Chapter 38: The Bond Tightens

The lantern came up the cliff path and it was Padraig, and behind him, small and out of breath and carrying a basket, was Nessa.

"Padraig said you would be up here," she said. "Maeve has gone to her room and shut the door and four of them are with her, and the rest of the house is in the kitchen not saying anything." She stopped when she saw Ronan sitting on the rock with his shirt open. "Is he all right?"

"No," I said. "But he is not dead. Give me the basket."

Padraig got down on the rock on the other side of him and looked at the mark and did not say anything for a while.

"It is fighting," he said at last. "The true bond and the false one. That is what a bonded wolf feels when the two of them are in the same body, and it will happen every time the true bond tightens." He looked at me. "What did you do?"

"I kissed him."

"You kissed him." Padraig sat back. "You kissed an Alpha with a false bond on his chest and a true bond coming on, and you did not think to come and ask me first?"

"You were not there. I was." I got the salve out of the basket. "And it was going to happen sooner or later, Padraig. It was going to happen on the twenty eighth in front of the elders, or it was going to happen in the boathouse in the storm, or it was going to happen on this rock tonight. I chose tonight."

Padraig made a sound in his throat and did not argue.

We got Ronan down the cliff path between the three of us and into the house and up the stairs, and the house was quiet in a way I did not like. There were wolves in the kitchen and wolves in the hall and every one of them looked up when we came in and every one of them looked away again.

I got Ronan into his bed and sat with him while Padraig made up a draught and Nessa brought hot water. The mark was settling. The burning had gone down and the roots had not moved and his breathing had come back to something like normal.

"I am going to be all right," he said, from the pillow.

"I know."

"You have got your healer face on."

"I have not got a healer face."

"You have. It is the one you use when you are frightened and do not want anyone to know." He reached up and caught my hand. "It is all right. I can feel you through the bond and you are frightened, and I would rather you were frightened than pretending not to be."

I looked down at him.

"You can feel me?"

"All the time. It is like standing next to a fire." He closed his eyes. "It is not unpleasant."

I sat with his hand in mine while he fell asleep.

The bond did not go quiet when he slept. That was the thing I had not expected. All night I could feel him, a warm steady presence in the back of my head, and through it I could feel other things too. Not words. Not pictures. Just the shape of what he was, the tiredness, the ache in his arm, the low-grade fear that he carried all the time and did not show anyone.

I went down to the kitchen at four in the morning because I could not sleep and I found Nessa there with a candle and a cup of cold tea.

"You are up," she said.

"So are you."

"I cannot sleep. Everyone is angry and nobody is saying it and the house feels like a storm that has not broken." She pushed the tea across the table. "Maeve has not come out of her room."

"She will."

"She will not. She has been in there since the hall and she has not eaten and the four with her are taking turns sitting outside the door." Nessa looked at me. "Healer. Is it true what Lorcan said? That you are the one who is making the Alpha worse?"

I put my cup down.

"No," I said. "It is not true. And you know it is not true, or you would not be sitting at this table with me at four in the morning."

"I know." She rubbed her eyes. "But half the house does not know. And the half that does know is frightened of the half that does not. And I am in the middle of it and I do not know what to say to anyone."

I was going to answer her, and then the pain came.

It came through the bond without warning. Sharp and white and hot, in my arm and my shoulder and my chest all at once, so sudden that I knocked the cup over and put both hands flat on the table and could not breathe.

"Healer?" Nessa was up. "Healer, what is it?"

I could not answer. The pain was in me and it was not mine. It was in his arm, in the shoulder with the silver burn in it, and it was running up into his chest, and I could feel it the way I would feel a knife going into my own body.

I got up and ran.

I was up the stairs and down the corridor and into his room and he was sitting up in bed with his hand clamped on his shoulder and his face white and his teeth set.

"Fiadh."

"What is it? What happened?"

"It opened." He got his hand away and there was blood on it, black blood, and the mark on his chest was glowing dull red under his shirt. "It opened on its own. I did not touch it. I was asleep and it opened."

I got his shirt open and the bandage off and the silver burn on his shoulder had split wide and the skin around it had gone the colour of a bruise, and there was a smell coming off it that had not been there before.

I put my hand on it and the pain came up my arm like a wire.

I took my hand away and stood there breathing hard with my back against the wall.

"Fiadh," Ronan said. "You felt that."

"Yes."

"You felt it through the bond."

"Yes." I slid down the wall and sat on the floor with my arms round my knees, and my arm was aching, aching as though something had been done to it. "It is not just a warm presence in the back of my head. It is your pain. I felt it in my own body. I felt it before I knew what it was."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Then you cannot be in the rite," he said. "If you feel what I feel, the bond will carry every bit of the breaking straight into you, and it will take you apart before it takes me."

"Ronan."

"I am serious. You cannot be in the rite."

I sat on the floor with my back against the wall and the ache going up my arm and the pull in my chest steady and warm and unbothered by any of it.

"I am going to be in the rite," I said. "And you are going to stop telling me what I cannot do."

The door opened behind me and Padraig stood there with his candle and his old face grey.

"Healer," he said. "You had better come down. Colm has come in from the north track. The rogues are back, and this time there are seven of them, and one of them is carrying a flag."

I got up off the floor and my arm ached all the way down the stairs.