Chapter 18 - Ronan
I’m back on the water by late morning, running the third boatload of the week across to the island.
Not to the harbor side, where Tristen’s wolves are no doubt still nursing the beating they took the other night.
This is the wild north where no one watches, and where two years of quiet, expensive work has gone completely unnoticed by my half-brothers—a new settlement, on their own soil, tucked into the fold of a hill and disguised behind a wall of wards so strong that you could walk within ten feet of it and feel nothing but an icy coldness and the sudden urge to be somewhere else.
It cost me a fortune, and I had to call in every favor I had ever been owed, but I did it.
Ferrying people over, laying stones, building infrastructure.
It’s been slow and tedious work, but it’s worth every fucking penny.
When I pull the trigger on this war, I won’t be begging for a seat at the table; I’m already here.
I’m already standing on their precious island, an army at my back, and no one will send us away ever again.
I maneuver the boat in through the gap in the rocks and feel the wards close around us as we pass beneath them—like a cold drag across the skin.
Once I pass through, the world seems to fall silent.
The boats on the crossing behind fade away, no patrol horns, nothing but the calm of my own settlement standing on the ground that the island doesn’t know is already lost.
I think back to this morning when I woke with Selene against my chest, and how I lay there watching her, telling myself I’d get up any moment, but instead, the moments dragged on.
That’s new; I’ve never once wanted to stay in bed when I knew there was work to do.
No woman has held my attention once I’d taken what I wanted.
Selene’s magic has threaded through my wolf now, there for the reaching whenever I want.
She didn’t hold back; she gave me everything, and I’m not even sure she realizes.
I woke up stronger than I’ve ever been, and it’s grown enough that I no longer have to be careful.
I’m ready to take the island. That’s why the boats are running heavier this week.
I’ve been holding off, waiting to be sure I wouldn’t be risking lives unnecessarily, but now, with the bond magic behind me and steadying the pack around me, I know we’re unbeatable.
I felt it at the docks this morning, in the way my men dropped their eyes from mine without me trying.
They feel it too, even if they can’t name it.
I saw it in the way the pack is working together seamlessly, with barely any vocal communication.
If they can work like that on the ships, imagine what they can do in battle.
Despite everything, my mind keeps wandering back to Selene and how I fully intend to take her back to my bed tonight. I have the bond, but I want to have her again, too.
Cole’s already on the jetty when I bring it into the dock, having come over with the first run earlier today.
Further up, dozens of men are hauling crates up the path to the smart cabins that now line the cove.
Forty families live here now, all building something real and fully onboard with my plans—I’ve promised them the earth, and now I’m going to deliver.
A woman who came over last year with her husband and two children to run the farmstead finds me almost as soon as I’m on land. They’d lost everything when their previous pack splintered and turned on one another. “We’ve put the gardens in,” she says.
“I told you it’s good soil here,” I tell her, and I mean it.
The island is incredibly fertile compared to the rough coastline.
She stops long enough to fill me in on the farmstead progress, which will hopefully help to sustain the settlement going forward by next season, before running off to chase one of her pups who shoots by.
Looking around at the calm success here, I remember this is what they’ve crossed the water for.
That’s what some of the recruits, like Davey, are starting to forget—not that I blame Davey, necessarily, after his experience; he certainly hasn’t been himself since he got back, more fired up, and it’s starting to affect the other young ones.
I want them engaged, but I don’t want bloodshed for the sake of it—only what is necessary to take down my half-brothers.
The men, especially the younger recruits, are in high spirits over the beating Tristen’s wolves took; it’s making them cocky. I see Davey approaching with some of them, already telling some kind of story about the raid, and making a beeline for me as soon as they round the corner.
“We should hit them again,” he says, “hit them while they’re down and take the harbor.”
“Listen to this one,” Cole says somewhere behind me. “Found his teeth after his unofficial stay on the island.”
A few others laugh, but not Garrick, an older wolf that’s been with me three years and was one of the first to set up over here with his family when I asked for volunteers. He sets down the crate he’s carrying and looks at Davey.
“Easy to talk about taking ports and fighting when you’ve got no one but yourself to worry about,” he says. “Some of us do.”
Davey has the sense to drop the grin. “I’m not saying it’s free, I’m just saying it’s better to strike first. We’re here to take it, right?”
I can see Garrick is going to snap back, so I raise my hand.
“That’s enough.” I don’t need to raise my voice; the bond magic does enough, and I feel it working through them.
My alpha wolf has always commanded respect, but this is different, and I wave them off in the opposite direction to continue their work.
It’s the plainest I’ve seen it work, but I also don’t miss the shifting dynamics in the pack, the younger ones hungry for a fight, the older ones more focused on what they have to lose. Selene and Ryder don’t think I notice, but I do. I just trust myself to pull them together when it counts.
Cole falls in beside me as I head up the path and waits until we’re past the last of them before he speaks.
“They’ve been getting worse,” he says, his voice low. “The younger ones are talking about everything they’re going to get when you take the island. The older ones are worried about what they might lose in the process. They love this settlement; they’ve worked hard building it.”
“And which half are you in?” I ask.
He takes his time. “I think we’ve got more to lose now than we ever have. A home on the coast. This place. Forty families that trust you with their kids.” He shrugs. “I wouldn’t want to watch a man gamble all of it reaching for something he doesn’t really need.”
He’s quiet for a second, then says the part he really walked up here to say.
“And there’s some starting to wonder about you, Ronan.
Whether there’s still a version of this where you stop before they’re asked to fight.
Whether anyone could talk you down now, if it came to it.
” He keeps his eyes on the path ahead. “I tell them, of course, there is, because you’ll always do what’s right for your pack, and I’d like to be right about that. ”
“Noted,” I say, not looking at him.
He can tell I’m done with it and lets it go, because he’s smart and loyal, and he’ll follow me either way. But he’s said it now, and we both know it landed.
Ryder’s already up in the big cabin we use for planning, bent over a map of the island. He came over a couple of nights ago and is spending more time here. I can tell he likes it even if he won’t admit it. He doesn’t look up when I come in.
“Did Garrick tell you about our witch problem?” he asks, and my mind goes straight to Selene. He looks up, then smirks. “Not your witch, who I hear has you handled, never mind the other way around. The witch here, on the ward boundary, two nights in a row. I’d say she knows it’s there.”
“And what’s been done about it?” I ask, ignoring his Selene barb.
He sighs. “Tightened the wards, of course. I ran a patrol late last night, and it was clear. I’ll do the same tonight. I assume you’re not staying.”
He’s eyeing me as he says it, and I can tell he senses the bond magic. “I need to get back to her; the bond is working,” I admit. “Soon, it won’t matter about a stray witch on the boundary. We’ll be ready to make our presence felt.”
Ryder sighs, and I know what’s coming. I grit my teeth because, as much as I love my brother and know his wolf is my closest equal, I hate being told what to do, even by him.
“You said you were going to think about what they said,” he says. “The email, the offer of peace. We could negotiate for this land; these people are happy here, and this settlement is thriving. We could get a piece of what we wanted, bloodshed-free. Wouldn’t that be a victory?”
“Are you joking?” I half laugh, incredulous. “You want to barter over a tiny cove as the price for being ignored for thirty years and tossed aside?”
“I’d take a thriving cove and nobody dying over a whole island soaked in our own people’s blood,” he snarls.
It’s a good argument. That’s the trouble with Ryder. His arguments are always good.
“They’d never accept us,” I say. “Not really.”
“You don’t know that,” he replies, softer.
“I won’t spend my whole life feeling grateful for scraps,” I reply.
Ryder goes quiet for a moment, and I hope he’s going to drop it, but he gets the last word.
“The bond magic is in you now. I can feel it from across the room, and I can feel the strength. So just be sure it’s you making this call with a clear head”—He picks up his jacket and heads for the door—”and not the boy who swore he’d make them all pay for it one day, because this isn’t just about what we want anymore. ”
Then he’s gone, and I’m left alone with the map, looking at the outline of an island that should have been ours but never was, wondering if I’m even on the right track.
And I hate that, because I have never wondered if I’m right; I have always been clear in my own head about what I wanted to do.
Damn Ryder and his stupid conscience and whatever goodness Selene seems to wrap me up in, even when she’s giving me all this power.
I take the last boat back, leaving Ryder there for another night to run his patrol and hold the line.
She’s waiting up when I get home, the same book in her lap that I know she’s not really reading, and a cup of tea next to her that has gone cold.
She looks up when I come in, and the look on her face when she sees me holds no fear; it hasn’t for a while now, and that does something to me I don’t know how to stop.
I get my hands on her and finally stop thinking.
I forget about the island, Ryder, and all my responsibilities and dreams of revenge.
For a few hours, there’s nothing left in the world but her, and the anger I’ve carried my whole life fades away.
She’s the only thing that’s ever made it feel less heavy.
I tell myself that my need for her isn’t a weakness. I tell myself that maybe I can have all of it at the same time—her, the war, my revenge, the island, and a happy pack. I can take everything I’m owed.
And I almost believe it.