Chapter 35: The False Luna

I ran down the harbour road with the paper in my fist and my boots slipping on the wet cobbles, and I got to the grey house just as Ronan came out of the front door with Elara behind him.

He was upright and he was walking and he was white to the lips, and when he saw me he stopped in the middle of the path.

"I told you not to follow me."

"You told me a great many things." I got to him and took his arm and he did not pull away. "What did she say?"

Elara came down the path with her green scarf tied at her throat and her hands in her pockets. She did not look pleased with herself. She looked tired.

"Come inside," she said. "All three of us. There is a thing I have been keeping that I should not have kept, and I am tired of keeping it."

We went into the grey house and she shut the door and took us into a room at the back with a fire in it and a table and three chairs. She did not offer us tea.

"Ask your question," she said.

I put the paper from the ledger down on the table.

"The mate the Council sent in the spring," I said. "The one whose name was in the letter. The one who never arrived. Was she real?"

Elara looked at the paper and then at Ronan.

"No," she said.

Ronan did not move.

"There was no mate," Elara said. "There was never a mate. The Council does not have a pool of wolves to marry off to Alphas. The letter was a formality. The name in it was a name a clerk made up out of a list of old families, and the reason for the letter was to give the appearance of a proper match so that the ritual could be presented as a marriage."

The fire cracked in the grate.

"Say that again," Ronan said.

"There was no mate. There was a ritual. You were not chosen for a wife, Alpha. You were chosen for a bond, and the bond needed a name and a paper and a letter so that if anyone ever asked, there would be a story to tell them." Elara folded her hands. "I am sorry. I have been sorry since the spring."

Ronan sat down slowly in the chair behind him. He put his hand over his mouth. He did not say anything for a long while.

I stood there with the paper in my hand and looked at him and did not know what to do with my own arms.

"Tell him the rest," I said.

Elara looked at me.

"There is no rest."

"There is always rest. You have been in this business twenty years and you are tired and you have just told an Alpha that the wife he was promised never existed. There is more." I sat down opposite her. "The letter said she would arrive on the fourteenth. Nessa saw a woman in a green scarf come to the house in the spring and leave before supper. That was you. You came, you did the rite, and you left. So why did the letter say a mate would arrive and stay?"

Elara was quiet.

"Because the ritual needs a place to live," she said. "The bond is not finished when the mark is given. It has to be fed. It has to be anchored to a wolf who stays near the one who is bound. If the binder leaves, the bond goes thin, and the bound wolf begins to recover." She looked at Ronan. "I was supposed to stay. I was supposed to live in this house as your mate and keep the bond fed. And I did not."

"Why not?"

"Because I came to this house in the spring and I saw a pack that had not eaten properly in six months and an Alpha who had signed a paper to keep them alive, and I could not do it." Her voice had gone quiet. "I told the Council I had done my part and would not stay, and Lorcan was very angry, and the bond has been going thin ever since. That is why he is still standing. That is why he has lasted seven months when the last one lasted four. I left, and the bond has been starving."

Ronan took his hand away from his mouth.

"You left," he said.

"I left."

"And I have been dying for seven months because a woman I had never met decided to be kind."

"Yes."

He got up out of the chair. He walked to the window and put his hand flat on the frame and stood there with his back to us.

"I signed a paper," he said, "for a wife. I signed it for a wife and a household and a mate and a future, and I told myself that whatever else happened, at least the pack would eat. And it was all a story. There was no wife. There was a mark and a woman who felt sorry for me." He turned round. His face was terrible. "Do you know what I have been carrying for seven months? I have been carrying the shame of a man who sold himself. That is what I told myself in the dark. That I had sold myself for a storehouse and it was worth it and I could live with it. And now you tell me there was nothing to sell. There was never a bargain at all. There was a bond and a lie and a woman in a green scarf who did not want to be here."

Elara did not answer.

"Ronan," I said.

"Leave it."

"No." I got up and went to him. "Look at me."

He looked at me. His pale green eyes were wet and he did not try to hide it.

"You did not sell anything," I said. "You were played by a man who has played a great many wolves. There was no wife and there was no bargain and you have nothing to be ashamed of, and if I hear you say the word sold again I will put wolfsbane in your tea and see how you like it."

He made a sound that was almost a laugh.

"You would not."

"I would. I am a healer and I know exactly how much to use." I put my hand on his chest, flat, over the mark. "The bond is starving, Ronan. It has been starving since the spring because the binder left and she could not feed it. That means it is not as deep in you as it could be. That means the rite has a chance."

Elara came round the table.

"She is right," she said. "The bond is thin. If you break it now it will not take your life with it. But you will need the binder in the room, and you will need the box, and you will need the third one, and you will need to do it before the second mark is given, because the second mark is what makes it fat again."

"And if it is not broken before the twenty eighth?"

"Then Lorcan will give you the second mark in that Council chamber with the elders watching, and the bond will close, and there will be no breaking it after that." Elara looked at me. "I will come with you. I will stand in the rite. I owe you that much and I have been owing it since the spring."

Behind us the front door of the grey house opened, and there were boots in the hall, and Lorcan's voice came through the wall.

"Elara," he said. "I told you not to speak to them alone."