Chapter 88: Ronan's Return

Ronan stepped out of the boat onto the slip and stood in front of Bran.

"You want the truth in front of your wolves," he said. "Here it is. I did leave. I left a house full of wounded wolves and a hole in the roof and I went north because the Council had summoned me to answer for a false bond and there was no other wolf who could answer for it." He looked at the three wolves behind Bran. "And while I was gone, a wolf who had never set foot on this coast came over my north track with forty hunters and took my house and put a flag on my wall. That is not a claim. That is a theft."

Bran's smile did not move.

"It is a claim," he said. "And it is a good one. I have been buying this coast for a year and half the wolves on it owe me money or a favour."

"Then call them," Ronan said. "Call them down to the slip and let them stand beside you and tell this pack what you have done for them."

Bran looked at him.

"I do not need to call them. I have forty wolves in that house and forty more on the ridge."

"You have forty hunters who are paid by the week and a ridge that is cold and wet and a pack that has been feeding them out of its own kitchen for three days." Ronan took a step forward. "I know what a paid wolf looks like, Bran. I have been an Alpha for eleven years and I have hired a few in my time. They are not loyal. They are comfortable. And the moment they are not comfortable they will go home."

The three wolves behind Bran shifted their weight.

"Alpha," Bran said. "You are making a mistake."

"No. I am making you an offer." Ronan put his hands behind his back. "You have a claim on a Council seat and I have a Council clerk on that boat with a satchel of papers and a trial in seven days. Stand down. Give me back my house and my wounded and my flag and I will let you walk off this slip with your hunters and your boat and your name, and I will not tell the Council that you took a territory by force."

Bran's face changed.

"And if I do not?"

"Then I will tell the Council and I will tell every wolf on this coast and I will tell the highland packs who have been selling you their hunters that the man who bought them has been buying them with Soren's money." Ronan looked at him. "And Soren is gone. He ran north two days ago with a bag and a driver and a dead man in the back of his car. There is no more money, Bran. There is a Council clerk on that boat with four hundred pages of paper and your name is going to be in it."

The slip was very quiet.

I stood in the boat with my hand on the gunwale and watched Bran's face.

He was not a fool. I had known that since the kitchen. He was a wolf who had been waiting thirty years and he had done his sums and he had worked out exactly how far he could go.

"You are bluffing," he said.

"I am not."

"Then prove it."

Rónán came up the boat with the satchel over his shoulder.

"I am the clerk of the Council of Alphas," he said. "I have the archive of the northern seat in this bag and it is under seal and it is going to be read out loud at the Blackthorn house in seven days. If you want proof, come to the reading and hear it."

Bran looked at the satchel.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he turned round and walked up the slip.

"Get the wolves out of the house," he said to the wolf on his left. "All of them. Down to the boats and out to the point and do not take anything that is not ours."

"Bran."

"Do it."

The wolf went up the slip at a run.

Bran turned round.

"Alpha," he said. "You have won this one. It will not happen twice." He looked at me. "And you. Founder wolf. I have been buying hunters for a year to bring you north and I have just given up a house and a flag and forty wolves to keep from being written down in a Council archive. I hope you are worth it."

He walked up the slip and got into the Ravenscar boat and it went out of the harbour into the dark.

We stood on the slip and watched it go.

And then Ronan sat down.

He sat down on the edge of the slip with his head down and his hand on his chest and his breath coming in short pulls.

"Ronan."

"I am all right."

"You are not." I got down beside him. "Look at me."

He looked at me. His face was grey and his hand was shaking on his chest and his heart was going hard and fast under my palm.

"I stood up on a slip and argued with a wolf for ten minutes," he said. "I have not stood up for ten minutes since the chamber."

"You did it well."

"I did it well and it has cost me a week." He put his hand over mine. "I am going to need to be carried up that hill."

I looked at him.

"Colm," I said. "Oisin. Get him up."

They got him up.

We went up the hill to the pack house with the flag coming down off the wall and the wounded wolves coming out of the door and the whole pack in the yard, and I walked behind with the box in my pack and the stone in my pocket and the letter from my mother in my coat.

They got Ronan into his own bed in his own room.

I sat down on the edge of it and put my hand on his chest and waited for his heart to settle.

It took an hour.

And then he slept, and I sat with him, and the pack went quiet around us, and at some point in the night I put my head down on the quilt beside him and slept for the first time in three days.

I woke because he was awake and he was thinking about me.

Where is she. That was the thought, and it came through the link before I had opened my eyes. Where is Fiadh.

I am here, I said, without moving my mouth.

He turned his head on the pillow.

"You are here," he said.

"I am here."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Fiadh," he said. "Come here."