Chapter 41: What Declan Couldn't Say

I sat in the harbor office with the cup going cold in my hands and the mind-link wide open and the man across from me with his grey eyes on the table.

“Say it again,” I said.

“I said it three times,” Declan said. “In the hall in December, in front of the Alpha and the whole co-op, with your sister standing in front of me. And the third time it broke and it was not her who broke it.” He looked up. “I have been telling this village for a year that she rejected me. I have been letting them believe it. I have been letting her believe it. And the truth is that she came to me in the harbor office and told me the Alpha had forced her and I did not believe her, and I told her I did not want the bond, and I said it in front of the whole co-op because I wanted her to hurt the way I was hurting.”

The office was very quiet. Down on the pier somebody was coiling a rope and the sound of it came in through the window.

“Why did you not believe her?” I said.

“Because I was a fool and because I was frightened and because a broken man does not think clearly.” He put his hands flat on the desk. “And because there was a thing she said that night that I did not understand until the link opened this morning. She said, the Alpha has a thing on me that I cannot fight and it is not a thing I can tell you. And I said, what thing, and she said, she has the ring. And I said, what ring, and she said, the ring of Maeve, and I said, that is a story for children, and she said, it is not a story, and she put her hand in her pocket and she took out a ring and she put it on the desk between us.”

I put the cup down.

“The ring of Maeve,” I said. “The one in the frame in the hall.”

“The one in the frame in the hall is a copy. A good copy. The Alpha had it made in Galway in 1994 and she has been wearing it on her finger at every meeting since.” Declan looked at me. “Your sister had the true ring in December and she put it on this desk and she said, this is the ring of Maeve and it came out of the cache on the high ground and if I put it on the table in front of the co-op the seat is mine. And I looked at it and I said, then put it on the table, and she said, I cannot, because the Alpha has my mother.”

The kettle had gone cold. The whole harbor was quiet.

“Her mother,” I said. “Our mother is in the ground on the hill since 1989.”

“I know. That is what I said. I said, your mother is dead, and she said, not that mother. She said, the Alpha has my mother's sister. The little girl who came out of the fire in 1961. She said, the Alpha took her out of this village in 1961 and she has been keeping her somewhere ever since, and if I put the ring on the table the Alpha will have her killed and I will never find out where she is.” Declan looked at me. “And I said, that is a story. And she said, it is not a story, it is the only thing I have been able to find out in fifteen years. And then she picked up the ring and she put it back in her pocket and she went out of this office and I sat here and I did not go after her.”

The bond in my chest went cold and then hot and then cold again.

“You have known since December that the Alpha is keeping a woman somewhere,” I said. “You have known since December that my sister was being blackmailed with a living hostage. And you have sat in this office for a year and you did not tell a soul.”

“I did not believe her.”

“You did not believe her in December. What about in March? What about in April, when she was on the floor of the boathouse with a rope round her neck and you carried her down the road?” I stood up. “What about last night, when you came to my cottage and told me the whole of it and told me the broken mark was the worst thing you had ever done? You told me the whole of it and you left out the ring and the hostage and the reason she rejected you.”

“I left it out because I did not know how to say it.” He stood up. “I have been carrying it for a year and I have been telling myself it was a story she told me to make me feel guilty and I did not believe it and I still do not know if I believe it.”

“You do not have to believe it. You have a mind-link and a mate and a woman in front of you who has been asking questions for a week and you did not say one word about it.” I was at the door. “There is a thing you said to me in the cottage last night. You said, I am done fighting it. You said, I am not going to spend another year in a collar buttoned to the throat. And I believed you and I let you into my bed and into my bond and into my head and you have been sitting on the one thing that could have saved my sister a month of pain.”

Declan came round the desk. “Niamh.”

“Do not.” I put my hand up. “Do not come near me. The link is open and I can feel what you are feeling and I cannot tell whether it is the truth or whether it is the thing you have decided to feel because it is the thing that will keep me in this room.” I opened the door. “I am going to the cottage. I am going to sit in it and I am going to think about a woman in this village who has been kept somewhere since 1961 by a family that has been keeping things since 1961. And tomorrow I am going to go and find the woman in the black boots who has been the Alpha's errand girl since March, and I am going to ask her a question that no one in this village has asked her. And you are going to stay away from me until I have decided whether I can stand beside you on Saturday.”

“Niamh.”

I went out and shut the door behind me and went down the stairs and along the pier with the wind in my face.

I got halfway up the shore road before I stopped. The bond in my chest was a hard knot and the man in the office behind me was not a liar by nature and the thing he had told me was a thing that could not be invented. A ring that was a copy in the frame in the hall. A little girl who came out of the fire in 1961. A woman who had been kept somewhere for thirty six years.

I turned round and went back along the pier and up the stairs to the harbor office and opened the door without knocking.

Declan was standing where I had left him with his hands at his sides.

“The woman who came out of the fire,” I said. “The little girl. My mother's sister. What was her name?”

He looked at me.

“Her name was Siobhan,” he said. “Your mother named her first daughter after her. Your sister was named for a woman who is still alive.”

I stood in the doorway with the wind behind me and the whole of it came together.

“Then the woman in the hall at two in the morning,” I said. “The woman with the red hair and the black boots and the roll to the right foot. The woman the Alpha told the co-op nine years ago was banished for breaking the charter. That is not Bridget.” I looked at him. “Bridget is a schoolteacher from Dublin who came back in March. The woman who has been in this village since 1961 and who the Alpha has been keeping somewhere and who came to the hall on the night of the claim is my aunt. And she has been in this village the whole time and not one wolf has looked at her and asked who she is.”

Declan’s face had gone very pale.

“Then Bridget is not the woman in the black boots,” he said. “Bridget is the woman in the black boots' keeper.”