Page 1

1

ROBIN OF LOCKSLEY

The King's Road cut through Sherwood like an oozing scar that was never going to heal. Forty feet up in the arms of an ancient oak, I watched a royal caravan crawl along it like a snail that had no real destination.

Easy, I thought.

The convoy stretched six wagons long with twelve guards riding escort, and at its center rolled a noble's carriage. It was lacquered so richly that it gleamed even under the gray morning sky. The man inside must’ve wanted the starving villages he passed to know exactly how little he thought of them.

“Fool,”s I mumbled under my breath.

I continued watching his carriage for a moment, but it was the crates that held my attention. They were stacked in the rear wagons and stamped with the royal crest.

I knew what waited inside them the way I knew the pull of my own bowstring. Those crates carried enough Omega suppressants to see every Omega in Nottinghamshire through the winter, and every last vial was bound for noble estates where pampered ladies would take double doses out of boredom. Meanwhile, common Omegas burned through their heats in locked cellars, praying no Alpha caught the scent and tried to rape them against their will.

The Crown called it distribution, but I called it what it was.

Theft.

I lowered my dark green hood over the locs that decorated my head before settling deeper into the branch, letting the bark bite through my sleeves. My grandmother used to say that stillness was its own kind of strength, that the oak survived storms not by fighting the wind but by holding fast to what lay beneath it. I thought of her often. Her hands had guide mine through embroidery sessions I’d hated and remedies I loved, but I had let her patience become my own.

Below me, the caravan rolled closer.

"No unnecessary blood," I said, running my thumb along the string of my bow to check the tension.

Somewhere in the neighboring tree, Little John groaned with all the drama of a man dying slowly of my company. "You say that every time."

I smiled beneath my hood. "Because every time you need reminding."

His answering grumble carried just enough affection to soften it, and I heard the others shifting into position around us, quiet as falling leaves. Much settled into the branches to the west while Alana took her perch above the bend, and somewhere beyond the ridge Tuck waited with the horses, muttering prayers he claimed were for our souls but were mostly for his bad knees.

My father used to say that the House of Locksley existed to protect the people. He said it the way other men had recited scripture, with his hand over his heart and his eyes on the horizon. Our family had earned its name when my ancestor, a Moor named General Idris al-Locksley, crossed the sea and bled beside an English king who rewarded loyalty with land instead of chains. For generations we kept that bargain with the people of Sherwood, and the people kept it with us.

Then a lord's lie put my father's head on a block, and the Crown that owed us everything took everything instead.

I nocked my first arrow and sighted the lead wagon.

Today, I intended to honor my father's promise anyway.

The reins of the lead horses stretched taut as the driver guided them around the bend, and I loosed. My arrow sheared through the leather in a single clean stroke, and the horses bolted forward while the wagon lurched sideways. The entire caravan collapsed into beautiful, blooming chaos.

The Merry Men dropped from the trees like the forest itself had decided to fight back.

I slid down through the branches and hit the road running, moving through the confusion the way my grandfather taught me to move through the dark, reading the currents of it, letting the panic of others become a map. A guard swung at me and I stepped inside his reach, hooked his ankle, and put him on his back with his own momentum before relieving him of his sword.

Another grabbed for my cloak and earned an elbow to the jaw that sat him down in the mud to reconsider his choices.

I disarmed and disabled and did nothing more. Because dead men fed no one, and I refused to let the Crown make a killer of me on top of everything else it had made me.

Orphan…

The carriage door burst open and a noble stumbled out into the wreckage of his morning, his velvet doublet straining with outrage. His face had gone the color of spoiled wine.

"You dare attack the Crown?" He seethed.

I drew another arrow and leveled it at the enormous ruby brooch pinned over his heart, mostly because it made such a tempting target.

"No." I let him watch me smile. "Just the people hiding behind it."