Chapter 72: The Mark Accepted

We sent Nessa out at dawn with word to the tavern and the boats and the market, and by eight in the morning the nine wolves who had come from the Blackthorn house were in the yard behind the rented house, and four more had come down from the boats and did not know what they were coming down for.

Twenty two wolves in a yard behind a house at the top of the market. It was the whole of the Blackthorn Pack, apart from the wounded who could not travel and the four who had stayed behind.

Ronan stood on the step with the morning light on him.

"I have brought you here because there is a thing this pack needs to see," he said. "You have been told a great many things in the last month. You have been told the Alpha is dying and the Alpha is mad and the Alpha has been bewitched by a rogue healer with a debt on her name. Some of that was true and some of it was not and I am going to stand here and tell you the whole of it."

He told them.

He told them about the false bond and the spring and the paper he had signed. He told them about the mark on his chest and the tea and the silver blade. He told them about the challenge and the mill and the mountain and the box.

He told them about me.

"Fiadh came to this coast on a debt that did not exist and a contract that was a trap," he said. "She walked into a dying man's house and in a week she named the thing that was killing me when every physician in the north had looked and seen nothing. She has sewn up eleven wolves in one night and did not ask which side they were on. She has carried me up my own stairs. She has stood in front of a Council envoy and refused to give him her silence."

He held out his hand and I came up onto the step beside him.

"She is my mate," he said. "The true one. The bond is made and the mark is on both of us, and this morning I am going to mark her again in front of you with the words said properly, because the first time it was done in a bothy in the dark with a Council summons on the table and it deserves better than that."

He turned to me.

The yard was very quiet.

"Fiadh," he said. "I am the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack and I have been a poor one this year. I have hidden things from my wolves and I have hidden things from myself and I have let a false bond sit on my chest because I was ashamed. I am not ashamed any more." He took my hand. "You are my mate and my healer and the wolf I will stand beside for the rest of my life. Will you take the mark from me in front of this pack and be the Luna of the Blackthorn Pack?"

I looked at him standing in the morning light with his ginger hair and his pale green eyes and the silver mark showing at the open collar of his shirt.

"I have been nobody's for twenty eight years," I said. "I have walked out of nine packs and never once looked back. And then I came to this coast and a man with a false bond held out a piece of paper and his fingers brushed mine and I have not been able to think straight since." I put my hand on his chest. "I will take the mark and I will be the Luna of this pack and I will stand beside you for the rest of my life."

He put his hand over mine.

Padraig came up onto the step with his knife and a bowl of water.

"Say the words," he said.

Ronan said them. They were the old words, the ones every wolf knows, and he said them slowly and did not stumble over a single one.

I said them back.

Padraig cut the palm of my hand and pressed it to the mark on Ronan's chest, and the silver crescent under my palm went warm and then it went bright, and the whole yard saw it.

And then he cut Ronan's hand and pressed it to the mark on mine, and the same thing happened, and the whole yard saw that too.

There was a long silence.

Then somebody at the back of the yard started to clap. It was Colm. He was standing against the wall with his arm still in a sling from the night at the border, and he clapped, and Nessa clapped, and then the whole yard was clapping and somebody was shouting and somebody was crying and Maeve was standing on the edge of it with her arms folded and a face like a stone and she did not clap.

But she did not walk away either.

Ronan turned round and held up his hand and the yard went quiet.

"There is one more thing," he said. "The Council trial is this afternoon. The elder Soren has postponed it twice and the whole town is talking about it and he is going to have to call it soon. When he does I will stand in that chamber and I will answer for what was done to me, and the Luna will stand beside me." He looked round the yard. "I am asking this pack to stand with us. Not for me. For the pack. Because if the Council takes this territory it will not stop at this territory and there will be no Blackthorn name on this coast by spring."

The yard was quiet.

Then Colm came off the wall and stood in front of the step.

"I am with you," he said. "I have been with you since the border and I am sorry I stood behind the Beta and did not say so."

"I am with you," said the woman next to him.

And then they all said it, one after another, and the sound of it went up over the yard and out over the market.

Maeve did not say it. She stood at the back with her arms folded and her bruise and her copper curls and she watched all of it, and when it was done she turned round and walked out of the yard.

I went after her.

"Maeve."

She stopped in the lane.

"I am not going to say it," she said, without turning round. "I have been Beta of this pack for nine years and I am not going to stand in a yard and say I am with the wolf who took my seat."

"You are not going to lose your seat," I said. "You are the best Beta this pack has ever had and I have been here a month and I could not run that house in a hundred years."

Maeve turned round.

"You mean that."

"I mean it. I am a healer. I have no idea how to run a house." I put my hand out. "I am not asking for a friend. I am asking for a Beta."

She looked at my hand for a long moment.

Then she took it.

Behind us, in the yard, the pack was still shouting.