Bound to a Dying Man의 모든 챕터: 챕터 191 - 챕터 197

The new law was passed in a room that smelled of fresh paint because the old Council chamber had been scrubbed out and the scrubbing had gone deeper than anyone expected. I went down for the vote because Ronan went down for the vote and because the Blackthorn Pack had a stake in it, and I sat in the gallery with Nessa on one side and Oisin on the other, and I listened to eleven Alphas argue about the future of the coast for six hours.The old Council of Alphas had been nine elders and a rule that said whatever the elders decided was law. The new one was different in every way that mattered. Every pack on the island got a seat and a vote, the elders lost the power to make bonds or rule on territory, and the whole thing was written down on paper that any wolf could ask to see. Ronan had drafted half of it in the fishing gear room with a pencil stub and a mug of cold tea, and when Elder Colm read the clause about willing marks aloud the gallery stood up and cheered for so long that Colm

The old keeper was fast for a wolf his age, and he was clever, and neither of those things saved him.I came in low and took his foreleg out from under him, and Ronan hit him from the other side before he could get his feet back. The pack was on him then, a ring of teeth that closed and opened and closed again, and he fought his way out of it twice and both times we put him back on the rock. The third time he did not get up.He lay on his side on the grass with his grey flank heaving and blood on his muzzle, and he looked up at me with those pale eyes and said, in the voice that lived inside my head, "You have a mark on your wrist that I did not put there. What is it?""You tell me," I said. "You are the one who made it."His eyes went to my foreleg and the mark on it, and something moved across his face that I had not expected. Not anger. Relief."The rite has a witness," he said. "Every rite needs a witness, and the founders wrote it so that the witness could never be the same wolf

I came up out of the spring with my mother's hand in mine.She was lighter than a wolf should be. I carried her up the stair with Ronan on her other side and Padraig going ahead with the lantern, and the water ran off her grey coat and left a trail on the stone, and none of us said a word until we were out in the open air under the stars. Then she opened her eyes and looked at the sky for a long time and said, "Is that the same moon?""It is a different moon," Padraig said. "Ten years of them."She thought about that. She was very thin and her fur had gone the colour of ash, and when she shifted back into her human shape she was so light that Ronan took off his coat and wrapped her in it and carried her the rest of the way up the hill. She had grey hair, my mother, and green eyes like mine, and a face I had not seen since I was sixteen years old.The pack house was full when we came in. Aisling had got the fire going and the kettle on and there was a clean bed made up in the small roo