The grass was cool against Wolf's stomach, the enchanted robes doing their job—shifting his outline into shadow and vegetation, making him part of the hillside. His breathing was controlled, shallow, the kind of rhythm you learned when staying still meant staying alive.

  The bear man had gone down clean. One shot, center mass, dropped like a puppet with cut strings. Wolf had watched him twitch once, then go still in the alley below. That made six. Six infiltrators trying to breach Jack's compound from the north side, and six bodies cooling in the gathering dusk.

  They weren't amateurs. These soldiers—whoever they were—moved with discipline. Good spacing, tactical awareness, weapons ready. But they weren't expecting resistance from *outside* the compound. They thought they were hitting a distracted target.

  They were wrong.

  Wolf's scope swept the perimeter again, checking angles, watching shadows. The princes were spread out across the sector, each covering their zone. Phillip had two kills. Eric had one. The others were holding position, waiting.

  Professional. Efficient. Silent.

  Wolf found himself impressed despite the situation. The princes moved like they'd had real military training, not just the courtly swordpy and training they had with joining the Hoods. These men knew fieldcraft, fire discipline, overpping sectors. Someone had trained them *right*.

  He shifted slightly, adjusting his position, and that's when he caught it again.

  That scent.

  Wolf's nose twitched. He inhaled slowly, carefully, filtering through the grass and dirt and gunpowder residue.

  *Daisy's scent.*

  Uniquely hers. Warm, unique, distinctly female. The kind of scent that got into your nose and stayed there, branded into memory.

  He frowned, scanning the area around him. Nothing. Just grass, trees, the compound wall behind him. No spotted curvy shape. No beautiful face with that knowing smirk.

  Wolf exhaled slowly, forcing logic back into his brain. *She's not here. You're smelling yourself, you idiot.*

  Of course he was. This morning. Her apartment. Tangled sheets and tangled limbs and hours of her scent getting all over his fur. It was *on* him, in his nose, on his skin, probably soaked into the damn robes despite the shower.

  Hours ter and he could still smell her like she was lying next to him in the grass.

  *Focus.*

  Wolf forced his attention back to the scope. Daisy wasn't here. She was safe, back at Cruel's establishment or in that sparse apartment, nowhere near this clusterfuck. He had a job to do.

  Movement.

  A figure emerged from the service alley two hundred yards out, moving fast and low. Another infiltrator. This one was smaller, faster, one of the squirrel people. Dark tactical gear, submachine gun held ready.

  The squirrel paused at the corner, checking both directions before sprinting across the open ground toward the compound wall.

  Wolf watched the footwork. The spacing. The rhythm.

  *Puppets or Crickets.*

  Had to be one of the cns. That wasn't standard military movement. Wolf recognized the pattern. The way the infiltrator checked corners, moved through open ground. Old Geppetto's legacy, split between his two adopted sons after the master disappeared.

  The question was: which cn was this? And what the hell were they doing here?

  Wolf tracked him. Smooth. Steady. Breathing out as his finger found the trigger.

  The shot cracked across the distance.

  And missed.

  The squirrel jerked sideways—*wrong* sideways—like he'd sensed the bullet before it arrived. The round sparked off stone where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier.

  "Shit," Wolf muttered.

  The assassin didn't panic. Didn't freeze. He dove, rolled, came up moving in that distinctive zigzag pattern. Cn-trained. No question.

  Wolf chambered another round, tracking, leading the target—

  The ninja hit the compound's high wall at full sprint and *ran up it and vaulted* over. Fifteen feet of stone, cleared like it was nothing. Gone over the top and into the courtyard beyond.

  Gone.

  Wolf exhaled slowly, forcing his heartbeat to settle. Seven targets. Six kills. One miss.

  His mirror vibrated. Phillip's voice, quiet and clipped. "Wolf. Hostile breach, north courtyard. Fast mover."

  "I saw him," Wolf said. "Lost visual."

  "Want us to pursue?"

  Wolf considered it. Pursuing meant breaking position, ruining the perimeter, potentially allowing more in. Robin's team was inside already, working their way to the harp. Their job was to hold the line, not chase infiltrators.

  "Negative," Wolf said. "Hold position. Stay on overwatch."

  "Copy."

  Wolf settled back into the grass, scope sweeping the sector again. The ninja bothered him. The assassin being here was not a coincidence.

  One of the cns was hitting Jack's compound at the same time they were stealing the harp.

  That wasn't coincidence.

  Wolf's nose caught Daisy's scent again. Warm and familiar and distracting.

  He closed his eyes for half a second, let himself remember this morning. Her ugh. Her hands on his chest. The way she looked as she orgasmed on top of him.

  *"You're gonna pull it off. You're gonna come back here."*

  Yeah, hopefully they would.