Asra’s hunt began the same way her hunts always began these days—in a dusty saloon on the outskirts of the capital city.

She kept to the shadows at the far end of the bar, the wide brim of her cow-herding hat pulled low over her face. The stench of tobacco smoke and cheap ale poisoned the air, and her ears buzzed with chatter and the grating notes of the pianist in the corner. The only thing that didn’t offend Asra’s senses was the temperature; the interior of the wooden building was mercifully cool compared to the summer heat outside.

She glanced to the corkboard pinned full of wanted posters near the swinging double doors at the entrance. The likenesses of countless gunslingers and magic-wielding outlaws glared back at her. Her own face would be on one of those yellowing pages if the humans knew what her face looked like when she appeared human.

Her quarry’s face should have been on that board as well, but his crimes had been sanctioned by his king. After all, the slaughter of Asra’s people fifteen years ago had been a victory in King Nolan’s eyes.

Asra drummed her fingers on the bar, worrying once again that the retired general may not come through this small town. She’d lost track of him a few days ago, on the edge of the southern badlands.

She forced the worry aside. This was the last watering hole before Windemere City, and humans weren’t as adapted to surviving the badlands as Asra’s kind. He would need to pass through here eventually. She would just need to be patient.

Unfortunately, that was not one of her strong suits.

“Another glass?” the barkeep asked.

The woman’s pinned-back blonde curls bounced as she nodded toward Asra’s empty glass of milk. The woman’s demeanor was stiff, professional.

Asra smiled. “You could just say it’s a weird drink for a grown woman, if you want.”

“I don’t want. I’d much rather have you here guzzling down milk like a half-starved calf than deal with most of the riffraff here making a mess out of my bar. You want another or not?”

Asra shook her head. “I’m done, thanks. What do I owe?”

“Three royals, darlin’.”

Asra counted out three paper bills. Of all the humans’ inventions, this was by far the strangest. The value of precious metal and jewels at least made some sense—humans were as obsessed with shiny trinkets as magpies—but Asra would never understand the fixation with the odd scraps of paper.

“You be careful out there, now,” the woman said as she took the money. “Werewolves are bound to be out tonight, especially with it being both His Majesty’s birthday and the full moon.”

Asra pulled the sleeve of her leather riding duster down over the back of her hand, hoping to hide the bright-yellow sigils emblazoned on her brown skin. The sigils and her amber eyes were the only visual indicators she was not human herself.

“Don’t tell me you take those ghost stories seriously, Yvonne,” a man a few seats down said. “No such thing as werewolves.”

“Yeah?” Yvonne asked, hands on her hips. “What do you think is killing all those rich folk, then?”

The man shrugged. “Hellhounds, of course. We all know the gods ain’t happy with the king.”

Yvonne’s pale face fell even paler, and the patrons within earshot all quieted.

“Keep your voice down,” Yvonne whispered hoarsely. “You know there’s guards everywhere right now.”

“So?” the man said, puffing out his chest. “It’s the truth.” He spat his chewing tobacco into a tin can in his hand. “What do we need him for, anyway? We were all doing just fine on our own before that pup decided we needed to be ‘unified.’”

“I’m serious, Charlie,” Yvonne snapped. “Shut your mouth.”

Even with the silver band on her wrist, Asra could smell the alcohol that emboldened the man’s words on his breath. She glanced around the room. No sign of soldiers or the king’s royal guard. Regardless, Asra should stop this man’s ranting before he got himself and everyone else here in trouble.

“My family’s been hunting wolves for generations,” she said with a shrug. “I can handle myself.”

“All right, tough girl,” Yvonne said, the corner of her mouth twitching. “I ordered extra milk just for you, so don’t go dying on me.”

Asra’s heart sank. Once she dispatched this general, there was no one left to eliminate besides the king.

“I don’t think I’ll be back,” she said. Then, she left an extra twenty royals on the bar, hopefully enough to cover the woman’s costs of extra milk.

Sadness flashed across the woman’s face, then her usual flippant composure took over. She was likely used to regulars venturing out into the badlands and never returning.

“Well,” Yvonne said, snatching the twenty-royal bill off the bar. “Been a lot of cats hanging out around here. I’m sure they’ll appreciate the milk.”

Asra smiled. “Give some extra to the gray one, with the one white paw. She’s my favorite.”

Yvonne returned the smile. “Will do, darlin’. You take care.”

Asra stood and tipped her hat to the barkeep, the way she’d watched humans do countless times, then took her leave.

As she pushed through the swinging double doors, the heat of the sun accosted her, and she closed her eyes against the glaring light. Asra blinked and the desert vista came into focus. Her quarry must be truly desperate to hide out here, rather than his more temperate and green home of Windemere City.

Good. His fear would make him easier to sniff out.

She removed the silver band from her wrist and put it into a pocket in the leather rucksack she slung over her back, and the full range of her sharp senses returned to her. Even for her sensitive nose, there wasn’t much to smell out here—the saloon’s smoke behind her, the bald eagle soaring high above, and the sparse sagebrush dotting the rugged terrain.

She headed to the rocky outcropping a few hundred yards away that she’d used as a hunting blind many times before. As she settled herself into a crook in the red rocks, she closed her eyes and focused on her nose.

It didn’t take long for the stench of adrenals to settle into her blood, as it always did before a hunt. She would smell it in the general’s blood as well, sweeter than her own, as he tried fruitlessly to run from her, or to fight her off, or perhaps to bargain with her for his life. Her stomach twisted at the thought, and bile rose in her throat as she imagined his family mourning over his casket.

And then she thought of her own family, her father and her younger siblings, now nothing more than bones turned to dust beneath the rubble of her home. She forced the nausea away.

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The general had chosen his fate fifteen years ago. Asra was simply here to deliver it to him.

Evening had fallen when she smelled it—not just the human’s scent, but her own as well. The scent of her blood, powering the spell that made the human general dangerous. It was the reason he couldn’t be allowed to live.

And it didn’t take long for the man himself to come into focus.

The old general slouched in the saddle of an exhausted horse. He was the complete opposite of how he’d looked when he infiltrated the protection spell of Asra’s hometown. His brown hair was disheveled and greasy, his white skin burned red under the unforgiving sun. There was nothing left of the bravado he’d shown fifteen years ago.

Asra dropped down in front of him, her leather duster billowing around her. The horse balked, but was quickly brought back into line by its experienced rider.

The general straightened in the saddle. He took a long drag from the cigarette in his mouth before he spoke.

“It took you some time to find me, dog-woman,” he said in an exhale of smoke. “Losing your edge?”

Asra’s pulse roared in her ears. She remembered his voice that night in the palace, barking orders at his soldiers to hold her down as the human doctor drew her blood. Judging by his stench, he still favored the same brand of cigarettes.

Asra pulled off her duster and shoes and tossed them aside. The cotton shirt and trousers were replaceable, but shoes were expensive, and she was rather attached to her duster. She’d tanned the leather and sewn it together herself.

I know it’s pointless to run,” the human called. “But shouldn’t we do this somewhere away from people? We wouldn’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

Asra bared her teeth.

“No tricks,” the general said, holding his hands up in the very picture of innocence. “You’d be able to sniff them out, anyway, wouldn’t you, shapechanger?”

Asra turned back to the saloon behind her, glowing on the horizon. The further she could keep the violence away from innocents, the better.

She turned back to the general and nodded.

Asra followed the man around the bend into a shallow canyon. The red rocks towered over her on either side, threatening to topple down on her at any moment. She took a deep breath and willed her trembling hands to still and her heart rate to ease.

Something skittered across the rocks above her—a cougar, perhaps. She didn’t dare look up to confirm this for fear of losing what little nerve she had.

She rounded a final bend, and the narrow canyon opened into a wide clearing. The general sat calmly atop his still horse, and alarm bells went off in Asra’s head. She finally glanced to the top of the canyon walls.

The source of the flurry above the canyon was not a cougar, but a squat man. His hands fumbled a bundle of odd red tubes.

Asra’s nostrils flared, and she sniffed it just in time—the dynamite the humans were so fond of embedded into the cliffs, the long wicks snaking down to the ground and ending near the hooves of the general’s horse. The man raised his fist, a lodestone clutched inside. Magic emanated from the iridescent stone, prickling against Asra’s skin, and his other hand erupted in a torrent of flames, aimed directly toward the dynamite’s wick beneath him.

An ordinary fire would have taken minutes to meander up to the dynamite above, but the magic flames slipped across the wicks like the current of a river. Cliffs above her exploded into a landslide, and the sound of thunder roared in her ears. For a moment, she was frozen, just as she’d been as a little girl watching from a bird's-eye view as similar boulders plummeted beneath her, burying everything she’d held dear.

Asra forced her quivering limbs to move, and in an instant she changed from a human woman into a giant gazehound. She dodged the stones at sharp turns and breathtaking speeds even her canine ancestors would envy. As she neared the general, the man raised the lodestone again, flames once more leaping from his empty palm toward Asra.

She dodged the flames, then nipped at the horse’s hooves. The beast reared back, and the general fumbled and dropped the lodestone to grip the saddle pommel. When the horse settled, the man reached for the pistol in his holster.

Asra tried to spook his steed again, but the general was too quick on the trigger. The gun cracked, and pain blossomed through Asra’s front left shoulder.

Ears ringing, Asra leapt over the horse’s back, snagging the general’s shirt with her jaws as she passed, and she wrenched him off the saddle. She landed on top of him with enough force that the skin at the back of his head split, and she smelled his blood before she saw it pooling beneath him.

He’d known—he knew what it would do to her to face that rockslide. He’d been there for the slaughter of her comrades; he’d been there when her father had buried himself beneath the mountain to let the rest of them escape.

What the general clearly didn’t know was how dedicated Asra was to preventing that from ever happening again. She snarled down at him and pinned his chest with her massive paw. The man heaved and coughed before he spoke.

“You’re faster than I thought,” he wheezed.

“You’re dead.”

The words were somewhat distorted as she forced them past her canine fangs, but they were still perfectly intelligible to the general at her mercy.

“I fully expected that,” he said. His toothy grin was stained with his own blood. “Why else do you think I was here?”

Asra’s heart leapt into her throat. “You were a distraction.”

“His Majesty knew you couldn’t resist taking me out. He’s somewhere safe by now. You’ll be lucky if you ever see him again.”

She growled. Nolan had been out, away from the protection spells of the palace, vulnerable and exposed. She could have had him, but she was too distracted by the general dangling himself in front of her.

“You were bait,” Asra said. “He used you.”

The man choked on his laughter. “You don’t think I was forced into this, do you? I volunteered, and I would do it again. I would die a hundred deaths in service of my king.”

Asra snarled. There was nothing left to say to this monster.

She snapped at his throat, and one quick jerk of her head simultaneously snapped his neck and tore out his jugular. He was dead before his body could register any pain—a fate far more merciful than he’d granted Asra’s people.

Asra watched him for a moment. She let the drool drip from her tongue and fangs, carrying away the foul taste of his blood. She glanced to the bullet wound in her shoulder. It hurt like hell, but the wound was largely superficial, and it would heal soon enough.

Groans from beneath the rocks caught Asra’s attention. The general’s lackey must still be alive. Asra shook herself off and limped toward the man to pull him from the landslide. No one deserved to suffocate to death beneath rubble.

By the time she reached him, the stout man had already extricated himself from the rocks. His hand flew to his holster, and he aimed his pistol at Asra with quivering hands.

“Don’t,” Asra said. “I don’t want to kill you.”

The man slowly lowered his gun, his eyes darting from Asra to the canyon exit and back again. He was filthy from the debris, but the golden thread of the embroidery on his silk overcoat still shone in the moonlight. A nobleman, clearly unfamiliar with actual combat. He’d likely hoped to gain some favor with the king by helping the general with his fool’s errand. The general had likely not informed him that this was a suicide mission.

“You’re from Windemere City?” Asra asked.

“Yes.” The man’s voice warbled.

“Then I have a message for your king.”

“What do you wish me to tell him?”

Asra’s nose curled. “One hundred and twenty-seven.”

“Of course,” the man said. “Anything … anything else?”

“No.”

She jerked her head to the canyon exit, and the man scrambled to his feet. He mounted the general’s horse and rode off into the night.

Asra sighed, and moved toward the exit herself. As she neared the end of the clearing, she glanced one more time to the body of the man who had ravaged her home.

One hundred and twenty-seven down.

One to go.