Free Wolf’s Princess by Maddy Barone

birthday and at Christmas.”
    He had, Rose acknowledged to herself. Expensive jewelry and perfumes she had no place to wear. “The presents were beautiful. But they didn’t tell me much about you. Everything of importance I learned about you came from Quill and Paint. For instance, you own a whorehouse?”
    He seemed to flinch the slightest bit. “I’m a co-owner, yes.”
    “Quill and Amanda told me a little bit about it, but I’d like to hear what you have to say.”
    Sky grasped her hands before settling himself cross-legged in the grass at the edge of the garden. “You deserve to know.” He seemed to be struggling to be completely open and honest. “I wasn’t trying to ignore you all these years. But every time I sat down to write to you, my heart broke a little because I couldn’t see you. With all the responsibility on my shoulders, I can’t afford to be an emotional wreck. And I couldn’t write the truth of what I was doing in case it fell into the wrong hands. Rose.” His hands clenched almost painfully over hers. “Rose, I missed you so much that if I let myself think about you for too long I would break down in tears. I wanted you to be with me so much it hurt.”
    She absorbed that, a little flattered and trying not to be. “Okay, tell me why you run a whorehouse.”
    His gaze was fixed on their hands, where he ran the pads of his thumbs over the backs of her hands in small circles. “You know about the laws regarding women in Omaha?”
    “Some. It sounds pretty wild, though, so I don’t know what’s true. Women have to pay a special tax to be married? And they have to pay to stay single too?”
    “Those are both true. When a woman turns eighteen years old, she has three options: pay one hundred gold strips to marry, pay ten gold strips each year she is single, or go to work in a house.”
    “One hundred gold?” she squawked. “That’s twenty years’ wages for most people.”
    “Yes. Not many people can afford to get married. Even paying ten gold strips for the annual Single Status Tariff is out of range for a lot of families.” His face, when he lifted his gaze to hers, was set in unyielding lines. “So many women have to work in houses like mine.”
    “A whorehouse.”
    “I don’t like to call them whorehouses. It’s demeaning.”
    “So is being forced to be a prostitute.”
    “Yes.” He met her gaze squarely. “I hate it, and that’s why I’m working to change it. When I first went to work at Ms. Mary’s, I read the law back and forth and found a loophole. The law says a woman must work at a house. It doesn’t specify what kind of work she has to do. In the other houses, cooking and other housework is done by men. In my house, those tasks are done by women. I don’t force anyone to have sex for money. Do you understand?”
    Rose thought he sounded desperate for her to accept what he did. “That must have been hard on your wolf. He must have hated it.”
    “He did.” Sky let go of her hands to run his fingers through his short hair. “He wanted to come back here to you immediately. The trip to Omaha wasn’t what he wanted in the first place. But when he discovered what was happening to the women in Omaha he wanted to tear apart every man involved. He accepted our stay in Omaha.” His voice lowered to a soft mutter. “For a while.”
    Knowing what she did of the wolves and their drive to protect women, she could believe it. “How did you end up working at a whor—I mean, a house? When you left the den you were going to work on the railroad.”
    “That was the plan.” He laughed. Maybe it was bitter, or maybe it was just tired, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “When Quill and I first arrived in Omaha we found out the railroad wasn’t hiring workers until spring. We were allowed in the city on a one week visa. If we didn’t have work by the time it expired we’d have to leave.”
    “A visa?” she echoed, remembering the foreign students at the