“I’m sorry, but you’re out of options.”

Rachel Bennett’s heart dropped, plummeting from her chest to her stomach and then all the way down to her feet.

“You can’t be serious.”

Her lawyer shrugged, glancing down at his golden wristwatch as he did. “Things have been this way for thousands of years. No exceptions have ever been made. Ever. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded bored, and like he wished she would hurry up and get this meeting over with. Rachel would have thought that, since she was paying him by the hour, he’d be a little more eager to draw the conversation out. But he must have had bigger clients, with more money and more interesting problems, because his body language made it clear that he was ready to leave this room.

Rachel wasn’t ready to give up yet, though. Her family’s whole fortune was on the line. Millions of dollars, and dozens of priceless heirlooms, were going to revert to a third cousin twice removed at the end of the year, unless she found a way around the antiquated clan laws. She wasn’t even sure of the exact relation of the mystery distant cousin. All she knew was it was some guy she’d never met who had swooped in and told her that he was ready to claim the fortune that was rightfully his.

Rachel had snorted in his face, and then spent the last of her savings to hire a lawyer. Giving up her meager savings had hurt, but she’d been confident that she would recoup her losses when she got her family fortune back. Now, that lawyer was telling her that she was going to lose that fortune. Adding insult to injury, he looked extremely bored while telling her this. Rachel felt her face heat with anger. Had this clown even bothered to research the matter properly? Or had he just taken her money and then made a half-hearted effort to parrot back vaguely relevant sections of the Wizard Civil Code?

Rachel frowned, and crossed her arms. He might be ready to leave, but she wasn’t going to let him off the hook this easily. She glared at him with what she hoped was a firm expression, and shook her head. “I don’t believe I’m out of options. There’s no way that in the twenty-first century this law still exists as is. There must be some loophole. Some way around it. I’m paying you to find that loophole.”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “There is no loophole, Miss Bennett.”

“Find one.”

Another sigh. “Your clan’s law is very clear on this, and it hasn’t changed for centuries. Unmarried female wizards may not inherit family fortunes. Unless you find a husband in the next thirty days, your fortune passes to the closest living male relative.”

“The closest male relative is some guy I’ve never met in my life, who has never had any interest in my family until now.”

“Be that as it may, he is the rightful legal heir as far as the law is concerned.” The lawyer spoke slowly, as though he were trying to patiently explain a simple concept to a dimwitted child.

“Is this the freaking middle ages still? Are we still such a patriarchal society that females can’t inherit their own family’s property?” Rachel felt hot tears stinging at her eyelids, but she managed to hold them back. She would not let this lazy asshole see her cry. She was sure he already viewed her as a hysterical woman. She would not add fuel to his fire, no matter how devastated she felt right now. Images of her mother’s jewelry collection flashed in her mind’s eye. As a young girl, Rachel had occasionally played dress up with the magical necklaces, bracelets, and rings. Her mother had never scolded her when she found her draped in centuries’ worth of jewels. Instead, she’d always smiled and told Rachel that the beautiful pieces would belong to her one day. Now, in a span of a few days, Rachel had discovered she might lose those heirlooms forever.

“I’m sorry, Miss Bennett. I didn’t write the laws. I agree that such policies are disgusting and old-fashioned, but I don’t have the power to change them.” He didn’t sound disgusted. He sounded bored.

“You’re sure there’s no way around this? You’ve checked every possible section of the Wizard Civil Code.”

“I’ve checked and rechecked a dozen times, at least. The laws are very straightforward. A male heir may make an official request to have family wealth transferred to him. If there is an unmarried female heir before him in the line of succession, she has thirty days from the date of the official request to marry. Otherwise, the fortune is permanently granted to the male heir.”

Rachel stared at the lawyer, willing him to suddenly realize that there was a loophole he’d forgotten, or an ambiguity in the law that might help her case. But he merely stared at her with that same bored expression. Rachel knew this was pointless. No matter how many times she asked him, the answer was going to be the same. She was going to lose her inheritance unless she hurried up and tied the knot—an unlikely prospect since she didn’t so much as have a boyfriend right now. She let her head drop into her hands for a moment, then looked back up at the lawyer with a resigned sigh.

“Alright. I understand. Thanks for your time.” Her politeness was a deeply ingrained habit. He should be thanking her, since she was the one giving him business and paying him exorbitant amounts of money to tell her that her fortune was a lost cause. But he did not thank her. Instead, he stood, looking relieved as he held out his hand to shake hers.

“Of course. I’m sorry there was nothing more I could do. Feel free to email my secretary if you have any follow-up questions.”

Rachel nodded dully as he stood and hurried out of the small conference room. The lawyer had been nice enough, at least, to come meet her at work. Rachel was a grunt worker for the Torch Lake Advocacy Bureau, which meant she only had a cubicle, not an office of her own. But she’d been able to reserve one of the many conference rooms for her meeting with the lawyer, and she had never been so grateful as right now to be behind closed doors. She tried to fight the tears, but she was losing the battle.

How could this be happening? She’d already lost her whole family during the Great Dark Magic War. Now she was going to lose her family’s inheritance as well? There must be some way around this. There had to be.

But even though Rachel’s lawyer could have been kinder and more empathetic in delivering his message, Rachel knew the man was right. She herself had spent countless hours attempting to figure out a way around the marriage law, and she’d found nothing promising during her research. She couldn’t believe that such a backwards law could still be on the books, though, so she’d hired professional help.

Now, she’d spent the last of her money only to be told that no more money would be coming. Rachel had never in her life had money problems. She’d come from one of the wealthiest wizarding families in the Pine Mountain Clan. She could trace her ancestors back for generations, and she’d never had to worry about petty details like bills or jobs. Until now. The Dark War had destroyed her clan, like so many other clans. In the wake of the war houses and other property were left in chaos. High Councils from the new wizard-shifter towns that had sprung up were slowly sorting through the rubble and returning property to its rightful owners. Rachel had been forced to get a job while waiting for the Councils to get to her clan’s property, but she had told herself that living paycheck to paycheck wasn’t so bad. After all, it was temporary. Or at least, she’d thought it was temporary. Now, it looked like her impoverished state might turn out to be permanent.

Rachel glanced at the clock on the wall, then forced herself to stand up and wipe the tears from her eyes. She was already ten minutes late getting back from her lunch break, and she could not afford to lose this job right now. Her stomach growled, angry that she had spent her free hour meeting with a lawyer instead of eating, but that couldn’t be helped now. Rachel took a deep, shuddering breath, and put a smile on her face.

You can do this, she told herself. No matter what, you’re a Bennett woman. You’re strong and capable, regardless of how much money is in your bank account.

After one more breath, Rachel opened the door and stepped into the hallway, hoping that she might be lucky enough to get back to her cubicle without seeing anyone she knew. The hallway itself was empty, but Rachel was startled to hear angry voices coming from the conference room across the hallway. Usually, these rooms were all empty, so it struck her as somewhat weird that she had been using one at the same time as someone else—someone else who sounded like they weren’t having much better of a day than she was.

Curiosity got the better of her, and she crept closer to the door, straining to make out the words being yelled. Something about the laws needing to change, and that all the wizards were still stuck in the past. Rachel’s interest was piqued. After the meeting she’d just had with her lawyer, she couldn’t have agreed more that the laws needed to be updated, but she doubted that the person yelling was angry over the same things as she was. He was a man, so he wouldn’t be worried about any inheritance he might have. What ancient laws were upsetting him?

Rachel listened, furrowing her brow. That voice sounded awfully familiar. Was it possible that the man behind the door was Jake Palmer? Rachel strained her ears. She’d had a crush on Jake from afar since the first time she saw him. He worked in the Dragon Utilization Department, and was a frequent visitor to the Advocacy Bureau. Every time he visited, she couldn’t keep her eyes off his impossibly muscular physique and handsome face. One of the few young dragon shifters in town, Jake attracted quite a bit of female attention everywhere he went, although most of it was from other shifters, not from wizards. Wizards tended to keep their romances within the wizard community, which Rachel thought was a little old-fashioned. Not that it mattered much whether Jake was a shifter or a wizard, because she would never have actually acted on her little crush. She hadn’t allowed herself to get caught up in any romances since moving to Torch Lake. She’d told herself that she needed to wait until things with her inheritance were settled, so she could truly settle into life here. She’d planned to quit her job and start her own business the moment her fortune was recovered and she had some capital to work with. But in the last hour, all of those dreams had gone up in smoke.

“This is ridiculous!” she heard the voice behind the door yell again. She was almost certain that it was Jake.

“Yes, Jake. This is ridiculous,” she said with a sigh, thinking that nothing he was dealing with could possibly be as bad as her situation.

Or could it?