Using Her Gold Is Her Honor — Or So They Said (Chloe's POV)

I turned away from the square, the autumn wind snapping at the hem of my dress, though no gust of wind could touch the cold that had settled in my chest.

Tara followed close behind me, sobbing so hard she hiccupped. "Luna, how could they do this? You've poured so much money into this Pack, and that woman — who does she think she is?"

"Tara." I didn't bother turning around. "Crying won't fix anything."

My original plan was simple: go straight back to my rooms, instruct the steward to lock down the Blood Moon Pack's supply vaults, and cut off every gold coin flowing from the Silver Pack. Let this whole nest of leeches starve.

But I stopped when I passed the Council Hall.

From inside, I could feel it — the heavy, rolling pulse of an Alpha's aura, thick enough to press against the skin. Caleb was summoning the Elder Council.

Fine. I wanted to hear exactly what argument he planned to use to convince that pack of old fossils to shatter a law older than memory itself, just so he could install his mistress above my head.

"Council Hall," I said, pivoting on my heel and walking straight toward the Elder Council chamber.

The guards posted outside took one look at me and went pale.

They moved to block me on instinct, then froze when my gaze landed on them. Even without a wolf, even without a shred of combat ability, I had spent six years holding the financial lifeline of this entire Pack. No one dared stop me.

I stepped up to the heavy oak doors and raised one hand — a silent order for the guards to keep their mouths shut.

The doors hadn't been pulled fully closed. Caleb's voice carried through the gap with perfect clarity.

"These six years, we have repelled three full offensives from the Shadow Wolf Pack to defend our territory!"

"Four years ago, in the Winter Campaign, I was struck by a blade laced with wolfsbane — a lethal dose!"

His voice swelled with emotion. "It was Selena. She was only a Gamma, and she risked her own infection without a second thought. She put her mouth to the wound and drew the poison out with her own lips. If not for her, I would have died on that battlefield."

I stood outside the door and listened to my husband deliver a heartfelt declaration of love for another woman before the Pack's highest council.

I almost laughed.

How touching.

When he was dying from wolfsbane poisoning, who had emptied a small fortune at the apothecary markets, purchasing the finest wolfsbane suppressants available, and sent them to the front on the fastest horses we had — through the night — so that he would survive to see morning?

He only remembered the woman who put her mouth on him.

"She is not only the woman who saved my life," Caleb continued, his voice ringing through the hall. "She is an exceptional warrior. She endured the brutality of active combat and gave birth to two pups of extraordinary potential — she has continued the Alpha bloodline."

"Therefore, I move—"

"I propose we break with precedent. I wish to grant Selena the title of Co-Luna. She deserves equal standing with Chloe, and together they will lead the Blood Moon Pack."

The Council Hall went dead silent for one second. Then it erupted.

"You cannot, Alpha!" The Chief Elder's walking staff struck the stone floor in agitation. "For ten thousand years, the law of our kind has been absolute — one Alpha, one Luna, no exceptions. What you are proposing is an open challenge to that law!"

"Agreed," the Second Elder said, his tone clipped and hard. "Luna may carry no wolf, but consider what these years have looked like without her. The Pack's operations, the warriors' arms and armor, the fortifications across our territory — every last coin of it was funded by her family's wealth. You return in triumph, and your first act is to install a Co-Luna? What does that say to her? If she takes offense and withdraws her gold and supplies, this Pack will be facing empty granaries within the season."

I had expected Caleb to hesitate. To weigh my financial leverage and pull back, at least slightly.

Instead, what broke the silence was a laugh — sharp, contemptuous, and immediately recognizable as the Third Elder, who had spent years scheming for control of the Pack's treasury.

"What does Chloe think?" he said, his voice dripping with cold amusement. "She's a wolfless nothing. In our world, strength and bloodline are everything. She's been in this Pack for six years and hasn't produced a single pup. Besides — the moment she married into the Blood Moon Pack, her money became Pack property. If we can use her gold to build something great, she should consider that an honor. She should be grateful for the privilege."

I stood outside that door and felt the fury rise through me like a fire finding its draft.

Grateful. Privileged.

I had brought the full weight of the Silver Pack's resources to prop up this wreck of an organization, and in their eyes I was nothing more than a willing coin purse — one they expected to smile and keep paying.

"The Third Elder makes a fair point." The voice that followed belonged to Caleb's most trusted Beta, and it carried the particular smoothness of someone who had been waiting a long time to say what he was about to say. "The Alpha needed mountains of gold to sustain the campaign these past six years. That's exactly why I recommended to the Council, early on, that we keep this arrangement quiet. Let the Alpha return with his victories. By then, everything would already be settled. All he'd need to do is spend a night with her, lean on the mate bond, and she'd hand over whatever we needed without a fight."

The Elders who had still been wavering went silent.

That was the shape of it, then.

From the moment Caleb had taken up with Selena on that battlefield, these people had known. Every one of them. They had bowed to me with perfect courtesy, spent my gold without a flicker of conscience, and calculated, in cold blood, exactly how long they could keep using me — the clueless, grateful fool bankrolling her husband's mistress and her husband's war.

My fingers found the edge of the door frame and gripped it. A splinter drove into my palm. The sharp, specific pain cut through everything else, and what it cut through most cleanly was the last soft thing I had been holding onto — some remnant of feeling for a fated mate that I should have let go of long ago.

It was gone now. Completely.

Fine. If they wanted to drain me dry so that another woman could take my place, I would give them exactly what they had earned.

From this moment on, I was done being anyone's foundation stone.

I would pull every coin and every grain of Silver Pack resources out of this Pack's hands. I would cut the Blood Moon Pack's finances off at the root and let this already-crumbling operation collapse under its own weight. I would take back every piece of wealth that belonged to me, and I would grind the power and dignity they were so proud of into the dirt beneath my boots — and I would make Caleb and every one of these ungrateful leeches pay for today in the most painful currency available to me.

Anger? Heartbreak?

No. What I felt was clarity — sharper and cleaner than anything I had felt in years.

I closed my eyes.

Deep inside me, the wolf-soul that had been judged dormant since my awakening at eighteen stirred. It moved — just slightly — and then it laughed: a single, soundless sound of pure contempt.

"You hear them, Chloe," my wolf murmured in the back of my mind. "They think you can't walk away from that garbage."

I opened my eyes.

They thought I would accept this. They thought the sum total of my life was to be a humiliated, wolfless Luna who kept signing the checks. They had built their entire plan around that assumption.

Let me show them what it costs to be wrong about me.

Selena's voice drifted through the gap in the doors, warm with a satisfaction she couldn't quite keep out of her tone. "Caleb, Chloe is such a gentle soul — I'm sure she'll understand. I'll be happy to help her share the burden of Pack responsibilities going forward."

"Excellent." Caleb's voice settled into the easy register of a man who believes the hard part is over. "If there are no further objections, then it's decided. Tomorrow, I will formally invest Selena as Co-Luna."

I lifted my boot and drove it into the heavy oak door with everything I had.

The sound it made was like a thunderclap in a closed room. Both doors swung back and crashed into the walls on either side.

The Council Hall went absolutely still.

The Third Elder's smirk died on his face.

Selena shot to her feet, one hand dropping to the silver-tipped dagger at her hip.

On the throne, Caleb's pupils contracted sharply, and something close to panic crossed his face before he could stop it.

Every eye in the room turned to the doorway.

I stood in the fractured light, and I looked at every one of them — these accomplished, powerful, utterly shameless people — with exactly the expression they deserved.