CHAPTER TEN BEFORE THE WHOLE CLAN #2
Euan’s eyes opened. He saw the color in her face and something moved in his expression. Grief, hunger, restraint, all fighting in that maddeningly handsome face of his.
“You do not have to,” he said.
That was precisely the wrong thing to say.
Marion dropped her hand from his face. “There it is again.”
“What?”
“You telling me what I do not have to do before asking what I want.”
He looked as if she had struck him again.
She regretted it for half a second, then decided he could withstand it.
Morna spoke before he could. “It must be her choice.”
“It is,” Marion said.
Euan stared at her. “You do not even know what it will do.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Then at least we are equally ignorant.”
“Marion.”
“I am tired of hearing my name in that tone.”
His mouth shut.
Good Lord, that was satisfying.
She stepped even closer, close enough now that she could feel the heat of him through the cold air. His scent wrapped around her, snow, blood, smoke, wolf, Euan. It should not have comforted her after everything his bite had brought.
It did.
That annoyed her too.
“When you bit me,” she said softly, and though she spoke to him, the Grove listened, “you did not choose it properly. I know that. Fever and poison had their hands in you. But after, every choice we made was shaped by fear of that moment.”
He did not blink.
“You feared you had cursed me,” she continued. “I feared you had taken something I could not name. The clan feared I would die. My gift feared the wolf. Everyone feared so much that fear became the only voice in the room.”
Her hand rose to the bite at her throat.
The light pulsed beneath her fingers.
“I am done listening to it.”
Euan’s breath left him slowly.
A silver canister clicked somewhere in the trees.
Several warriors turned.
Aodh lifted the axe, not for execution now but war.
Morna hissed, “They are readying smoke.”
Marion looked toward the east. “Then we had better not be unfinished when it comes.”
Euan’s gaze snapped back to her.
His voice dropped. “Do you understand what you are saying?”
“No. Not entirely.” She swallowed and forced herself to be honest, because if she did not start telling the truth now, she had no right to demand it of him. “I am frightened. I am angry. I am not even sure I can walk back into the castle without wanting to smell every wall. But I know this.”
She took his burned wrist again, gently this time.
“I will not let your fever be the only claim between us.”
For the first time since she had entered the Grove, Euan looked truly shaken.
Not by death. Not by Aldrich. Not by Niall.
By her.
His eyes dropped to her mouth, then to the bite at her neck, then back to her eyes.
“What do you want, Marion?”
There.
Finally.
The question broke something in her that no pain had touched.
She smiled, though her lips trembled. “At last. A sensible question.”
He huffed a breath that might have been the ghost of a laugh.
She stepped closer. “I want you alive. I want you honest. I want you to stop deciding that punishment is proof of love.” Her voice lowered. “And I want to choose what began between us with blood.”
Euan’s eyes burned gold.
Around them, the clan faded. The trees faded. Even Aldrich in the darkness seemed suddenly far away, though Marion knew better.
Euan bent his head until his forehead nearly touched hers.
“If there is pain,” he whispered, “give it to me.”
“No.”
“Marion.”
“We share it, or we do not do this at all.”
His eyes closed briefly.
When he opened them, some old resistance in him had cracked.
“Aye,” he said hoarsely. “Together then.”
Morna let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like relief. “Good. Before the alchemist grows bored and murders us for lack of entertainment.”
Marion almost laughed again. She was definitely becoming hysterical.
Instead she turned toward the gathered wolves. Toward Rhona, Aodh, Tavish, Fergus, Niall and all the others who had come to watch a death and now watched something older than their law stir awake.
Her face heated again, but she lifted her chin.
“If anyone objects,” she said, “do so quietly and far away.”
Tavish coughed into his fist.
Rhona bowed her head.
Aodh rested the axe against his shoulder and muttered, “I have seen stranger things at dawn, but not many.”
Niall said nothing.
That worried Marion, but she had no room for him now.
She turned back to Euan.
He stood before her, tall, scarred, half ruined by grief and so beautiful to her that it was terribly unfair. His hands were loose at his sides, giving her every chance to step away. His throat moved as he swallowed.
Then, slowly, deliberately, he lowered himself to one knee in the snow.
A murmur went through the Grove.
Marion froze. “What are you doing?”
He looked up at her.
The sight of him there nearly stopped her heart. Not submissive. Not diminished. Choosing. Offering. Letting the whole clan see it.
“You should not have to reach for me,” he said.
Her throat closed.
“Euan.”
His voice roughened. “I claimed you in fever. I ask you now, awake and knowing, if you will claim me in return.”
The first silver smoke canister hissed in the trees.
Marion heard it.
So did every wolf.
But she did not look away from him.
Not this time.
She stepped close enough that her bare feet brushed his knees in the snow.
Then she laid both hands on his shoulders and bent toward his throat.