Chapter 3

The next day I had the honey cakes sent back exactly as they came.

No scolding, no warning.

I only added one sentence.

"Silver Ridge has never decided anyone's place on the strength of a pup whose bloodline hasn't been confirmed."

Word got out, and Lucas came to me before nightfall.

"Why are you treating Mia like this?"

It was the first time he had brought up her name on his own.

I looked up. "I thought you barely knew her."

He paused. "I only heard she'd sent something over."

"A young woman from an outlying supply post. What could she send that's worth you coming to me about it?"

Lucas's expression stiffened for a heartbeat.

"Elena, I don't want to play word games with you."

"Then let's keep it simple."

I pushed the Riverbend cabin expense records across to him.

"Why is her housing being paid out of your trade line?"

He glanced at them.

"Special arrangement."

"Approved by whom?"

"Me."

"Why?"

"She's pregnant and she isn't well."

"Plenty of she-wolves in Silver Ridge get pregnant every year. Do the rest of them live in patrol cabins?"

Lucas's patience visibly ebbed away.

"What is it you actually want to ask?"

I looked at him.

"I want to hear you say it yourself."

He said nothing.

I waited. A few seconds later he pushed the records back to me.

"You've been too sensitive lately."

I laughed a little.

Not because it was funny.

Because I had finally heard the line I knew best. When someone can't explain the facts, they start explaining your feelings.

"Fine." I nodded. "Then I won't ask."

At the council meeting the next day I proposed a small adjustment.

All special housing, medical care, and guard assignments would go through an open approval process.

No one objected.

Lucas couldn't object either.

He sat at the far end of the long table, his face calm.

Only I knew what that one rule would cut off.

Three days later, Mia's life changed.

She had been getting fresh meat and pregnancy herbs delivered straight to the cabin every day. Now she could only draw what any ordinary member drew. The two guards who had always escorted her to the healer went back to border patrol.

When Leah brought me the news, my face gave away nothing.

"She went to Lucas."

"What did she say?"

"Asking why even her herbs had been cut off."

I looked up. "And what did he tell her?"

"That the audit is just strict at the moment, and everything will be different once the pup is born."

I closed my eyes for a moment.

Even now he was still painting her a future. Making me believe he barely knew her, and making her believe all of this was temporary.

A few days later there was a winter supper at the supply post.

I didn't go. Leah did.

She came back that night looking grim.

"Mia had some fruit wine."

"A pregnant woman can drink?"

"There's almost no alcohol in it."

"And?"

Leah hesitated. "She said some she-wolves hold a position and still won't give the pack a pup."

I laughed once. "What else?"

"Someone told her to watch her mouth. She said she only felt sorry for a man who truly wants to be a father."

That one didn't need any translating.

I leaned back in my chair.

Until then I had still been willing to see Mia as a woman Lucas had deceived.

Not anymore.

She knew. She knew he had a mate, she knew who I was, she knew that cabin and those herbs and those guards were never hers.

She simply believed that if the pup in her belly mattered enough, she could turn what wasn't hers into something she was owed.

That night I pulled the full resource records for the past six months again and went through them page by page.

Toward dawn I found a pattern of transfers that had been broken up across different accounts.

Two border patrol guards.

Temporarily reassigned twelve times over the past two months.

Destination: Riverbend to the healer's residence.

Requested for: Mia Grant.

I stared at that line for a long time.

An affair. Cheating. Betrayal.

Until then, all of that had been between Lucas and me.

But he had moved the pack's guards.

That made it something more than a marriage.