The study door clicked shut and my father poured himself a drink before he bothered to look at me.
He did not offer me one. He never did.
Hobart: Sit down, Tamsin.
I stayed standing. My lip had stopped bleeding, but I could still taste it.
He slid a paper across the desk. Thick paper. A dark seal in the corner.
The numbers on it were small and neat and ugly.
Tamsin: This is the debt.
Hobart: That is what we owe the Vey pack. Grain. Coin. Interest.
Tamsin: And what, you want me to count it for you?
Hobart: I want you to erase it.
He said it slow, like he was explaining a fence line to a slow hand.
Hobart: Alpha Bastian needs a wife. You will be that wife.
The name went through me cold. Everyone in both packs knew it.
The scarred Alpha. The man who took Vey when his father's hands went soft.
They said he did not raise his voice. They said he did not have to.
Tamsin: You're selling me to a man who breaks people.
Hobart: I'm selling you to a man who pays debts. There's a difference.
My hand went to my satchel strap before I could stop it. His eyes followed it.
Hobart: Maribel is settled with Lowell's family. That leaves you.
Hobart: And girl, you are not worth much on the open market. Be glad someone wants a warm body.
Tamsin: No.
Hobart: I wasn't asking.
Then he said the thing he had been holding in his mouth all night.
Hobart: Refuse, and Emric goes to the council for the debt.
The room went small and loud at once. I could hear my own breathing.
The door was open a hand's width. I had not heard it.
Emric stood there in his loose shirt, one shoulder against the frame, breathing like it cost him.
Emric: I'm fine, Tamsin.
He was not fine. I could hear the wet crack in his chest from across the room.
Tamsin: He's fifteen. He's sick.
Hobart: Then he'll be a sick boy in a council cell. That's not my doing.
Tamsin: Take it out of my courier work. I'll run letters for the whole valley, every night.
Hobart: Letters don't pay pack tax. And you don't have a valley's worth of nights.
He leaned back and told me the rest like it was weather.
Hobart: Bastian is thirty one. Scarred. Not gentle.
Hobart: He'll take what husbands take, and nobody will ask your leave.
Something in my stomach pulled tight. Fear, and a worse thing I would not name.
My face went hot with both of them.
Tamsin: And if he kills me?
Hobart: Then the debt's still paid. And Emric's still breathing.
He said it plainly. No heat in it at all. That was the worst part.
Then Emric folded over, coughing into his sleeve, the long wet one.
I watched him catch himself on the frame and try to hide it. The fight ran out of me like water out of a cracked bucket.
Tamsin: You sign nothing until I hear the terms from him.
Hobart: You'll hear them at his gate tomorrow. Wear the gray dress.
Tamsin: I hate you.
Hobart: That's fine. Be at the cart at dawn.
Emric: Don't do it. I'd rather take my chances.
Tamsin: Then get better. That's the price.
I lied to him again. It was the thing I was best at now.
I packed my satchel before moonrise and hid my letters under a loose board.
Tomorrow I would stand in front of the man with the scarred face and find out what he was.
I told myself I only had to survive him. Nobody said a word about liking it.