The Debt He Owed My Wolf

Chapter 3

Kade

"You want to what?" Marek asks, low enough that only I catch it over the noise of the council hall filling up around us.

"Add a clause," I say. "Before anyone signs anything."

Rowan leans back in his chair, arms crossed, watching Corwin's elders file into the room with the kind of polite boredom he wears whenever he's actually paying the closest attention. "This is supposed to be a trade agreement over grain routes and border patrols. You're about to turn it into something else entirely."

"I'm aware."

I didn't sleep last night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the scar on her arm, pale and old, half-hidden beneath a sleeve she'd clearly learned to keep pulled down out of habit rather than modesty, the kind of habit that only forms after years of practice hiding the same thing over and over. Aero hasn't settled since the moment we arrived at this territory. He's been pacing, restless, snapping at me every time my thoughts drift toward leaving without her.

“She isn't safe here,” he says again, for at least the tenth time this morning. “You know it. Stop stalling and do something about it.”

I'm not stalling. I'm making certain I don't waste the only real chance I'll get to do this properly, in front of witnesses who can't later claim it never happened.

Corwin takes his seat at the head of the council table, flanked by his Beta and a handful of pack elders who all look like they'd rather be anywhere else in the world this morning. Wren isn't in the room yet. I notice her absence immediately, the way you notice a missing tooth with your tongue, an emptiness where something should be.

"Shall we begin?" Corwin says, sliding a folder of contracts across the table toward me with the eager efficiency of a man who wants this finished quickly.

"Where's your sister?"

His smile flickers, just barely. "Excuse me?"

"Your sister. Wren. I'd like her present for this."

A ripple moves through the gathered elders, quiet murmurs and exchanged glances passing between them. Clearly, whatever role Wren plays in this pack, "present at a council meeting" has never once been part of it.

"She has no place in pack business," Corwin says, an edge creeping into his voice now.

"She does today." I lean back in my chair, letting the silence stretch a beat longer than comfortable. "Because the terms I'm offering depend entirely on her."

Garrick, standing near the door, shifts his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot. Corwin's jaw works like he's chewing on something bitter he can't quite spit out. After a long, visibly tense pause, he finally snaps his fingers at a passing servant, who scurries off toward the kitchens without a word.

Wren appears a few minutes later, ushered in like she's being marched toward punishment rather than a meeting. She keeps her eyes fixed on the floor, hands clasped tightly in front of her, the sleeve of her dress pulled carefully down over the arm I bandaged last night in the dark.

"Sit," I tell her, nodding toward the empty chair beside mine.

The whole room goes still. Even Corwin looks like he's momentarily forgotten how to close his own mouth.

"She doesn't sit at council tables," he says.

"She does now." I hold the chair steady until she lowers herself into it, stiff and clearly bracing for someone to yank it back out from under her the second she relaxes. "Here are my terms, Corwin. Your original agreement stands, the trade routes, the border patrol rotation, all of it exactly as written. But I'm adding one line." I slide a second sheet of paper across the table toward him. "Wren leaves with me today. Not as staff. As my intended mate."

The room erupts.

Elders murmur urgently among themselves, Garrick's hand twitches toward his belt out of pure reflex, and Corwin's face cycles through three different shades of red before finally settling on outrage.

"She belongs to this pack," he says.

"She belongs to whoever this contract says she belongs to," I say evenly. "And right now, that clause is the only thing standing between you and losing this entire deal. Your choice, Corwin. Choose quickly."

I watch Wren's hands curl into fists in her lap, knuckles gone white, her breathing shallow and much too fast. I can practically feel the panic rolling off her from where I sit; not, I realize, at the idea of leaving this place, but at being the reason a room full of powerful men might turn violent in front of her.

"This is absurd," Corwin says. "You cannot possibly—"

"I can," I say, "and I am. You have until I finish this next sentence to decide whether Ironfall becomes your ally or your very serious problem."

Silence stretches so long that I can actually hear Wren's heartbeat from where I sit, hammering fast and dangerously uneven. Too fast. My attention snaps toward her just as the color drains completely from her face, paler than I thought a person could go while still upright, and her eyes roll back before a single other person in the room even notices something has gone wrong.

I catch her before her chair tips backward, sweeping her up hard against my chest as the entire council scrambles to its feet in a burst of shocked noise.

"Get everyone out," I snap at Marek, no longer caring in the slightest how any of this looks to the elders staring at us. "Now. All of them, out."

Corwin is still talking somewhere behind me, still trying to salvage some final scrap of leverage from a negotiation he's already lost, but I've stopped listening entirely. Wren weighs almost nothing in my arms and her pulse flutters weak and unsteady beneath my fingers where I hold her wrist against my chest.

Every instinct I have is screaming the exact same thing on an endless loop.

Get her out of this house. Today. Before anyone in this room has the chance to change their mind.

Marek clears the hall in under a minute, herding elders and guests toward the doors with a firmness I rarely see out of him. Rowan stays close, watching my face rather than Wren's, gauging exactly how much control I still have left over my own temper.

"Kade." His voice is low. "Breathe. You're vibrating."

I hadn't noticed. My hands are shaking where they hold her, fury and fear running through me in a current I can't separate into its two parts. Corwin is still standing near the head of the table, arguing with an elder about whether the contract even holds now that things have "gotten out of hand," as if the paperwork is the only thing that's gone wrong here.

"It holds," I say, without turning around. "Everyone in this room signed it or witnessed it before she collapsed. Nothing about that changes because you don't like how it looks."

"You can't just take her out of here unconscious—"

"Watch me."

I carry her straight past him, past the last of the lingering elders, out into the cold morning air where the car is already waiting. Rowan opens the door before I even reach it. I settle Wren carefully against the seat, tucking my jacket around her shoulders because the temperature has dropped since dawn and she's still only wearing the thin dress she served dinner in the night before.

She doesn't stir. Not when the engine starts, not when the packhouse disappears behind us down the long gravel drive, not when Corwin's furious shouting fades into nothing more than distance and silence.

I keep one hand pressed lightly against her back the entire way, counting the shallow rhythm of her breathing just to have something steady to hold onto besides the storm still turning over in my chest.