Chapter 13 #3
"Move them carefully," I instructed the handful of villagers still on their feet helping to wrangle the sick, my voice carrying that particular brand of calm authority that made people listen even when panic clawed at their throats.
"Space them out. At least three feet between the pallets. We need to slow this thing down."
The sickness came in waves—some barely yet running a fever, others bleary-eyed and barely breathing. Each one a story of suffering I didn't have time to fully absorb. Not yet. Later, maybe, when this was over. If we made it through.
"Clean linens!" I called out, already moving to the next patient. "Everything—and I mean everything—that's touched the sick gets boiled. Water hot enough to scald. Add bleach if you have it."
Morg materialized at my elbow like she'd been doing this dance with me for years instead of minutes. Her healer's instincts made her worth her weight in gold. I showed her the angle to prop patients up so their lungs could expand fully, how to read the subtle signs of someone circling the drain.
"The rash," she murmured, staring at the angry pustules erupting across a young man's forearms like a grotesque constellation. "I've seen fevers, infections, but never this."
"I have." The words tasted bitter. "In textbooks. This is smallpox, Morg. It's a human disease highly contagious and extremely dangerous."
Her face went pale beneath the exhaustion, but her hands stayed steady. "Tell me what to do."
"Isolation. Immediately." I swept my gaze across the room, my brain already running logistics like a battlefield commander.
"Anyone not showing symptoms stays locked down in their homes.
This building becomes ground zero—no one enters except designated caregivers.
And those caregivers wear masks, gloves, whatever protection we can cobble together. "
When Ryhain and Zuhra returned, water vessels sloshing against their hips, I intercepted them before they could venture deeper into the sick room. Ruka's sister had his same fierce intensity burning in her eyes, now fixed on me with laser focus.
"The three of you are my team," I said, looking between them. "My only team. No one else comes through that door. Everyone else quarantines. No exceptions."
"Ardin—" Ryhain's voice cracked on her son's name.
"We'll take care of him," I promised, meeting her eyes so she could see I meant it. "But I need you healthy and strong to help me take care of everyone else. Can you do that?"
Her throat worked. Then she nodded, jaw setting with the same stubborn determination I'd seen in her brother.
The next hour became an intensive crash course in survival medicine.
I demonstrated proper handwashing—not the quick rinse most people did, but the thorough, methodical scrubbing that actually killed pathogens.
Soap, hot water, two full minutes of friction between every finger, under every nail.
I showed them how to fashion masks from clean cloth, how to tie them snugly over nose and mouth without leaving gaps.
How to read a body's distress signals—the glassy-eyed stare of dangerous dehydration, the particular flush of fever climbing toward critical, the subtle shift in breathing that meant lungs were struggling.
And most critically, I taught them to monitor themselves. To recognize when they'd crossed from caregiver to patient.
Morg absorbed it all with the focused intensity of a general memorizing battle plans. "We will do as you say, healer," she said, her voice carrying the weight of an oath.
While I worked, Ruka became the steady heartbeat of the village.
Through the doorway, I'd catch flashes of him speaking with terrified families, his presence alone seeming to calm their panic.
He rallied the warriors still on their feet, coordinating supply drops at each dwelling.
His voice, deep and resonant, carried reassurance like a physical thing, wrapping around frightened people and giving them something solid to hold onto.
Once, I glanced up from checking a young girl's thready pulse to find him kneeling beside an elderly man's pallet.
He'd tied cloth over his nose and mouth, but his eyes were visible—warm, present.
One massive hand rested on the old man's bony shoulder with infinite gentleness as he spoke in tones too low for me to hear.
Whatever he said worked magic. The fear-rigid lines of the patient's face softened, and he managed a weak nod, some of the terror leaving his eyes.
Something fierce and bright bloomed in my chest.
This was leadership stripped to its essence. Not barking orders from a safe distance, but wading into the darkness alongside your people. Not just wielding authority, but offering your actual presence—your time, your touch, your willingness to be vulnerable beside them.
"Your mate is a good chieftain," Morg murmured, catching the direction of my gaze. "The people trust him. They will follow his guidance through this darkness."
"He is," I whispered, my throat suddenly tight. "He really, really is."
Across the crowded room, through the haze of fear and sickness, Ruka's eyes found mine, and in the midst of all the chaos, I saw the question that passed between us. Are you alright?
I nodded, mustering a small smile. I'm okay.
His answering nod was barely perceptible, but I felt the full weight of what it carried—his trust, his faith, his absolute belief in me. In us.
I turned back to my patients, pushing up my sleeves with renewed determination. The road ahead would be brutal, no question. But watching Ruka move through his people like an anchor in the storm, I felt something solid settle behind my ribs.
Pride. The kind that ran bone-deep and unshakeable.
Pride in the man I'd chosen. The man who had chosen me back.
Whatever hell came next, we'd face it side by side.
Time became a slippery thing, hours melting into one another like wax as day bled into night.
I drifted from patient to patient in a fog of exhaustion, doing what little I could with what little I had—cooling fevered skin, coaxing water past cracked lips, counting breaths that came too shallow, too fast. But the disease was relentless.
With each rotation around the room, new faces joined the sick.
The telltale rash bloomed across more skin.
Temperatures spiked higher. My makeshift clinic swelled past its breaking point, bodies crowding every available surface.
When dawn finally crept through the windows, washing everything in cold, unforgiving light, I was a hollow shell held together by sheer stubbornness.
My hands wouldn't stop shaking as I pressed the thermometer to another child's forehead.
103.8 degrees. Pustules were already erupting across her pale green cheeks and down her small arms.
The walls closed in. I stumbled outside, gulping air that tasted like failure.
Ruka materialized beside me, his hand finding my elbow before my knees could buckle.
"Jordan?"
I met his eyes, and everything I'd been holding back—all the terror, all the helplessness—rose up in a wave that threatened to drown me.
I'd been playing the role of confident physician, the healer his people desperately needed.
But standing there in the merciless morning light, the truth crashed over me with devastating clarity.
The facade shattered. I launched myself at him, and he was there—solid and sure—catching me like he'd been waiting for this moment.
His arms locked around me, a fortress against the storm.
I pressed my face into the curve of his neck, breathing him in, anchoring myself to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
"I've got you," he whispered against my hair, one hand cupping my skull while the other banded across my back. "I've got you, my love."
I held on like he was the last solid thing in a world gone liquid and strange. My fingers twisted in his shirt, desperate. Because maybe he was the only thing keeping my head above water. My foundation. My gravity. The strength I could borrow when mine ran dry.
"I can't do this alone," I confessed, the words scraping out of me. "Ruka, I need help. Real help. Medical supplies, antivirals—I need to call for help."
Something flickered across his face—the weight of impossible choices.
Calling for outside help meant cracking open the village's carefully guarded secrets, risking everything he'd fought to protect.
But then his gaze shifted to the common house, to his people suffering inside, and his expression hardened into resolve.
"Get your phone. We'll take the Hummer and drive until you get service."
Twenty minutes later, we were careening down the mountain, the Hummer's suspension groaning over every rut and rock. Ruka drove like a man possessed, his jaw set, knuckles bone-white against the steering wheel. I clutched my phone like a talisman, eyes locked on the screen.
No signal. No signal. No signal. No signal.
Then—a single bar flickered into existence, fragile as hope.
"Stop!"
The brakes screamed. I was already dialing before the dust settled around us.
"Jordan?" Kelsey's voice was fuzzy with sleep, confused. "Do you have any idea what time—"
"Kelsey." My voice came out raw, stripped bare. "I need you to listen. I'm dealing with a smallpox outbreak at the Orc village."
Dead silence. Then: "Jordan, that's impossible. Smallpox was eradicated decades—"
"I know what the textbooks say." My fingers tightened around the phone. "But I also know what I'm seeing. Kelsey, please—have there been any reports? Anything unusual in Franklin or the surrounding counties?"
Rustling on the other end. The click of keys. "Hold on, I'm pulling up the Notifiable Diseases Surveillance system."
Every second felt like an hour. Ruka's hand found mine, his thumb tracing circles against my palm—an anchor in the chaos.
"There's nothing, Jordan." Kelsey's voice had shifted, professional now, focused. "Some seasonal flu, a few cases of hand-foot-and-mouth at a daycare. But no fever clusters, no unusual rash presentations. Whatever you're dealing with, it's completely isolated."
The words should have been reassuring. Instead, they felt like a death sentence. Isolated meant contained—but it also meant we were utterly, terrifyingly alone.
"I need antivirals." I forced steel into my voice. "Tecovirimat, brincidofovir—everything you can get your hands on. I've got at least forty confirmed cases with lesions, and more developing every hour."
"Christ." A sharp exhale. "Okay. Okay, let me think. Those drugs are in the Strategic National Stockpile. I'll have to make some calls, cut through red tape. Where are you? I'll need exact coordinates for the delivery—"
"I’ll text you the directions." My heart hammered against my ribs. "Just please, Kelsey. These people are dying."
"I'll move heaven and earth to get you what you need." Her voice softened. "But Jordan, you need to understand—the moment I start making these calls, this goes official. CDC protocols kick in. Quarantine procedures. The whole nine yards."
"I know." I closed my eyes against the weight of it. "Just get me the drugs."
"Twenty-four hours. I promise. Stay safe."
The line went dead, leaving me staring at the phone like it might offer answers it didn't have.
My hands trembled as I scrolled through my contacts again. The CDC was coming—that was inevitable now. But I needed someone who could stand between them and the village, someone who understood that these weren't just case numbers on a spreadsheet.
Sarah answered on the second ring, alert despite the early hour. "Jordan? What's wrong?"
"I need you." The words spilled out in a rush. "There’s a smallpox outbreak at the Orc village. CDC's going to descend like the wrath of God within hours, and I need someone who can make sure this doesn't turn into a complete catastrophe."
A pause, weighted with understanding. "Smallpox. Jordan, that's—"
"Impossible, I know. Everyone keeps telling me that." I pressed my free hand against my forehead. "But I've got at least forty confirmed cases and counting. Sarah, didn't you go to Harvard with someone at the CDC? One of their attorneys?"
"Yeah, Smith Thompson, first year, same section." Her voice had taken on that razor-sharp edge I'd always admired. "You're worried about more than just the medical response."
"You know how they treated the Orcs at Franklin Memorial." The memory burned. "These people have rights. When the CDC shows up with their protocols and their quarantine orders, I need to know someone's fighting for them. Can you do that?"
"Send me everything—patient numbers, timeline, symptoms. I'll make damn sure this is handled right."
Relief flooded through me. "Thank you."
"Just promise me you'll take care of yourself too," Sarah said, and beneath the professional tone, I heard genuine worry.
When the call ended, Ruka's voice cut through the silence. "What happens now?"
I turned to face him, seeing past the stoic mask to the fear underneath—fear for his people, for his village, for everything he'd built. Fear for me. "Now we go back," I said, "and we keep your people alive until help arrives."