The tiger male’s eyes moved over the baboons first, then the broken walls, then the blood on the ground.
Finally, his gaze landed on Odette.
But it did not stay.
His pale blue eyes passed over her as if she was only another blood-stained thing on the ground, not a female who had just made a boar beastman fall in front of the whole hollow.
His expression did not change.
His mouth did not move.
There was no surprise in his face, no pity, no anger, and not even the faintest trace of curiosity.
He simply looked past her and continued taking in the thorn walls, the torn roots, the wounded males, the crying females, and the baboon beasts standing too close to the gate.
For some reason, that made Odette feel colder than if he had stared.
Most males looked at her too much.
They looked at her face, her legs, her hair, her feather crests, her blood, her mouth, or the way her body was still shaking even when she tried to stand straight.
But this male looked once and dismissed her so cleanly that it felt as if she had not been seen at all.
Only then did Odette notice the beasts standing with him.
They were not only males.
There were females among them too.
That caught her eyes more than his cold face did, because the females did not look like the females of Thorn Hollow.
They were not tucked behind males.
They were not crouching near roots with children hidden against their chests.
They stood openly beside the warriors, mud on their legs, scars on their arms, sharp bone blades at their waists, and fresh blood drying on their fingers as if they had used their own hands in the fighting.
Some had striped tails moving behind them.
Some had claw marks across their shoulders.
One female had her hair tied back with vine and a dead bird hanging from her belt by its feet, as if she had hunted it herself and forgotten to look proud about it.
Odette stared at them before she could stop herself.
So females could stand like that.
So females could carry weapons.
So females could smell of blood that was not only their own.
A strange ache opened inside her chest, not soft and not sweet, but sharp enough that it almost made her angry.
This was the life she had wanted without ever seeing it clearly.
She had wanted to move, hunt, learn, fight, choose, and be more than something hidden behind roots until a male came to claim her.
She had thought that desire made her strange because Thorn Hollow had always treated her hunger for freedom like sickness, but now she was looking at females who stood in the open air with their heads raised.
The baboon envoy was no longer smiling.
A sound came from one of the elders behind Odette.
It was not loud.
It was barely more than breath forced through an old throat, but the moment it left him, every beast close enough to hear it went still.
“Rauvan.”
Odette’s fingers tightened around the torn strap of her canvas bag before she even understood why her body had reacted.
The name moved through Thorn Hollow faster than blood scent.
One female stopped crying.
A wounded guard lifted his head from the mud.
Even the baboon envoy’s mouth twitched once, as if the name had struck him across the teeth.
Rauvan.
Odette knew that name.
Every beast in the Red Canopy knew that name, but hearing it in old warnings and seeing the male who carried it were two different things.
In old whispers around fire pits, in frightened warnings between hunting paths, and in bitter stories told by males who had lost blood to his people, he was called Rauvan of the Saber-Tooth War-Pride.
Some called him White-Fang Rauvan because of his hair, which fell in thick white strands around his hard face and made the dark markings across his skin look even sharper.
Some called him the Frost-Eyed Butcher because his eyes were a pale blue that looked too calm when he killed.
Odette had heard the stories.
She had heard that his people did not keep their females soft.
She had heard that saber-tooth females hunted, fought, and tore open throats beside their males.
She had heard that their war-pride moved through the Red Canopy 1like a living storm of claws, teeth, hides, cubs, old ones, pregnant females, hunters, healers, and killers, thousands of beast people following one path because Rauvan led them and because very few living creatures were foolish enough to stand in front of him.
But now he was here.
He was much larger than Odette expected, tall and heavily built, with the thick strength of a beast made for close killing.
His chest was bare, and dark saber-tooth markings ran over his shoulders, arms, ribs, and throat like shadows burned into skin.
A long scar cut from the side of his left brow down toward his cheekbone, stopping just before his mouth, and instead of making him ugly, it made his cold beauty look more dangerous, as if even his face had survived a fight that should have ended him.
His hide skirt was rough and dark, tied low at his waist, and old blood had dried along one edge.
He did not look like a male who needed to prove he was strong.
That was what made him frightening.
Rauvan had not come for Odette.
He had not come because Thorn Hollow had been attacked, and he had not come because a female had been thrown into the mud, beaten by elders, or threatened by baboons.
Thorn Hollow’s suffering meant nothing to him.
His own people were moving through the Red Canopy, and that was enough trouble already.
The saber-tooth war-pride had been traveling for many sunsets, thousands of beast people shifting between river paths, root caves, open stone beds, and high ground where the young and wounded could sleep without being dragged away in the dark.
They moved because the wet season had changed the low hunting grounds, because prey had begun to vanish from old trails, and because something deeper in the forest had started pushing beasts out of places they had once owned.
The journey had been hard but controlled.
Then the baboons crossed too close to his hunting ground.
They had not only taken prey.
They had drawn blood from two of his outer hunters and frightened a group of young females gathering bitter leaves near a stream.
None of the young females had been taken, because Rauvan’s people did not leave their females helpless, but the insult was enough.
A baboon troop testing his path while his people were moving was not a small thing.
It was a bite at the edge of his pride, and if he did not answer it, other teeth would follow.
So he had followed the blood scent.
Now the baboons wanted to step back.
Odette saw it in the envoy’s shoulders.
She saw it in the way his long fingers stopped flexing and the way the males behind him shifted closer together.
They still looked ugly and hungry, but their hunger had met something larger than itself, and now it did not know where to go.
The elders of Thorn Hollow saw it too.
The Red Canopy is a massive ancient forest.
It is called The Red Canopy because from the sky, bird beastmen had noticed that the leaves turn rust-red during the dry season and from above it looks like the whole forest is bleeding.