Mir's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The envoy's arrival should have ended everything. Instead her father waved the man off to the ceremonial tent and told Mir to walk with him to the pavilion where the pack was already gathering. Rune had called the meeting at dusk. He stood on the layered platform of ice and stone, tall and blond in his fur-trimmed coat, and he was pouring drinks from a clay jug into cups he passed down himself. He called Mir's bond foreign interference. He said a wolf marked by an envoy's son could not lead. The room shifted the way rooms do before they turn. Mir stepped up to answer. Her father put a hand on her shoulder and took the cup from Rune's own hand first, the way an alpha does when he wants to close a subject. He drank half of it before Mir understood. She saw Rune's face for one second before he fixed it. She knocked the cup out of her father's hand. It was already too late. Her father sat down hard on the edge of the platform. His mouth went slack on one side. Fin was there before Mir called him, gathering the older man under the arms, and the two of them carried him to the healer's hut with the pack parting around them in silence. Mir put her father on the pallet and cut his collar open. His pulse was slow and skipping. She smelled the cup she had brought with her. Bitter almond under the pine spirit. She had seen the healer treat a poisoning like this once, two winters back, a trapper who chewed the wrong bark. Charcoal first. Then a tea of crushed willow and the yellow root the healer kept in the third jar. She sent one of her twelve out to the frostbound clearing where they gathered to bring back snow-packed charcoal from the fire pit. She ground the root herself. Fin stood at the door with his hand on his knife and let no one past. By midnight her father was breathing even. By first light he opened his eyes and looked at her. "Rune," he said. She nodded. He closed his eyes again and said, "Call the pack." He named her in front of them from the pallet. He said the word alpha and he said it flat, the way he said everything final. The envoy stood at the back and did not object. Rune was not in the room. Two of Mir's twelve had already gone to find him. Fin did not leave her side. He had not slept. His hand kept touching her wrist, then her waist, then her wrist again, like he was counting her. A runner came in near noon. Rune had cleared his cache and ridden past the marker stones with three wolves who owed him. He had left word. He would come back for her. Fin heard it and did not speak. He only moved half a step closer. Mir felt the second thing before she named it, the small change under her ribs that the healer had taught her to read in other women. She put her hand flat against her stomach and did not tell him yet.