Chapter 120: The Border Battle

We went up the hill at dusk with four wolves and a healer and an old man.

Oisin went along the harbour wall to the east with Colm and Tomas, who could barely walk and would not stay behind. Padraig went with them because Padraig had a stick and a bag and forty years of knowing every coal chute and back door on that hill.

Ronan and I went up the front.

"Twenty wolves on the wall," he said.

"Twenty wolves on the wall and fourteen of ours in the cellar." I looked at the pack house. "They will have the door barred and the windows shuttered and the cellar door will be the coal chute on the east side."

"Which is where Oisin is going."

"Which is where Oisin is going."

We went up the last of the path and the wolves on the wall saw us.

There was a shout and then a horn and then the gate opened and eleven wolves came out of it.

I shifted.

I have shifted four times in my life and every time it has hurt and every time it has been easier than the time before. This time it took two seconds and there was no pain at all. There was the wolf coming up out of my chest and the world going sharp and bright and the heather and the stone and the sea all at once.

I went into them.

I am not going to write down the whole of the fight. There is no good in writing it down. There were eleven wolves in the yard and two of us and it went on for a long time. I took a bite on the shoulder and I gave one back and at some point I had a Ravenscar wolf by the scruff and I held him down until he stopped moving.

Ronan was beside me the whole time. I could feel him through the bond, warm and steady, and I knew where he was without looking.

We got into the yard.

Oisin had the coal chute open and the fourteen were coming out of it one at a time, and Colm was at the top of the chute pulling them out, and Nessa came out last with her face black with coal and her eyes wide.

"Healer," she said. "They have taken the kitchen and the hall and the cellar and there are ten of them in the hall."

"Where is Maeve?"

"In the Alpha's room."

I went up the back stairs with Ronan and we came into the hall from the kitchen side.

There were ten Ravenscar wolves in the hall and there were nine Blackthorn wolves behind us and it went on for about a minute.

I do not remember most of it. I remember the noise and the smell of blood and wet fur and the fire being knocked over and the smoke. I remember Nessa screaming somewhere behind me and I remember turning round and there was a Ravenscar wolf on her.

He had her by the arm and he was dragging her toward the door and she was fighting him and he had a knife in his other hand.

I went across the hall.

I got him in the shoulder and he went down and I got my teeth into his forearm and the knife went skittering across the flags. Nessa fell back against the wall and I stood over her.

The wolf got up.

He was big and he was grey and he had a knife in his other hand that I had not seen and he came at me with it.

And Ronan came between us.

I saw it happen. I saw him come across the hall in three strides and put himself in front of me and I saw the knife go in.

It went into his shoulder. The same shoulder. The one that had been open since June, the one with the silver burn, the one that had healed in the cave and had never been quite right since.

He went down on one knee.

The Ravenscar wolf turned and ran.

I shifted back and got my hands on him.

"Ronan. Ronan, look at me."

He looked at me. His face was grey and his hand was on his shoulder and there was blood coming through his fingers.

"It is the same shoulder," he said.

"I know it is the same shoulder." I got his shirt open and looked at the wound and it was not a bad wound, it was a clean cut and it should have closed in an hour.

It was not closing.

"Fiadh," Ronan said. "It is silver."

I looked at the knife on the floor.

It was on the flags by the door and it had a grey blade and the blade had a sheen on it that was not steel.

It was silver.

"Padraig," I shouted. "Padraig, get up here."

The hall was quiet by then. The Ravenscar wolves were down or gone and the Blackthorn wolves were standing in the middle of it with their chests going.

Padraig came up the stairs with his bag.

He looked at the wound and he looked at the knife and he did not say anything.

"Padraig," I said.

"Healer," he said quietly. "A silver wound in a shoulder that has been open before will not close. It will take a month and it will take everything he has got and he has not got anything." He looked at me. "You have a false bond in your chest and he has a silver wound in his shoulder and there is a Ravenscar flag on this house."

I knelt on the floor of my own hall with my hands on my mate's shoulder.

"Where is Maeve?" I said.

And the door at the top of the stairs opened and Maeve came out onto the landing.

She came down the stairs slowly with her copper curls loose and her hands at her sides.

"Luna," she said.

"Maeve."

She stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

"I did not know about the knife," she said. "I did not know it was silver."

"Get out of my house," I said.

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she turned and walked out through the door and the Ravenscar wolves who could still walk went with her.

And in the hall behind her there were nine Blackthorn wolves and four hundred years of a false bond and a mate on the floor with a silver wound in his shoulder that would not close.