Chapter 15

 Ronan’s POV

Article nine gets stamped at eight in the morning by a clerk who can’t look at me while he does it.

“You understand this is entered in the public record, Alpha.”

“I do.”

“And that a claim of this nature cannot be withdrawn by the claimant, only dissolved by the claimed party before a full council.”

“I know what I’m signing.”

Rhys, behind me, says nothing at all, which is the loudest he’s been in fifteen years.

We cross the water at noon with eleven men, which is either an escort or an army depending entirely on how the day goes. The far bank is quiet. There’s a boat tied off badly, a house with no smoke, and a woman sitting on a stump in front of it with a pipe she isn’t smoking.

“You’re the Alpha,” she says.

“I am.”

“You’re late.”

“You’re the binder.”

“I am.” She stands up. Maren, then, and she comes barely to my chest and looks at me the way a farrier looks at a horse. “You’ve a paper in your coat.”

“I have.”

“Article nine?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.” She spits into the grass. “Then you’d best hope she likes you, because that girl has had exactly one good day in six years and it was yesterday, and it was good because for once nobody made an arrangement about her while she was out of the room.” She turns for the door. “Come on. She’s been up since four asking when you’d get here, which I’d not read too much into. She’s also been sharpening a very small knife.”

Wren is in the kitchen with her sleeves rolled up and dried blood still under her nose, and she stands when I come in, and she doesn’t flinch.

That’s the first thing I notice. Two days ago she flinched at kindness.

“Alpha,” she says.

“Wren.”

“You came.”

“I said I would.”

“People say a lot of things.” She gestures at the chair opposite. “Sit down. You’re very tall in a small room and I’ve got things to tell you, and I’d rather you were sitting for one of them.”

I sit. Rhys makes a noise in the doorway that he tries to turn into a cough.

“You found the north road names,” she says.

“One’s dead. The other two are gone.”

“Ivo was the dead one.”

“How do you know that name?”

“Because I bit him.” She says it quite calmly. “I’ve had a productive day. I know what my blood does, I know why there’s a price on it, I know who paid for six years and I know what they use people like me for. I’ll tell you all of it. But first you’re going to tell me what’s in your coat.”

I don’t insult her by asking how she knows.

“It’s a pack claim,” I say. “Article nine. It’s the only legal instrument that let me cross that water without a council hearing I don’t have time for.”

“And what does it say about me?”

“That you’re an unbound wolf in danger of trafficking.”

“And?”

“And that you’re of my household or intended household,” I say. “It’s a mate claim, Wren. Filed yesterday, in your absence, without your consent, and I knew exactly what it was when I signed it.”

She’s silent for a long moment. Behind me, Maren very quietly puts down the kettle.

“Thank you,” Wren says.

“For what?”

“For not softening it.” She sits back. “Garrick would have called it paperwork. You could have said protection and I’d probably have swallowed it, because I’ve swallowed worse and you’ve been kinder to me than anyone in six years.” Her chin comes up. “Here’s mine. I’m not signing anything. Not the dissolution, not the confirmation, nothing, not for a while. I’ll come to Ravencross, because I’ve got nowhere else and because there’s a woman upstairs who needs a doctor your money can buy and mine can’t. But that paper stays exactly what it is, an unanswered question, until I’m the one who answers it. Can you live with that?”

“No,” I say honestly.

Something almost like a laugh gets out of her.

“But you’ll do it anyway,” she says.

“I’ll do it anyway.”

“Good.” She stands. “Then there’s the other thing, and I’ve been dreading it since four this morning, so I’m going to say it fast.”

“Say it.”

“Her name is Nell. She was bound eleven years ago, and I loosened her last night, and she was taken out of a house in your territory in a cart with another woman.” Wren’s hands are trembling and she doesn’t hide them. “The other woman had been stabbed and they were keeping her alive enough to talk. She told Nell her son’s name eleven times so somebody would remember it.”

The kitchen goes very far away.

“Ronan,” Wren says. “Your mother didn’t die in that house.”

Behind me, Rhys says, “Oh, God.”

“There’s more and it’s worse,” Wren says, “and I’m going to say that fast too. Nell remembers the man who drove the cart. She never saw the faces of the ones who took her, they wore cloth, but the driver didn’t bother, because the driver was a wolf and he was talking to them the whole way like a man doing a job he’d done before.”

“Describe him.”

“Forty, then. Fifty now. Scar through his eyebrow, left side. Missing the top joint of his ring finger.”

Rhys’s hand comes down on the doorframe hard enough to split the paint.

And out in the yard, twelve of my men start shouting at once, because a rider is coming down the north road at a dead gallop with no lantern and no escort and a Ravencross pennant on his shoulder.

Corrin has come to find me himself.