Midwinter 

Chapter Five: 

Kael's POV

I stood outside her door with my claws still out and Ruin howling in my skull.

“Mine.” He said, bit exactly in words but in  the thud of my heart and the heat in my hands and  memory of her pulse pounded my thumb. 

“Go, make it right with her.”  His voice finally echoed through my mind.  But it was not convincing enough, at least not for a man of war like myself. 

I pressed my forehead against the cold oak. Through the wood, I could hear her breathing. Slow, Uneven and full of fear.  She wasn't crying, but I could sense how terrified she was. 

I had just told her she was going to be the architect of her father's demise. I had at least expected to bawl her eyes out, but even though she was a fair and gentle damsel, there was some grit about her. 

Maybe that's why she was my mate. 

"Alpha?"

The guard at the foot of the tower stairs had risen from his stool. A young man, barely twenty, with eyes that went everywhere except my face.

"No one enters this door," I said. "No one speaks to her. If she asks for water, you bring it. If she asks for anything, you come and tell me."

"And if she tries to leave?"

"She will not."

"But if…”

"If she does," I said quietly, "you will not touch her. You will find me."

His throat bobbed. "Yes, Alpha."

I made myself walk. Down the stairs, along the east corridor, past the portraits of men who had shared my blood and none of my doubts. Ruin followed me inch by inch, snarling at every step that took me away.

I went to the forge.

The fires were banked low, the way I had left them the night before. I stripped off my shirt, fed the coals, and dragged a bar of iron from the rack. The heat rolled over my skin. The hammer came down, and sparks flew, and the first ringing blow shook the whole mountain.

I couldn't think, so instead I hammered.  

The iron folded and stretched as I created something new. Every strike a word I could not say, an expression I could only keep to myself.  She is a spy. She is the answer to a prayer… she is my mate and the daughter of the man who murdered my mother. 

I had said that last one out loud in my head a hundred times. It had never once made Ruin quiet.

By the time the sky outside the narrow window had turned the grey of old steel, my hands were black and my shoulders burned and I had decided what I would say.

I put on a clean shirt. I washed my face. I looked at the man in the polished steel for a long moment, and the man looking back had no expression at all.

Good.

The council chamber sat at the heart of the compound, a round room of granite with a table cut from a single oak. Seven elders. My Beta. The Gamma, Kiera, in her tracker's leathers, standing at my right. Vera on the wall behind Marcus with her arms crossed, because Marcus's mate sat in every council whether the elders liked it or not.

I tried to sit but couldn't, so I put both hands on the table.  

“We are all aware of the company we have in our midst, a guest… or perhaps a prisoner as you almost would like to think.” 

“That's what she is..”  someone's voice echoed through the room and there was a slight but obvious hum agreement from the others.  

“The RavenMark daughter will be bound to me in midwinter.” I said.  “A peace ceremony. Before the pack and before the Moon Goddess ‘ 

I half expected a row, given how scared they were of me, but nothing came. Just silence. Then Marcus came to his feet so fast his chair crashed over backwards.

"Say that again."

"You heard me."

"You will bind her?" His scarred face had gone grey. "Darius Ravenfell's daughter? You will put her in your heart in front of this pack?"

"A Binding is not a claiming," said Elder Hask, the oldest of them, with a voice like dry paper. "It is a vow of peace. It can be undone."

"It is a vow in front of every wolf in Ashveil," Marcus snapped. "It is a ring on her finger and a seat at his side. Call it what you like. The pack will call her Luna."

"Then the pack will be mistaken," I said.

"Will it?" He took a step toward me. "Three days ago you told me you had a different feeling about this one. I held my tongue. Two days ago you refused to reject her. I held my tongue. Now you stand here and tell this council you will wed an enemy spy, and you expect me to sit down?"

"I expect you to listen."

"Then give me a reason."

"There are three." I did not raise my voice. "One. Darius sent her under a flag of peace. If we kill her, we hand him his war, and the Moon Goddess will not be on our side of it. Two. A true bond, once woken, cannot be severed without killing her. You know that, Marcus. You heard me say it yourself."

A low murmur. Kiera's eyes slid sideways to me and away.

"Three," I said. "A man who believes his gift has been accepted does not look for the knife. If Darius thinks his daughter is welcome in my house, he will reach out to cement the idea of peace. And perhaps it is what we have needed for a long time.” 

I sounded like a fool above all things, but it was to an end… one I couldn't disclose yet.  

Elder Maud, a thin woman with white braids and a way of looking at you that made you feel eleven, folded her hands. "And the girl herself? She is aware of this?"

"She will be."

"And if she refuses?"

"She will not refuse."

"You sound very certain."

"I am. Is it not why she is here?” 

Marcus laughed, short and ugly. "Of course you are. Because you are not thinking with your head."

The chamber went very still.

"Careful," I said.

"No. I have been careful for nine years." He pointed at me with a shaking finger. "I have watched you carry every bad thing this pack has ever done on your own back, and I never said a word, because I would have followed you into the sea. But I will not stand here and watch you do what your father did."

"Marcus," Vera said, very softly, from the wall.

He did not look at her. "He looked at Seraphina exactly like that, Kael. Exactly. As if she were the only thing in the room that was real."

Ruin surged. My claws split the table's edge before I knew they had come out.

For three long breaths nobody moved. The splinters of old oak lay on the floor between us. I looked at my hands, then at Marcus, and I put the claws away, one at a time, the way a man sheathes a blade.

"Do not say that name in this room again," I said.

"Or what?"

"Or I will forget you are my friend, and have your head on a pike for all the pack to see.. you are not beyond that.” 

His face worked. Whatever he had meant to say next died behind his teeth. Vera had left the wall and put a hand on his arm, and he shook it off, and then, slowly, let it stay.

"The council has heard," I said to the elders. "The Binding stands. Midwinter. If anyone objects, they may do it in the proper way…not that I would give to fucks about it..” 

"A bride must be willing," Hask said. "Will the council hear from her before midwinter?"

"She will give her answer when she is asked."

"That is not an answer, Alpha."

"It is the one you will have."

Hask inclined his head. Maud did not. A younger elder, Corwin, shifted in his seat and looked at the floor.

"We are dismissed," I said.

The chairs scraped. The elders filed out in a murmur of low voices. Marcus stood a moment longer, looking at me with something I had not seen in his face since the winter his sons were buried. Then he turned and went, and Vera followed him, and in the doorway she looked back at me over her shoulder with a question I did not answer.

Kiera lingered. "You did not tell them everything."

"No."

"Will you tell me?"

"No."

She nodded slowly, as if I had confirmed something she already knew, and went out.

I was alone in the empty chamber with the splintered table and the faint smell of smoke on my hands. I let out a breath and felt, for the first time in two days, my knees shake.

A boot struck the stone in the corridor, running.

The door banged open. A young Gamma named Torren stood there with his chest heaving and mud to his knees.

"Alpha. A rider at the border drop. Ravenmark."

I went still. "Alone?"

"Alone. He says he came to deliver a message." Torren swallowed. "He asked for her by name, Alpha. He said he is here for the Alpha's bride."

"Which name?"

"Selene, Alpha. Selene Ravenfell." He licked his lips. "He knew exactly where to find the drop."