Chapter 2

I didn't even make it back to my room before a young maid caught my hand in the hallway.

"The Dowager wants to see you now, Luna Astra."

Lennox was waiting outside my door.

She was my maid, and the one person in this whole keep who'd followed me here from my old home.

She took one look at my face and hers went white.

"Don't go," she said. "That old woman just wants to watch you fall apart."

"Then let her watch." I straightened my cloak. "I've got a few things to say too."

The Dowager's rooms were stuffed with gold, and the air was thick with the heavy perfume she wore to cover the smell of her own medicine.

I caught it the second the door opened. And beneath it, I caught another scent.

The Dowager sat at the head of the table. Hadley, Callum's widowed sister-in-law, sat at her right.

"Astra." The Dowager patted the seat and smiled sweet as honey.

"Come, sit. You must be exhausted."

I sat.

"I heard about the new Luna." She dabbed at a dry eye.

"Oh, it's hard. So hard. But you don't have to feel alone, dear. We're all here for you."

"Yes," Hadley said. "You still get to be a Luna."

The Dowager leaned in close, her voice going soft and warm, like she was about to hand me a present.

"Here's what we've decided, sweetheart. Blaire wears the crown. But nothing really changes. You'll still be the one who actually runs this pack." She smiled.

Give Blaire the crown. Keep me as the free help. So their precious son could be satisfied forever.

My wolf wanted to flip the whole table, but I held her down.

"You're right," I said. "No sense wasting good help."

I laid my hands flat on the table. "So give me it back. All of it. Starting tonight."

The color dropped right out of their face. "W-what?"

"The kitchens. The winter grain. The healers' pay. The guards." I ticked them off one by one.

"We can't---" Hadley's voice climbed. "There's no money left in, you know there isn't, not without you."

"Without my family's gold," I finished. "Yeah. I know."

The room went quiet.

"Every coin that's kept this pack warm and fed came out of my family's pockets," I said.

"The gold in your vaults. The jewelry around your necks."

I looked straight at the rubies at Hadley's throat.

"Starting with my grandmother's necklace. The one you're wearing right now."

Hadley's hand flew up to cover it. "This is mine---"

"It was my grandmother's. And her mother's before that." I stood up.

"By morning, everything that belongs to my family gets packed up and brought to my door. Or I come to your rooms and take it back myself. Your choice."

The Dowager shot to her feet.

"You dare? You ungrateful little stray. You've got no pack, no family, no name left in this world. You're nothing without this house!"

I stopped at the door and looked back at both of them---the old queen, the sour widow.

"You'd better hope that's true," I said.

"Because if it's not, you just spent a whole year kicking the wrong dog."

And I walked out, and left them with their cold dinner and the first real fear I'd ever seen on that old woman's face.