Chapter 188: The Pack's Future

The pack meeting was held in the drying shed because the pack house roof still had a hole in it and the rain had not stopped for a week.

That was how the Blackthorn Pack made its decisions now. Sixty wolves crowded into a long stone building that smelled of kelp and salt and wet rope, sitting on upturned crates and coils of line, and the Alpha stood at the end of it in a coat that had been mended at the elbow.

Ronan opened the meeting by reading out the numbers. That was new. Old Alpha Blackthorn would have made a speech about honour and the coast and the blood of the pack, and everybody would have gone home f*eling warm and knowing nothing. Ronan read the numbers. Seaweed harvest down by a third because half the boats had been out of the water since the war. Two of the four drying kilns needing repair. The harbour f*e to the town council unpaid since the spring. Eleven wolves who had left after the trial and had not come back.

"Eleven," said a grey haired woman near the back, whose name was Aisling and who had been gutting fish since before I was born. "That is the Fennelly brothers and their families, and they went to Ravenscar. Good riddance to the brothers. The wives were decent."

"The wives have children in the school in the town," Ronan said. "I am not writing off children."

There was a mutter at that, and it went on for a while, and I sat on a crate near the door with a mug of tea going cold in my hands and watched the Blackthorn Pack argue about its own future. Nobody looked at me for the first hour. Then Aisling did.

"And what about the healer?" she said. "She gave her mark to the water and got the whole Council thrown out on its ear, and now she sits there saying nothing. Is she staying or going? Because I have a chest full of wool that needs spinning and no daughters left at home to spin it, and I would rather know now."

The whole shed turned to look at me.

I put the mug down. "I am staying," I said. "If the pack will have me."

"Will we have her," said Aisling, and snorted. "Girl, you carried my grandson off the border with a hole in his leg and you did not stop to ask whether you were welcome. You can stay."

That was the vote, in the end. Nobody called for a show of hands. Aisling said it and the shed grumbled agreement, and Ronan stood at the end of the room with his dimples showing and did not say a word, and the meeting moved on to the kilns.

Afterwards, when the shed had emptied and the rain had thinned to a drizzle, Ronan and I walked down to the harbour wall together. The tide was out and the rocks were black and shining and the boats sat on their sides in the mud, and he put his hands in his pockets and looked at them.

"The Council is not going to rule the coast much longer," he said. "Colm told me this morning. They are going to put the question to the gathering, and the gathering will vote to strip the Council of its power over bonds and territory. Not all at once. Over a year, maybe two. But it is going to happen."

"And then what?"

"And then the packs are on their own. Every Alpha answers to his own wolves and nobody else." He looked at me. "There are Alphas on this coast who have never made a decision without a Council writ in their hand. They are going to be a great deal of trouble."

"Then we build something that makes the trouble harder." I leaned on the wall. "You have four packs on this coast within a day's sail. Ravenscar is one of them, and Lord Callum and I have an understanding now, and he is a vain old wolf but he keeps his word. The others will need a reason to talk to each other instead of raiding each other. Give them one."

"Such as?"

"A council of Alphas that is not a council of elders. Every Alpha sits on it, and every Alpha is bound to answer to his own pack first, and there is a law that says no bond can be made without both wolves saying yes in front of witnesses." I looked at him. "You could write it. You are good at law. You have spent a year being dragged through it."

Ronan was quiet for a while. The gulls argued over something on the rocks below us and the wind came in cold off the water.

"I sat in that chamber and I voted to exile you," he said. "Do you remember that? The Council ruled and I voted with the majority and I did not say a word in your defence, and you walked to the border alone."

"I remember."

"I have not asked you to forgive me for it."

"No," I said. "You have not."

He turned to face me. There was grey in his ginger hair now at the temples that had not been there in the autumn, and his pale green eyes were steady on mine, and his hands were out of his pockets and at his sides where I could see them.

"I am asking now," he said. "Not for the pack. Not for the coast. For me."

I let him wait. It was not cruelty. I wanted him to hear the silence and know what it was, and I wanted to be sure of my own answer before I gave it, because I had spent ten years giving my answers too quickly to men who wanted something.

"I forgave you on the mountain," I said. "In the bothy, when you told me what it cost you to stay silent. I forgave you then and I did not say so because I was not ready to be that woman yet." I turned my wrist over so he could see the pale crescent. "I am ready now."

He let out a breath. Then he laughed, a real laugh, and it was the first one I had heard out of him since before the trial, and it echoed off the harbour wall and startled the gulls.

"Right then," I said, and I took his hand, and we stood there on the wall while the tide came back in.

The gate bell rang behind us. We both turned. Nessa was running down the hill from the pack house with her freckled face white, and she was shouting something about a boat, and as she got closer I made out the words.

"A boat from the north," she said, gasping. "It is flying the keeper's flag. There are four of them and they say they have come for the founder's mark, and they say they have a right to it that predates the Council."