Chapter 90: A New Alpha

The bell was the harbour bell and it was ringing because a boat had come in from the north in the dark.

I went down to the hall with the stone in my pocket and my coat over my shift and the whole house was already awake.

Colm met me at the bottom of the stairs.

"Healer," he said. "It is a fishing boat out of Rathlin. There is a wolf on it who says he has come from the northern seat and he has a paper for the Alpha."

"Where is he?"

"On the slip. He will not come up."

I went down.

The wolf on the slip was old and wet and he had a canvas bag over his shoulder and a paper in his hand and he gave it to me without a word.

It was a single sheet and it had the seal of the northern seat on it and it was in a hand I had seen before.

It was Soren's.

It said that the elder Soren had been detained on the north road by wolves of no pack and had been taken to a house on the north coast, and that he was alive and would remain alive so long as the founder wolf came north alone.

It said that if the founder wolf did not come north within seven days the elder would be killed and the house would be burned and the wolves in it would be burned with him.

And at the bottom there was a line in a different hand, a rough scrawled line that was not a clerk's.

It said: Come alone, founder. Bring the stone.

I stood on the slip with the paper in my hand and the wind coming off the water.

"Fiadh," Ronan said behind me. He had come down after me with a blanket round his shoulders and his face grey. "What does it say?"

I gave him the paper.

He read it twice.

"It is Bran," he said.

"It is Bran."

"But Bran left. He stood on this slip and gave up the house and went out to the point."

"He went out to the point and he did not go north and he has been sitting on the water for three days waiting for Soren to come to him, and Soren came, and now he has both of them." I looked at the paper. "He wants the stone. He has worked out what the stone is and he wants it."

Padraig came down the slip with his stick.

"Healer," he said. "You cannot go north alone."

"I know."

"You cannot go north at all. The stone is warm and the bond in it is pulling and if you go north and Bran takes it off you he will have a false bond and a founder wolf and a Council elder in the same house."

"I know that too."

Ronan put his hand on my arm.

"Fiadh."

"Not now." I turned round. "Not now, Ronan. I have a paper in my hand and a house in the north and seven days and I am not going to stand on a slip in the dark and argue about it."

He looked at me.

"Then we do not argue," he said. "We go inside and we sit down and we work out what to do about it in the morning."

We went inside.

The hall was full. The pack had come down and the nine who had signed Maeve's paper were standing at the back and the rest were in front of them and everybody was looking at me.

Ronan walked to the top of the hall.

"Before we talk about the north," he said, "there is a thing I am going to do and I am going to do it now because there is not going to be a better time."

He turned round.

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

I went up the hall.

"Two days ago in a Council chamber I stood in front of five elders and a false bond came out of my chest and my heart stopped," Ronan said. "And this wolf sat on the floor of that chamber with her hands on my chest and brought me back. She has been in this pack for two months and in that time she has found a false bond, stopped a poisoned tea, cleaned a silver wound, sewn up eleven wolves in one night, stood in front of a Council envoy and refused him, and broken a blood ritual in front of the Council of Alphas."

He took my hand.

"She is my mate and she is the founder wolf and she is the healer of this pack. And this morning I am naming her Luna of the Blackthorn Pack in front of the whole of it."

He said the words.

They were the old words, the ones every wolf knows, and he said them slowly and did not stumble. And when he had finished he put his hand on the silver mark on my chest and the mark went warm and then it went bright, and the whole hall saw it.

There was a silence.

And then Colm started to clap, and Nessa clapped, and the whole hall was clapping except the nine at the back.

They did not clap.

They stood at the back of the hall with their arms folded and their faces set, and then one of them turned round and walked out, and then another, and then the rest of them, and the door shut behind them.

The hall went quiet.

"Nine," Ronan said. "Out of twenty two."

"Nine out of twenty two and the rest of them are still in this hall," I said. "That is the whole of it, Ronan. That is the whole of what a pack is."

He looked at me.

"You are not angry."

"I have been angry for a month. I am too tired to be angry." I turned round to face the hall. "There is a paper on the table from the north. There is a wolf on the north coast with a Council elder in his house and a demand for the founder wolf and the stone. I am not going to give him either of them. But I am going to need every wolf in this hall to stand with me when the Council comes, and I am going to need it in six days."

The hall was quiet.

Then Colm stepped forward.

"I am with you," he said.

And then Nessa said it, and then the woman beside her, and then the whole hall, and the sound of it went up and filled the house.