Chapter 33 · The Debt Comes Due

"Three months." I made it loud enough to be a verdict. "Write it in the ledger. Date it."

Valerius didn't move out of the study door. Firelight behind him, cedar smoke, cold coffee, that snow-and-iron thing he drags into a room just by standing in it. Three months ago it made my knees unreliable. Now it makes me want a lock on my side of the door.

"Three months," he said back. Slow. Measuring me while I stood inside my own body.

"Since the border. You can count. I've seen your ledgers."

"The pack will smell it by the next moon."

"They'll smell it by dawn. Wolf pregnancies run short — three months is most of the way, not the start of it. You think I haven't counted?"

Something crossed his face that wasn't surprise. Recalculation.

"Then we don't have a moon," he said.

"We never did. So skip the part where you put a hand on my stomach and get feelings about it. Ask me something that costs you."

He didn't answer long enough that the fire got loud. Then my back lit up.

Between the shoulder blades.