The Rogue He Claimed

Chapter 16: The First Touch

The howls went on for a long time. Then they stopped, all at once, as if someone had closed a door on them.

Finn and I stood at the cairn stones and listened to the silence. His arm was still around me, and I could feel his heartbeat through his cloak.

"He is letting us know he is there," I said.

"He is letting me know he is there." Finn let go of me. "That was a border call. He is claiming ground on the far ridge."

"And the border call is answered by other wolves, which means he has more men than we thought."

"Yes." Finn picked up the lantern. "We go back. Now."

We went down the ridge fast, and by the time we reached the pack house the yard was full of wolves. Angus was on the steps in his shirtsleeves with a sword in his hand and his grey hair loose, and Isla was beside him with her knives already belted on.

"How many?" Angus said.

"I counted six in the hollow three days ago," Finn said. "The calls tonight came from both the far ridge and the north hollow, so at least ten. Maybe twelve."

Angus looked at the dark hills.

"He is not attacking," he said. "He could have come over the border tonight and he did not. He is making us look at him."

"He is making us tired," Isla said. "Twelve wolves on the far ridge, and we will sit up every night with our knives in our hands, and in a week we will be too tired to fight."

"Then we do not sit up." Angus turned to the yard. "Two watches a night, four wolves each. The rest of you sleep. If he comes, the watches will raise the alarm, and we will be ready in the time it takes to shift."

The pack broke up. Angus went inside, and Isla went to the gate to set the watches, and I stood in the yard with my heart still hammering.

"Elara." Finn was beside me. "You should not go back to the cottage tonight. Not alone."

"Ronan is there."

"I will send Ewan to fetch him. There is a room off the barn where the shepherds sleep in lambing season. No one will look for you there." He looked at me. "And there is something I need to show you."

He took me to the barn.

It was a long building of stone and timber, and it smelled of hay and sheep and old wood. Finn went to the far end and opened a small door in the wall that I had not noticed before, and behind it was a room with a bed and a chair and a window that looked out at the loch.

"My mother used to come here," he said. "When the pack house was too loud. She said the sheep made better company than the warriors."

"It is a good room."

"It is a safe room. The door locks from the inside and the window is too small for anyone to climb through." He lit a candle on the table. "Wait here. I will bring Ronan."

He went out. I sat down on the bed and looked around at the stone walls and the small window and the candle flame.

He came back with Ronan, who was still half asleep and had his blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

"This is better than the cottage," Ronan said, and lay down on the bed, and was asleep in a minute.

Finn and I stood in the doorway and looked at him.

"He is a good boy," Finn said.

"He is a stubborn boy."

"That too."

We went out into the barn and closed the door quietly behind us. The sheep shifted in their pens and one of them bleated, and then the barn was quiet.

"Finn," I said.

He turned to look at me.

"I have not thanked you," I said. "For the pouch. For the promise. For all of it."

"You do not have to thank me."

"I know." I stepped closer. "I want to."

The mate bond pulled between us, and I could feel the heat of him, and I could smell the wool and the woodsmoke on his cloak. He was very still.

"Elara," he said. "If you do not mean this, tell me now."

"I mean it."

He reached out and took my hand. His fingers were warm and rough from work, and they closed around mine, and the touch went through me like a spark jumping across a gap.

That was all it took. He pulled me to him and I went, and we kissed in the dark barn with the sheep moving in their pens and the candlelight coming faintly through the door.

His hands moved up my arms and into my hair. I pulled at the clasp of his cloak and it came loose and fell, and then my hands were on his shoulders and then in his hair, and he made a sound against my mouth that made my knees go weak.

"Finn," I said.

"I know."

He lifted me up and carried me to the far end of the barn, where the hay was stacked in a clean pile, and he laid me down on it. The hay was dry and soft and it smelled of summer, and I looked up at him in the dim light and I saw his pale golden hair falling across his forehead and his gold-brown eyes so dark they were almost brown.

He knelt over me and put his hand on my face.

"You are shaking," he said.

"So are you."

He laughed, very quietly. Then he kissed me again, and his hands found the hem of my shirt, and the world outside the barn went away.

I do not have the words for what came after. I could tell you about the way the hay scratched my back and the way his hands were careful and the way he whispered my name against my throat, but none of it would explain what it felt like. It was slow and then it was fast. It was gentle and then it was not. It was the mate bond opening like a door inside me, and it was the two of us walking through it together.

Afterward we lay in the hay with his cloak over us, and he traced the line of my shoulder with his fingers.

"Are you all right?" he said.

"Yes."

"You are crying."

I put my hand to my cheek and found that he was right.

"I do not know why," I said.

"I do."

"You do not."

"I do." He kissed my forehead. "Because I am crying too."

We lay there for a long time. The sheep settled. The candle burned down in the little room and went out. My wolf was quiet in my chest, quieter than she had been in three years, and I thought about how strange it was that I should feel safe in a barn in a pack that was not mine with a war coming over the ridge.

Then the mark began to form.

I felt it first as heat, low on my shoulder, where his hand had been. It grew until it was almost too hot to bear, and I sat up and pulled the cloak aside and looked at it in the light of the moon through the barn window.

There was a mark on my shoulder. A crescent, silver and small.

Finn sat up beside me. He looked at the mark and then at me, and his face had gone very still.

"My mother had one of those," he said. "On her shoulder. My father put it there."

"What does it mean?"

"It means the bond is sealed." He touched it very gently. "It means you are mine and I am yours, and it cannot be undone by anything short of death."

I looked at the silver crescent on my shoulder.

"Your father will see it," I said.

"I know."

"He will know."

"I know that too."

Outside the barn, a wolf howled. It was close. It was much too close, and it was not a Cairn wolf.