All Chapters of Bound to a Dying Man: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Maeve had hot water and dry clothes waiting and she did not say a word while she handed them out, and that was worse than if she had shouted.I got Ronan up to his room and out of the wet clothes and into a dry shirt and wrapped him in two blankets and put him in the bed with the shutters open so the air could get at him. His arm was bad. The roots had reached past the shoulder now and the skin over them had gone the colour of a plum, and when I put my hand on it he did not flinch, which was worse than flinching."Your fever is up again," I said."It never went down.""Then I will bring it down." I sat down on the edge of the bed. "But first I want to look at the mark, and I want to do it properly. Light and air and no interruptions."He lay back and pulled his shirt up to his collarbone and I brought the candle close.The mark on his chest was not the same mark it had been three weeks ago. The spiral had gone deeper and darker and the centre of it had a sheen to it, like a wound that

Lorcan came into the kitchen with the letter in his hand and his grey coat buttoned to the throat, and he looked at the three of us and the ledger on the table and the chair Ronan had knocked over, and his smile was very small."Am I interrupting?""Yes," I said."I thought so." He set the letter down and turned it round to face Ronan. "The Council has considered your position. You will present yourself at the northern seat on the twenty eighth and confirm before the elders that the bond placed on you in April was entered into freely and in good faith. In exchange, the Council will seal the second mark at no further cost to your pack, and the tithe will be forgiven for five years." He straightened. "That is a better offer than you deserve."Ronan did not pick the letter up."That offer is a confession," he said. "If I confirm the bond was entered into freely, I am saying I asked for it. And then the Council has a paper with my name on it that no one can ever challenge.""Yes," Lorcan

I ran down the harbour road with the paper in my fist and my boots slipping on the wet cobbles, and I got to the grey house just as Ronan came out of the front door with Elara behind him.He was upright and he was walking and he was white to the lips, and when he saw me he stopped in the middle of the path."I told you not to follow me.""You told me a great many things." I got to him and took his arm and he did not pull away. "What did she say?"Elara came down the path with her green scarf tied at her throat and her hands in her pockets. She did not look pleased with herself. She looked tired."Come inside," she said. "All three of us. There is a thing I have been keeping that I should not have kept, and I am tired of keeping it."We went into the grey house and she shut the door and took us into a room at the back with a fire in it and a table and three chairs. She did not offer us tea."Ask your question," she said.I put the paper from the ledger down on the table."The mate the

For a moment he did not move at all.Then his hands came up and closed round my wrists and pulled them away from his face, and he held them between us and looked at me with the wind pulling at his hair."Fiadh," he said. "Think about what you are doing.""I have thought about it for three weeks. I am tired of thinking about it.""If I kiss you back, the bond will close.""I know.""It will close and it will not open again, and every wolf on this coast will smell it on the two of us by morning, and Lorcan will have it written down before noon." His voice was rough. "And if the rite kills you, I will have to live with the fact that I took this from you on a cliff in the dark because I was too tired to say no.""You did not take anything." I got one hand free and put it flat on his chest, over the mark through his shirt. "I have been nobody's for twenty eight years. I have walked out of nine packs and never once looked back and I have never wanted to belong to anything in my life. And th

Colm was in the hall with his coat still on and his face grey."Seven of them," he said. "On the north ridge, where the heather starts. They have got a pole with a bit of cloth tied to it and they are standing there in the open and they are not moving.""Did they say anything?""One of them called out. He said they wanted to speak to the Alpha and he said they would wait." Colm looked at me. "Healer, they have not crossed the border. They are standing on the line with a flag."Ronan came down the stairs behind me. He had his shirt on and his arm bound and his face was still white, but he came down on his own two feet and he came down straight."Then we go and speak to them," he said."Ronan, your shoulder.""My shoulder has been open since June and it will still be open when I get back." He took his coat off the peg. "Colm, get four warriors and meet me at the north gate. Not more than four. If they wanted a fight they would not be carrying a flag."I got my coat and my kit and went w