Chapter 3: Treasury

The guest quarters were smaller than the room she'd had as a child, tucked into the west wing of the pack hall where visiting dignitaries and traders usually stayed. Mira set her single bag on the narrow bed and stood at the window for a long time, watching the last light drain out of the training yards below, where a handful of young wolves were still running drills in the dusk.

She recognized none of them. Three years was long enough for an entire new generation of pups to grow into fighters, long enough for the world to keep turning without her in it. That should have felt like relief. Instead it sat in her chest like something stolen.

She made herself stop watching and pulled the treasury folder Priya had left on the desk, flipping through pages of numbers by lamplight until the ache in her chest had something else to focus on.

Ashwood's finances were worse than she'd expected. The border war seven months ago — Kade's father's old rival pack testing the succession, probing to see if the young Alpha's grief had made him weak — had cost more than territory. It had cost warriors, supplies, three seasons of harvest revenue redirected into defense spending that hadn't produced a single acre gained. The loan Kade had taken to fund it had seemed, on paper, like a reasonable bridge. It had become a noose instead.

She was good at this now — reading a ledger the way she used to read her own grief, turning columns of numbers into a shape she could understand and, eventually, control. By the time the lamp burned low, she had a fair picture of exactly how much trouble Ashwood was in, and exactly how much leverage that gave Ironclaw.

More than enough to take the twenty percent, if Rurik wanted it.

She closed the folder and sat with that thought for a long time in the dark.

---

The treasury meeting the next morning was held in a room she remembered too well — the same council chamber where she'd once sat beside Kade's father as his son's intended, learning pack governance she'd never gotten the chance to practice. The long table was the same. The map of Ashwood land on the far wall was the same, though someone had added new border markings in red ink where the war had redrawn lines that used to be settled.

Kade was already there when she arrived, along with an older wolf she recognized instantly and wished she hadn't — Elder Thorne, silver-haired now instead of merely graying, the same man who'd pushed hardest for her rejection three years ago, sitting at Kade's right hand like nothing had changed.

Thorne's eyes flicked over her with mild, dismissive interest — a stranger, an outsider, nothing worth a second look. It should have felt like victory. Instead something old and bitter curdled in her stomach.

"Ms. Voss," Kade said, gesturing to the seat across from him. "Elder Thorne sits on pack council and oversees finances. He'll be part of these discussions."

"Fine." Mira sat, opened her folder, and made herself focus on the numbers instead of the man who'd once called her too weak to lead beside his Alpha. "I've reviewed the accounts Priya provided. I'd like to start with the loan terms as they currently stand, and then discuss what Ashwood can realistically offer toward repayment."

"Straight to business," Thorne said, something dry in his voice. "Ironclaw trains its collectors well."

"Ironclaw doesn't waste time," Mira said. "Neither should we, given the pack's position."

Kade's jaw tightened slightly at that, and she watched him decide not to rise to it. Good. That was new — the Kade she remembered would have snapped back immediately, prideful and quick to defend Ashwood's honor even when the numbers didn't support it. Three years had taught him something too, apparently.

"The pack can offer partial payment now," Kade said. "A quarter of the outstanding balance, from this season's harvest revenue, with the remainder restructured over eighteen months at whatever interest rate your employer considers fair."

"Eighteen months is a long time to hold an open debt on a pack that just lost a war," Mira said. "My employer will want assurance the pack's finances are stable enough to sustain that timeline. Which, based on what I've seen—" she tapped the folder "—is not currently the case."

Thorne's expression sharpened. "You've had these records less than a day."

"I read quickly."

"She's bluffing," Thorne said to Kade, not bothering to lower his voice, as though Mira weren't sitting three feet away. "Trying to rattle us into worse terms."

"I'm not bluffing," Mira said evenly, and slid a page across the table — the harvest revenue projections, the ones that assumed no further conflict, no bad weather, no unexpected losses, and still came up short of covering both the loan and the pack's ordinary operating costs. "This is your own accountant's projection. Even in the best case, eighteen months doesn't cover the gap. My employer isn't in the business of extending credit to packs that can't service it."

Kade studied the page for a long moment, and something tired moved behind his eyes — the particular exhaustion of a leader watching his own numbers confirm what he already feared. "Then what does Ironclaw propose?"

"A shorter timeline. Twelve months, aggressive repayment, and Ironclaw takes an active interest in ensuring the pack's revenue streams are protected during that period." She paused, choosing the next words carefully. "Which means no further military engagement that isn't strictly defensive. My employer doesn't fund packs that keep starting wars they can't afford."

"We didn't start it," Kade said, sharp now, some old fire finally showing through. "Cross Pack tested our border the month after my father died. I wasn't going to let them take Ashwood land because they thought grief made us an easy target."

Something in Mira went very still.

"Cross Pack," she repeated.

"Selene Cross's father," Kade said. "Old grudge. Older than either of us. He's been waiting for an opportunity since before I was Alpha." He caught something in her expression — a flicker she hadn't quite managed to smother — and studied her with that same unsettling attention from the orchard. "You know the name."

"Everyone in the debt-collection business knows the major packs," Mira said, too quickly, and made herself slow down. "Cross Pack has a reputation."

It wasn't a lie. Cross Pack absolutely had a reputation — one Ironclaw tracked closely, because Selene Cross had spent the last two years quietly expanding her father's mercenary contracts into territory Ironclaw considered its own. Somewhere underneath the numbers on this table, Mira suspected, Selene's fingerprints were on more of Ashwood's misfortune than anyone in this room currently realized.

That was a problem for later. Right now she had a debt to collect and a cover to maintain, and she'd already let too much slip in one morning.

"Twelve months," she said, steering them back. "Aggressive repayment schedule. I'll draft terms this afternoon and have them ready for your signature by tomorrow, assuming the council agrees."

Thorne looked ready to argue further, but Kade held up a hand, and something in the small, tired gesture told her he was more worn down by this war and its aftermath than he wanted anyone in this room to see.

"Draft the terms," he said. "We'll review them tonight."

The meeting broke, Thorne rising first with a curt nod that didn't quite qualify as respect, leaving Mira and Kade alone at the long table for one uncomfortable moment before she could gather her folder and go.

"Ms. Voss."

She stopped at the door, back to him, and made herself breathe evenly before she turned around.

"You're good at this," Kade said. There was something almost rueful in it. "Reading numbers. Reading people, I suspect. It's an unusual skill for someone your age to have mastered so completely."

"I had a good teacher."

"Ironclaw's commander?"

"Something like that." She held his gaze, daring him to keep pushing, half-terrified he would and half-terrified, in some old broken corner of herself, that he wouldn't.

Kade studied her for a long moment, something working behind his eyes that she still couldn't name — recognition trying to surface through three years of change, or maybe just the particular unease of a man who couldn't stop noticing a stranger.

"You remind me of someone," he said finally, quiet. "I can't place who. It's going to bother me until I do."

"I get that a lot," Mira said, and left before her voice could betray anything else.

She made it three hallways before she had to stop, one hand braced against the wall, and remember how to breathe.