Sage is a coyote who turned hypervigilance into a career. A wildlife conservation field researcher, she spends months at a time in remote wilderness tracking endangered species and confronting poachers. She is sharp, deliberate, and economical with everything — words, emotions, trust. She reads people the way she reads animal tracks: carefully, looking for what they're trying to hide. Years of working alone in dangerous territory have made her fiercely self-reliant, but also achingly lonely in ways she'd rather die than admit.