In Time
729 Words
(Kat’s POV)
The clearing settled into silence as the last body hit the ground.
Kat stood over the aftermath, her breathing steady, her attention sweeping the area one final time to confirm what she already knew. No movement, no stragglers, the rogues were finished. Her focus shifted to the wounded woman. She lay a few paces away, unmoving where she had fallen. Blood darkened the fabric at her side, the wound deep enough to matter, while something else—something less visible—lingered beneath the surface. Kat could see it in the slackness of her limbs, the unnatural stillness.
One of the Royal Guards with her moved quickly, intent on ending this woman as well, as if she was no different than the rogues he had just killed. His jaws reached for her throat, teeth grazing it before Kat acted.
“Don’t!” Kat moved just as fast, her voice cutting through the moment as she drove forward, her hand snapping out to catch him by the back of the neck and force him back before he could make contact.
He snarled instinctively, tension flashing through him before recognition followed.
“She’s not a rogue,” Kat said, her tone low but edged with command, the wolf stilled and bowed his head, obeying his superior.
Kat released him and stepped forward, dropping into a crouch beside the woman. Up close, the details sharpened—the precision of her features, the controlled lines of someone trained, not feral. Even unconscious, there was structure there. Not rogue. Not random.
“Look,” Kat added, already reaching to a note & picture on the ground that one of the rogues had dropped.
She mainly looked at the photograph, holding them up just enough for the others to see. The image was intact enough—clear enough. The same woman.
“She’s the target,” Kat said.
The guard’s expression shifted, tension giving way to something more controlled as he looked between the picture and the woman on the ground.
“Instructions were to kill her,” he said.
“And bring proof,” Kat added, her eyes narrowing slightly as she looked back down at the burned edges of the paper. “To a meeting.”
No location. No names. Nothing that pointed to who had ordered it. Only intent.
Kat’s jaw tightened slightly, a low, dangerous growl slipping from her before she could stop it. Hired, organized, deliberate. Someone wanted this woman dead. Badly enough to pay rogues to do it. She folded the paper again, slower this time, her mind already moving ahead of the moment.
“Bandage her,” Kat said.
One of the guards moved immediately, dropping to a knee and reaching for the wound at her side, already pulling cloth free to apply pressure and slow the bleeding.
The other hesitated. “We’re taking her back?”
“Yes.” Kat’s gaze didn’t lift from the woman as she answered. “To Bloodstone.”
The guard frowned slightly. “And then?”
“Then we get her treated,” Kat said. “And we send her on her way.”
The answer was simple, but it didn’t settle anything. Not for Kat.
Her eyes lifted, scanning the clearing again, the stillness settling differently now that the immediate threat was gone.
“This wasn’t random,” she added, more to herself than to them. “They were waiting for her.”
Waiting. Which meant someone had known. Known where she would be. Known she would be alone.
Kat’s expression hardened slightly as she straightened, her attention returning to the path they had come from. It lined up too cleanly. Too easily.
One of the guards finished binding the wound, tightening the wrap enough to hold without cutting off circulation. “She’s stable,” he said. “For now.”
Kat nodded once, then glanced back down at the unconscious woman.
Whoever she was—whatever she had been dragged into—she wasn’t meant to survive it. Her gaze shifted outward again, toward the edge of the forest where the trail had led them.
“It’s a good thing we got here when we did,” Kat said. Not relief. Not satisfaction. Just a blatant statement of fact, because if they had been even a few minutes later—there wouldn’t have been anything left to save.
- Writer
