Chapter 17: Declined

Pru got as far as the MacClellan checkpoint.

It was the same one where I had stepped off a bus with a newborn and a fever.

Rowan drove me there in four minutes with Lark strapped in her seat between us.

The gate guards had already dropped the bar across the road.

Pru stood in the headlights with Hugo in one arm and a leather satchel in the other.

Her pastel coat was soaked through at the hem.

"Let me through," she was saying. "I have every right to cross. I'm a Wexley."

"You are a Wexley who left a Council circle with a Kestrel satchel," Rowan said, getting out. "Open it."

"No."

"Open it, Miss Wexley."

She clutched it harder.

The guard took it out of her hand, and she did not fight him.

He unzipped the bag on the hood of the truck.

It was full of cash, bank bonds and a ring of Kestrel treasury keys.

"The new Alpha will want those back," Rowan said.

"They're mine," Pru said. "I earned them. I carried his son, I stood in the pack-links for ten months, I smiled at that horrible woman."

"I earned every coin."

"You earned a lie," I said.

She turned her head and saw me.

Her face came apart.

"Morwen," she said. "Oh, thank the Moon."

She took three steps toward me, and Rowan moved one pace to the side. That was all.

She stopped.

"Morwen, please," she said. "My father shut off my cards. I tried one at the ticket kiosk and it was declined."

"I have a baby. I have no money and nowhere to go."

"I'm so sorry about the ward. I was frightened."

"You were frightened," I said.

"Of the Dowager. She told me what to say."

"She told you to push me into a cabinet?"