Chapter 7 #2
Then she tried to stand, clearly planning to help hold him down, and I saw her injured leg give out.
I moved without thinking, catching her before she could fall. Her weight settled against me for just a heartbeat, solid and warm and right in a way that made my bear rumble with satisfaction, before she jerked away, pushing at my chest with surprising strength.
"Easy," I said, keeping my voice low and steady. "You're hurt."
She shook her head sharply and pointed at the injured male again, then at herself, gesturing emphatically. The message was clear: Help him, not me.
I wanted to argue. Wanted to make her sit down and let me check that wound on her thigh, because I could smell the blood and it was making my bear agitated with worry. But she was looking at me with such fierce determination that I found myself nodding instead.
Later. I'll treat her later.
I called out to Miska and Fen, who came over immediately.
They understood what I needed without being told having seen me set broken bones before.
Miska positioned herself at the injured male's shoulders, Fen at his hips, and the female crouched by his head, gripping his hand and speaking to him in that incomprehensible language.
I met the injured male's eyes and saw understanding there. Fear, but also trust. He knew what was coming.
"Ready?" I asked, even though he couldn't understand me.
He nodded.
I gripped his leg firmly, feeling for the break, visualizing how the bones needed to realign. Then I pulled.
The injured male screamed but he held still while I worked, while I felt the bones grind and shift back into alignment with a sensation I now would recognise in my sleep.
The female was talking to him constantly, her voice urgent and soothing at the same time, her free hand stroking his hair back from his forehead. I caught the shine of tears on her cheeks, but her voice stayed steady.
Strong. So strong.
I finished the alignment and held the leg in place, breathing hard. "Done," I said. "The worst is over."
The injured male had gone limp, his face grey with shock, but he was conscious. Still breathing. The female looked at me with something that might have been gratitude, though her expression was hard to read through the tears.
I needed to splint the leg before he moved. I looked around the clearing and spotted several straight branches near the river, likely torn loose by the storm. I gestured to show what I needed, and Fen went to retrieve them while I gathered the supplies from the pouches at my belt.
The female watched everything I did with intense focus, and I found myself hyperaware of her attention.
Aware of how close she was kneeling, how her scent cut through the smell of blood and river water.
Aware of the way her hair fell forward to frame her face, the way her hands moved when she spoke to her companion, gentle and sure.
Fen returned with the branches, and I selected two that were straight and strong and would work as splints, each the right length to immobilize the leg from thigh to ankle.
I packed them with moss for padding, positioned them carefully on either side of the injured male's leg, and began binding them in place with leather strips.
I finished securing the splint and checked my work. Solid. It would hold as long as he didn't try to walk on it. I pulled out a pouch of yarrow and willow bark ground into a powder and mixed it with a little water from my water skin. The resulting poultice smelled bitter and earthy.
The female watched as I spread it over the injured area, her nose wrinkling at the smell. Despite everything, something that looked almost like interest flickered across her face.
I glanced up and found her eyes on mine. For a moment, we just looked at each other, and I felt that pull again, stronger than before. Then someone called my name, breaking the moment.
I looked over to see Rivik gesturing me toward where he stood with the other male stranger. The female's attention followed mine, and I saw her watch Rivik with the same wary calculation she'd shown me. But there was curiosity in her expression now too. Maybe even hope.
I stood reluctantly, every instinct screaming at me not to leave her, and made my way over to Rivik. He was trying to communicate with the stranger through gestures and broken phrases, but his eyes kept drifting to the female.
He feels it too.
The realization hit me like a fist to the chest. Rivik was looking at her the same way I was.
With that same desperate, inexplicable need.
I suddenly understood why he’d raced into the fight, why he’d immediately gone for the shifter holding her.
He’d needed to protect her too, he’d just got there before me.
"We're taking them back to camp," Rivik said quietly in our language, his tone brooking no argument. "They need shelter and healing. And they're not from any clan I've ever seen."
I nodded. "They speak no language I recognise from the gatherings, but yes, I agree. The injured male will need weeks of care and rest before he can travel again, and it's obvious their camp was destroyed in the storm. But he’ll need to be carried."
"I know. We'll build a stretcher."
We gathered the others and set to work, dragging more branches from the river's edge, stripping them of bark, lashing them together with leather cord. The work was familiar, almost meditative, but I couldn't stop myself from glancing over at the female every few moments.
She'd moved back to sit beside the injured male, her hand resting on his shoulder, her face drawn with exhaustion.
The other male stranger, a wolf shifter by the scent of him, stood nearby, clearly trying to decide if we were a threat or an ally.
Another female wolf shifter stood with him, his mate, I assumed.
When the stretcher was finished, we carefully transferred the injured male onto it. He groaned but didn't fight us, and the female spoke to him constantly in that soothing tone, her hand gentle on his arm.
Fen and Jarak unpacked some of the dried venison, and now they offered pieces of the cooked meat to the strangers. After a moment’s hesitation, hunger clearly won out and they took some gratefully.
I made sure I was the one to bring food to her.
She looked up as I approached, those wide eyes meeting mine with that same cautious assessment. I held out the portion of meat slowly, making sure she could see I meant no threat.
She hesitated, then reached out and took it from my hand.
Our fingers brushed for a moment and I felt a rush of heat from her touch.
She felt it too. I saw it in the way her eyes widened slightly, the way she pulled her hand back quickly and stared at me with confusion, her face colouring a little. Then she smiled.
It wasn't a big smile, just a small, tired quirk of her lips, but it transformed her entire face. Her eyes lit up, softening all the fear and exhaustion into something warm and genuine.
My chest felt too tight suddenly. Too full.
I stepped back before I did something foolish like reach out and touch her face.
Later, I told my bear firmly. Once we're back at camp and she's rested and that leg is properly treated. Then I can talk to Rivik and figure out what this is.
If this strange, fierce pull was real or just some trick of my mind. If she felt it too, or if I was imagining the way she kept glancing at me when she thought I wasn't looking.
We finished preparations to leave as the sun reached its height. Rivik had convinced the alpha of our intentions somehow, the stranger’s expression slowly shifting from suspicion to cautious hope.
The female tried to help organize the supplies, reaching for one of the strange packs they'd been carrying, but I moved to help without thinking, taking the pack from her hands.
She tried to protest, gesturing that she could manage, but I just shook my head firmly and tapped my chest, then pointed ahead to the path we'd be taking. I'll carry it. You just walk.
She stared at me for a long moment, then let out a breath and nodded. The fight went out of her shoulders. Acceptance, not surrender. She was smart enough to know when to conserve her strength, and I respected that more than I could say. I liked that she would let me do something for her.
She pointed at herself, then at the stretcher where the injured male lay, and mimed walking beside it.
I'll walk with him.
I nodded. That much I could allow, even if every instinct in me wanted to pick her up and carry her the entire way back to camp.
She was limping very slightly, favouring her right leg, and the wound needed cleaning and stitching before infection set in.
I’d make sure I examined it tonight when we made camp.
I slung the pack over my shoulder alongside my own.
It was lighter than I'd expected, made of some strange material I'd never felt before.
Smooth and tightly woven, nothing like leather or hide.
Everything about these strangers was like that.
Wrong but fascinating. Their clothing, their tools, the remnants of their shelters.
Miska and Jarak lifted the stretcher with the injured male, positioning themselves carefully to keep it level. The small female moved to walk beside them immediately, her hand reaching out to rest on her companion's shoulder even as she limped.
I fell into position on her other side, close enough to catch her if she stumbled but far enough not to crowd her. Close enough to feel that strange pull, that sense of rightness that shouldn't exist but did.
Rivik gave the signal to move out, and we started back up the side of the ravine along the northern route, the same path Rivik had planned to take us home before we'd heard the scream. The terrain climbed steadily, winding through sparse birch and pine that clung to the hillside in stubborn clusters though it would be at least another day’s travel before the trees would thicken into the forests that were our pack’s territory, and another three after that before we reached home.