The Luna They Didn't Want

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3: WHAT SHE ACTUALLY DOES

MAREN

I'm at the eastern border before sunrise, which is not technically my job. Nobody assigned me to scout work. Nobody asked me to be the one crouched in the frost-covered brush at five in the morning, studying prints that shouldn't be there.

I go anyway, because three years ago I made a decision to take this job seriously, husband or no husband, respect or none.

Yusra meets me near the marker stone, already crouched over the tracks she flagged last night, while scouring the place like I had ordered her to. She doesn't look surprised to see me. She's one of the few people in this pack who's stopped being surprised by anything I do.

"Here." She points. Four prints, evenly spaced, deliberate. "Wolf, but the gait's wrong for a normal patrol. Too even. Too careful." She glances up at me. "Someone counting steps, Luna. Measuring the distance between our markers and the treeline."

I crouch down beside her, running my fingers along the edge of one print, half-frozen into the dirt. This wasn't random movements at all. This is someone gathering information, about our border and the distance between here and whatever they had in mind.

"How many sets?"

"Four, that we found. Could be more we missed." She hesitates. "I sent word up the chain like always. Figured it'd reach the Alpha's desk by midday."

"It won't," I say, before I can stop myself, and then immediately wish I hadn't said it out loud, because Yusra's expression changed for a brief moment, it was not suprise, just confrimation if what she already expected.

"I'll bring it to him myself," I add. "Today. In the meantime, I want patrols doubled on this stretch, and I want it quiet. If someone's mapping us, I don't want them watching us react."

"Already moving on it." She straightens. "There's something else. Three of the eastern scouts have asked, off the record, if they could report straight to you going forward. Not officially. Just — easier."

I know exactly what that sentence is built around, and it isn't convenience.

"Tell them I'll always make time," I say. "Officially or not."

The trade ledgers are the part of my job nobody sees and everybody benefits from. I built the network myself, over two years, one careful relationship at a time — three border packs who trade grain for our timber, a beta-run apothecary two territories over that supplies half our healer's stock at a fair price because I personally negotiated the terms, a scout-sharing arrangement with the Ashford pack that's caught two poaching attempts before they became real problems.

None of it has Caspian's name on it. All of it keeps this pack fed, healthy, and informed in ways the official channels alone never could, I had singlehandedly increased the source of grains, wheat, foods than what was previously established, but Selene wouldn't dare notice that either, only ordered celebrations whenever she is in the mood for it, and never find out how the pack was getting it. Shaking all those thoughts aside, I focused on finding my mate instead and I brought the border report straight to him before midday, the way I said I would. He's in his study, which is rare enough on its own — usually I have to track him down through Selene's schedule instead of his.

"Four sets of prints," I say, laying the sketch Yusra made on his desk. "Measured pacing. Whoever it was wasn't hunting, they were surveying. I want to increase patrols on that stretch before it turns into something worse."

Caspian glances at the paper. Doesn't pick it up or spare it a second glance ashe focused back on what he was doing.

"Probably Thornridge scouts," he says. "They've been pushing the marker before."

"It's not Thornridge gait. Yusra's tracked their patrols for two years, she'd know their pattern blind. This is someone else."

"You're not a tracker, Maren."

"No. But I trust the people who are, which is more than I can say for whoever's been ignoring their reports for the last month."

It comes out sharper than I planned. His eyes flick up to mine — first real eye contact he's given me in days — and for a second I think it's going to land, that I've finally said the one thing pointed enough to get through. Then the study door opened, and Selene leaned in, all soft apology and perfect timing, like always as she spoke in an innocent tone, acting like she had been wrong by me.

"Sorry — Caspian, the seamstress is here about the festival gowns, she says it has to be now or not till next week — "

"I'll be right there." He's already standing, already half-turned away from me, already folding this conversation closed like it was never that important to begin with. "Double the patrols if you think it's needed. I trust your judgment."

*I trust your judgment.* Five words that should feel like something, and instead feel like being handed a chore so he can leave the room faster to get away from me as usual.

He's gone before I can say anything else to stop him. The sketch of the prints sits on his desk, exactly where I left it, already forgotten.

I pick it back up myself. If he won't act on it, I will. I've been doing this pack's actual work alone for long enough that the absence of his attention barely registers as a wound anymore.