The Rogue He Claimed

Chapter 50: The First Ritual

The wolf on the ridge was not alone.

By nightfall there were six of them, grey and thin and patient, sitting on the ridge above the north road and doing nothing. They did not come down. They did not call again. They sat and they watched and they waited.

"The Council's enforcers," Torin said. "Not mine. Callum's. He must have sent for them before we took him."

"Will they attack?" Finn said.

"No. They will wait until a Council member arrives to give them orders." Torin looked at the ridge. "We have three days. Maybe four."

Angus called the council of elders that night.

It was not the whole pack. It was the old ones, the ones who had been in the glen long enough to remember the debt before it was a secret. There were nine of them, and they sat around the long table in the hall with their hands folded and their faces set.

Maeve sat at the end of the table with the ledger in front of her.

"I have called you here," Angus said, "because the debt is broken and the cave is open and there are wolves on the ridge who will want to know what we have done. Before they come, we will decide what we are going to tell them."

"We will tell them the truth," Nessa said. She was sitting at the far end of the table and she looked older than she had a week ago. "We have been lying for a hundred and forty years. I am tired of it."

"The truth will hang us," said an old man named Bram. "The Council will put every wolf on this table in a silver cage."

"Then we will hang with the truth in our mouths," Nessa said.

The elders argued for an hour. I sat at the back of the hall with Finn beside me and I listened to them talk, and I thought about my mother and the locket around my neck and the eleven women Maeve had held by the hand.

Then Maeve stood up.

"Stop," she said.

The table went quiet.

"You are arguing about what to tell the Council," Maeve said. "You are arguing about whether to lie or to hang. But you have not asked the one question that matters, and I am going to answer it whether you ask or not."

She opened the ledger.

"This book records the debt. It records the names of the women who paid it. It records the years and the Alphas and the healers. But it does not record what the ritual was. It does not record how the women died." She looked up. "I know how they died. I was there."

The hall was silent.

"The first ritual I performed was in the spring of the year I turned twenty-five. The woman was named Ailis. She was thirty years old and she had two children and her husband was a shepherd on the north pasture." Maeve's voice was steady. "The Alpha came to me and told me she had been chosen. He told me to prepare the herbs and to meet him at the cairn stones at moonrise."

I could hear the fire crackling.

"I did what I was told. I prepared the herbs. I went to the stones. Ailis was there with the Alpha and two warriors, and she was crying, and she asked me to help her. She asked me to tell the Alpha that she had children. She asked me to tell him that her husband would not survive without her."

Maeve paused.

"I did not tell him. I gave her the herbs and I held her hand and I said the words my mother had taught me. And the stone took her. It took her slowly. It took her all night. And when it was done there was nothing left but a little ash and a name on the wall."

The hall was very quiet.

"I carved her name myself the next morning," Maeve said. "And then I went home and I made bread and I washed my face and I did not speak of it to anyone for forty years."

Nessa had her hand over her mouth. Bram was staring at the table.

"Eleven times," Maeve said. "Eleven women. I held their hands and I said the words and I watched them die. And every time I told myself that I had no choice. Every time I told myself that if I refused, the Alpha would find another healer and the women would die anyway." She looked at the elders. "I was lying. I had a choice. I chose to live."

The fire cracked.

"Then you are a murderer," Bram said.

"I am a murderer," Maeve said. "And I am going to tell the Council so. I am going to stand in front of them and I am going to tell them what I did and I am going to let them do what they like with me."

The elders looked at each other.

"Maeve," Angus said.

"No, Angus. I have been silent for forty years. I am not going to be silent now." Maeve closed the ledger. "Elara's mother was the last woman I held. She was the only one who did not die. And when she ran, I did not stop her. I let her go. It was the only good thing I did in forty years."

I stood up.

"Maeve," I said. "You are not going to stand in front of the Council alone."

She looked at me.

"Elara," she said.

"You held eleven women's hands. But the Alpha chose them. The Council took the money. The stone took the blood." I looked at the elders. "We are all going to stand in front of the Council. All of us. Every wolf in this glen who knew and said nothing."

The hall was silent.

Then Nessa stood up.

"I will stand," she said.

"So will I," said Bram.

"So will I," said the old man by the wall.

One by one the elders stood. And then the warriors. And then the women in the doorway and the shepherds at the back and Ronan beside me.

Angus stood last.

"Then we will all stand," he said.

Outside, on the ridge, the wolf howled again. It was closer now. And it was not alone.