Chapter 64: Ronan's Rage

The wolf at the door was a stranger. He was thin and grey and he had a paper in his hand and a coat that had been mended at the elbow, and he stood on the step of the Council house and asked everyone who came past whether they were the healer with the golden hair.

I went up the street with Ronan and Oisin behind me and Nessa at my shoulder, and when the stranger saw me he came down the step.

"Healer," he said. "You are the healer."

"I am. What is that paper?"

"It is a list of names." He held it out. "It is the names of wolves who were bound by the Council and died of it. My wife is the fourth name on it. She was bound in the year before last and she went thin and strange and she died in the winter and nobody would tell me why."

I took the paper.

There were eleven names on it.

"I have been carrying this list for a year," the stranger said. "I have been to every pack on the western coast and nobody would listen to me. And then I heard there was a healer in the north who had found a false bond on an Alpha and was going to stand up in front of the elders and say what it was." He looked at me. "I came to ask if I could stand with you."

The street was full of Council wolves. They were on the corners with their grey coats and their hands folded and they were watching us.

"You can stand with me," I said. "What is your name?"

"Tomas."

"Tomas. Come to the mill at eleven and I will tell you what to do."

He went. I folded the paper and put it in my coat.

Behind me, Ronan had turned round.

Maeve was coming down the steps of the Council house with Colm at her shoulder and four wolves behind her.

She stopped at the bottom of the steps.

"Alpha," she said.

"Maeve."

"You should not be here." Her voice was flat. "I have done what I had to do and I have done it in the open and I am not going to apologise for it. The pack could not wait for a dying man to make up his mind."

Ronan walked up to her.

He walked up to her with his hands at his sides and his shoulders back, and the street went quiet.

"You gave them the trail," he said. "You gave them the north coast and the cove and the road south. You have been in that house all night with Lorcan and Soren and a paper with nine names on it and you have been telling them where I am and what I am going to do."

Maeve did not flinch.

"I did what I had to do."

"You gave them my healer."

"I gave them nothing. They have a bounty on her that every hunter on this coast is out looking for and they did not need me to tell them she was in the north. I told them where you were because I wanted you found and brought back alive before you did something stupid that got the whole pack killed."

Ronan's voice went quiet.

"You went to Lorcan. In my house. On the night my healer was in a cave with a false bond coming out of her hands and you sat in the grey house with the man who poisoned my tea and you bargained."

"I bargained for a territory and a confirmed seat and a pack that survives the winter." Maeve took a step forward. "And you? What did you bargain with? A rogue healer with a debt that does not exist and a false bond you signed yourself and a challenge you lost in front of forty wolves. You have nothing left to bargain with, Ronan. You have not had anything left since the spring."

Ronan hit her.

He did not shift. He hit her with his fist across the mouth and she went back against the step and put her hand up, and Colm grabbed her and the four wolves behind her came forward and Oisin got between them.

The street went up.

I have seen a crowd turn before. It is not the shouting you notice. It is the way the faces change. There were thirty wolves in that street and half of them were Council and half of them were Blackthorn and there were townspeople on the steps and in the doorways, and every one of them saw the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack strike his Beta on the steps of the Council house.

Ronan stood over her with his fist still up.

"Maeve," he said.

She got her hand away from her mouth and there was blood on it.

"Colm," she said. "Get the wolves back to the house. We are done here."

Colm took her arm and the four wolves closed round her and they went up the street, and the crowd parted for them and closed again behind.

Ronan stood on the steps.

"Alpha," I said.

He did not turn round.

"Ronan."

"I have just done the thing I swore I would never do," he said. "I have struck a wolf in my own pack on the steps of the Council house in front of half the town."

"You have. And it was a bad thing and it will cost us." I came and stood in front of him. "Look at me. It will cost us at noon and there is nothing we can do about it now except go into that chamber and be the wolves we should have been."

"I have been the wolf I should have been for eleven years and I have lost a challenge and my Beta and my pack in six months."

"You have not lost me."

He looked at me.

"No," he said. "I have not lost you."

Oisin came up behind us.

"Alpha," he said quietly. "There is a thing you should know. There were two Council wolves on the corner when you hit her and one of them went up the street at a run. He is going to the house to tell Lorcan."

"Let him."

"He is not going to tell Lorcan. He is going to the car at the back of the house." Oisin looked at him. "He is going to tell Soren. And Soren is going to come out of that house with a writ and twenty wolves and he is going to take the healer before the hearing even starts."

Ronan turned to me.

"Then we do not wait for noon," he said. "Oisin. Get the box and the page and the ledger. We are going into that house now."

Behind us, at the top of the street, the door of the Council house opened and a line of grey coats came out onto the steps.