Chapter 4: The Tribute

Kade POV

The new moon rose over the southern border like a closed eye.

No light. No silver on the river. Just the black outline of the pines and the cold creeping up from the water. It was the kind of night old wolves called a blind moon, when the Goddess looked away and anything could happen.

I didn't believe in omens anymore. I'd stopped believing in a lot of things five years ago.

But I'd brought forty warriors anyway.

They stood in a long line behind me at the ford, torches hissing in the damp air. Rhys was at my right. Mara was at my left, in full leathers, her twin blades crossed on her back. She had insisted on coming. I'd let her, because Mara watching an enemy was worth ten scouts.

"They're late," she said.

"Silvercrest is always late," Rhys said. "They think it makes them look important."

"It makes them look like they can't read a calendar."

Some of the warriors laughed. I didn't. My eyes were fixed on the far bank, where the road came down out of the trees.

For ten days, ever since that second letter, Ash had refused to go back to sleep.

He hadn't spoken. He hadn't howled. He'd just been there, restless, pacing a slow circle in the back of my mind like a wolf that smelled something on the wind but couldn't find it. The strand of gold hair had burned with the rest of the letter, but I could still smell honey and white roses on my fingers when I woke at night.

It made no sense. The bond with Celeste was dead. I had felt it die. I had felt it tear out of me in front of nine packs.

So why had my wolf woken at her scent?

I hadn't told anyone. Not Rhys, not the old healer, certainly not Mara. An Alpha whose wolf stirred for the woman who had humiliated him in front of the whole North would be a laughingstock all over again. I'd spent five years making sure no one in Thornvale ever laughed at me.

Mara nudged her horse closer to mine. "You've been quiet all day," she said, low enough that the others couldn't hear. "Thinking about her?"

I didn't need to ask who she meant. "Thinking about what she wants."

"I know what she wants." Mara's mouth curled. "She wants to see if you'll bite. She sends you some pretty little thing with soft eyes, and she waits to hear that the Iron Alpha took her to his bed. Then she laughs, because she knows you're still hers."

"I'm not anyone's."

"I know." She leaned in, her knee brushing mine. "But she doesn't. So let me deal with the girl, Kade. Put her in the kitchens. Put her in the laundry. Let me make sure she never gets close enough to your door to cause trouble."

It was a reasonable offer. It was also the kind of offer that came with a price, and Mara's prices always ended in the same place: the empty seat beside mine at the high table.

"We'll see," I said.

She smiled as if I'd said yes, and nudged her horse back into line.

"Torches," Rhys said quietly.

They came out of the trees in a slow column. Twelve riders on grey horses, Silvercrest's river crest stitched on their cloaks in thread that had once been silver and was now closer to grey. A covered wagon rattled behind them. The horses were thin. The riders were thinner.

"Gods," Mara murmured. "Look at them. They really are starving."

The lead rider splashed into the ford and stopped halfway across. He was older, heavy-jawed, with a captain's knot on his shoulder.

"Alpha Ravenmoor." He dipped his head, not quite low enough. "I am Captain Dorran of Silvercrest. I come on behalf of Alpha Lucian Vane and Luna Celeste to settle the blood debt between our packs."

"You burned two farms and killed a man with four children," I said. "Say it properly."

His jaw worked. "To settle the debt for the death of your herder and the damage to your lands."

"Better. Where's my payment?"

Dorran turned in his saddle and barked an order. Two of his men climbed down from the wagon and pulled back the canvas.

They lifted someone out.

She was small. That was the first thing I noticed. Small and thin, wrapped in a grey wool cloak that had been patched at the hem. Her hood was down, and her dark hair was pulled back in a plain braid. Her wrists were tied in front of her with a length of cord.

They'd tied her up. Like livestock.

The men waded her across the ford between them, water to her knees, and she didn't make a sound. Not when she slipped on a stone. Not when one of them yanked her up by the arm hard enough to make her stumble. She just kept walking, eyes fixed on the water.

They stopped in front of my horse.

"The tribute," Dorran said. "Wren Hollis. Twenty-two years old. In good health. Obedient. She's yours, by the old law, to keep or discard."

I looked down at her.

She didn't look up.

Something about that irritated me more than it should have. I swung down from my horse and walked over to her, my boots crunching on the gravel of the bank. My warriors went quiet.

"Look at me," I said.

She lifted her head slowly.

She had grey eyes. Not blue like the sky over Silvercrest, but grey like the river before a storm. Wide, wary, and very, very tired. There was a faint bruise on her cheekbone, yellow and fading. She was pretty in a quiet way, the kind you'd walk past without a second look and then find yourself thinking about later.

I didn't intend to think about her later.

"How old is that bruise?" I asked.

She blinked as if nobody had asked her a question in years. "Six days, Alpha."

"Who gave it to you?"

Her eyes flicked toward Dorran, then down again. "I fell."

I didn't believe her. I didn't care enough to argue.

"Hold out your hands."

She held them out, still bound. I took them and turned them over in the torchlight. Her palms were rough with work, calloused across the base of her fingers. Across her knuckles were old burns, smooth and pale. Someone had scalded this girl a long time ago.

"This is what Silvercrest sends me?" I said, loud enough for every rider in the ford to hear. "A scullery maid with scarred hands? A man died. Four children lost their father. And Lucian Vane thinks he can wipe that clean with this?"

The girl didn't flinch. But her fingers twitched in mine, very slightly.

Dorran's face reddened. "She was chosen by the Luna herself."

"I know exactly who chose her." I let go of her hands. "And I know exactly how much the Luna values what she gives away."

Mara laughed beside me, low and amused. She'd dismounted too and was circling the girl slowly, the way she circled a sparring partner, sizing her up.

"She doesn't even smell like a wolf," Mara said, wrinkling her nose. "What is she, a human?"

"She's wolfless," Dorran said stiffly. "She never shifted."

A murmur went through my warriors. A wolfless she-wolf was rare. It was also, in most packs, a reason to be pitied or despised.

Mara grinned. "Oh, that's perfect. Celeste sent you a broken toy, Kade."

The girl's chin lifted half an inch. Barely. If I hadn't been watching, I'd have missed it. Some small part of her still had pride left in it, and Mara had just stepped on it.

Interesting.

"Cut her loose," I told Rhys.

Rhys drew his knife and sliced through the cord. The girl rubbed her wrists, where the rope had left raw red marks, but she didn't thank anyone. She just waited, the way prey waits. Still and silent, hoping not to be noticed.

"The debt is accepted," I said to Dorran. "Tell your Alpha that the next time his warriors cross my border, I won't take a servant. I'll take Silvercrest."

Dorran's knuckles went white on his reins. But he nodded, wheeled his horse, and led his thin, grey column back across the ford and into the dark trees. Nobody looked back at the girl. Not one of them.

She watched them go until the last torch disappeared.

I watched her watch them. Her face gave almost nothing away, but her hands had curled into fists at her sides, and for a moment her lips moved. It looked like a name. One short word, whispered into the dark after the people who had brought her here and not looked back.

It wasn't my business. I told myself that firmly.

Rhys came to stand beside me, sheathing his knife. "Well," he murmured. "That was the strangest blood payment I've ever seen."

"They didn't even ask for a receipt."

"They didn't ask for anything. Did you see Dorran's face? He couldn't get back across that river fast enough." Rhys frowned at the trees. "That man was scared, Kade. Not of us. Of whatever he'd been told to do."

"Or of whatever he'd been told not to say."

Rhys glanced at the girl. "You think she knows?"

"I think everyone in Silvercrest knows more than they're telling," I said. "And I think she's the only one they left behind."

Then she turned to face me, and for the first time she spoke without being asked.

"What happens to me now, Alpha?"

Her voice was soft and low, with the faint river lilt of the south. Steadier than I'd expected.

"You work," I said. "Thornvale doesn't keep anyone who doesn't. You'll go to the servants' quarters in the lower keep. My housekeeper will give you a bed and duties."

"And when you're finished with me?"

It was such a strange question that I actually stopped.

"I'm not going to be finished with you," I said. "I'm not going to start with you. You're payment for a debt, not a gift for my bed."

Something passed across her face. Relief, I thought. And then something else, darker, like a shadow crossing deep water. Fear. Not of me, I realised. Of something else entirely.

"Rhys," I said. "Put her on a horse."

"She can ride with me," Mara offered sweetly.

"She'll ride with Rhys."

Mara's smile tightened. I ignored it.

Rhys guided the girl toward his grey mare. She went without complaint, but she moved stiffly, like someone who had been sitting in the bottom of a cold wagon for a very long time. She tried twice to pull herself into the saddle and couldn't manage it. In the end Rhys simply lifted her up, and she sat there gripping the pommel with both scarred hands, staring straight ahead.

I turned back toward my horse and gathered the reins. Done. Debt settled. A thin servant girl for the lower keep, and Celeste's game, whatever it was, would reveal itself soon enough. I would be ready.

The wind had been blowing off the river all night, steady and cold, carrying the scent of wet stone and pine.

Then it changed.

It swung around without warning, the way mountain winds do, gusting from behind the girl and straight into my face. It lifted the loose hair at her temples. It pulled at the hem of her cloak. And it carried her scent to me for the first time.

Rain on warm earth. Wild mint. Something sweet and green underneath, like the first spring morning after a long winter.

I froze with one foot in the stirrup.

In my chest, Ash didn't just wake. He exploded.

Five years of silence broke apart in a single instant. My wolf surged forward so hard my vision went white at the edges and my claws punched through my fingertips before I could stop them. Every nerve in my body lit up at once, burning, singing, pulling toward the girl in the grey cloak like iron to a lodestone.

And in my head, my wolf said one word.

Not a whisper. A roar.

MATE.