Chapter 71: The First Love Scene

The trial did not happen.

We went up the street to the Council house at noon with the receipt in my coat and the box in Ronan's pack and Maeve at our shoulder and Oisin and Padraig and Nessa and Elara behind us, and the steps were empty and the doors were shut.

A clerk met us at the door.

"The trial is postponed," he said. "The elder Soren has asked for the afternoon to consider new evidence." He looked at me. "The Council has taken a lease on the house at the top of the market for the use of the Blackthorn Pack until the matter is settled. It is at the Council's expense."

Maeve laughed. It was a short hard sound and there was no humour in it at all.

"At the Council's expense," she said. "He is buying us."

"He is putting us somewhere he can watch us," Ronan said. "But it has a roof and a fire and a door that locks and I will take it."

We took it.

The house at the top of the market was bigger than the pack house and it had a kitchen and a parlour and a stair up to three rooms, and a fire in every grate that had been lit before we got there. There was bread on the table and a jug of milk and a cold pie under a cloth.

Nessa stood in the middle of the parlour with her hands on her hips and looked round.

"There is a bath," she said. "There is a copper bath in the scullery and it is big enough for a wolf."

"Then get in it," I said.

We got everybody fed and washed and into dry clothes. Padraig went to bed in the small room at the back with his stick beside him. Oisin took the front room and said he would keep watch. Elara took the room at the top of the stairs and Nessa took the one next to it and Maeve went out at dusk to find the nine wolves from the tavern and tell them where we were.

And Ronan and I went up to the last room at the end of the landing and shut the door.

There was a fire and a bed and a window that looked out over the market. The bed had a good quilt on it and two pillows and the fire had been lit an hour before and the room was warm.

I stood in the middle of it with my coat still on.

"I have not slept in a bed in eleven days," I said.

"Neither have I."

"I have slept in a boat and a bothy and a mill loft and a sheep pen."

"I know. I was there." He came and stood in front of me. "Fiadh. Take your coat off."

I took my coat off.

He took it out of my hands and hung it on the back of the door. Then he came back and put his hands on my waist and stood there looking at me.

"You have got pine needles in your hair," he said.

"I know."

"And a bruise on your jaw from the rocks."

"I know."

"You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life."

I put my hands on his chest.

"You have been dying for six months," I said. "You have been grey and shaking and thin and I have been holding you up on cliff paths. And now you are standing in a rented room in a Council town with a true mark on your chest and your hands on my waist and you look like a man of thirty two who has never been ill in his life."

"I feel like one." He kissed me. "I have not felt like one since the spring."

The kiss went on for a long time.

We got out of our clothes eventually. It was not a graceful business. There was a boot that would not come off and a button that would not undo and at one point he laughed so hard he had to sit down on the bed, and I stood over him with my shift half off and told him to stop being ridiculous.

Then he stopped laughing and looked at me and I looked at him and the room went quiet.

He was warm. That was the first thing. He was warm all over and he was strong and he was steady and he was not shaking, and he put his hands on me and they did not shake either. He kissed my throat and my shoulder and the silver mark over my heart and he said my name against my skin in a voice I had not heard from him before.

I put my hands in his ginger hair and pulled his head up and kissed him.

I do not know how long it went on. Long enough for the fire to burn down. Long enough for the market outside to go quiet. I remember his hands on my back and my leg round his hip and the sound he made when I put my mouth on his shoulder. I remember the silver mark on his chest warm under my palm and the pull between us going tight and staying tight.

And at the end of it, when we were lying in the dark with the quilt over us and his arm under my head and my hand flat on his chest, the bond settled.

I felt it settle. It stopped pulling and it stopped aching and it lay down between us like a wolf lying down by a fire. It was warm and it was quiet and it was the most peaceful thing I have ever felt.

Ronan was quiet for a long time.

"Fiadh," he said at last.

"Hm."

"I have been thinking about the mark."

I turned my head.

"What about it?"

"The silver mark. The one on your chest." He put his hand over it. "It is a true mark and it is on both of us and it was made last night in a bothy with an old man's knife and a bowl of water. It is done. It cannot be undone." He looked at me. "But it was made in a hurry, in the dark, with a Council summons on the table. It was not made the way a mark should be made."

"It was made the only way it could be made."

"I know. And I want to make it again." He turned on his side to face me. "Tomorrow. In front of the pack. With the words said properly and the whole of it done the way it should be done. I want to stand up in front of twenty two wolves and say, this is my mate, and I want them to see the mark on your chest and I want the town to hear it."

I lay in the dark with my hand on his chest.

"The pack is divided," I said. "There are nine with Maeve and nine with Nessa and four on the boats who have not heard any of it."

"Then let them hear it."

"And the Council? Soren is sitting in that house working out how to take the territory and if you stand up in front of the pack and mark me in public he will have it in writing before the sun goes down."

"Let him have it in writing." He put his forehead against mine. "I have spent six months hiding. I hid the mark and I hid the shame and I hid the fact that I was dying, and it got me a false bond and a lost challenge and a Beta who went to the Council because nobody had told her the truth. I am not going to hide my mate."

I lay in the dark for a moment.

"Right then," I said. "Tomorrow."

Down in the market, somebody was walking up and down with a lantern.