I stared at her, wide-eyed. "Your Highness wants me to what? Transfer my dowry into Augusta's name?"
The audacity of this woman.
Augusta trailed behind the Luna Supreme, her voice small and trembling. "Sister, I may only be a lesser-born daughter, but I'm still a daughter of the Ironhold Pack. I'm about to become the Alpha Heir's Luna. I simply don't want to bring shame upon our bloodline's name."
The Alpha Heir tenderly wiped her tears, then turned to me with a mocking look. "I'll have my Chief Sentry deliver my personal decree to Alpha Sovereign Fenwick Ashvane's estate. They are to treat the future Luna with the respect she deserves and prepare a proper bonding tribute for her."
By the time Augusta returned to the Ashvane Pack Estate, the Alpha Heir's Chief Sentry had already arrived and delivered the message.
The moment Augusta stepped through the door, she dropped to her knees before my mother, the picture of pitiful innocence. "Mother, the Alpha Heir took pity on me for my humble birth and suggested the estate prepare a proper bonding tribute. He said Seraphina could lend me her dowry first, so I'd have something respectable when I enter the Heir's Den."
"Seraphina will only be a secondary mate. No one will care how large her dowry is. Once we're both in the Heir's Den, what's mine and what's hers will be one and the same."
"After all, I may be lesser-born, but I'm still Father's daughter. Surely he wouldn't want the whole realm mocking the Alpha Sovereign of Ironhold for treating his daughters unequally?"
Her eyes glittered with calculation. My mother regarded her with quiet disappointment, then finally spoke. "Enough. Go and rest. Focus on your bonding preparations."
Augusta rose, a satisfied smile playing on her lips as she swept out of the room.
My mother took my hand. "Seraphina, do you truly intend to become the Alpha Heir's secondary mate?"
I shook my head. "Don't worry, Mother. I will never mate with the Alpha Heir. I wouldn't even want to be his Luna, let alone his concubine."
"I've already refused the Luna Supreme's offer to make me a secondary mate, but I doubt she'll give up so easily."
My father's expression turned grave. The scent of cold-forged iron and ancient cedar deepened around him, the way it always did when he was weighing something that could not be undone. "The Ironhold Pack cannot be dragged into the succession struggle. The only way to extricate ourselves is to bond you to someone else before the Sovereign Den can issue a decree."
"If Augusta wants to mate into the Heir's Den, let her. When the time comes, our pack will have its own answer."
On the day of the Alpha Heir's bonding ceremony, crimson banners draped every archway of the Sovereign Den and ceremonial howls echoed across the grounds. When the Alpha Heir arrived at the estate and spotted me standing off to the side, he smiled. "Seraphina, three days from now, I'll petition His Majesty for a decree naming you my secondary mate. Behave yourself, and I'll give you a grand ceremony too."
Then his gaze drifted toward Augusta's courtyard, where forty-eight chests of bonding tribute stood in neat rows. His expression darkened. "Is the Ironhold Pack trying to humiliate me?"
"My Luna, and she brings only forty-eight chests? This is an insult."
My father stepped forward. His Alpha aura, which he had kept carefully banked all morning, unfurled like frost spreading across stone. The air thickened. Several of the assembled wolves shifted their weight, shoulders dropping involuntarily under the pressure. "Forgive the offense, Your Highness, but Augusta is not my biological daughter. Forty-eight chests for a girl I raised out of kindness is more than generous."
