Riven's POV
I've spent two years not wanting anything. That's the job. You go deep, you go cold, you don't let a single person matter, because the second someone matters they turn into the knife somebody holds to your throat.
Then a woman with a bad leg cut me open in the dirt, kept me breathing, and never once asked whose side I was on.
I've wanted things again ever since. Mostly her.
Three days on the road to a pack I've got no business visiting, and I already know how this ends. I don't chase things I'm going to lose. I never have. I'm patient, I'm certain, and I don't miss.
She just doesn't know that yet.
We stop the second night at a waystation on the edge of Blackwood land.
Rough place. Border outpost, runs on cash and looking away. The man behind the counter takes one look at
