Adrian spent the better part of the day going from door to door, calling in favors from every wolf he’d ever done a good turn for. By the end of it, he had scraped together a single thousand coins, a joke against the ten thousand or more the wedding would swallow whole.
He knew the real number wasn’t the problem. He’d just come home victorious, and half the ranked families in the territory would have handed him twenty or thirty thousand coins without blinking, just for the chance to be owed a favor by him later. But something in him refused to take it. Borrowing from strangers felt like begging with extra steps, and whatever pride he had left, he wanted to keep it intact.
By the time he turned his horse toward home, he’d already half convinced himself that borrowing from Cassandra would sting less than borrowing from anyone else.
He was still turning that thought over when Bryan came riding hard in the opposite direction, his horse’s flanks already lathered white with sweat.
"Adrian, you need to get home. Your wife is going to be the death of our mother."
Adrian let out a tired breath. "What has she done this time?"
"She told Sebastian not to come treat Mom anymore."
"There are other physicians in the territory. If Sebastian won’t come, we’ll find someone else. If we have to, I’ll pull in a favor and get one of the pack’s own healers to look at her." It didn’t sound like much of a crisis to him, not yet.
To Adrian’s mind, this was just one more piece of the picture falling into place. His wife had reached straight into his mother’s health to punish him, and it wasn’t the act of a woman who’d simply been hurt. It was calculated. Aurora had never once played games like this. Whatever she wanted, she said plainly and stood behind it.
"That won’t work." Bryan’s voice was urgent now. "Mom fell sick right after you left for the front. Cassandra brought in healers from the pack council back then, more than one, and none of them could touch it. She kept getting worse until Cassandra tracked down Sebastian herself. His medicine is the only reason Mom is still alive and improving."
Something cold settled behind Adrian’s eyes. "So she’s using Mom’s life as leverage against me."
"That’s exactly what she’s doing." Bryan nodded. "She already went to the Alpha and begged him to take back the decree. When that failed, she moved on to this, trying to force you to walk away from Aurora one way or another. She’s not the woman either of us thought she was."
Adrian didn’t wait to hear more. He spurred his horse straight toward Grace Mansion, the wind tearing past his ears loud enough to drown out everything except the pulse hammering in his own throat.
A general’s strength was nothing to underestimate, and the gates of his own home certainly weren’t built to hold him back. He kicked the door open and stormed through the house until he found her sitting calmly with a bowl of watercress soup in front of her, the same soup Lulu had picked fresh that morning to help settle her nerves.
He swept his arm across the table and sent the bowl shattering against the floor.
"Cassandra!" His teeth were clenched so hard the word barely made it out whole. "Will this ever end? How much further are you planning to take this?"
Cassandra looked down at the mess of broken porcelain and spilled soup without flinching, only a small, private regret crossing her face for the wasted work Lulu had put into it.
"Lulu, clean this up," she said, her voice even. "I need to speak with the general alone. You’re free to go once it’s done."
Lulu returned with a broom, swept the floor clean, and left without a word.
Only then did Cassandra lift her eyes to her husband. "Is this about Sebastian?"
"You have the nerve to ask me that?" His voice cracked through the room like a whip.
She smiled, and there was nothing warm in it, only a cool, cutting kind of beauty that made him falter for half a second before his anger came rushing back.
"Why wouldn’t I ask? Perhaps the better question is why Sebastian refuses to set foot in this house anymore. Maybe look at your own family before you look at me."
"Don’t pretend with me." His voice had gone flat and hard. "You stopped him from treating my mother, and now you’re using her life to force my hand so I won’t marry Aurora. You’re disgusting, Cassandra. Even if I never marry Aurora, understand this. I will never treat you any better than I do right now. You disgust me." He drew in a sharp breath. "If I had known what kind of person you really were, I never would have married you. I regret it. I must have been blind."
"Then why not divorce me?" She tilted her head up at him, calm as still water.
The question landed somewhere he hadn’t expected. "What?"
Cassandra rose to her feet, and there was something almost cruel in the amusement on her face now. "If I disgust you this much, if you love Aurora enough to throw everything else away for her, then I’m nothing but dead weight to you. Since you can’t stand the sight of me, why not just end it?"
"I..." The words caught somewhere in his throat.
Divorce her.
His hand had curled into a fist at his side, and he didn’t remember making it do that.
She stepped closer, close enough that he couldn’t look away from the mockery written plainly across her face.
"Is it that you don’t have a reason ready? I can hand you a whole list if you need one. I’m jealous. I’m disobedient. I’m useless. I’m wicked, apparently, and I speak far out of turn to my elders. Any single one of those should be more than enough to set you free of me."