Chapter 124: The Fifth Love Scene

I did not go down to Lorcan.

I sent Oisin down with the writ and the ledger and the letters under his coat and told him to take them to the envoy at the gate and to say that the Luna of the Blackthorn Pack would speak to him at dawn and not before.

Then I shut the door of the Alpha's room and put my back against it.

Ronan was sitting up in the bed.

"You did not go down," he said.

"No."

"He has come with a white flag and a writ and the whole of the north behind him and you sent a smuggler to the gate."

"I sent a smuggler to the gate because I have been up all night and there is blood on my hands and I am not going to stand in a yard at five in the morning and argue with a Council envoy." I came away from the door. "And because there is a thing I have been wanting to do since the ridge went quiet and it is not talking to Lorcan."

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

Ronan looked at me.

"Fiadh," he said. "Your hands are shaking."

"I know."

"You have not slept in two days."

"I know."

"You have been holding a house with nine wolves and a hole in the roof and a false bond in your chest."

"I know." I put my hand on his face. "Ronan. I have been holding things since the day I got off the bus. I have been holding a debt and a contract and a mate and a pack and a claim and a coast and a false bond and a silver wound. And I have been holding them all in my own two hands because there was nobody else to hold them."

Ronan put his hand over mine.

"And now?" he said.

"And now there are nine wolves in the hall who stood up one after another and put their hands out and said, I am with you." My voice cracked. "I have never had that. Not once in ten years. Not in nine packs. And I do not know what to do with it."

Ronan looked at me.

"You do not have to do anything with it," he said. "You have to let it hold you for a while."

I looked at him.

"I do not know how," I said.

He kissed me.

It was not like the bothy and it was not like the night before the exile and it was not like the room at the top of the east stair. It was slow and it was careful and it was the kiss of a man with a silver wound in his shoulder who had been lying in a bed all night listening to his mate hold a house.

"Fiadh," he said. "Lie down."

"You are wounded."

"It is my shoulder. I am not asking you to lie on my shoulder."

I lay down.

He turned on his side to face me and put his good arm round me and pulled me in against his chest.

We lay like that for a while.

"You held the house," he said.

"I held the house."

"I heard you on the stairs. I heard you say hold it and they held it." He put his mouth against my hair. "I have been an Alpha for eleven years and I have never once heard a wolf hold a line the way you held it last night."

"I did not shift."

"I know."

"I have shifted four times and every time it hurt and every time I was frightened and last night I did not shift at all." I lifted my head. "I stood on the stairs and I told them where to stand and I did not need the wolf."

Ronan looked at me.

"Then you are stronger than the wolf," he said.

And then he kissed me again and this time it was not slow and it was not careful.

I do not have the words for the rest of it. I am a healer and I have spent my life writing things down plainly and this is the one thing I cannot write plainly. What I can say is that it was the first time since the cave that there was nothing between us at all. No false bond and no silver mark and no Council and no exile. There was a bed in a house on a coast and a mate with a wounded shoulder and nine wolves asleep in the hall below.

He kept saying my name. I kept saying his. At some point I started to cry and he stopped and lifted his head.

"What is it?" he said.

"Nothing. It is nothing." I got my hand on his face. "I have been alone for ten years and I am not alone any more and I do not know what to do with it."

He put his forehead against mine.

"You let it hold you," he said.

I let it hold me.

We lay in the dark afterwards with the quilt over us and his arm under my head and the sky outside the window going grey.

"Ronan," I said.

"Hm."

"There is a thing I have been thinking about since the ridge."

"What?"

"The false bond." I turned my head. "It is in my chest and it is cold and it is getting colder. And I have been thinking that a false bond is a thing that takes. It takes strength and it gives it to whoever holds the other end."

"And?"

"And there is no other end. It is in me and there is nobody holding it." I looked at him. "But a true bond is a thing that gives. It gives strength and it takes it back and it holds both ways."

Ronan was quiet for a moment.

"You are saying the true bond could hold the false one," he said.

"I am saying the true bond could hold it between us. Not in me and not in a stone. Between us. Where there are two wolves and not one." I sat up. "Padraig said a thread held by two is not the same as a thread held by one. He said it in the mill and I did not listen."

"Fiadh."

"Ronan. I have a false bond in my chest and a writ on the table and a Council envoy at the gate and there are nineteen wolves in a house in the north. And I think I know how to save all of it."

Ronan sat up.

"How?" he said.

I looked at him.

"We go to the spring," I said. "And we put the false bond in the water and the true bond in the two of us and we see which one holds."

And down in the yard, a horn sounded again.