The Silver Wolf’s Awakening (The Healer and the Highborn Savage #4)

CHAPTER ONE THE ALTAR BREATHES

M arion woke to the sound of her own funeral.

At first she thought it was rain.

It was such a soft sound. A steady whispering above her, around her, beneath her, as if the whole mountain had lowered its voice to mourn. Then she realized it was not rain at all. It was weeping.

Wolves.

The sound curled down through stone and earth, through the black ribs of the cavern, and settled inside her chest like cold fingers. Low mourning howls. Human sobs. Boots scraping somewhere high above. A woman praying in a broken voice. Someone saying Euan’s name.

Euan.

Her eyes opened.

Darkness stared back.

For one terrible moment Marion did not move.

She could not remember how to breathe, and then, even worse, she realized she was breathing.

The air entered her body sharp and cold, filling her lungs with the scent of wet stone, old blood, smoke, snow, and something pale and bitter that tasted like moonlight on her tongue.

She lay flat on the moonstone altar.

The same altar where she had died.

No. Not died.

Had she?

God help her, she did not know.

Her fingers twitched against the stone and the tiny sound of skin scraping mineral made her flinch.

It was too loud. Everything was too loud.

Water dripped somewhere far off, and each drop struck rock like a hammer.

A mouse scurried behind a crack in the wall.

The torches had burned low, but she could hear the oil shifting inside their iron cups. She could hear ash giving way.

She could hear hearts.

Many of them.

Too many.

Fast ones. Slow ones. Grieving ones. A child’s heart beating so hard it sounded as if it might burst.

Georgie.

Marion sat up too quickly and pain sliced through her skull.

She gasped and clutched the edge of the altar. At least she meant to clutch it. Her nails struck stone with a sharp click.

She froze.

Slowly, very slowly, she lifted her hand.

Her fingers looked like hers and not hers at the same time. Pale, trembling, the knuckles scraped and stained from the ritual, but the nails were different. Longer. Sharper. Not claws exactly, but close enough that her stomach turned.

“Oh God,” she whispered.

Her voice came out rough and strange, like she had been screaming for hours.

Had she screamed? She remembered the cavern. The circle of wolves. Euan’s hands on her. Morna’s voice telling her to stop fighting. The terrible pull inside her bones. The wolf rising. Her healing gift burning against it, trying to mend what it thought was damage.

Then pain.

Then Euan roaring her name.

Then nothing.

Marion pressed a shaking hand to her throat. There was a pulse. Fast, but strong. Stronger than it had been in weeks. Not the weak fluttering thing that had frightened her every morning since the bite began killing her.

The bite.

Her fingers flew to the mark at her neck.

Heat answered.

Not the cruel burning from before, not the fevered tearing pain that had spread through her like poison. This was different. Deep. Steady. Almost alive. Her fingertips came away glowing faintly, pale gold in the dark.

Marion stared at them.

Her healing light had never looked like that.

Before, it had been warm, white gold, soft as candle flame under skin. This was colder. Brighter. There was silver in it, thin as frost, slipping around the gold as if both colors had decided they belonged together.

She shoved herself backward on the altar and nearly fell off it.

Her bare feet hit the cavern floor. Stone should have been freezing. She felt the cold, yes, but it did not bite. It welcomed. That was ridiculous, and she knew it was ridiculous, but there it was.

Marion took one step.

The cavern shifted.

No, not shifted. She saw it better.

The moonstone veins in the walls glimmered beneath black rock. Old carvings she had barely noticed during the ritual showed themselves in impossible detail. Wolves. Women. Hands raised beneath a full moon. A figure with hair flowing around her and a wolf standing at her side.

Her breath caught.

The woman’s eyes had been carved with tiny chips of pale stone.

Silver eyes.

A sound broke from Marion’s throat, half laugh, half sob, and she backed away from the carving.

“No. No, I am not doing this.”

That was when she caught sight of herself in a dark pool of water near the altar.

At first she thought another woman watched her.

A thin face. Wild eyes. Hair loose over her shoulders, tangled and dark from sweat and ritual smoke, except it was not all dark anymore. Silver streaks threaded through it from temple to ends, catching the low torchlight. Her eyes were no longer the eyes she had known all her life.

They were gold.

Not brown with gold in them. Not fever bright.

Gold.

Like Euan’s.

The sight struck her so hard she stumbled.

A small cry escaped her and echoed up into the throat of the cavern.

The mourning above stopped.

For one stretched breath there was nothing. No wolf cry. No prayer. No boots. Even the stone seemed to listen.

Then a bowl clattered somewhere beyond the tunnel.

Footsteps came running.

Marion turned toward the sound before she understood she had moved. Her body knew where the doorway was without looking. She could smell who approached. Herbs. Smoke. Wool. Old blood. Sorrow pressed down and hidden behind hard discipline.

Morna.

The clan healer burst into the cavern carrying a folded length of white cloth in her arms.

A burial cloth.

Marion stared at it.

Morna stared at Marion.

For several seconds neither woman spoke. Morna’s face went white beneath the lines of age and battle and sleepless grief. Her mouth parted, but no sound came. The cloth slipped from her hands and spilled over the cavern floor like fallen snow.

Then the older woman dropped to her knees.

Marion took a step back.

“Don’t do that.”

Morna did not rise. Her dark eyes shone with something Marion had never seen in them before. Fear, yes. But not of Marion.

Awe.

“By the old moon,” Morna whispered.

Marion swallowed. “I am not dead.”

It was a foolish thing to say. Plainly she was standing there, breathing, shaking like a leaf, but she needed someone to say it back. She needed the words put into the air and made true.

Morna slowly lifted a hand, then stopped as if afraid Marion would vanish.

“No, lass,” she said, and her voice cracked. “No. You are not dead.”

Marion pressed one hand to her own chest. Her heart kicked hard under her palm. “Then why are they mourning?”

Morna’s expression changed.

That small change frightened Marion more than the silver in her hair, more than the strange light in her blood, more than waking on stone with death still clinging to the room.

The healer looked away.

Marion’s new hearing caught a sound miles off, impossibly far and impossibly clear.

A heartbeat.

One heartbeat different from all the others.

Slow.

Heavy.

Known.

Her entire body turned toward it.

Euan.

She knew him before her mind could reason through it. Knew the rhythm of him. Knew the deep pull of his life as if someone had tied a cord from his heart to her ribs and drawn it tight.

But the heartbeat was not inside the castle.

It was moving away.

“Where is he?” Marion asked.

Morna said nothing.

The cold that had not hurt her feet suddenly crawled up her legs.

“Morna.” Her voice sharpened. “Where is Euan?”

The healer rose slowly. She looked older than she had hours ago. Maybe everyone did after watching a woman die. Maybe Marion would have looked older too, if she still knew how old she was after what the moon had done to her.

“Lass, listen to me first.”

“No.”

“Marion.”

“No. Do not use that tone with me. Where is he?”

Morna’s jaw tightened. She bent, picked up the fallen burial cloth with hands that were not quite steady, then seemed to realize what she held and let it drop again.

“He believed you gone.”

Marion could not seem to breathe properly. “He saw me?”

“Aye.”

“He touched me?”

Morna nodded once.

Marion shut her eyes. Euan’s face came back to her, not as she had seen it last, but as she knew it must have been. That proud, impossible man broken open in front of his clan. His hands on her dead body. His wolf howling inside his chest.

She gripped the edge of the altar behind her. “What did he do?”

Morna looked at the altar, then at the tunnel, anywhere but Marion’s eyes.

“He invoked alpha law.”

The words meant nothing for half a second. Then Marion remembered the whispers from Book Three, the old laws, the terrible things wolves believed honor demanded. If a chief unlawfully caused the death of his claimed mate, his life belonged to the Sacred Grove.

Her stomach dropped.

“No.”

“Marion.”

“No.”

“He ordered his warriors to take him before dawn.”

A sound left Marion. Not a word. Not even a sob. Something rougher.

Morna stepped toward her. “He would hear no one. Not me. Not the elders. Not the child.”

“Georgie saw?”

“She screamed herself hoarse at him.”

Marion’s hand flew to her mouth.

For a moment the cavern blurred. Poor Georgie.

Her brave, sharp tongued little girl who had already lost too much.

She had watched them carry Euan away to die because he believed Marion gone.

She would be somewhere above, crying, frightened, perhaps thinking her mother and the man who had become something like home were both lost in the same night.

Marion straightened.

The grief inside her did not leave. It hardened.

“That fool,” she said.

Morna blinked.

“That arrogant, tragic, impossible Highland fool.”

A strange sound escaped Morna. It might have been a laugh if there had been any room left for laughter in the cavern.

Marion turned toward the tunnel. The heartbeat pulled at her again, faint but steady.

Too far.

How did she know that? She did not know. She simply did.

“How long until dawn?”

“Not long enough.”

“Get me a horse.”

Morna did not move.

Marion glared at her. “Did you not hear me?”

“A horse will not reach the Grove in time.”

“I did not ask whether it would enjoy the journey.”

“No horse,” Morna said, firmer now, “can reach the Sacred Grove before the axe falls.”

The axe.

Marion’s vision flashed white. She saw it though she had never seen the place. Silver blade. Black stone. Euan kneeling, calm because of course he would be calm. He would make death look like duty just to make everyone else suffer less.

Damn him.

Damn him for loving like that.

Her teeth ached.

Not from pain. From something lower, older, angrier.

Marion looked down at her hands. The silver gold light pulsed beneath her skin. Her nails lengthened another fraction against her will.

Morna saw.

The healer’s face changed again. Grief gave way to something sharp and knowing.

Marion lifted her eyes. “Then what can reach him?”

For a moment Morna said nothing.

Above them, the wolves began to howl again, but this time the sound was different. Uneasy. Stirring. As if some rumor had moved through the stones and reached their blood before their minds.

Morna looked at Marion’s silver threaded hair, her glowing bite, her golden eyes.

Then she spoke softly.

“You can.”

Marion’s heart slammed against her ribs.

The faraway heartbeat answered.

Slow.

Waiting.

Alive.

For now.