The Spring Between Us

Chapter 38: Two Lunas, One Spring

We rode for the pack house at a gallop.

Nora came with us. She would not be left behind and I did not argue with her. Hank went ahead and his wolves came out of the rocks along the border to join him, and by the time we came up the long slope to the Kızıltaş gate there were eight of them behind us and the gate was open.

The yard was full.

The pack was in the yard with their coats half on and their faces grey, and Berik was at the foot of the porch steps with a bandage on his head and his jaw set, and Cal was coming toward me before I had got down off the horse.

"Luna," he said. "It is Ruth."

I got down. "What about her?"

"She is gone. She went out the back before dawn with a horse and a bag and Sten went after her and came back an hour ago and said she had gone down the mesa road toward the quarry and was riding hard." He stopped. "And there is a thing in the hall. She left a paper on the table and it is in her hand and it is addressed to you."

I went up the steps and into the hall. The hall was full of wolves and the long table was on its legs again with the chairs around it and Helle was still under the sheet at the far end because there had been no time to bury her. There was a folded paper in the middle of the table with my name on it.

I opened it. It was short.

Derya. I am going down to the quarry to see the Council man. I have been thinking all night about what you said in the yard and about Helle on the ledge and about the money in the company ledger that you do not know I know about. I have taken money from the company for two years. It was for the pack and it was wrong and I am going to say so in front of the Council before you do. If I am not back by noon, do not come after me. Take the pack to the inquiry without me and let me be the one the Council man has to explain. R.

I read it twice. Then I put it on the table and looked at the ring of wolves in the hall.

"She has gone to Silas," I said.

"She has gone to confess," Nora said from the door. She had come in behind me with her white hair and her dark brown eyes and the whole hall turned to look at her. "That is not the same thing. It is a stupid thing and it may get her killed, but it is not the same thing."

"Who is she?" a warrior said.

"She is the former Luna of the Çöl pack and she is the second envoy of the Council and she is standing in this hall as a guest." I looked at the warrior. "And she is right. Ruth has gone to put her own neck in the noose before I can put it there for her. That is either the bravest thing she has ever done or the most frightened, and I do not know which and I do not have time to find out."

I turned to the hall. There were forty wolves in it and every one of them was looking at me.

"Listen to me," I said. "All of you. I have been Luna of this pack for one month. In that month I have lied to you and I have gone behind your backs and I have bitten one of you in this hall and I have brought a rival Alpha onto your land. I am not going to stand here and tell you I was right about all of it. I was not. Some of it was fear and some of it was pride and some of it was me trying to do everything alone because I did not trust any of you enough to ask for help."

The hall was silent.

"But this I will tell you and it is the truth," I went on. "The water did not dry up. It was taken. It has been taken for twenty years by a Council man named Silas and by a company that pays him, and the money went into a chamber under the quarry and into the pockets of wolves in this canyon, and one of those wolves was my Beta and one of them may have been my mother's killer." I put my hand on the table. "And tonight at sundown the Council will sit in the quarry hall and the Council will read a decision that takes this pack apart, and I am going to stand in front of them with two ledgers and a list and a pact and a pair of iron rings, and I am going to tell them what they have done."

I looked around the hall.

"I cannot do it alone," I said. "I have tried and I cannot. So I am asking you. Not ordering you. Asking. Come down that mesa road with me at sundown and stand in that hall and listen, and if what I say is true then say so, and if it is not true then say that too." I looked at Berik. "Berik. You have more reason to hate me than anyone in this room. Will you come?"

Berik looked at me for a long moment with his bandaged arm in its sling.

"Luna," he said. "I have been a warrior for twelve years and I have never seen a wolf bring a Council man down with a book. But I will come and I will listen." He looked around the hall. "And I will bring my brother and my brother's wife and the two warriors from the south fence."

The hall stirred. Old Tomas stood up and said, "I will come." Helle's husband, a quiet man named Arne, stood up and said nothing and did not sit down again. Then another wolf stood up and another and another, and by the time the hall was quiet again there was not a wolf in it who was still sitting.

I went out into the yard with Hank behind me and Nora behind him and Cal at my shoulder, and I stopped on the porch and looked out at the mesa and the canyon and the long road down to the quarry.

"Two Lunas," I said.

Hank looked at me. "What?"

"Two Lunas, one spring." I looked at him. "Nora said the first pair were two Lunas. One from each pack. And my father and your father were two Alphas. And you and I are an Alpha and a Luna." I turned to Nora. "The pact says the pair is one from each pack. It does not say which rank. It does not say mate or truce. It says a pair."

Nora's face changed. "Derya."

"The first pair were two Lunas and both packs killed them. The second pair were two Alphas and both packs killed them." I looked at her. "Your mother told you the first pair were two Lunas from rival packs who shared a bond. And my father and your mate were two Alphas from rival packs who shared a truce bond. And now Hank and I are an Alpha and a Luna from rival packs with a mate bond and a truce bond both." I put my hands on the porch rail. "Nora. Why did the packs kill them? Not the Council. The packs. You said it yourself. The old women said the Council sent men. But the packs were there. The packs watched it happen and did nothing."

Nora was quiet. Then she said, "Because a pair that belongs to both packs is a pair that belongs to neither. The Kızıltaş wolves saw their Alpha bonded to a Çöl wolf and they called it a betrayal. The Çöl wolves saw their Luna bonded to a Kızıltaş wolf and they called it the same." She looked at me. "Both packs killed the first pair. And both packs killed the second pair. Not with their own hands. With their silence. With their refusal to stand between the pair and the Council."

The yard was full of wolves and the sun was over the rim and the road down to the quarry lay long and bright and empty.

"Then we do not ask the packs to stand between us and the Council," I said. "We ask the packs to stand with us. Both packs. Together. In that hall. That is the only thing the Council cannot argue with."

Hank came and stood beside me at the rail and put his hands on it and did not touch me.

"At sundown," he said.

"At sundown." I looked at him. "And Hank. There is a storm coming. Look at the sky over the eastern rim."

He looked. The sky over the eastern rim had gone dark and the wind had changed and there was a smell in it of dust and rain.

"That is a canyon storm," he said. "It will be on us in an hour and it will close the road."

"Then we go down that road before it comes," I said. "And if it catches us halfway, then we shelter where we can and we go on at first light." I turned to the pack. "Saddle every horse. Load the ledgers and the pact and the rings and the sheet on that table and the body of Helle and put her in the wagon. We are going to the quarry and we are going now."

The yard came alive. Wolves ran for the stable and the wagon and the kitchen, and I went down the porch steps with Hank and Nora beside me, and at the bottom of the steps Cal caught my arm.

"Luna," he said. "There is a rider coming up the road from the quarry. It is Sten. He is riding hard and his horse is lathered and he is shouting something."

I turned and looked down the road. Sten was coming up the long slope at a gallop and his horse was white with sweat and he was waving his arm over his head, and when he came through the gate he pulled up so hard the horse went back on its haunches.

"Luna," he said. "The Beta is dead. The Council man has her in the Council hall and he has read her a charge of theft and conspiracy and he has ruled on it himself without a hearing and she is dead, Luna. He has hanged her from the beam in the Council hall."