Chapter 2 My Name on the Summons

The Registry court occupied the bottom three floors of a building that had once been a bank, and it still had the bank's proportions: high ceilings, marble floors, a row of brass lamps converted to electric light sometime in the last century. The lamps hummed. Everyone who worked there had learned to ignore the hum. I only heard it on mornings when I was already afraid.

I heard it that morning.

Kade walked beside me through the security checkpoint, and the scanner above the gate gave a low, flat tone when we passed beneath it. The guard at the desk, a grey-haired woman named Ruth with reading glasses pushed up on her forehead, looked at her screen, then at us, then at her screen again.

"Both of you," she said.

"Both of us," I agreed.

"You know I have to log this, Nia. A feral wolf and a Registry attorney walking in together on a mate summons will be in the system before you reach the second floor."

"Then log it accurately. It is not a secret. It is the reason I am here."

She typed. The printer beside her desk coughed out a slip of paper, and she tore it off and handed it to me. A visitor's pass with a barcode and a case number, and the case number was mine.

I had spent seven years in that building arguing other people's case numbers. I had never once held my own.

The summons office was at the end of a corridor lined with filing cabinets bolted to the wall in the years when the Registry still worried about people stealing from it. I knocked once and opened the door without waiting.

The clerk behind the desk was young, with pale hair and a nervous habit of touching the edge of his collar. His name plate said Owen. He looked at me, then at Kade, then at the summons on the desk between us, and I watched him decide to be professional.

"Identification," he said.

I put my card on the desk. Kade put nothing.

"He is unregistered," Owen said, his voice cracking slightly. "The Registry has no record for him. He will need to be processed before the bond can be confirmed."

"The bond cannot be confirmed until we have read the terms. I am requesting the full summons file."

"You are the mate of record." Owen's fingers found his collar. "The attorney of record has not been assigned."

"Then assign me."

"The Registry does not permit a mate to act as counsel in her own bond case. It is in the act, section twelve. A Luna may not represent herself in matters concerning her own licensing."

I had known that before I walked into the room. I had wanted to hear him say it, because hearing a thing said out loud is the first step toward finding the way around it.

"Then give me the file. As the mate of record, I am entitled to read the terms before confirmation."

Owen looked at the summons, then opened the top drawer, took out a thin folder, and pushed it across to me. The folder had my name printed on the front tab, and below my name, in the space where the Registry usually wrote the name of the bonded wolf, it said Kade, feral, no pack affiliation, eastern green belt.

I sat down and opened the folder and read.

The first page was a duplicate of the summons Elias had brought to the camp. The second page was the licensing terms.

A licensed Luna, the terms said, becomes a co-leader of her mate's household and territory. She holds authority over pack disputes, pack law, and the distribution of territory resources, subject to the approval of the Council of Alphas. Her assets, income, and property are held in joint trust with her mate for the duration of the bond. She may not dissolve the bond without the consent of her mate and the approval of the Registrar. A licensed Luna who leaves her mate's territory without her mate's consent commits an offense under the Mate Licensing Act.

I read that paragraph three times, and the hum of the brass lamps seemed to get louder in my ears.

"What does this mean in practice?" I asked. "In plain words, Owen. Not act language."

His face had gone the color of the paper on his desk. "It means the bond is a contract. The Registry licenses the pair, and the Luna becomes a partner in the household and the territory. It means..."

"It means she cannot leave."

"It means she cannot leave without consent."

"Whose consent?"

"Her mate's. And the Registrar's."

I looked at Kade. He stood by the door with his arms crossed, and his face had not changed at all since we walked in, and that frightened me more than any expression would have.

"You knew this," I said.

"I knew some of it."

"You knew that the moment the Registry confirms this bond, I become property. That is what the act means, whatever pretty words are in the file. I become property with a title."

"You become a Luna," Owen said quietly. "It is an honored position. You would have authority over the pack."

"I would have authority my mate permits me to have, over a pack I have never met, in a territory I cannot leave, with my income in joint trust and my exit subject to a Registrar's approval. Do not dress it up for me, Owen. I have read the act. I have argued it."

The room was quiet. Down the corridor a phone rang and was answered, and a door closed.

"Sign the confirmation," Owen said. "The terms are better than the alternative. If you refuse, the Registrar will rule on the bond without you, and a refusal is an offense under the act. It carries a penalty."

"What penalty?"

"Suspension of your license to practice. Confinement to the green belt until the Registrar rules. I do not know the exact wording. I am a clerk, Nia. I push paper."

I stood up, closed the folder, and held it against my chest.

"Come with me," I said to Kade. "You and I are going to find a room where we can talk without a clerk listening."

We found an empty hearing room on the third floor, small, with a window that looked out over the green belt gate and the grey hills beyond it. I closed the door and put the folder on the table between us and did not sit down.

"Explain," I said.

Kade uncrossed his arms. "I bit you because a file told me you were going to be installed as a false Luna in a pack that had already lost its Alpha. The Registry planned to move you in, license you to a wolf of their choosing, and use you to control the pack. The bite was the only thing I could think of that would put you beyond their reach before they could do it."

I stared at him. "That is the most convenient story I have ever heard from a man who is currently the only person who benefits from it."

"It is the truth."

"Then prove it."

"I cannot prove it today. The file is gone. I burned it."

I laughed, and it was not a kind laugh. "Of course you did."

"I burned it because if anyone found it on me, they would know what I knew, and they would kill me before I could tell you. I did not plan on the Registry licensing us off the bite. I thought it would be a medical note and a fine, and you would be free of them."

"You thought wrong."

"I did."

The door of the hearing room opened. I turned, and Halden stood in the doorway with his coat folded over one arm and his grey hair combed neatly back, and behind him Thessaly, the Council inspector, with her silver hair and sharp blue eyes, and behind her two Registry officers with their hands folded in front of them.

"Miss Nia," Halden said. "I heard you were in the building, and I came down to offer my assistance. The confirmation hearing has been moved to Friday morning. I will be presiding."

He smiled at me with the courteous patience of a man who had been waiting for me for a long time.