Chapter 157: The Pack's Shame

I was three days north of the Blackthorn border when the shame caught up with the pack.

I did not see it. I heard it afterwards, from Nessa and from Colm and from Ronan himself on a night in the north when the trial was over. But I am putting it here, because it belongs in this story and because it happened while I was on a boat and a road and a harbour and did not know a thing about it.

The shame came on the second day.

It came the way shame always comes in a pack. It did not come as shame. It came as anger and it came at the wolves who were nearest.

The first wolf it came at was Ronan.

He had stood in the yard and told the pack he would not order his mate out and the pack had stood with him and the four had walked out and the rest had cheered. And then the rider had come with the writ and the Luna had walked to the border and the pack had stood at the gate and watched her go and gone back up the hill in the rain.

And on the second day they began to ask why.

It started in the kitchen. Nessa told me. It started with a wolf saying that the Alpha had let her go. And another wolf said that the Alpha had stood in the yard and made a speech and then stood at the gate and watched her walk north and done nothing at all. And a third wolf said that a wolf who would not stand by his Luna in a yard in front of a Council writ was a wolf who could not be trusted with a border.

By the third day it was in the hall.

Ronan came down to the hall on the third morning and there were nine wolves at the long table and they were not the nine who had turned their backs in the north.

They were the nine who had stood.

The woman at the front of them was the one who had come up to him in the yard and said, Alpha, I am not going to turn my back on her again.

"Alpha," she said. "We have been talking and there is a thing we have to say."

"Say it."

"The Luna has been declared a rogue and she has walked north and the Council is going to try her in eleven days. And we have been standing on this coast for three days with a hole in the roof and eleven wolves burned from the fire and a Council writ that says the founder is a rogue and a border to hold." She looked at him. "And you have not said a word about what we are going to do about it."

Ronan looked at her.

"There is nothing to do about it," he said. "She is in the north and the trial is in eleven days and the Council has declared her a rogue and I have thirty wolves and a hole in the roof and a border."

"Then we go north."

"No."

"Alpha."

"We do not go north." Ronan's voice was flat. "The Luna walked north so that there would not be a fight in this yard and a Council on this coast and a pack torn apart. If thirty wolves of the Blackthorn Pack go north with the Alpha at the front, there will be a war in the northern seat and the trial will not happen and the founder will be a rogue in a cell for the rest of her life."

The hall was quiet.

"And if we do nothing?" the woman said.

"Then the trial happens and the founder answers for the chain and there is a chance that a Council that has been in an uproar for a month listens to her." Ronan looked at the table. "It is a small chance. It is the only one we have."

The hall went up.

It went up in the way a hall goes up when the wolves in it have been frightened for a fortnight and have been holding it in and have finally found a place to put it. It went up and it stayed up and it was still up when Maeve came in through the door.

Maeve.

She had come south on a boat with a paper she had torn in half and she had been in the house since and she had not been in the hall. She came in now with her copper curls tied back and her sleeves rolled and she stood at the bottom of the hall.

"Alpha," she said.

"Maeve."

"This hall is going to tear itself apart in the next hour," Maeve said. "And I have been standing in the kitchen listening to it and I have been thinking that I have been Beta of this pack for nine years and I have been the wolf who tore a hall apart and I am not going to do it again."

The hall went quiet.

"Then what do you suggest?" Ronan said.

"I suggest you tell them the truth." Maeve came up the hall. "You have been standing in this hall for three days telling them there is nothing to do and a small chance and a trial in eleven days. And you have not told them the thing that is actually in your head."

The hall was silent.

"What is in my head?" Ronan said.

"You are going north." Maeve looked at him. "You have been going north since the moment she walked out of that gate. You have been sitting in this hall and eating nothing and sleeping in a chair and counting the days and you have been going north in your head since the border stone."

Ronan did not answer.

"You are not going to stand in this house for eleven days while your mate stands in a Council chamber on her own," Maeve said. "You are going to go north and you are going to do it in the last three days when there is no time for the Council to send wolves to this coast. And you are going to take four wolves and not thirty and you are going to leave the pack here with a Beta."

The hall went up.

"With a Beta?" Ronan said.

"With me." Maeve's jaw worked. "I tore a paper in half in a yard and I told you I was not going to take a seat the Council gave me for standing against her. I did not say I would not take a seat you gave me for holding a coast."

Ronan looked at her for a long moment.

And then he laughed.

It was a short hard laugh and there was no humour in it at all and it was the first time he had laughed in three days.

"Right," he said. "Four wolves and a boat and the last three days."

The hall went up.

And this time it went up in a way that was not anger.

And down in the harbour, a horn sounded.