The Spring Between Us

Chapter 31: What Hank Saw

I sent the pack out of the hut.

All of them. The warriors and the women and old Tomas and the children who had crept up to the door to listen. I stood on Mira's step and told them to go to the hall and put the table back on its legs and sweep the floor and wait for me, and they went, slowly, looking back over their shoulders, and Cal went with them to keep order.

Then I shut the door and turned around and said, "Tell me."

Hank was sitting on Mira's stool with his shirt off and a pad of linen pressed to his shoulder. Mira had cleaned the cut and it was not deep, but it was long and it had gone through the muscle and he would carry it a while.

"You went across the table at Ruth," he said. "That is the first thing. You did not go around it and you did not go under it. You went over it, and you took the corner of it with your shoulder and it went over on its side, and the paper she was holding went out of her hand and under the bench."

"Did I get her?"

"No. Berik got between you." Hank shifted on the stool. "He put his arm up and you took him down by the forearm and you had your teeth in him before he hit the floor. He did not fight back. He kept saying your name."

I stood by the door with my hand on the latch.

"Then what?"

"Then you let him go. You dropped him and you stood over him and you looked at the door and then you looked at the hall, and the hall was full of wolves who had all stood up at once. You turned toward the door and two of the Çöl warriors got in front of you, and you put one of them down with your shoulder and cut the other one across the arm. Then you went for the back door."

"Where were you?"

"I was behind you." He looked at me. "I had come in with my wolves and I was standing at the near end of the table with my coat off, and when you went over that table I went after you. You were at the back door when I got to you. I put my hand on your back and you turned and came at me, and I got my arm up and you took me by the shoulder and put your teeth through my shirt."

I looked at the pad of linen on his shoulder. The blood had come through it in a dark circle.

"I bit you."

"You did." He said it plainly. "And then you stopped. You had your teeth in my shoulder and your weight on my chest and you stopped. You let go and you stepped back and you stood in the middle of that hall and looked at me, and your eyes were not a wolf's eyes. They were yours. And then you lay down on the floor and you were a woman again." He shifted the pad. "Derya. That is the thing I have been trying to tell you since you woke up. You stopped. You had every reason to keep going and you stopped."

I came away from the door and sat down on the cot. My hands were still shaking and there was still blood under my nails.

"I could have killed Berik," I said.

"You could have. You did not."

"I could have killed you."

"You could have." He looked at me. "You did not."

"That is not the point." I put my head in my hands. "Hank. I do not remember it. I do not remember the table or Berik or the back door or your shoulder. I remember the paper in Ruth's hand and then I remember the floor. There is a hole in me where the hall should be, and if I do not remember it I cannot stop it from happening again." I lifted my head. "The paste failed because you were near me. The bond pushed and my wolf came up and she went over the top of me like water over a dam. She has done it twice now. In the pasture and in the hall. And both times I lost the middle of the hour."

Hank was quiet. Mira was at the table with her back to us and her hands still, and she did not turn around.

"There is a thing I have been thinking about since the pasture," Hank said. "Your wolf is not broken, Derya. She is not sick and she is not wild. She is a wolf with a bond on her that is bigger than she is, and she has been trying to carry it alone because you have been fighting her every step. When the bond comes at her she comes up, and when she comes up you go down, because you will not go with her." He leaned forward. "You have to stop fighting her. You have to let her come and stay awake while she comes."

"I have tried."

"You have not. You have been holding her down since the spring. Every time she moved you pushed her back." He looked at me. "Mira. Tell her."

Mira turned around. Her round face was tired and her apron was stained and she said, "He is right. I have watched you since you were a girl. You have a strong wolf and a frightened woman and the frightened woman has been sitting on the strong wolf for ten years. Your mother did the same. It killed her in the end." She came and stood in front of me. "The paste is gone and the mark cannot be covered and the inquiry is in two days. So you have two days to learn to let her come. Not to shift. To let her come and stay. I can help you. There is a thing I can put in your tea that quiets the fear and lets the wolf up a little at a time, and you will sit in this hut and let her come and not push her back, and by the end of the second day you will know whether you can hold the shift without losing the middle of the hour."

"And if I cannot?"

Mira's mouth set. "Then at the inquiry you will stand in front of both packs with a mark on your arm and a wolf you cannot hold, and the Council will do what the Council does."

I sat on the cot with my hands in my lap. The mark on my arm was warm and steady and behind it my wolf was lying low and quiet and I could feel her, the way you feel a dog pressed against your leg in the dark.

"Two days," I said. "In this hut."

"Two days," Mira said. "And Derya. There is one more thing and it is not a small thing. If you learn to hold her, and if you go into that inquiry with your wolf awake, then the bond will be open and Hank cannot be within a mile of you. Not for the whole two days. Not until you stand in front of the Council."

I looked at Hank. He was sitting on the stool with his shirt off and the cut on his shoulder and the linen pad dark with blood, and he was looking at me.

"Two days," he said. "I will go back to my side tonight. I will take my wolves and I will go, and I will not come near this mesa until the inquiry. Ruth will tell the Council I cannot hold my pack and Silas will tell the Council I am your creature, and I will sit in my own hall and I will not come to you."

"And at the inquiry?"

"At the inquiry I will stand on my own side of the hall with my own warriors and my own Beta's confession in my hand, and I will watch you walk in with your wolf awake and your mark bare and I will be proud of you whichever way it goes." He stood up. "But before I go, there is a thing I have to tell you and then I am going to leave and you are going to hate me for it."

"What thing?"

"Your mother." Hank put his shirt on over the pad and buttoned it. "Before she died she wrote to my mother and told her she had found the pact. She told her she was going to take it to the Council and she asked my mother to stand with her. My mother said no. My mother has been carrying that for four weeks." He picked up his coat. "What she did not tell you, and what she told me this morning before I rode to your border, is that your mother wrote a second letter that same week. Not to my mother. To the Council of Alphas. And my mother carried it down the mesa road herself and gave it to a clerk at the Council hall, and that clerk put it in a drawer, and four days later your mother was dead."

I stood up. "My mother wrote to the Council?"

"She wrote to the Council and my mother carried it and the letter is in a drawer in the Council hall at the quarry." Hank got his coat on. "My mother has been sitting in this canyon for four weeks knowing that she carried the letter that killed your mother. She is not a coward, Derya. She is a woman who made one bad decision and has been eating it every night since. But it is the reason she has the tin in her pocket and the reason she came up that road at dawn. She is trying to put it right."

He went to the door. I stood by the cot with my hands at my sides and my mark burning and my wolf awake behind it.

"Hank," I said.

He stopped with his hand on the latch.

"When this is over," I said, "when the inquiry is done and Silas is finished and the water is ours, I am going to want the conversation we have been putting off. The one you promised me at the gate."

He turned his head. "I will hold you to that."

"See that you do."

He went out. I heard him cross the yard and call his wolves and the gate open and shut, and then the yard was quiet and the pack house was quiet, and Mira went to the stove and put the kettle on.

"Lie down on the cot," she said. "I will make the tea and you will drink it and then we will begin. It will be slow and it will be ugly and by tonight you will be very tired."

I lay down. The ceiling of Mira's hut had eleven beams and I had counted them the night before with a leather strap in my mouth and I counted them again now while the kettle began to sing. Outside the window the light was going orange and the yard was quiet and somewhere in the pack house a woman was sweeping up broken glass.

Mira came with the cup. I drank it. It tasted of mint and something bitter and after a while the room got soft at the edges and I felt my wolf lift her head.

"Now," Mira said. "Let her come. Do not push her back. I am right here and I am not going anywhere."

I closed my eyes.