I was fifteen.
Papa was teaching me how to disarm a wolf in close quarters. I had been faster than he expected. I had gotten under his guard. He had taken me down on the second pass — hard, no apology — and the metal of the buckle dragged across the stone of the training-ground wall as I went down. When I sat up he had handed the gear back and said only, again, and I had gone again, and again, and the scratch had been on the buckle for the rest of my life.
That was the night I stopped being his student. That was the night I started being his weapon.
I close my eyes. My mind drifted to the night of that day, when I had gone on my first patrol assignment.
Even if I was three years younger than the standard age where I had a wolf, Papa wanted me to learn before my wolf came. The team that
