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.

"Iris, get to the kitchen and start the evening meal. The moon's already high, and the den is hungry." Agata's voice cut through the great room like a dull blade, more habit than authority behind it.

I didn't spare her a glance. Instead, I turned to Tessa with a smile so polished it could have graced the front of the spirit network. "Tessa, you and Lena ran together as pups in the old territory. I imagine you used to take your meals here all the time back then?"

"Of course!" Tessa's voice lilted with practiced sweetness, that honeysuckle scent of hers laid on thick enough to mask whatever sat beneath it. "Back in those days, Lena and I shared nearly every meal. Her mother's cooking, the full-moon feasts, all of it."

"So after all those moons away, you must really miss Agata's cooking." I let my gaze drift to the pack matriarch, my tone warm as honey poured over a blade's edge. "Agata, shouldn't you start the meal for your guest? She's traveled such a long way to be welcomed back."

I crossed the room, settled into the worn leather of the long couch, and reached for the crystal screen's control. The screen hummed to life, filling the silence I'd left behind me. I could feel the air in the den shift, the quiet recalibration of everyone's expectations, the way lower wolves sense a current change before they understand it.

It didn't take long. Lena appeared beside me within minutes, jaw tight, irritation simmering behind dark eyes, that stale-leather-and-souring-wine scent curling off her in waves. "How could you make my mother cook? You know her health isn't what it used to be." Her voice dropped low, meant to sound commanding but landing somewhere closer to petulant. "Get up and handle the meal."

I widened my eyes, letting just the right amount of concern bleed through. "Agata, you're unwell? Is it serious? Why didn't anyone tell me? We should send for the pack healer at once."

Agata's face twisted. "Who's unwell? There's nothing wrong with me! Don't you dare speak ill-fortune over this den with that kind of talk."

"Then why don't you want to cook for Tessa?" I tilted my head, amusement threading through every syllable. "You don't feel like it?"

The old she-wolf's expression curdled like milk left out in the Sicilian sun. Her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line, the bitter-herb-and-chalk scent of her sharpening. "Who said I wouldn't cook?"

She pushed herself up from her chair and marched toward the kitchen with the stiff pride of a she-wolf who still believed the Greyhollow name alone could fill a room. For the next two hours, the sounds of clattering pots and sizzling fat drifted through the den-estate. The smell of garlic and braised meat filled the corridors, rich enough to stir even a dampened wolf, and for a moment the place almost felt like a home that functioned on something other than resentment.

When the long table was finally set, Rowan took Tessa by the arm and guided her into my chair at the head of the family side. The pup didn't even look at me as she did it. "Sis, Tessa is our guest. You don't mind giving up your spot, right?"

Agata materialized beside me, pressing a bowl into my hands the way one might toss scraps to a packless stray. "If sitting at the edge of the table is uncomfortable for you, why don't you take your plate to the kitchen and eat there? And while you're at it, clean up a bit."

I stared at the bowl in my hands. So now I wasn't even permitted at the table. The table I paid for. In the den my bloodline's strength kept standing. Eating meat bought with tribute drawn from hunting grounds the Ravenfall name controlled.

I set the bowl down on the counter with a quiet, deliberate click. Somewhere beneath my ribs my wolf went very still, watching, the way she does before a kill.

"No need. You all enjoy yourselves." My voice was flat, stripped of everything but finality. "A friend asked me to run with them tonight. I'll eat with them."

Lena's brow furrowed, that familiar crease of irritation forming between her eyes. "We leave for the coastal den tomorrow, and you're still going out? Have you even packed your things yet?"

"Don't you have hands?" I met her gaze without flinching, and for half a breath I let her feel the weight of mine. "Pack your own things, Lena."

The silence that followed was exquisite. She stood there, mouth half-open, as though the concept of fending for herself had short-circuited something fundamental in that weak Alpha brain of hers. I didn't wait for a recovery. I picked up my coat and walked out the front door, the cold night air carrying my scent of black cedar and cold iron out ahead of me into the dark.

The night air hit my skin like cold silk. I drove myself to the den-grounds beneath Moonscar's holding, a place tucked behind an unremarkable face on the high northern reach of the Sicilian Territories, where the cellar ran deeper than most pack archives and the clientele knew better than to scent too long at another's business. I ordered a bone-in cut, rare and bloody, a half-measure of the dark southern vintage, and fresh meat hauled up from the cold coastal grounds. I ate slowly, letting my wolf savor every bite with the quiet satisfaction of a she-wolf spending her own power in a world that wanted her grateful for scraps.

With my own tribute, my own earnings, I could feed wherever I pleased.

I stayed out well past the moon's high point, lingering over bitter dark roast and a second pour, watching the territory breathe through the tall windows. There was no rush. There was nothing to rush back to.

When I finally returned to the den-estate, every light was out. The house sat in total darkness, silent as a tomb. Despite me being gone for hours, not a single call on the crystal communicator. Not a single message. No one had checked in. No one had wondered if I was safe, if I'd been tracked, if I'd been run down on some lonely stretch of the territory. They had simply gone to their dens, each of them, without a second thought for the she-wolf who kept the roof over their heads and the rival packs from their throats.

I moved through the darkened hallway by memory, my fingers trailing along the cool plaster until I reached the bedroom. I pushed the door open, crossed to the bed, and sat down on the edge of the mattress.

A scream shattered the silence.

"Ah!"

My hand found the bedside lamp. Light flooded the room in a warm, merciless glow, and there she was. Tessa Thornvale, lying in my spot, her dark hair fanned across my pillow, the sheets pulled to her collarbone as though she belonged there. The scent hit me a half-breath before the light did — honeysuckle laid too thick over a faint trace of rot, soaked deep into my sheets, into the place that should have carried only black cedar and cold iron.

Something detonated behind my ribs. Five years of swallowed fury, of bitten tongues and clenched fists and quiet, corrosive patience. It all converged into a single, white-hot point, and deep inside me my wolf rose with it, hackles up, a snarl building where there had only ever been silence. Before I could think, before reason had any chance of intervening, my hand connected with her face. The crack of the slap echoed off the bedroom walls like a silver round going off.

Tessa crumpled, clutching her cheek, tears spilling instantly. Lena shot upright beside her, an arm sweeping around her shoulders like a shield. "Why did you hit her? We were just talking and must have fallen asleep. It was an accident."

"An accident." I tasted the word, and it was ash. "So you accidentally ended up in bed together. Holding each other. In my bed. That's the story you're going with."

"We were waiting for you!" Lena's voice rose, defensive and loud, the volume compensating for the weakness of the argument. "You were out until the Goddess knows when, so Tessa stayed to keep me company. We talked for a while, and then we fell asleep. It's perfectly normal."

"Then why didn't you call me? Why didn't you send a single message?" I held up my communicator, the screen bare, and let her see it. "Too busy catching up with your old scent-bond? And the two of you couldn't wait in the front room? You had to come to the bedroom, to my side of the bed?"

Lena's face darkened, her jaw set in that stubborn, cornered expression I'd come to know so well over five years. "You're being unreasonable, Iris."

I was done. Done arguing with someone who couldn't see what was right in front of her because she refused to open her eyes, refused to scent what hung thick in the air of this very room. I turned to Tessa, who was still curled against the headboard, tears tracking dark lines down her cheeks, thin and theatrical.

"I'm back now. So why don't you leave?" My voice was quiet, controlled, each word placed with surgical precision, even as my wolf paced behind my ribs, low and lethal. "Or were you planning for all three of us to share the bed?"

Tessa didn't acknowledge me. She didn't even look in my direction. She pressed her palm to her reddened cheek and turned her face toward Lena, her lower lip trembling. "Lena, it really hurts."

Lena's entire body softened. The anger, the defensiveness, all of it dissolved in an instant, replaced by a tenderness she had never once shown me. She cupped Tessa's face in her hands, her thumbs brushing the tears from beneath her eyes. "I'll get you something for it."