The Scentless Disgrace (2)
Valerius grabbed her wrist—not gently—and pressed her thumb into his pooling blood, then against the contract beside his signature. The paper drank the blood immediately, sealing it, making it permanent.
"Done." He released her and stepped back, wiping his palm clean with a white cloth. "The Scentless goes north. The Sunstone Pack survives."
The council murmured approval, relief palpable in the shifting of bodies, the loosening of shoulders. They'd bought their survival with her bones, and the transaction satisfied them.
Corinne descended from the gallery, her silk gown whispering against stone steps. She moved with the grace of someone who'd never been denied anything, whose sweet Omega scent had opened every door since puberty. She stopped in front of Riana, close enough that her honey-scent became suffocating.
"You should be grateful." Her voice pitched low, for Riana's ears only. "Anyone willing to take a wraith is more than you deserve."
Riana said nothing. She'd learned years ago that silence was the only defense they couldn't strip from her.
Corinne's perfect face hardened. "They'll forget you within a week. You were never really here anyway."
She turned and walked away, leaving her scent like a parting insult.
Valerius motioned to the attendants waiting in the shadows. Two women approached with baskets, their movements brisk and impersonal. They stripped Riana's bronze pack-cuff from her wrist. Unbraided her hair, removing the leather cord that marked her family line. Took the small wooden token she'd carried since childhood, the one carved with the Sunstone wolf.
In their place, they dressed her in white funeral cloth. The fabric was thin, meant for corpses being prepared for the pyre. It wrapped her in layers that smelled like the lavender they burned for the dead.
The message was clear. To the Sunstone Pack, she was already gone.
The council watched in solemn silence as the attendants bound her wrists with hemp rope—not tight enough to hurt, but visible enough to mark her as property being transferred. When they finished, they stepped back, their duty complete.
A Beta with a leather-scent and road dust on his boots entered the hall. The caravan master, Riana realized. Come to collect his cargo.
He looked her over like livestock, checking teeth and limbs with his eyes, then grunted. "She'll do. Load her up."
Valerius didn't say goodbye. He turned his back before they led her toward the main doors, already discussing next season's hunts with an elder. His voice faded behind her as they walked her through corridors she'd known her entire life, toward gates she'd never thought she'd leave through.
The caravan waited in the courtyard—three covered wagons, two dozen guards, horses stamping in the morning cold. They loaded her into the rear wagon, settling her between supply crates and grain sacks. The iron box containing the Blood Contract sat beside her, sealed and silent.
As the caravan rolled through the Sunstone gates, Riana looked back once. Corinne watched from a high window, her face a pale oval behind glass. Then the wagon rounded the southern wall, and her sister disappeared.
Riana turned forward, toward the road that led north into winter.
The sun bled out behind her, and the white cloth they'd wrapped her in smelled like the lavender they burned for corpses.
**
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