Healing the Scarred Alphas novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ford
Mabyn crosses the river in chains as tribute, Torren orders her kit searched for poison, and when a dying boy is carried through the yard she kneels in the mud and takes him until his chest stops.
The river was cold enough to make my teeth ache, and my father's steward held my chain the whole way across.
The Aldwater ran knee deep over the ford stones, brown with the spring melt.
On the south bank my father sat his grey horse and did not wave.
That was how I knew the crossing was real.
On the north bank three men waited at the foot of Ironmere's gate, and the biggest of them did not move at all.
The steward put the end of my chain into the biggest man's hand.
"Tribute from Ashfen, by Alpha Tavish Ravenhill's word," he said. "Healer Mabyn Ravenhill, the Alpha's daughter, as surety for the peace."
Then he turned and waded back without looking at me.
I stood there with the water running out of my skirt and my wrists burning under the iron.
The big man was easily a head taller than anyone I had ever seen.
The left half of his face was one smooth shining scar, from the temple down into his collar.
The ear on that side was mostly gone.
His other eye was slate grey, and it went over me once, slowly.
"You know who I am," he said.
"Torren Ironmere," I said. "The eldest."
"And you know what your father did to me."
I had heard the stories since I was fifteen.
I had never once seen the proof walking toward me.
"I know he burned your hold," I said.
"He burned my mother's long house with eleven of mine inside it." His voice was quiet and level. "I carried out four children. This is what I carried them through."
He let me look at it for a long moment.
I made myself look at all of it, because turning away would have been a coward's answer.
The man beside him was lean and fair, with a black leather patch over his left eye.
He wasn't looking at the scar.
He was looking at my hem.
"Our last tribute from your pack was a girl," the patched man said. "She was sixteen. She had wolfsbane sewn into her skirt, and a smile."
"I'm not her," I said.
"No," Torren said. "That's why you're going to stand still."
He nodded once at the patched man.
"Cadoc. Her kit, and her hem, and everything on her. Do it here, where my yard can see it."
Cadoc took the roll from my belt, the one my mother had sewn for me.
He opened it on the gate stone and went through every pocket.
Bone needles, steel needles, a curved one for deep work, black thread and white.
A clay pot of salve.
He unscrewed it, sniffed it, and dipped one finger in.
He ran his thumb along every inch of my hem, and then my sleeves, and the seam of my bodice.
His hands were fast and impersonal, and I thought, Good.
Let them find it now, and let them find nothing.
"Needles," Cadoc said at last. "Comfrey and honey. Thread." He looked at his brother with something very close to disappointment. "She's clean."
"Then she's cleaner than the last," Torren said, and I heard that he did not believe it.
A shout came from the yard behind them.
A young man tore out of the gate at a dead run, curls flying, a small bundle held against his chest.
His shirt was soaked red down the front, and none of that blood was his.
"Torren!" His voice cracked. "Torren, it's the shepherd's boy! They hit him at the sheep fold, there's silver in him!"
The bundle in his arms was a child.
He was six or seven, his skin the colour of candle wax, a black-fletched arrow shaft sticking out under his ribs.
Behind the young man came a grey-haired woman in a healer's apron, walking, not running.
"Aldith!" Torren said.
The woman stopped a few feet from the child and put her hands behind her back.
"It's in the lung, and it's silver," she said, flat and tired. "I can't."
"Aldith."
"I can't, Torren. I can't touch it."
The boy made a small wet sound with every breath, and I knew exactly what that sound meant.
I did not ask.
I dropped to my knees in the mud with my chain swinging, and held up both wrists.
"Give him to me."
"Don't," Cadoc said, very softly. "She's Ravenhill."
"Give him to me, and take these off if you want him to live."
The curly-haired man looked at Torren.
Torren looked at the boy.
Something in the scarred face shifted, and then he gave a short nod.
The boy came into my arms light as a bird.
The chain was still on, so I put my bound hands flat on his ribs and found the arrow with my fingertips.
The silver lay against the lung wall, a hair from the great vessel.
One wrong breath and it would cut.
"Needle roll," I said. "The curved one. Honey salve. Hold his head still, and don't let him cough."
Nobody moved.
"Now!"
Torren said, "Gethin. The roll."
The curly-haired one scooped it up and dropped to the mud beside me.
I drew the shaft clear in one pull.
Blood came in a hot rush over my wrists.
The boy arched once, shuddered, and went limp.
His chest stopped moving.
I looked up.
Torren Ironmere stood over me with his brothers' hands on their knives, and his one grey eye was perfectly still.
"If he dies in your hands," he said, "you hang from my gate before sundown."
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