Alle Kapitel von MARKED BY THE ALPHA I WAS TOLD TO FEAR: Kapitel 71 – Kapitel 80

Ronan’s POV“Twenty men,” I said.“Twenty men on the north bank at night is a war,” the senior councilman said. “You will have Hallam in front of a bench by Friday claiming a raid.”“Then let him claim it. There are three children in a stone room.”“There is one child and two persons of unknown age, and if you go in there with twenty and one of them is killed, every word this hall has said today comes apart, and I will not be able to hold my own bench together.” He was on his feet, and he was not being obstructive, which was the worst of it. He was being careful, and careful was going to cost her. “Blackwood. Take eight. Take eight and take me.”“You.”“Me and Halden both. Both benches, in the yard, in our own coats, at the door when it opens.” He shrugged. “Then it is not a raid. It is a bench executing on a void instrument with a seated Alpha in attendance, and Hallam can claim what he likes on Friday.”“You are two men of sixty on horses in the dark.”“I have been on a horse in th

Ronan’s POV“Read me the day,” she said.“It is one in the morning, and you have been on a horse for eight hours.”“Ronan.”So I sat on the slipway at Corrach with the tide out and the lantern on the stone and read the ninth of the month out to her with the times against it, and she got most of the morning and none of the afternoon, and when I came to the part where she drew the line through her own mark in front of two benches,s she stopped me.“That was me?”“That was you. Half past three. Both benches accepted the repudiation, and the senior man told you to be quick about it.”“And Maren proved it.”“Maren proved it and then told the room she had known since ten and said nothing for five and a half hours.”“Where is Maren now?”“On the slip with two of my men, not tied, and both benches have said she will be charged and both benches have said they will speak for her, and I do not know how those two things sit together and neither do they.”“Do not let anybody hang her.”“Wren.”“I

Wren’s POV“He is in a chair at Ravencross, and he is seventy-eight,” I said.“Then he had better hurry.” Ise had her feet up on the tail of the cart now, out of the wet, which I took as the first thing she had done for herself in nine days. “The third book is nine hundred pages,s and it goes back to 'ninety-two, and the old hand is not the house hand with different letters. It is a different hand. It has short forms in it, and they are not written down anywhere because they were never meant to be read by anybody but the chair.”“And you cannot read it.”“I can read about one word in four.” She said it without shame, which I liked. “I was four years in, and the master died. The old hand is the fifth year. I got the letters and the columns and the consignment lines,s and then nobody came in again.”“Then how have you been running thirty-one houses?”“Off the second book, which is in the house hand and which I can read, and the second book has thirty-one houses in it and what they are o

Wren’s POVThey worked for four days, and I lost most of it.I know what happened because it is in the book, and I know that on the second day I sat at that table for six hours copying short forms in my own hand because Ronan wrote down that I did, and I know that on the third day I could not do it anymore and that I did not make a scene about it, which I am told is not like me.Here is what I have got, from the book, in his handwriting, times against it.Second day, nine in the morning. Osgar dictating from the floor, then from a chair, then from the floor again. Aled writing. Two hundred and nine short forms by noon. Sesse at the same table writing the same list in her hand, because two copies in two hands is proof and one copy is an argument.Second day, four in the afternoon. Ise reading a page of the third book out loud for the first time with the short forms beside her, one word in four becoming three words in four. Ise crying briefly, and then carrying on. Osgar telling her she

Wren’s POV“Where is it?” I said.“In the archive, in the third box, under the muster rolls.”“Get it.”“Wren.”“I am not going to sign it. I have never once been going to sign it.” I put my hand out. “Get it, because I want to look at the thing that has been sitting in a box in this house for a month with my name on it, and I want to look at it today, while I have got the week.”He got it. He put it on the table in front of me and stood back, which he has learned to do.It was two pages. Article nine, mate claim, Ronan Blackwood of Ravencross in respect of Wren of Thornhollow, filed the fifteenth, unsigned in the second space.And there was a ruled line at the foot of the first page for the consent of the party claimed, and it was empty, and I had a very strange minute looking at an empty ruled line on a piece of paper in my own hall.“Ronan. Why did you file it?”“Because on the fifteenth you were a stranger on the wrong side of the water with a conveyance on you and no standing any