by Unknown
It was the strength he had instilled in her that had given her the courage to escape.
Without that, she never would have met Raife.
“Are ye proposin’, lass?” Raife grinned, running a wet hand over her hip.
“I’m already yours,” she reminded him with a smile. “I just realized… what you said. It’s marriage. That’s how the king seeks to end the border wars.”
“Aye,” Raife agreed. “He has now promised his own daughter, Lady Margaret, to James IV. Henry finally found what works to keep the peace. Join two warring factions by marriage. Men are hotheaded, ’tis true. Look at Darrow. But wives and mothers will not stand by and watch their sons slaughtered, their daughters widowed.”
“Yes, Darrow is the hot-headed one,” she teased, remembering Raife’s reaction when his brother had taken her out into the woods alone.
“I am not hot-headed,” he protested. “I have worked hard to keep the peace my father sacrificed for.”
“You are more passionate than you let on.”
“About some things.” He smiled, meeting her eyes.
“And you have risked it all for me.” She swallowed, knowing it was true. “To mate with me.”
“Ye are mine, Sibyl Blackthorne.” Those blue eyes of his darkened as he took her fully into his arms, her body fitted to his like hand in glove. “Ye are my chosen. My mate. I will’na let him have you.”
“But at what cost?” she murmured, closing her eyes in pleasure as he kissed her neck. “Will there be war again?”
“The border skirmishes grow less factious every year,” Raife replied, his breath hot against her collarbone, his mouth a wonderful distraction. “The MacFalons will get over their injury. Alistair will lick his wounds and King Henry will find another highborn English lady for him to bed. He can’na have mine.”
“No, he cannot,” Sibyl agreed happily enough, moaning softly when Raife’s mouth found her breast.
She didn’t want to think about Alistair, or her uncle, or any other man besides this one.
But Raife’s words stayed with her. Would Alistair back down? In his heart, Alistair was a coward. But it was his pride that was injured, and she didn’t know if he would recover from that. Raife was so honorable, she knew he didn’t understand a man like Alistair, but Sybil had lived with her uncle, and they were two peas in a pod. Alistair was the type of man who would stab another man in the back. Or murder a wolf in a cage and drag it out as if he had made a real kill.
It wasn’t so much what was true, as what it looked like on the outside, to the rest of the world, that mattered to men like Alistair MacFalon and Godfrey Blackthorne.
“What’s the matter, lass?” Raife lifted his head to look at her when she didn’t fully respond to his caresses.
“So much pain and sacrifice,” she murmured, putting her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, so grateful to be here with him she could barely breathe. Everything that had happened in the past—Sondra’s death, Avril’s capture, even Raife’s unplanned conception—it all seemed to culminate here, for her and Raife, for their future offspring and the generations that had yet to come. “Your poor mother, your father…”
“Our children will not have to sacrifice so much for peace.” Raife’s eyes grew serious as he looked at her. There was so much pain and heartache there, she wouldn’t add any more to it. He’d been through enough. His pack, and his kind, had sacrificed more than enough.
“We do not have children,” she reminded him with a soft, devious smile, sliding her hand down to capture him, firm and at the ready.
He grinned. “We’d better get to making some then.”
Chapter Nine
Raife had said he would declare her his mate to the pack the next day, but they didn’t leave their room the next day. Or the day after that. Kirstin brought them food and drink, and they needed the sustenance, that was certain! And whenever Raife or Sybil would answer the door, Kirstin’s eyes would sparkle and she would flash a knowing smile, but she never said a word.
It wasn’t until the third day, when Sybil was so sore she could hardly walk, that Kirstin finally spoke up. But she didn’t say the words Sybil expected to hear—no teasing or jest about her pack leader’s newly chosen mate—but rather gave her a message that would change her life forever.
Raife was sleeping by the fire when the knock came. Sybil heard it, a small, tentative thing. Too early for breakfast, she thought, getting up and pulling on her shirt to go investigate. Kirstin was standing out there in the tunnel and beckoned Sibyl to come with her.
“What is it?” Raife was awake, calling for her, as she put on her plaid and tied her shoes.
“Go to sleep. I’ll be right back,” Sibyl whispered. “Someone is in need of a healer.”
It was a white lie, and perhaps not a lie at all. Kirstin had been quite urgent and was, still, as Sybil joined her in the tunnel. They walked together, heading toward the kitchen, as Kirstin finally told her.
“The MacFalons have Laina.” Her words were whispered, choked. She sounded so very afraid and there were tears in her eyes.
“What?” Sibyl slowed, stopped, staring at the woman in disbelief. It couldn’t be true. It simply couldn’t.
“The scouts just came back with the news,” she whispered, glancing up and down the tunnels, as if someone might overhear. “They are going to tell Raife and Darrow.”
“No,” Sybil breathed, grabbing Kirstin’s shoulders and shaking her. “No! They will go after her and then…”
Kirstin’s eyes grew even bigger, and Sybil didn’t even know it was possible. They were already as big as saucers in her pale face. Sybil cursed Laina under her breath.
“Was she out looking for huluppu?”
“What else?”
“Is she… alive?” Sybil didn’t even want to think about the alternative. Although, after what Raife had told her about his mother, she knew there were things that could happen to a woman that had further-reaching consequences than a quick death.
“They took her to the MacFalons,” Kirstin whispered as they approached the kitchen. It was still early and most of the pack was still asleep, wrapped up in their plaids in front of the big fireplace. “The scouts say they painted a message inside the cage. In blood.”
“In Laina’s blood?” All the color drained out of Sybil’s face.
“The MacFalon is out to start a war,” Kirstin whispered as they tiptoed through the kitchen. “He is defying the pact.”
“He wants me.” Sybil said this as they stepped out into the cool morning air. The sun was just coming up over the horizon. “This is about me.”
“I think so.” Kirstin nodded, standing there in the cold, shivering, her eyes wild with fear.
“I can’t… I can’t let this happen.” Sybil looked around the valley, at this place she had come to call home. A place that felt more like home than any other ever had, even her father’s own estate. Then she met Kirstin’s eyes and knew why the woman had come to her, why she had pulled her aside to tell her quietly, without yet involving Raife or Darrow. Why she had led her out here in the morning light.
Kirstin was a wulver woman. She knew sometimes sacrifices had to made, that there were some things the heart of a man just couldn’t handle. And Sybil was a part of them now. This was her pack—this was her family. Her worst fear had come to pass. Alistair was going to start a war. He was willing to risk it all simply to retain his property. She was nothing but a possession to him, something that had been stolen. Something he wanted returned.
And, like a demented, twisted child, he was going to get his toy back, no matter the cost.
If that meant war—well, that was a game to him too, wasn’t it?
But Sybil knew the costs, the real costs in human and wulver blood. Laina’s had already been spilled. She prayed her friend was still alive. The image of little Garaith filled her mind, and she couldn’t imagine him growing up without his mother. How many more wulver lives would be l
ost because of Alistair’s selfishness? She imagined Alistair’s men coming into the tunnels, the stream running with wulver blood, and her heart broke into a thousand pieces.
This was her family, now more than ever. Raife’s face came into her mind and she heard his objections in her head, even though he didn’t yet know this news. He would choose another, far more dangerous solution than the one she was about to undertake. But war was no solution. She had to keep the peace—the peace his mother had sacrificed for, the peace his father had fought for, the peace they all had come to accept and expect.
She would have to make this sacrifice to save them all.
She put her arms around Kirstin and the two women hugged, hanging onto each other tightly, knowing it would be the last time they embraced.
Kirstin already had a pack for her and Sibyl teared up when she saw her little satchel, the one she had pinned under her skirts when she had escaped Alistair MacFalon. Was she really going to do this? But when she met her friend’s eyes, she knew there was no other way. The wulvers would ride out if Laina wasn’t returned, and she couldn’t risk Raife’s life, the lives of everyone in the pack, when all Alistair wanted, in this end, was his own way.
He wanted his property back. Sybil would simply return it to him.
“There is water, some food,” Kirstin told her. “You must hurry.”
But there was no time.
There was always a sentry at the entrance of the cave. She couldn’t go that way, and besides, she needed something faster than her own feet. She was no wulver. She couldn’t cross the rocky terrain on foot like they could, faster than any human. Kirstin hugged her one more time before heading back into the mountain, letting Sybil do what she must.
The horses were penned, and she found Angus, the horse Raife often let her ride, in the dimness, calling to him with a special whistle. She didn’t give herself time to think. She saddled the horse and climbed on, knowing if she was going to do this, she had to do it fast, before Raife awoke and found her gone. Before the scouts had a chance to tell him and Darrow how Laina had been captured by Alistair and used as bait to lure them all into a bloody trap.
The horse didn’t want to go. It nickered and pawed at the ground when Sibyl climbed up onto its back. She urged it on, squeezing its flanks between her bare thighs and steering the horse upward, through the mountain path. She had never been on it, but she knew where it went. Raife had told her about the treacherous way up and then down the mountain, a pathway no human had ever travailed. Only wulver warriors had the skill to traverse this path.
And she was neither.
Thankfully, the horse knew the way, had traveled it more than once in its lifetime, had been taken up and down the mountain during training exercises that were, finally, serving some purpose. Sibyl leaned over the horse’s neck, holding onto the bridle, and let it take her where it would. There was nothing else to do, except hold on and pray. The path was little more than the rocky edge of a cliff, the shear drop-off so steep she couldn’t see the side of the mountain if she dared to look down to her left.
The path wound up, up, taking her higher into the mountains until she gasped for breath and clung to Angus’s mane, her eyesight blurring and her mind bolting. She wanted nothing more than to escape. The early morning cold made her bones ache and her teeth chatter. What had she been thinking, stealing a horse and riding away into the mountains? What did she think she was going to accomplish?
But she knew, and kept it out in front of her as she managed to stay on the horse as it neared the top of the mountain and started down the other side. She was going to sacrifice herself for the man she loved. A war between the MacFalons—and their local border allies in the Middle March—and the wulvers would bring King Henry’s wrath down on all of them. So what if he had once negotiated a peaceful pact between them? It had been in his best interest to do so. He needed the wulver warriors and the Scots to unite and fight for his right to wear the crown.
Now that crown—and all the power than came with it—belonged to him alone.
No matter how strong the wulvers, no matter if one of their warriors was worth ten of Henry’s, eventually the numbers would win out. Raife would be killed, Darrow too. They would all be slaughtered, the females widowed, the babies orphaned, left alone to fend for themselves in the mountain. Sibyl thought of Kirstin, of Laina’s baby, and clung more tightly to her horse.
She could stop this. If she simply returned and offered herself to Alistair, to do with as he wished, she could get him to let Laina go. His pride had been wounded, and mayhaps he would take her back and marry her after all. Or mayhaps he would set her aside, return her as damaged goods to her uncle, who would likely attempt to beat sense into her until she was senseless.
Not that any of that mattered.
They could do anything they wanted—Alistair, his men, her uncle. It wouldn’t matter, as long as they freed Laina and honored the pact.
The horse, so used to following the path, wanted to turn around and go back. She had to steer it onward, thankful she had spent so much time with Darrow searching for the huluppu tree. She knew how to get back to Alistair’s land, the border between Scotland and England—the borderland between worlds, between humans and wulvers.
She found the path where she had found the huluppu tree, found it growing, healthy and strong, on the other side of the stream. It was mid-morning when she found the cage, the horrible word, written in blood, goading Raife and Darrow and the rest of the wulvers to war.
“Tiugainn.”
Come.
In Laina’s blood. Oh Laina, Laina, please hang on, Sibyl thought, tasting her own blood in her mouth where she’d worried the inside of her cheek raw. She glimpsed the tree where she had pinned Alistair with an arrow and wished she had a longbow now. But it wouldn’t do her any good. One woman and one bow were nothing. She couldn’t stand up to Alistair and the MacFalons.
She couldn’t do anything but surrender.
The day was warm, the bluebells so thick on the forest floor she could hardly see green. The mountain’s chill faded as she rode closer to the MacFalon castle. Something in the distance, behind her, gave her pause as she stopped her horse just shy of the edge of the woods.
The long, keening howl of a wolf.
A wulver.
It was Raife. She knew her mate’s call, would know it anywhere, and he was and would forever be her mate, she realized. It wouldn’t matter if Alistair accepted her back, married her, and she spent her life with the MacFalons, raising his children as Scots. Raife would forever have her heart.
She knew Raife’s mother had felt the same about Darrow’s father, even if she had sacrificed herself to a king. Avril had already been mated to and in love with Garaith, was being held prisoner when King Henry had taken a fancy to her. A woman’s heart knew the truth—and while Sybil would be forever grateful that Raife had been the result of her sacrifice—she understood now what it was to really love someone.
To love them so much you would give your own life to save theirs.
And what else could Avril have believed, except that Henry, who would someday sit on the throne of England, already had the power to wipe out her entire pack? Henry had been a kind captor, but a captor nonetheless. And in the end, he had let her go, had given her back in exchange for an army of wulver warriors who had fought for his right to wear the crown.
All in the name of peace.
“Raife.” Sybil whispered his name, feeling him still, tasting him on her lips, her body filled with him. It always would be, now. She wore the shape of his heart within her breast, and nothing else would ever fill it again. She was his and always would be, no matter what happened now.
She hadn’t stopped to think, had just stolen this horse and rode out with the hope she could avert a disaster, but she stopped now. She stopped and remembered him, every look, every touch. How much time they’d wasted, how many couplings she had missed out on, too afraid to say yes to him, to life, to love. But ho
w sweet those few joinings had been, how perfect, how complete. They would last her forever.
They would have to.
“Tha mi gu dòigheal,” she whispered in Gaelic. I love you, Raife. I never said the words, but I do. I love you more than life itself.
She rode out into the clearing alone, head held high.
Alistair’s men met her halfway to the castle. She had hoped Donal would be among them, that he would listen to reason, but he wasn’t. The same Scots who had made derogatory comments about her behind her back were no longer afraid to make them to her face. They called her a harlot, a strumpet, a whore. The one called Gregor grabbed the horse’s bridle and spit in her face. He yanked her by the arm, pulling her off her horse and throwing her face first across his saddle.
And Sibyl just hung her head and let them, thinking the whole while, I love you, Raife.
That was all she knew and all that mattered.
* * * *
She hadn’t expected kindness from anyone, but Moira clucked and fussed over her as much as she ever had. Sibyl didn’t realize it would be so hard to give up her plaid, how dependent she had become on its warmth, its safety, its freedom. Moira threw it in the fire and burned it and Sibyl had never been more bereft. It was as if her heart had been thrown into that fire. The tears came, relentless. She couldn’t stop them and she stopped trying after a while.
“Ye have gone and done it now,” Moira whispered as she cinched Sibyl into a corset that crushed her ribs and forced her breath up high in her chest. “I’m surprised the MacFalon will still have ye.”
So was Sibyl. She had yet to see Alistair, but she was being groomed and dressed for him. They had started calling him “the MacFalon” in her absence. She wondered at that—his men hadn’t the respect for him they had for his father, at least that had been the case when she left. But things had changed and she couldn’t quite understand why or how.
