He Signed the Exile Order, So I Took the Wards North novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: He Rides North

Corvin demands the order voided, admits in front of Ronan's hall that he never read it, and nails a Concord writ to the gate charging her with stripping Greyfell's wards.

"Did you do it?" Ronan asked.

The whole kitchen waited for my answer.

"I closed my hand on the gate post," I said. "That's all I did."

"The Alpha says hunters came because of you."

"The hunters came because nobody was holding the wall."

"Whose job was that?"

"Mine. For ten years."

Ronan's eyes stayed on my face a moment longer.

Then he turned to the rider. "Take your horse in out of the cold. Tell the cook to feed you."

That was the whole of his answer, and I did not know what to make of it.

Corvin arrived four days later, riding at the head of twenty Greyfell wolves.

I heard the horns from the tower window and watched them climb the switchbacks.

He looked thinner.

Jory rode beside him, with his hood up, and Rhona sat behind a rider on a grey mare, wrapped in a blanket that looked too thin.

I went down to the hall with Hester at my shoulder.

Ronan was already in his chair on the dais.

Corvin strode in without waiting to be announced, and left mud across the floor.

"Warden." He did not bow. "I'm here for my wife."

"She is not your wife," Ronan said. "She is my guest, under an order you signed."

"That order is a clerical error."

I laughed out loud.

Two hundred wolves had come in to watch, and it was the only sound in the room.

"There's no error," I said. "You signed it in front of seven territories."

Corvin turned on me with the big warm grin I had married.

"Cat. Love. You wrote a paper and put the wrong name on it. I signed it thinking it said something else. Fix it and come home."

"Say that again," I said, "louder."

He blinked.

"Say what you just told me. That you signed it thinking it said something else."

"Yes," Corvin said impatiently. "I didn't read it."

"You didn't read an order of exile before you signed it."

"I trusted my wife to write what I asked."

"I wrote an exile order and laid it by your plate," I said. "You never read the name on it."

A rustle ran along the walls.

A woman near the front said, quite loudly, "He signed it without reading it."

A man behind her said, "In front of the Concord."

Corvin's face went the color of old brick.

"I am the Alpha of Greyfell," he said. "I will not be mocked in a stranger's hall."

"Then stop being a joke in it," Ronan said.

His voice was mild.

Somebody snorted, and the hall broke into laughter.

Rhona had come in behind them and stood at the back, shivering.

Her eyes found mine.

She mouthed something that looked like I'm sorry.

I looked away first.

Corvin crossed the floor and grabbed my arm.

"You are coming home."

His fingers closed hard.

The wolves along the walls stiffened and growled all at once.

"Let go," Ronan said.

"She is my mate."

"Let go of her arm, Sterne."

"Or what?" Corvin snarled. "I'll shift and take her out of here. You think you can stop an Alpha?"

He let go of my arm and stepped back, and I watched him call his wolf.

I saw the effort pull the cords of his neck.

His shoulders hunched, his jaw cracked open, and his face stretched.

Nothing else happened.

His back straightened, and his hands stayed hands.

He tried again, and his whole body shook with it.

His wolf did not come.

Someone near the door started to laugh, and then forty others did.

It was an ugly sound, and not one of them was kind.

Corvin looked down at his own hands.

"No," he said quietly. "No. It's the cold. It always comes."

Jory had pulled his hood back, and I saw his face.

He was not laughing.

He looked at Corvin, and then at me.

Ronan came down off the dais slowly, with his hands loose at his sides.

"Alpha Sterne," he said. "You'll want to leave my hall."

"I'll have the Concord on you."

"Bring them."

Corvin's lip curled.

He grabbed Rhona by the wrist and hauled her toward the door.

She stumbled and said, "Corvin, please, you're hurting."

"Quiet," he said.

Jory took one step after them and stopped, glancing back at me.

I shook my head at him very slightly.

Not yet.

They left, and I stood among the quiet wolves with my arm aching where he had held it.

Ronan had not looked away from me.

"Did he always do that?" he asked.

"Grab me?"

"Call a wolf that wouldn't come."

I opened my mouth, and had nothing to say.

At the gate, the wind carried the sound of a hammer.

We went out, all of us, into the snow.

Corvin was nailing a sheet of parchment to the gate post with the gatekeeper's hammer, and the Concord's red wax glittered on it.

"That's a writ," Ronan read slowly. "Charging Catriona MacNair with stripping the Greyfell wards. She is to answer at the Moot."

Corvin smiled at me across the snow.

"Come home, Cat," he said, "or answer to the seven territories."

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