Luna Discarded, Alpha Forgotten

The Border Oath

By morning Elena had tested the edge of her tether eleven times, and eleven times it had held her like a hand around the throat.

The field beyond the eastern gate was still green. The hoofprints still ran toward the treeline. Sabine was out there somewhere with a monster's breath on her neck, and Elena stood on the wrong side of an invisible line, with her palms pressed against nothing and her teeth locked so hard her jaw ached.

"Stop," Roran said from behind her. "You are bruising yourself on it."

"Then tell me how to break it."

"I can't." He came to stand beside her. He had not slept either. "But I have been reading Iris's account since dawn, the whole thing, every uncut line, and there is a sentence I think you will hate."

She turned. He held out the old book, open to a page smudged by many thumbs.

The keeper's cord runs to the edge of the land that keeps her. Should that land be joined by oath to another, the cord runs to the new edge.

"Joined by oath," Elena read aloud. "Two packs."

"Blackthorn and Ashgrove. One border instead of two." Roran's voice was very even. "The lands bind, the cord stretches to cover both, and from Ashgrove's southern ridge it is a half day's ride to the Barrow Hills. Where the old kings are buried. Where, if Iris's account is right, a man who wants to stay alive would hide."

Elena looked at him for a long moment. She knew exactly what he was offering, and exactly what it would cost.

"A border oath is not a treaty," she said. "It is a marriage between lands. If Blackthorn falls, Ashgrove falls with it. If the curse comes back, your people wake up to dead fields. You would be tying five hundred wolves to a pack that broke me."

"I would be tying them to you." He said it simply, as though there were nothing else to weigh. "And I have been Alpha of Ashgrove for six years. I know what my pack would say if I asked them. They would say you carried half of them out of the winter the year the river froze. They would say it is the least we owe."

"Roran."

"I am not asking permission. I am telling you what I have already decided. I am asking whether you will let me."

Her eyes stung. She laughed at herself, short and rough, and wiped her face with the heel of her hand. "You are the most stubborn man I have ever met."

"You have met Kane."

"Second most stubborn."

The corner of his mouth lifted. Then the smile slid away, and what replaced it was so bare she almost looked aside. "There is something else you should know before you accept. A border oath is spoken between Alphas. Kane must speak it with me. He must stand in the circle, bare handed, and join his land to mine in front of both packs."

"He will."

"You are sure?"

"He asked me what he could do," Elena said. "This is what he can do."

They held the oath at noon, in the open field between the gates, with the whole of Blackthorn pressed in behind Kane and a hundred Ashgrove warriors drawn up behind Roran. There was no ritual circle this time, no stone, no ceremony beyond what the two men chose to say. They clasped forearms in the old way, wrist to wrist, and Kane spoke first, in a voice that did not shake.

"I am Kane Blackthorn, and I name Ashgrove's land my land, and Ashgrove's people my people, for as long as the grass grows on both."

"I am Roran of Ashgrove," Roran said, "and I name Blackthorn's land my land, and Blackthorn's people my people, for as long as the grass grows on both."

The ground sang.

It was a sound Elena had never heard from the earth, not the low hum of the circle but something higher and wider, a chord struck across two valleys at once. The gold in her chest flared. She felt the cord that held her uncoil like a rope being paid out, one length, then two, then ten, and the wall she had been leaning on dissolved, mile after mile, until she could feel the whole joined country spread out beneath her like a map written in her bones.

She felt the ridge. She felt the river. She felt, a long way south and faint as a candle seen through fog, the dark, cold knot of the Barrow Hills.

And she felt something else, small and bright and frightened, at the very edge of the sensation. A pulse she knew the way she knew her own.

"She is alive," Elena whispered. "Sabine is alive."

She did not realize she was crying until Roran's hand closed around hers. He did not say a word. He only held on, and she held on back, and across the clasped forearms of the two Alphas, Kane watched their joined fingers with an expression Elena could not read and did not want to.

"Go," Kane said quietly, to nobody in particular. "Whatever you need. Take whoever you need."

They were saddled and gathering at the stable yard within the hour. Six of Roran's best, two of Kane's trackers, Elena, Roran, and Kane himself, who had refused every plea to remain at the compound and had said only, in the flat tone of a man who had already lost an argument with himself, "She is my mate. I will not wait behind a wall."

Marta caught her at the stable gate while the others were still gathering their packs. The old healer pressed a leather pouch into Elena's hands, heavy with dried silverleaf, yarrow and a tin of salve that smelled of pine tar.

"For wounds," Marta said. "Do not wait to use it. Pride has killed more wolves than claws."

"I will bring her back."

"I know you will." Marta's mouth wobbled, then firmed. "I delivered Sabine, you know. Bawling and furious, and she held onto my finger like she meant to keep it. Whatever she did to you, she is still that child to me. Bring her home, and then be as angry with her as you please."

Elena kissed the old woman's cheek and did not trust herself to answer.

Elena was tightening a cinch when the guards brought Garrick.

He walked between them in plain clothes, hands unbound, with the same untroubled air he had worn since the hour he first spoke. He stopped three paces from her horse and bowed, the way a courtier bows to a queen he intends to outlive.

"I would not go to the Barrow without me, keeper."

"You are not coming."

"Then you will be standing at a stone door until your sister's heart stops." He said it gently. "That door was sealed with Lysa's blood, and Lysa's blood alone. My mother wove the last ward on it herself, before Aldric ever knew what he had done to her. It will open for her son, and for no one else alive. I cannot say it plainly enough. Take me, or leave your sister there."

Elena looked at him for a long, hard breath. Roran's hand went to his sword. Kane did not move at all, though a muscle jumped in his cheek, and when he finally spoke it was to Garrick alone. "You will keep your hands where we can see them. You will keep your mouth shut unless you are asked to open it. And if my mate comes to harm because of you, I will not need a trial."

"Brother," Garrick said mildly, "you have never sounded more like your father."

Kane flinched as if slapped, and said nothing more.

"If you betray us," she said at last, "I will not be merciful twice."

"No," Garrick agreed, almost fondly. "I do not think you will."