while both of its Alphas rode north to bring her home.She had built the pack to survive her absence.She had, instead, give







