I gave Lena's pack a monthly tithe of ten thousand gold moons. I handled every den expense, every meal, every patrol's provisioning. I ran the legitimate holdings, the trade dens and the coastal hunting grounds, that generated the resources keeping the Greyhollow name alive. One hundred thousand gold moons a moon-cycle, run clean through Ravenfall channels. I was the backbone of a territory that existed only because I held it together.
I never felt like a Luna. I felt like a servant-omega. A servant who paid her own wages and still wasn't permitted to sit at the high table.
And despite all of it, despite every coin and every hour and every sacrifice scraped from the marrow of my loyalty, they still treated me as less than packless.
Tessa crossed the den toward me. Her steps were unhurried, her smile polished to a shine that didn't reach her eyes. She stopped close enough that her scent reached me first, honeysuckle laid too thick over something faintly sour, a brittle copper underneath the sweetness she wore like armor.
"I'm sorry, Iris." Her voice dripped with a sweetness so manufactured it could have come off an assembly line. "If I hadn't decided to join the run at the last moment, you wouldn't have lost your place in the convoy. Honestly, I almost stayed behind when I heard there were no spots left. But Lena insisted she'd handle it. I had no idea she'd make you take the long road on foot." She pressed a hand to her chest in mock sympathy. "I even offered to make the crossing alone, but Lena wouldn't hear of it. She was so worried about me traveling through open territory for that long. So I suppose I should thank you for taking the inconvenience."
Rowan hooked an arm through Tessa's and leaned against her shoulder. "Exactly. Can you imagine Tessa on some back trail for thirty-six hours? All kinds of rogues out there. If some packless lowlife marked a she-wolf like her, what would we do?" She looked at me, and her lip curled with something that lived in the cruel space between amusement and contempt. "Iris, on the other hand, has that look about her. Like a warrior. She'd scare them off before they got within ten feet."
The two of them dissolved into laughter, bright and careless, their voices ringing through the foyer like bells in an empty cathedral.
Lena must have caught the fury settling across my face, because her tone softened. A calculated retreat, not an apology.
"Look. I know this arrangement isn't ideal. But it's the best solution we have." She paused, reaching for something she thought would placate me. "Last moon you were eyeing that pelt-cloak at the trading post on the high road. Why don't you go ahead and get it?"
I held out my hand, palm up. "Fine. Five thousand."
Her expression curdled. "Five thousand? I already said you could get it. Now you want me to pay for it too? Don't push your luck."
I let my hand drop. A smile crossed my face, thin and sharp as a stiletto.
"Since when do I need your permission to spend my own moons, Lena? Tell me. How much do you bring into this den each cycle?"
The flush hit her face like a slap. Her jaw tightened. Her eyes cut away from mine, and beneath the stale leather and souring wine of her scent, something curdled with shame.
"That's not fair," she muttered.
It was perfectly fair.
Lena Greyhollow drew three thousand gold moons a cycle from a handful of minor protection claims, pocket coin that barely covered her cheap wine and her vanity. I generated one hundred thousand a cycle through the Ravenfall-controlled holdings and operations I managed single-handedly. Her earnings didn't cover her own expenses. I had been funding this den, this pack, this entire charade of a bloodline dynasty from the very beginning.
When we were mated, there was no bride-gift. No tribute from the Greyhollow side. Nothing. I had absorbed the five-hundred-thousand-moon blood-debt, added thirty thousand as a mating tribute, and bought the den-estate we lived in with Ravenfall power. Every comfort they enjoyed, every meal on the table, every coin in their pockets, every thread of respectability still clinging to the Greyhollow name, all of it came from me.
If they loved Tessa Thornvale so much, if she was their true Luna, their old neighborhood darling, their precious returning queen, then they could have her.
Let her fund the territory. Let her run the holdings. Let her keep the Council enforcers at bay and the blood-creditors satisfied and the den fed.
Let them see how long the Greyhollow name survived on Thornvale moons.
