CHAPTER FOUR STOP HEALING WHAT IS NOT BROKEN
T he snow should have hurt her feet.
That was Marion’s first ridiculous thought as she stepped out from the mouth of the mountain and into the open courtyard below Castle McFarland.
It should have bitten. It should have numbed. It should have made her gasp and curse and demand boots like any sensible woman who had no business standing half dressed in the Highland cold after apparently dying on a stone altar.
Instead the snow welcomed her.
It slid between her toes like cold silk and packed beneath the soles of her feet, and all she could think was that she felt it too clearly. Each crystal. Each buried pebble. Each old trace of blood where wounded wolves had passed before the storm covered it.
She stopped and stared down.
Her feet were still feet.
Thank God for small mercies.
Though her nails were another matter. Her hands hung at her sides, fingers spread, the points of them sharp enough now to make her curl them inward.
The castle loomed above her, black against a paling sky.
Torches burned along the walls. Figures crowded the steps and balconies, wolves and people both, though some were in between and looked as if grief had left them not knowing which shape to choose.
Faces stared down at her. Gold eyes glimmered. Human mouths parted.
No one spoke.
That was worse somehow.
Marion had spent years being stared at in the village. She knew the weight of eyes. Women peering from doorways when she came to deliver a child. Men muttering when she passed with herbs in her basket. Duncan smiling that neat, poisonous smile as if he already owned the air around her.
But this was different.
This was not suspicion alone.
It was fear, yes, but it was something else too.
Awe sat among them like a dangerous guest.
Marion hated it.
She did not want anyone’s awe. She wanted boots, a cloak, and Euan’s thick skull safely attached to his living body.
Morna came behind her, carrying a wool blanket she had snatched from somewhere. “Put this on until the shift takes you.”
Marion took it and wrapped it around her shoulders, though the warmth hardly mattered. “Until the shift takes me. How comforting.”
“You asked for speed.”
“I did not ask for my bones to rearrange themselves in front of half the clan.”
“Then close your eyes.”
Marion shot her a look.
Morna folded her arms. “Or complain. That may help.”
“It often does.”
“Aye, I have noticed.”
A small sound came from above. Marion knew it before she turned.
Georgie stood on the lower steps, held back by Tavish, who had both hands raised in the careful manner of a man trying not to startle a wildcat. The child had a blanket around her shoulders and her hair was a hopeless mess. Her eyes were fixed on Marion.
Marion’s heart pulled.
“Take her inside,” she told Morna.
Georgie stiffened. “No.”
Marion looked toward the sky. “Of course not.”
“I want to see.”
“No, you do not.”
“I do.”
Morna muttered something in Gaelic that Marion did not understand but suspected was rude.
The wolf inside Marion shifted.
Not her body. Not yet. Something beneath it. A deep roll under the skin, like a creature turning in sleep.
Her breath caught.
Morna’s sharp gaze snapped back to her. “It is beginning.”
“I did not do anything.”
“The wolf does not need your permission to wake. Only to be fought.”
That did not improve matters.
Marion’s hearing stretched so suddenly she swayed. The castle was too loud. Stone settling. Fire popping. Someone crying quietly in a tower room. Tavish’s heart thudding. Georgie’s smaller one racing. Morna’s breath, slow and deliberate.
Then beyond them all, farther than sound should travel, Euan.
His heartbeat struck once through her.
Slow.
Heavy.
Then again.
Marion staggered forward.
Morna caught her arm. “Do not chase it yet.”
“He is farther.”
“Aye.”
“He is calm.” The word came out with disgust and hurt tangled together. “He is actually calm.”
Morna’s mouth tightened. “He believes he goes to justice.”
“He goes to stupidity.”
“That too.”
The wolf rose again, harder this time.
Pain shot through Marion’s spine.
She sucked in a breath and bent forward, one hand braced on her knee.
The blanket slipped from one shoulder. Her skin prickled, then burned.
Not like silver. Not like poison. This was deeper.
Clean pain, if there was such an idiotic thing.
Her muscles clenched as if something inside her was stretching too wide for the shape she wore.
Her gift reacted at once.
Gold light flared in her palms.
It rushed inward, frantic, familiar, trying to soothe the strain, to mend the tearing, to stop whatever was happening before it could hurt her.
For a second relief washed over her.
Then the wolf snarled.
Marion cried out.
The two powers slammed together inside her and the world tilted. Her knees hit snow. The impact sounded absurdly loud. Her fingers clawed into white and came away with dirt beneath the tips.
“Mama!” Georgie screamed.
“Keep her back,” Morna barked.
“I am fine,” Marion gasped.
“You are not.”
“I know that,” she snapped, though there was not enough breath in her lungs to do the words justice.
Her hands glowed brighter. The healer in her was terrified. She could feel it as if it had a mind of its own. Bone moving was wrong. Ligaments stretching was wrong. Teeth aching, skin tightening, joints loosening. All wrong. All injury. All things she had spent her life undoing in others.
So it tried to save her.
It tried to stop the wolf.
Pain tore through her hips and shoulders. She bowed over the snow, choking on a sound she refused to let become a scream.
Morna knelt in front of her and caught her face between both hands. “Look at me.”
Marion opened her eyes. Her vision had gone strange. Morna’s face was too sharp, every line carved deep, every white hair bright as thread. Behind her, the world blurred at the edges.
“I cannot,” Marion said through her teeth.
“You can.”
“It is breaking me.”
“No.” Morna’s fingers dug into her cheeks. “It is changing you.”
“That is not better.”
“It is if you want to reach him.”
Euan’s heartbeat pulled again.
Slower.
Marion squeezed her eyes shut.
No. No, he did not get to fade away while she knelt in snow arguing with her own body. He did not get to walk to some sacred stone and make himself noble and dead. He did not get to leave Georgie grieving because wolf law told him pain needed blood to balance it.
She would not allow it.
Another wave hit.
Her back arched. Her fingers dug deeper into the earth beneath the snow. She felt the healer’s light rush again, desperate to mend the shifting bones.
Morna’s voice cut through everything.
“Stop healing what is not broken.”
Marion almost sobbed. “It feels broken.”
“I know.”
“My bones are moving.”
“Aye.”
“That should not happen.”
“Neither should waking from death with silver in your blood, but here we are.”
If Marion had not been in agony she might have laughed.
Instead she dragged in a breath and tried to hold on to that small piece of irritation. It was better than fear. Fear made her clutch. Fear made her gift burn hotter. Fear told her to close, mend, survive the way she had always survived.
Quietly.
Carefully.
Small enough not to be noticed.
No.
She thought of Duncan’s hand on her door.
She thought of Aldrich’s silver cane tapping stone.
She thought of Euan refusing to touch her because he thought desire itself could kill.
She thought of Georgie asking if being a wolf meant she could still make soup.
A laugh burst out of Marion then, wild and cracked.
Morna drew back just enough to peer at her. “Have you gone mad?”
“Possibly.”
“Good. It may help.”
The pain came again.
This time Marion did not send the light to stop it.
Her gift surged, confused, searching for damage.
She held it back.
Not with force. Force had never worked. It had made the pain worse. So she did something harder.
She trusted.
Her shoulders began to change.
The feeling was hideous. There was no pretty way to think of it.
Her bones shifted under skin, and her healer’s mind shrieked that such things belonged in nightmares.
Heat tore down her arms. Her hands curled.
The nails lengthened fully now, darkening at the tips, and fur brushed across her wrists like frost growing from within.
She shook violently.
Do not mend it.
Her spine pulled. Her jaw ached so sharply tears sprang to her eyes.
Do not mend it.
The world dropped lower, or she did. Her palms sank into snow and became paws. Silver white fur spilled over them, luminous in the early dawn. The blanket fell away. Cold air swept over her changing body.
Someone above sobbed. Someone else whispered a prayer.
Georgie made a small sound, not fear exactly. Wonder perhaps. Marion held to it.
Her mouth changed last.
That frightened her most.
Her teeth sharpened. Her tongue felt strange. Her breath came in sharp bursts through a muzzle that was not there and then was. The final twist of it stole a cry from her, but it did not come out human.
It came out a howl.
The sound struck the courtyard and rolled up the castle stones.
Every wolf answered.
Marion collapsed forward into the snow.
For several breaths she lay there, panting, eyes squeezed shut. The pain ebbed like a tide pulling back from rocks. She waited for horror. For panic. For the sudden certainty that she had lost herself.
Instead she smelled everything.
Snow. Stone. Smoke. Wool. Fear. Blood. The sour bite of old silver in the walls. Morna’s herbs. Tavish’s leather. Georgie’s tears. The distant pine woods. The black loch under ice. The road south. The road east.
Euan.
She lifted her head.
The courtyard had grown larger and smaller at the same time. Or perhaps she understood it differently now. Her sight caught movement in fragments. A hand clutching a railing. A wolf lowering its head. Snowflakes turning slowly in the air. Morna standing very still before her.
Marion looked down.
Paws.
Large silver white paws planted in red streaked snow.
Her breath puffed in front of her.
Oh God.
She was a wolf.
Not trapped. Not half formed. Not dying between shapes.
A wolf.
The thought should have sent her into hysterics. Instead her tail twitched.
That startled her so badly she jumped.
Morna made a sound suspiciously like a laugh. “Easy, lass.”
Marion turned her head toward her, offended.
The movement was too quick. Her ears caught every sound. Her body knew how to balance before she thought of it. It was strange. Horribly strange. Wonderfully strange.
Georgie slipped free of Tavish.
“Georgie,” he hissed, lunging too late.
The child came down two steps, then three, clutching her blanket with both hands. Her face was pale, her eyes huge.
Marion froze.
No. Let her not be afraid.
Please not that.
Georgie reached the bottom step and stopped. She stared at the silver wolf standing where her mother had been. Marion lowered herself slowly, front legs bending, head dipping until she was as small as such a body could make itself.
Georgie’s mouth trembled.
Then she whispered, “Mama.”
The word entered Marion like grace.
Her eyes burned. She had no idea whether wolves could cry and did not intend to find out in front of half the clan. She moved forward one careful step and pressed her cold nose to Georgie’s small hand.
The child gave a broken little laugh. “You are soft.”
Marion huffed.
Georgie’s fingers sank into the fur along her cheek. “You are very pretty.”
Another huff, less dignified this time.
“Do not get vain,” Morna said. “We have enough trouble.”
Marion turned and bared her teeth at the healer.
Morna did not look impressed. “Aye, very fearsome. Now run.”
That one word changed everything.
Run.
Euan’s heartbeat struck again through the bond, and Marion’s entire body answered. Her ears flattened. Her paws pressed into snow. The world opened into scent and distance and direction.
The Sacred Grove lay beyond ridge and frozen stream, past the old standing stones, through black pine and low valley.
Too far for a horse.
Not too far for her.
Georgie stepped back as if she understood before anyone spoke.
“Bring him home,” she said.
Marion looked at her daughter one last time.
Then at Morna.
The old healer’s face had gone solemn. She nodded once. Not to a patient. Not to a frightened human woman. To something else.
To what Marion had become.
Marion turned toward the open gate.
A new scent slid under the wind.
Bitter. Metallic. Wrong.
Silver smoke.
It was faint, but it came from the same direction as Euan’s heartbeat.
Fear might have stopped her an hour ago. Fear might have made her gather herbs, ask questions, wait for men with weapons and laws to decide what should be done.
Not now.
Now her paws struck the snow.
Once.
Twice.
Then she was running.
The castle fell behind her. Shouts rose, then blurred into wind. The ground rushed beneath her as if the earth itself had grown eager. Snow flew from her paws. Cold air tore through her lungs and came out silver in the dawn.
Marion ran faster than any horse she had ever seen.
Faster than grief.
Faster than fear.
Ahead, Euan’s heartbeat slowed again.
Marion lowered her head and ran harder.