Page 1 of Wolf Heir
PROLOGUE
The storm outside was a mere murmur compared to the clamor inside Middleborough Castle. Only the bravest warriors ever crossed the threshold of its rugged stone keep, and none so formidable as Chief Hamish MacNair. Six feet four, a wall of muscle, he loomed at his mate’s bedchamber door, waiting, shifting from foot to foot, the way a caged bear paced. Hamish, by all accounts, the most ruthless when killing his enemy, had never known fear. Yet tonight, on the far side of the bedchamber door, he was a man undone.
Within the bedchamber, the cries of Lady Orla—his mate, his heart, his lady—rose and fell, searing the air like a hot iron. Three days of labor had passed, an agony that would break all but the most stubborn. Orla was as stubborn as they came. She was a MacTavish by birth, a clan renowned for their spine, their wit, and the bending of men to their purpose.
But she was also a shifter, so he believed she would live. The castle’s womenfolk huddled in the galleries, wringing their hands, whispering the old prayers. Even the men kept their distance, save for Hamish, who planted himself outside Orla’schamber as if his presence could ward off death by sheer force of will.
The only one who showed no fear—no respect, no awe, not even fleeting pity—was the midwife Morag. She was the same age as Orla, with the face of a mother and the mouth of a viper. She moved through the halls with the confidence of one who knows every secret passage, every loose stone, every rumor that could be turned to gold.
Morag had caught every babe born at the castle for the last four years, and she’d buried nearly as many mothers. Tonight, she wore her thick brown hair in a tidy plait, a blood-red scarf knotted at the throat. She delivered the news to Hamish each hour: another contraction, another inch dilated, another rag soaked through.
But Morag was a vessel of ambition. Orphaned at twelve after her village burned, she had honed her skills after training with another midwife who had died last year. Morag could knead life or death from a woman’s body with equal ease.
On the eve of Orla’s confinement, Morag had delivered her predictions with a conspirator’s intimacy. “It is a hard birth, m’lord. For the bairn and the mother both. But sometimes the moon gives only one life at a time.”
Hamish, ever the pragmatist, had nodded, the lines in his face like carved runes. “If it comes to a choice, save my mate,” he’d said, though his voice cracked.
Morag had nodded, her own eyes softening with the gift of shared grief. “Aye, m’lord. As you wish.”
But the truth was, she had no intention of letting a weakling survive. Not Orla’s son, not Orla herself, not with so much at stake.
When the hour of birth arrived, the castle was alive with anticipation and dread. Servants scuttled through the corridors, bearing fresh linens, boiled water, and the calming draughtsthat Morag alone concocted. The warriors posted along the walls grumbled at the distraction, but even they felt the pull of destiny. The clan’s future was being decided in screams and sweat and blood.
Inside the chamber, Morag stood at the foot of the bed, calmly ignoring Orla’s howls. The lady’s face was a mask of pain, but her eyes—gray as the northern sea—were lucid, defiant. The child was coming breech. It would be a miracle if either survived. Morag pressed down hard, forcing the issue. Orla screamed, then bit down on the leather strap, refusing to give Morag the satisfaction of a broken spirit.
The bairn slid into the world blue and limp, the cord wrapped thrice around his neck. Morag moved quickly, slicing the cord, working the tiny chest, whispering spells and curses in equal measure. As she’d expected, Orla was hemorrhaging, her life leaking onto the straw. The other women wailed, pleading for Morag to save their lady.
“She must rest,” Morag snapped, and shooed them away with a flick of her hand. One of her apprentices, a mousey girl named Isla, remained, eyes wide as moonstones.
“Is he alive?” whispered Isla.
Morag barely glanced at the child. “He’s a weak one. Willna last the night, most likely.” She looked down at Orla, who was panting, fighting to stay conscious. There was a moment’s hesitation. Then, deftly, Morag pressed her fingers to Orla’s neck, just enough to render her still.
The door banged open, and Hamish strode in, his face wild with hope and fear. “Orla? The bairn?”
Morag put on the widow’s mask. “She’s gone, my lord. Bled out, before I could stem it. The bairn…he’s alive, but only barely. I fear he’s not long for this world. I did all I could.”
Hamish collapsed to his knees beside the bed, gathering Orla’s cooling hand in both of his. He howled, a sound soguttural and raw it might have split the stones of the keep. Morag turned away, cradling the mewling infant to her breast, her face unreadable.
And then, as the commotion raged, a rumor reached Morag’s ears, borne by the scullery maids in the hallway. In the lower chamber, another woman had just delivered—a scullion, nameless even to the kitchen girls, who had birthed twins, but only one survived. The other, still and silent, was a perfect copy, a male the same age as Orla’s son.
This couldn’t have worked out better. She would say that the bairn died in childbirth along with his mother. She couldn’t just kill the bairn right there, not when other ladies were attending Orla.
She reached down, supporting the slick, purpled weight of Orla’s newborn, and passed him carefully to Blair, who at sixteen had already delivered lambs and foals but never a child. Blair, wide-eyed and trembling in her borrowed apron, cradled the infant as if she were holding a sparrow. The baby’s mouth opened and closed in fishlike astonishment.
The cord, glistening and pale, trailed from his belly, and Blair’s hands fumbled with the knot of twine, her cheeks flushed with pride and terror.
The baby’s skin was the color of boiled shrimp, his cries thin and reedy, but his limbs flexed with a ferocious will to persist. Blair wiped his face, her fingers gentle as moth wings, then swaddled him in the towel that reeked faintly of lye and rosemary.
She pressed the baby to her chest, rocking slightly, transfixed by the sudden, hot reality of his presence. She did not notice the hush that had fallen over the room, or the way every woman’s eyes slid quickly from Orla to the blood pooled beneath her hips, until the midwife’s voice snapped her attention back to the birthing bed.
“Get rid of the baby,” she hissed, voice a dry, thistly whisper. The words struck Blair like a sudden slap, and she recoiled, the twist of her apron nearly dropping the bundle she swaddled so tightly, as if to squeeze breath from the child’s tiny lungs. Morag’s knuckles were white on the oak of the table, her eyes a warning. “Now,” she said with a spittle of urgency, “or you’ll be dead before the sun is up.” Her tone left no room for missteps or mercy.
Blair nodded, because there was nothing else to be done. Nausea pooled at the base of her throat. She looked at the baby—a boy, his hair the color of river silt, skin so pale it seemed translucent—and tried, just for a moment, to imagine what it would take to do as Morag asked.
The child had been quiet since the last feeble cry, milky lips pinched in sleep, or perhaps in the peace of not knowing what waited beyond the hem of his blanket. Blair wrapped another length of cloth around his body, as if cold was the enemy and not the woman who watched her every move.
Morag’s plan was clear. She jerked her chin toward the far chamber, beyond which the night wind rattled. That door opened into the hallway and down the stairs straight into the main part of the castle. “Through there,” Morag said, gesturing with her hand again, “and out the other door. The chief’s eyes won’t find you.”
