The Alpha Rejected His Scentless Mate at the Altar, So She Came Back as the Luna He Kneels For novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Ledger

"Where is it?" I said.

"My room. Under the mattress." Freya gave a shaky laugh. "Where else?"

Her room was on the top floor of the Ravensdale house.

It still had the same pine-tree wallpaper from when she was six.

She locked the door and pulled the things out from under her mattress.

The first was a tin.

Small and round, the kind cough drops come in.

I opened the lid.

The smell hit me before I even saw the dried leaves.

Burnt grass.

My wolf flattened her ears inside me.

I shut it again fast.

The second thing was a brown leather account book, worn soft at the corners.

I knew the handwriting on the first page.

Square, heavy letters, pressed hard into the paper.

Garrick's.

I had seen it on my school permission slips for six years.

I turned the pages.

It was a household ledger.

Coal. Flour. A new truck tire.

And in the middle of every month, the same line.

Tea, S.V.

The first one was in December, fifteen years ago.

The month I turned twelve.

I turned the pages faster.

Tea, S.V. Tea, S.V. Tea, S.V.

Every month for ten years.

Next to each one was a little sum, and next to that, another entry.

Cash in, the river.

Five hundred a month.

"The river," Freya whispered. "Who's the river?"

I didn't know.

Ironclaw was across the river.

So were the three small river packs.

So was half the north.

I kept going.

Five years ago, in November, the line was different.

Letters, S.V. Paid in full. Five thousand, the river.

Then, on December twenty-first, the day of my altar, one more line.

Tea, S.V. Stopped.

I sat down on Freya's bed.

My hands were perfectly steady.

That surprised me.

"What are you going to do?" Freya asked.

I closed the book.

"Read it to them."

The Council supper was that night.

The whole pack was there, and every visiting wolf.

Garrick sat in the Beta's chair at the high table, eating roast elk.

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