My Fated Mate Can Have Her-Chapter 208: No Vacancy

Violet

The boarding house was full.

The woman behind the counter had barely glanced at us before delivering the news. No rooms. No space. Try again in a few days, or find somewhere else.

The main door closed in our faces.

I turned to find Rowan already scanning the street, his expression thoughtful rather than concerned.

"We’ll find something else," he said. "Let’s explore a bit. We might come across other places. And I’d like to find a market."

"A market?" I looked at him.

He patted his bag. "Some of the currencies I have," he explained. "If I can find a black market to convert it, we’d have more options and freedom here."

"Convert?" I paused. "I don’t think that is possible. And what are black markets?"

He glanced at me, then seemed to catch himself. "Well, they are different from usual markets. A lot of illegal dealings take place in those markets. Either that or certain unofficial transactions without necessarily being illegal. Trades that don’t follow the usual rules, and wolves who deal in things that requires fewer questions about where something came from."

My mouth hung open and I could not help the shock that consumed my face.

How...

"Are these illegal operations in your territory too?" I whispered, hoping I was wrong.

The whole thing sounded ridiculous.

His brows rose up as if he hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary. Then a subtle recognition lit his face as he understood just what I was hinting at.

He smiled, his eyes shifting back to the busy streets. "Almost every ruler is aware of operations like that in their nation. In a way to be honest, it does help the economy."

"Re—really?" I asked, still not able to wrap my head around it. "But if it’s illegal..."

"Not all of it is." He started walking slowly, and I fell into step beside him. "Some of it is just... unofficial. A wolf who makes goods but doesn’t have the proper permits or a trader who deals in items from other territories without paying the right fees, along with a few other things." He shrugged.

"And you just allow it?"

"To an extent." His eyes scanned the street ahead as he spoke. "Shutting down every black market would take resources. And sometimes it’s easier to let these things exist in the shadows. They fill gaps that the official systems don’t and it keeps a certain... balance."

I was quiet for a moment, turning his words over in my mind.

It made a strange kind of sense. Uncomfortable sense, but sense nonetheless.

"So, in your territory," I said carefully, "You know about these markets and you let them operate."

"Within limits." His expression grew slightly more serious. "There are lines. Anything that harms others, exploitation, violence, and a lot of other things gets dealt with."

I thought about the pack I had grown up in. I had grown up in such a small world. So, markets like these were a thing.

"But you want to convert your coins. Is such a thing even possible? And how sure are you that you’d find such a place here?"

He looked ahead. "I just have a feeling. It would be impossible for a sprawling civilisation like this not to have such a place."

I frowned. "But the coins—even if we found a place like that, would anyone here even want your coins? It’s completely different from the type they use here."

The coins really were that different and unlike anything I had seen before. At least the coins for different territories Rowan had shown me, they had similarities and were made of various metals.

But the ones Aris had handed to me were oval-shaped rather than round, and made of some kind of polished black stone that gleamed faintly in the crystal light. Each coin had a circular hole in the centre, and they were thin, almost delicate-looking, as if they might snap if pressed too hard.

But they were very sturdy despite how fragile they looked.

The strangest part had been the markings. Small coloured dots surrounding the edges of each coin. Some had one dot, others had two or three. The colours varied too, like colours red, blue, white, and a few I thought might be green or gold, and one could easily tell even in low lighting.

I assumed the different dots and colours signified the values of the coins.

It was a beautiful currency, I had to admit. Far prettier than the metal coins as if someone had taken care to make money into something worth looking at.

But pretty or not, I had no idea how much anything cost here or what counted as expensive or cheap.

"It could give us away," I continued, not comfortable with what he was suggesting. "If someone sees unfamiliar coins and starts asking questions about where we came from, we’d have a problem. Especially since we’re supposed to be from the lower levels. I don’t even know if they are open to outsiders."

He was quiet for a moment.

"I understand your concern, but I am also aware that we could be tracked through it too. Trust me, I will be careful." He pushed his hair back from his forehead, and I couldn’t help but notice his hair had grown longer. "It is a risk, but it might also be our only option if we want to find our way out of this place."

He continued, "Someone, anyone who needs currencies from above ground, would know routes to the surface. A city of this size especially has to have trade with the outside one way or the other."

"Oh..."

He was right.

And it did make a lot of sense.

"But before that, it would be wise to know how the currency here works," he added. "Will be on the lookout for that while searching for a place we could stay."

"You think people go up and down regularly?" I asked.

"A civilization this size?" He glanced around at the towering structures, the bridges arching overhead, the steady flow of wolves moving through the streets. "There has to be trade. No city exists in complete isolation."

I hoped he was right.