The Alpha's Silent Debt

Chapter 2

Wren

The silence stretched so long I thought Alpha Kane might simply answer the question for me.

"He punishes me," I said finally, because lying to an Alpha felt more dangerous than the truth ever could. "For things I cannot remember doing. For things that happened before I was old enough to understand them."

My uncle's face went the color of old ash. "She is confused. She has always struggled with her mind since the incident—"

"What incident?" Kane's voice had dropped low, dangerous in a way that made the hair on my arms rise.

Nobody answered. Nobody in this house ever answered that question directly, not even to me.

"The m******e that took her parents," Kane said slowly, watching my uncle's face for a reaction he clearly found. "I have heard the story. Rebels breached the border, slaughtered the Alpha and Luna, and somehow, in the telling, it always circles back to blaming a child of seven for opening a gate she could not have reached."

My chest tightened painfully. I had heard that story so many times it had become part of my own skin, and yet hearing it spoken aloud by someone outside this house, someone who said it like it sounded absurd instead of true, made something c***k open behind my ribs.

"She was there," Roran said stiffly. "She survived when no one else did. Make of that what you will."

"I intend to." Kane's eyes moved back to me, and this time when he looked at the collar around my throat, his jaw visibly tightened. "This is warded iron. Do you know what happens to a wolf sealed behind warded iron for fourteen years?"

I shook my head. No one had ever explained it to me. I only knew that without it, I was told, I would be dangerous. Unstable. A monster waiting to happen.

"Nothing good," Kane said grimly, then turned fully to face my uncle. "Alpha Roran, we have a debt to discuss."

"Yes, of course, if you'll follow me to the study—"

"We can discuss it here." Kane crossed his arms. "I understand you owe Ironwood eleven thousand in gold and half the northern grazing land for the border conflict three years ago."

"We have been assembling the payment—"

"You have been avoiding my letters for three years." Kane's voice did not rise, and somehow that made it worse. "I did not travel two days to be handed excuses."

My uncle's mouth opened and closed, and I watched something calculating slide behind his eyes, the same look he wore right before he made a decision that always cost someone else dearly.

"We can offer partial payment now," Roran said carefully, "and the remainder can be settled through an alternate arrangement."

"What alternate arrangement." Kane's tone made it clear he already suspected the answer would insult him.

Roran's eyes flicked to me, just for a fraction of a second, and my stomach dropped straight through the floor.

"She is unmated," my uncle said. "Strong bloodline, despite her condition. A marriage tie between our packs would settle far more than gold ever could."

I felt every drop of blood leave my face. He was offering me. Like furniture. Like livestock. After fourteen years of telling me I was worthless, he was suddenly willing to trade me for a debt, and the horrible, twisting part of it was that I understood exactly why. Marrying me off solved two problems at once. It settled his debt, and it removed me from his house permanently, silencing whatever fragile thread of guilt still tied him to a dead brother's daughter.

Kane went very still.

"You would sell your own niece to settle a debt," he said, each word deliberate, "the same niece you have apparently been punishing for fourteen years for a crime a child could not have committed."

"I would be finding her a respectable match," Roran said, though his voice had lost some of its earlier confidence.

Kane's grey eyes swept over me again, longer this time, taking in the fading bruise along my jaw where Marsh's hand had landed that morning, the collar, the too thin frame beneath my worn dress.

"Fine," he said finally.

My heart stopped.

"I accept an alternate arrangement." Kane's gaze never left me. "Wren comes with me to Ironwood. Not as a settlement of half a debt, but the full amount, forgiven entirely. And she comes as my ward, under my protection, not as a bride bartered without her own consent."

"That was not the arrangement I proposed," Roran said sharply.

"It is the only arrangement I am willing to accept." Kane's voice hardened into something that made even my uncle take a step back. "You will draft the papers tonight, or I will consider Calder's debt unpaid and this territory in violation of pack law. I am certain Ironwood's council would be very interested to learn exactly how that debt has gone unpaid for three years, and why."

The threat hung in the air, heavy enough to feel. My uncle's jaw worked silently for a long moment before he gave a stiff, furious nod.

"Fine," he bit out. "Have the papers drawn."

Kane turned to me one final time, and something in his expression softened just slightly, just enough that I almost didn't trust it.

"Go pack your things," he said quietly. "You leave with me tonight."

I nodded, numb, and turned toward the narrow staircase leading to the servant's quarters, my mind spinning too fast to fully understand what had just happened. Somewhere behind me, I heard my uncle's low, furious voice speaking to Marsh, too quiet for human ears but not quiet enough for mine.

"Make sure she doesn't remember anything on the way out," he said. "Search her room. If she has kept anything of theirs, burn it before she leaves this house."

I stopped on the stairs, my hand tightening on the railing, my heart hammering against my ribs.

Anything of theirs. My parents. There was something in this house my uncle did not want me to take with me, something he was suddenly, urgently afraid I might find on my way out the door.

And I had exactly one hour to find it before Marsh got there first.