Chapter 73: The Mind-Link Opens

We went back into the house and shut the yard door and the pack went round to the front and stood in the market with their collars up and their faces set and did not go away.

Ronan sat down at the kitchen table and I sat down opposite him and Padraig put the kettle on.

The mark on my chest was warm.

It had been warm since the yard and it had not gone cool, and every time I looked at Ronan it got a little warmer, and I had been a healer for ten years and I knew what a mark did when it was new and this was not that.

"Padraig," I said. "The mark is warm."

"That is the bond settling," he said.

"It has been settling since last night. This is different."

Padraig came and looked at the mark and then at Ronan's.

"They are the same," he said. "Both silver, both in the same place, both the same size. That is what a true mark looks like when it is made properly in front of a pack." He sat down. "There is a thing that happens when a mark is made in public. The old books call it the opening. It is not a thing you do. It is a thing that happens to you."

"What opens?"

"The mind-link."

I looked at Ronan.

"We have had the link since the cave," he said. "I have felt you through it. The pain and the fear and the cold in the water. I felt it all."

"That is not the link. That is the thread." Padraig poured the tea. "The thread is what a bond gives you before the mark is made. It carries feeling and it carries strong things, fear and pain and want. The link is different. The link carries words."

I sat in the kitchen of a rented house in a Council town with a cup of tea going cold in front of me.

"Words," I said.

"Words. Thoughts. Whatever is at the front of your mind and behind your teeth." Padraig looked at me. "It will come on its own. It always does. Usually within a day of the mark. You will be doing something ordinary and it will be there."

He was right about the ordinary part.

It came at noon.

I was in the scullery with my sleeves rolled, washing the mud out of my coat in the copper bath, and the water was grey and cold and my shoulder was aching and I was thinking about the trial and about Soren and about a receipt in my coat pocket and about whether a founder wolf could be tried in a Council chamber.

And then there was a voice in my head.

You are thinking too loud.

I dropped the coat.

I stood in the scullery with my hands in the water and my heart going and the voice in my head was not mine.

Healer. It is me. It is all right.

"Ronan?"

I am in the kitchen. I have been in the kitchen for an hour. You have been thinking about Soren for an hour and I have been sitting here listening to it.

I went out of the scullery with my sleeves still rolled and my hands wet and Ronan was at the kitchen table with a cup in his hand and a look on his face that I had not seen before.

"It works," he said.

"It works."

"I have been listening to you think about the trial for an hour and I could not answer you and it has been driving me mad." He put the cup down. "You think in lists. Did you know that? You think in lists and you count things when you are frightened."

"I know."

"You counted the boats in the harbour on the first night. Nine. Then you counted the lights in the windows. Four."

I sat down at the table.

"Get out of my head," I said.

"I cannot. That is the whole of it." He took my hand. "It goes both ways. You can hear me too. Try it."

I looked at him.

Try it, he said, and his mouth did not move.

You are going to have to teach me how, I thought at him.

You are doing it. That was it. That was the thing I have been trying to say to you all morning.

I sat at the kitchen table with his hand in mine.

"This is going to be a problem," I said.

"It is going to be an advantage."

"It is going to be a problem in a Council chamber. If Soren asks me a question and you are standing three feet away and you think the answer at me, I will say it out loud and we will both be finished."

Ronan laughed.

"Then we will have to learn to be careful," he said.

And then there was a third voice.

Not mine and not his. It came from behind his eyes, from the place in him where the mark sat, and it was low and warm and it had a growl in it that his voice did not have.

You are the one who smells of herbs and the sea. I have been trying to talk to you since the cave and you would not listen.

I sat very still.

"Ronan," I said. "There is somebody else in here."

He looked at me.

"What?"

"There is a voice in the link and it is not yours. It is low and it has a growl in it and it says it has been trying to talk to me since the cave."

Ronan put his cup down slowly.

"That is my wolf," he said.

"I know it is your wolf."

"He has not spoken to me since the cave. He has been asleep." He was staring at me. "He is talking to you and not to me."

He is talking to you because you are the mate and you are the one who held the thread. The wolf's voice was warm and it was stubborn and it already loved me the way a wolf loves a thing that is his. I have been asleep for six months and I woke up in a cave with a gold wolf standing over me and I have not been able to get the smell of her out of my nose since.

I put my hands over my face.

"He is going to be a problem too," I said.

The kitchen door opened and Oisin came in with his coat on and his face set.

"There is a car at the Council house," he said. "Lorcan has come out of it and he is walking up the market with two wolves behind him and a paper in his hand and he is asking for the Alpha."

Ronan stood up.

"Let him come," he said.

The front door of the rented house opened and there were boots in the hall and Lorcan's voice came through.

"Alpha," he called. "I have brought you a gift. The Council has decided on a charge and I have come to read it to you before it is read to the town."