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Chapter 113: Ronan's Vow
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2026-11-03 05:55:35The trial was at nine and the great chamber was full by eight.
I have never seen anything like it. The gallery went round three sides of the hall and it was packed to the rail, and there were wolves standing in the aisles and wolves on the stairs and wolves in the doorway with the cold coming in behind them. There were Blackthorn wolves in the front row of the gallery, the fourteen of them, and Colm's brother was at the front with his hands on the rail.
The eight were on the other side of the gallery with Maeve at the front.
The five elders were at the table and the four keepers were beside them and Cael was in the middle of the four.
And in the middle of the floor, with the whole of the north watching, there was me.
And Ronan.
"Herald," Ronan said. "Before the trial begins, there is a thing I have to say and I am going to say it in front of this chamber and this Council and the whole of the north."
The herald looked at the elders and the elders looked at each other and Ilsa nodded.
"Say it," the herald said.
Ronan turned round and faced the gallery.
"My name is Ronan and I am the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack," he said. "Eleven years ago I won this seat in a challenge against my own cousin and I have held it since. In the spring of this year I signed a paper that I was told was a marriage contract and it was a false bond. It nearly killed me. And a healer came to my house on a debt contract and found it in a week and pulled it out of my chest in a Council chamber in the south in front of five elders."
The chamber was silent.
"That healer is standing beside me now and she has been marked with silver and exiled from her own territory and called a fraud in a chamber in the north by her own Beta," Ronan said. "And I voted with the law that marked her. I want that in the record. I want the whole of the north to hear me say that I voted with the law and I have regretted it every day since."
The gallery went up.
The herald struck the floor.
"Alpha," Ilsa said. "This is not the place."
"It is exactly the place." Ronan turned round. "I am the Alpha of a pack that has been split in two. I have a Beta who took my patrol routes to Ravenscar and eight wolves who turned their backs on my Luna in this chamber. And I have fourteen wolves who stood on a harbour wall in the rain for a founder they had known for two months."
He put his hand on my shoulder.
"I am going to say a vow in front of this Council," he said. "And I am going to say it in the old words so that there is no mistake about what it means."
The chamber went completely silent.
"I am the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack and I will not stand in a chamber and watch my Luna be taken," Ronan said. "I will not vote with a law that puts silver on her wrist. I will not send her north alone again. If this Council rules against her I will take my pack off this coast and I will hold the border in the north and I will not come back until the law is changed."
The gallery went up.
It went up in a roar that filled the whole of the chamber and went out through the doors and down the stairs and into the square, and I heard the square take it up and send it back.
The herald struck the floor four times and the chamber did not go quiet.
"Silence," Ilsa said. "The chamber will be silent."
The chamber went quiet.
"Alpha," Ilsa said. "You have made a vow in front of this Council that you will defy its law. Do you understand what that means?"
"I understand it."
"Then the Council will note it in the record." Ilsa looked at me. "Healer. Do you have anything to say?"
I stood in the middle of the floor of the great chamber of the northern seat.
"I have a book," I said.
The chamber was silent.
"I have a book of the founder's line that goes back three hundred years and names four generations and the fourth is me. I have a copy of the old pact that made this Council and the keepers and was signed by five wolves two hundred years ago. I have a seal of the keepers that says the record is true. And I have a stone in my pocket with a false bond in it that has been in it for a month and has come out of the stone and into my chest and has been getting colder every day."
I put my hand into my coat and took out the book and the pact and the seal and put them on the table.
"And I have a thing to say to this Council," I said. "There are thirty one names on a list that came out of a room under the Council chamber in the south. There are four hundred pages of archive that were going to be read out loud at the Blackthorn house in seven days. There is a binder in this building who has confessed in writing and a keeper who has withdrawn his letter and a Beta who took the patrol routes to Ravenscar." I looked at the five elders. "The law this Council has been keeping for two hundred years has been a lie. And I am going to stand in this chamber until every wolf in the north knows it."
The gallery went up.
And this time nobody struck the floor.
And this time it did not come down.
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