CHAPTER SIX A CHIEF PREPARED TO DIE
E uan McFarland walked to his death with dry eyes because tears belonged to men who still had the right to ask for mercy.
He had none.
The Sacred Grove waited at the bottom of the black slope, half hidden by old pines and morning mist. Torches burned between the trees, their flames bending low in the wind as if even fire did not wish to stand tall there.
The snow had stopped falling, but it lay over everything in a thin white skin.
Roots. Stones. Branches. The path beneath his bare feet.
He had refused boots.
It was a foolish thing perhaps, but he had wanted to feel the ground before it took him. The old chiefs had done the same, according to Morna. Back when law was law and men did not look for softer words to make blood feel less red.
Tavish walked at his left.
Fergus at his right.
Both had hands close to their weapons though there was nothing here to fight except Euan’s own command.
He could smell their grief, hot and angry under wool and leather.
Tavish had not spoken since they left the castle.
The lad had shouted himself hoarse in the cavern before Euan ordered him silent.
He had looked so young then. Too young to stand witness for this.
Then again, Georgie had looked younger.
Euan’s steps faltered.
Only once.
Fergus noticed. The older warrior turned his head just slightly, but he had the sense not to speak.
Good. If one of them spoke of the child, Euan did not know if he could keep walking.
Georgie’s scream still followed him.
Not the first one when Morna had said there was no breath in Marion’s body. Not even the second, when Euan had lifted Marion from the moonstone and found her limp as winter cloth in his arms.
It was the last one that had stayed with him.
Do not go.
Small hands beating at Tavish’s chest, her face wet and furious, hair flying loose from its plait.
She had looked so much like Marion in that moment that Euan nearly broke in front of them all.
Not soft. Not pleading. Angry because pain had taken one thing too many and she was still young enough to believe fury could forbid it.
He wished she had been right.
A fresh wave of pain went through his chest, but it was nothing to the ache behind his ribs where the bond had gone silent.
No, not silent.
That was worse. If it had gone silent, perhaps he could believe Marion was beyond suffering. But the bond had become a hollow place. A room after the body had been carried out. Every breath he drew found that emptiness and scraped against it.
He had done that.
His bite.
His fever.
His cowardice after.
He had known a human mate could die. Not at first, not in the fever.
But after. When memory returned. When Marion’s scent became part of his blood and terror came with it.
He should have told her everything. He should have put the truth in her hands and let her decide whether to curse him, leave him, fight him, love him.
Instead he had wrapped his fear in protection and called it honor.
The old trees opened before him.
The Sacred Grove was not large, but it felt as if it held the weight of the whole mountain.
The trees grew in a circle, black bark twisted and scarred by centuries of claw marks.
At the center stood the execution stone, wide, flat and dark as old grief.
Above it, hanging from an iron frame between two ancient trunks, was the silver axe.
Euan looked at it without flinching.
The blade had not been used in three generations. It had been polished all the same. Wolf law remembered its weapons even when men prayed they would never lift them.
Elder Rhona stood at the far side of the circle, wrapped in a gray cloak, her face carved in sorrow.
Elder Niall stood beside her with his hands folded over the head of his walking stick. His face held solemnity, but Euan caught something beneath it. Not pleasure exactly. No, Niall was too disciplined for that. Satisfaction perhaps. Or relief.
Euan had no strength left to care.
The Grove Keeper stepped forward.
He was an old wolf named Aodh, older than Morna perhaps, with long white hair braided down his back and eyes that had gone more amber than gold with age. His hands were bare despite the cold. There were old scars around both wrists where silver had kissed him long ago.
He looked at Euan for a long moment, then lowered his head.
“My chief.”
“Not for much longer,” Euan said.
Tavish made a sound beside him.
Euan did not look at him.
Aodh’s mouth tightened. “Do not make me laugh here, lad. I will resent you for it.”
There had been a time Euan might have smiled at that. A small one. Enough to honor the attempt. But his face felt carved from the same stone waiting in the center of the Grove.
“I come willingly,” he said.
Aodh closed his eyes a moment.
“That is not what I asked.”
“No. But it is what you need answered.”
The old wolf opened his eyes again. “Aye. It is.”
The circle had filled behind them. Warriors, elders, a few healers, those bound by law to witness a chief’s sentence. None came in wolf form. Not yet. This was a human death for a wolf crime. That was what the old law said.
Euan nearly laughed at the thought.
Human. Wolf. What did it matter? He had failed in both skins.
His gaze moved past the gathered faces toward the path behind them.
For one mad, useless moment, he thought he heard a child running.
He turned before he could stop himself.
Nothing.
Only snow. Mist. The dark line of the trees.
His hand closed into a fist.
Tavish saw. “Chief.”
“Do not.”
The lad swallowed hard. “She would not want this.”
Euan kept his eyes on the empty path. “She is not here to want.”
The cruelty of his own words cut through him. Tavish flinched as if struck.
Euan turned to him then.
“She is not here,” he said more quietly, “because of me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No,” Tavish said again, and there was a reckless note in his voice now. “You were poisoned. You were half mad with fever. The bite was not murder.”
Euan stepped close enough that the lad went still. Tavish had seen him rage before. Most of them had. But rage would have been easier.
“This is not a debate.”
Tavish’s eyes shone. “Then let it be treason. I will drag you from here myself if I must.”
A murmur moved around the circle.
Fergus grabbed Tavish’s arm. “Lad.”
Euan looked at the young warrior, at the grief and fury and loyalty tangled so fiercely in him, and something painful softened in his chest despite himself.
“If you defy my final order,” Euan said, “I will rise from whatever pit waits for me and make your afterlife miserable.”
Tavish stared at him.
Then, to Euan’s surprise, he laughed once. It broke in the middle and became almost a sob.
“Bastard,” Tavish whispered.
“Aye.”
Euan reached out and clasped the back of his neck. For a breath he let himself hold the lad there, forehead nearly touching his. It was not an embrace. Men like them did not have the luxury of such things often. It was enough.
“Georgie,” Euan said.
Tavish went rigid.
“You will help Morna guard her. If the castle falls, you take the child north through the old pass. Not south. Aldrich will expect south.”
“Do not speak as if you will not be there.”
“Promise me.”
Tavish’s jaw worked. “I promise.”
“And Marion...” Euan stopped.
His throat closed so suddenly he could not force air past it.
The Grove blurred.
God. He had thought he had emptied himself of that.
Marion on the altar. Her skin pale, hair spilled like dark silk over moonstone, the bite at her throat no longer burning. He had touched her face and it had already begun to cool. He had called her name like a man who could command death by being loud enough.
Death had not listened.
It never did.
He forced the words out. “If the clan will not place her in the crypt, she is to be taken to the rowan tree near her cottage.”
Rhona made a small wounded sound.
Euan ignored it. He had to finish. He could finish this one last thing.
“She loved that tree. Georgie said she dried herbs beneath it when the sun was strong.” His voice roughened. “Put her where morning can find her.”
No one spoke.
Even the wind seemed to have gone still.
Then Niall’s voice came from across the circle. “A generous request for a human woman.”
Euan turned his head.
Fergus made a low growl in his throat.
Euan lifted one hand and the growl stopped, though not willingly.
“She was my mate,” Euan said.
Niall bowed his head. “Of course, Chief.”
There was something wrong in the way he said it. Not enough to challenge. Not enough to matter with the axe waiting. But wrong.
Aodh stepped between them before the air could sharpen further. “The law must be spoken.”
“Speak it.”
The old Grove Keeper’s expression twisted. “I had hoped never to say these words to you.”
“I know.”
“I held you when you were born.”
Euan looked away.
That, for some reason, hurt almost as much as Georgie.
Aodh’s voice lowered. “I swore to your father I would keep your blood from this stone.”
“You kept it as long as you could.”
“Not long enough.”
Euan met his eyes then. “Long enough for me to choose how it ends.”
Aodh stared at him, then nodded slowly.
The formal words began.
Ancient law. Mate death. Chief debt. Blood returned to the Grove so the clan might stand clean beneath the moon.
Euan heard them and did not hear them. His mind had gone elsewhere.
To a cottage smelling of lavender, smoke and broth.
To Marion scowling at him while pretending not to be afraid.
To her hands glowing over his wounds. To her mouth softening when Georgie laughed.
To the first time he had wanted to kiss her without fever making the choice for him.
He should have brought flowers, he thought absurdly.
That memory nearly undid him. The words he had said before leaving her in Book One returned with vicious clarity.
If the world were kinder, I would have met you at your door with flowers instead of chains.
The world had never been kind.
But Marion had.
Marion had looked at chains and seen a man.
Euan stepped toward the black stone.
His silver bindings were brought out then. Ritual cuffs, not the cruel manacles Aldrich had used. Still, when they closed around his wrists, the burn went through him sharp and familiar.
His wolf snarled.
Euan silenced it.
Not now.
It had howled enough. It had claimed enough. It had taken enough.
He knelt.
The stone was cold under his knees.
Tavish turned away. Fergus did not, but tears streaked silently down his weathered face.
Aodh stood before him. “Euan McFarland, chief of Clan McFarland, alpha of the old blood, do you submit to the Grove?”
Euan lifted his head.
For a second, impossible warmth moved under his ribs.
Not memory. Not grief.
Warmth.
His breath caught.
Marion?
No. Cruel hope. The mind’s final betrayal.
He closed his eyes and forced it down.
“I submit,” he said.
Aodh’s face crumpled for one breath, then hardened again into duty.
The silver axe was lifted from its place.
The Grove went silent.
Euan bowed his head and thought of Marion’s hands, Georgie’s laugh, and the impossible mercy that had bought a beast in chains.
“Forgive me, mo chridhe,” he whispered.
Then the old law moved toward its end.