Free Web NovelChapter 51: Chapter 51 In front of everyone
_Author’s POV_
The noise started at half past ten in the morning.
Rowena was in the study reviewing Corby’s written statement when Velvet appeared in the doorway with the expression she reserved for situations that required immediate attention but were not emergencies in the physical sense, something between exasperation and alarm.
“There are people at the gate,” Velvet said.
Rowena looked up. “How many?”
“Eight. Maybe ten.” A pause. “Maelis is with them.”
Rowena set the statement down.
She had not slept. She had worked through the remainder of the night on the documentation from the facility, on Corby’s statement, on the preliminary structure of the case she was building with Celeste’s lawyers. Her eyes were clear and her back was straight and she looked, despite everything, like a woman who was running on something more sustainable than sleep.
She stood up and went to the window.
The gate was visible from the study’s east view.
Maelis was there, standing with her cane and six people Rowena recognized as Moonreign Pack members, plus two she didn’t, plus Elvira.
Maelis was speaking loudly.
“Open the gate,” Rowena said to Velvet.
“My Luna.....”
“Open the gate. Let them in. I’ll be downstairs in two minutes.”
By the time Rowena came through the front door, a small audience had assembled without being invited.
The Ashthorne estate’s morning staff had not gone anywhere. Two of the groundskeepers had drifted toward the front. Three neighbors who had been walking on the street outside had stopped, drawn by the particular gravity of a scene in progress.
Kasper had materialized from the east annex.
Maelis stood in the center of the front path.
She looked worse than the last time Rowena had seen her, the leg clearly causing genuine pain, her color off, the energy she was projecting maintained through will rather than physical comfort. Rowena noted all of this and felt the same thing she always felt when she looked at Maelis, the complicated combination of genuine care and clear-eyed understanding of exactly who this woman was and what she was doing.
“Rowena.” Maelis’s voice came through. “I’ve come to speak with you directly since you seem unwilling to engage reasonably through other channels.”
“Good morning, Maelis,” Rowena said. “You should be sitting down. Your leg.....”
“My leg is exactly the point,” Maelis said. “You have refused to release the medical funds necessary for my specialist. You have taken back every item your family contributed to our household. You have left the Varkos estate in a state that.....”
“Let me stop you there,” Rowena said pleasantly.
Maelis stopped.
Rowena came down the front steps and stood at the base of them, not moving toward the group, simply positioning herself where she could be heard clearly by everyone present, including the people who had stopped on the street.
“You said I’ve refused to release medical funds,” she said. “That’s inaccurate. I extended the Ashthorne medical endowment through the end of the year, at my own expense, as part of the dissolution agreement. Your specialist fees are covered until December.” She kept her voice level. “If there’s a processing issue, that’s an administrative matter your attorney can raise with mine. It has nothing to do with my willingness to provide it.”
Maelis’s expression flickered. “The specialist requires.....”
“The specialist requires the same fund that has been covering his fees for three years,” Rowena said.
“Which is still active. I can provide the documentation reference number if you need it.”
A murmur moved through the small audience.
“You took back everything,” Maelis said, pivoting. “The furniture, the equipment, the accounts, you stripped that household and left it.....”
“I took back what belonged to my family,” Rowena said. “Every item that left the Varkos estate was documented in the original dowry inventory that was submitted to the Alpha King’s office as part of the dissolution. Nothing was taken that wasn’t Ashthorne property.” She paused. “The Varkos estate is smaller now than it was during our marriage because my family’s contributions have been removed. That’s accurate. It’s also the direct consequence of a marriage that was ended because Kaelen brought another woman home, announced her as his wife, and told me I had no say in the matter.”
The street had gone quite still. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
Maelis’s jaw tightened. “You were provided for.....”
“I provided,” Rowena said. “For three years. The Moonreign Pack’s operational accounts, the vendor contracts, the staff payroll, the medical endowments, the infrastructure maintenance, all of it came from Ashthorne funds administered by me. I have the records.” She looked at Maelis directly. “When Kaelen married into my family, the pack was three months from financial collapse. I didn’t broadcast that. I handled it because it needed handling and he wasn’t there to handle it himself.”
“You fulfilled your duty as Luna.....”
“My duty as Luna did not include personally funding a pack that was insolvent before I arrived,” Rowena said. “That was something I chose to do because I believed in the marriage. The marriage ended because Kaelen chose someone else. The financial arrangement ended with it.” She tilted her head slightly. “These are not complicated facts, Maelis. They’re just uncomfortable ones.” freēwebnovel.com
A woman on the street, a neighbor, someone Rowena didn’t know by name but recognized by sight, said, audibly enough to carry: “She’s right. They took her money for three years and now they’re at her gate.”
Someone beside her agreed.
Maelis heard it.
Her expression shifted.
“You’re a young woman with no understanding of how families work,” Maelis said, and her voice had lost some of its carrying quality, replaced with something more unsteady. “You came into that household with nothing....”
“I came into that household with everything,” Rowena said. “My family’s money, my family’s name, three years of my life, and the specific faith of a dying woman who believed her daughter would be protected.” She kept her voice even. “My mother spent her last healthy years arranging that marriage because she trusted the Varkos family. She transferred every resource she had into your household because she believed Kaelen would honor his word.” A pause. “And he didn’t.”
The street was completely quiet now.
Elvira, from her position behind the main group, was staring at the ground and cursing.
“He made a promise,” Rowena continued. “On our wedding night, before he left. He promised to come back. He promised to honor the marriage. Those were his words.” She looked at Maelis. “He came back three years later with another woman and her child and told me the situation was what it was.” She spread her hands slightly. “I didn’t take his furniture, Maelis. I took mine.”
One of the Moonreign Pack members. a man Rowena recognized as a mid-rank member who had been with the pack for years, looked at the ground.
Another had turned slightly away from the group, the body language of someone who had been brought along and was no longer certain they wanted to be associated with the purpose.
Maelis felt the shift. She was too experienced not to feel it, the moment when a crowd that has been brought as support begins to reconsider its position.
“You are ungrateful,” Maelis said. But the authority had gone thin. “After everything we gave you, a home, a title, a place in this pack.....”
“A home I paid for,” Rowena said. “A title I maintained alone. A place in a pack that required me to manage its survival while my husband was elsewhere making promises to someone else.” She looked at the older woman steadily. “I’m not ungrateful, Maelis. I’m accurate. There’s a difference.”
Maelis’s composure broke.
Not entirely, she was too controlled for entirely. But the edges of it came apart in the way they did when a person had run out of arguments and hadn’t run out of feeling, and what was left was the unmediated version of both.
“You think you can just.....” She struck her cane against the path. “After everything, you sit in this house with your family’s money and your title and you act like you owe nothing, you owe this family.....”
“What do I owe you, Maelis?” Rowena asked. Genuinely. “Tell me specifically. Name the debt.”
Maelis opened her mouth.
Closed it.
The specific debt, named plainly, did not exist. There was no transaction in which the Varkos family had given Rowena something she hadn’t paid for herself, and Maelis knew the ledgers as well as anyone. She had sat in that household for three years watching Rowena fill gaps that Maelis had allowed to exist and had never once said thank you, and standing here now she could not name a debt because the debt ran the other direction and they both understood it.
“You’re making a scene in front of strangers,” Rowena said. “At my family’s gate. Because you’re in pain and you’re frightened and the household you’ve managed for forty years is smaller than it was and I understand all of that.” Her voice had softened fractionally. “But I’m not going to stand here and let you rewrite what happened. I will not do that.”
Maelis’s hand on her cane was shaking slightly.
It might have been the leg. It might have been something else.
“Your medical account is active,” Rowena said. “Call your attorney today and they will confirm it. The specialist can be booked.” She looked at the older woman for a moment. “I genuinely hope your leg gets better. I mean that.”
She turned and went back up the front steps.
