The Alpha's Silent Debt

Chapter 4

Wren

My hands shook so badly Sable had to help me unfold it.

The handwriting was elegant, careful, nothing like the frantic scrawl I would have expected from someone writing on the last night of their life. My mother's hand. I recognized it from an old ledger I had once found hidden in the cellar, one I had not been quick enough to hide before Marsh found and burned it.

My darling Wren,

If you are reading this, then the worst has happened, and I was not able to protect you the way I promised the day you were born. There are things you deserve to know, things I have been too afraid to say out loud in this house for longer than I should have been. Your father and I have long suspected that someone close to us intends harm, someone who smiles at our table and calls himself family. I am not able to name them yet without proof, only to tell you this. Whatever you are told about tonight, whatever story becomes the truth people repeat, do not believe it without question. You are the rightful heir of this pack, blood and bond, and no lie built to bury that fact will hold forever. Trust the collar to no one but a true healer of the old bloodlines. Trust yourself, always, above every story someone else tells you about who you are.

I love you more than every star in every sky.

Mother

The letter blurred in front of me as tears I had not allowed myself in years finally broke free. Fourteen years of being told I was the reason my parents died, and here, in my mother's own hand, was proof that she had known someone close to her intended harm, that she had feared this exact ending long before it arrived.

"She knew," I whispered. "She knew someone was going to hurt them, and she never named who."

"But she was afraid of someone inside the house," Kane said slowly, his eyes dark with a fury that seemed to fill the entire room. "Someone who sat at their table. Someone she trusted enough to call family, but not enough to fully believe."

The word hung between us, heavy and obvious, and none of us said it out loud, because saying it out loud meant accepting it as truth instead of suspicion.

My uncle.

"We need proof," Kane said finally. "Suspicion won't be enough to challenge an Alpha's claim to a territory, even one built on a lie. We need something that ties Roran directly to that night."

"The warding on her collar," Sable said. "If we can find whoever crafted it, they'll have records. Wards this old and this specific aren't cheap, and they aren't common. Whoever made it will remember who paid for it."

Before Kane could answer, the door burst open, and Beckett appeared, breathless, his usual easy grin nowhere in sight.

"We have a visitor," he said. "Says he's here about a betrothal contract. Says it's tied to Wren's parents' will, and it predates the m******e by two years."

The room went silent.

"A betrothal contract," Kane repeated slowly, "that no one has mentioned in fourteen years."

"He says it's binding under old pack law," Beckett said. "Says her parents signed it themselves, an alliance marriage meant to unite two territories once she came of age. He's waiting in the front hall right now."

I felt the room tilt slightly beneath me. A betrothal I had never known about, surfacing the exact same day a letter from my dead mother finally reached my hands, the exact same day someone had tried to have that letter destroyed before I could read it.

"Bring him in," Kane said, his voice hard as stone. "I want to see the face of a man who waits fourteen years to mention a marriage contract."

The stranger who walked through the door a moment later was tall, dark haired, dressed in the deep green colors of a territory I did not recognize. He bowed slightly, his eyes finding mine with an intensity that made my skin crawl.

"Wren," he said, like he already knew me, like fourteen years of separation meant nothing to him at all. "You've grown into your mother's face."

"Who are you," Kane said, stepping slightly in front of me, his voice a low warning.

"Alpha Draven of Thornpack." The stranger's smile did not reach his eyes. "I am here to collect what was promised to my family before Wren's parents were so tragically murdered. A betrothal, sealed in blood and signed by both Alphas, uniting our territories the moment she came of age." His gaze slid past Kane, back to me, cold and possessive. "I have waited a very long time for you to grow up, little wren."

My stomach turned violently. Something about the way he said my name made every instinct I possessed scream that this man had far more to do with the night my parents died than a simple, forgotten marriage contract.

"That contract means nothing," Kane said, his voice dropping into something dangerous. "Wren is under Ironwood's protection now."

"Ironwood's protection means nothing against a binding contract signed by her own father." Draven's smile widened slightly, and for the first time since he had walked into the room, I saw something flicker behind his eyes that looked almost like triumph. "You should ask your little servant, Alpha Kane, exactly how her uncle came to inherit a pack that was never legally his to take. I think you will find the answers far more interesting than a simple debt of gold."

Kane went very still beside me.

"What is that supposed to mean," he said slowly.

Draven's eyes moved to me one final time, and the words he said next dropped through my chest like a stone through still water, shattering fourteen years of everything I thought I understood.

"It means," he said softly, "that Roran was never meant to inherit anything at all. And it is long past time someone told her exactly what her uncle did to make certain that he did."