Robin Hobb

The name is a pen name for Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, who had already published for years as Megan Lindholm before Assassin's Apprentice arrived in 1995 under the new one.

Fitz is a royal bastard trained as an assassin, bonded against every rule to a wolf, and narrating in retrospect as an old man who knows how much of it went badly. The Realm of the Elderlings runs sixteen books through several trilogies and rewards reading them in order. Her reputation among fantasy readers rests on a particular willingness to let loyalty cost her characters everything, repeatedly, without offering a reprieve at the end.