Chapter 3 #2
Her breathing stutters.
I freeze. Hand on her forehead, other hand crushing the cloth, pulse hammering in my throat.
The stutter stretches. One beat. Two.
Then steadies.
"Don't." I barely get the word out. "Don't do that."
I press my hand flat against her chest. Her heartbeat thumps against my palm—fast, uneven, but there.
"You're fine. That was nothing. You're fine."
My hands are shaking.
"I'm adding that to the list of things I'm yelling at you for. When you wake up. Which you're going to do. Because you don't get to die on my floor. That's rude. I'd have to clean it."
Nugget screams outside. A crash—the water bucket, probably. I should check.
I don't. I stay.
The light shifts. Late afternoon. Golden.
My stomach has given up growling and settled into a dull, persistent ache.
The chickens have gone quiet, which either means they've calmed down or something got into the coop.
I heard sniffing around the deer carcass earlier.
Didn't get up to check. Didn't care enough to check.
"How many of you are there?" I ask her. "A whole group, right? A pack. Has to be. The men who built my cottage—four of them. And the wolves who came for treatment, they weren't all the same wolf. Different sizes, different injuries. That's at least fifteen. Twenty."
No answer.
"Is there someone in charge? Do you have—meetings? Assignments? 'You go get stabbed on Tuesday, you go get stabbed on Thursday'?"
Nothing. Just her breathing, and Nugget honking at the dark.
"You could wake up and answer these. I'm keeping a running list and it's getting long."
The cottage gets darker. Evening. I light a candle with numb fingers, then two more. The wicks need trimming—they're smoking, burning uneven, casting shadows that jump when the draft hits them. The gap in the ceiling lets in a thin thread of cooling air.
Add it to the list. Ceiling. Bandages. Paste. Water. Deer. Chickens. Werewolves. The list is getting unwieldy.
My eyes are gritty. My back is one solid ache from the wall. Her pulse—still fast. Her temperature—still burning. The wound—gray edges paler, retreating, but slow. So slow.
"Any time now," I tell her. "Fever breaking would be wonderful. I'd like to eat something this decade."
I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes.
Just for a second. Just while the candles burn and Kestria breathes and the world outside gets dark and quiet.
My hands are crusted with her blood—dried brown under my fingernails, in the creases of my knuckles.
I need to wash them. Need to eat. Need to sleep.
Need to figure out what comes next, because Theron is coming back and he's going to bring more men and they know where I live and they know about Kestria and—
Later.
The next time I open my eyes, the candles are guttering. One's already out, a thin ribbon of smoke curling from the wick. The other two are stubs.
And the room sounds wrong.
Not wrong. Different. The rhythm of—
Her breathing.
I jerk forward, hand on her forehead before I've fully woken up.
Warm.
Not burning.
"Oh." I pull the blanket down, check the wound. The gray is gone. Healthy pink spreading out from under the paste, new skin forming at the edges. "Oh, thank—it worked. Of course it worked. It always works."
My whole body is wrung out—back screaming, knees locked, neck stiff, so hungry I'm nauseous, which is a fun contradiction—
"You're going to be fine." I'm smoothing the blanket back over her, tucking it at the edges, and the words come out so high they crack. "Fever broke. Wound's healing. You're going to be fine and I'm going to eat an entire loaf of bread and then yell at you. In that order."
Her breathing is deeper now. Easier. Color coming back to her face—faint pink where there was nothing, warmth where there was gray.
I let my head fall back against the wall.
I don't relight the candles. Just sit in the dark and listen to her breathe.
I wake to fingers brushing my arm.
My neck screams when I lift my head—I fell asleep against the wall, chin on my chest, and everything has locked into place at terrible angles.
Dawn light leaks through the window, gray and thin.
The candles are cold puddles of wax. My mouth tastes stale.
My back is going to be furious with me for a week.
"Kestria?"
Her eyes are open.
Human eyes. Brown, warm, clear. The same eyes that were laughing at my pink chicken yesterday morning.
"Mel." Her voice is a rasp, barely there. "You look terrible."
My whole body goes loose. "You got stabbed by a poisoned sword and turned into a wolf in my front yard. I think I'm entitled to look terrible."
"Fair point." She shifts and winces. "Ow."
"Don't move. The wound's still closing."
"Everything hurts."
"You got stabbed. That tends to hurt."
"How long was I out?"
"All day. All night." I hold up a finger. "Which I spent sitting on this floor. My entire skeleton hates me. When you can walk, you owe me a cushion. A good one."
"Noted." She's almost smiling. Weak, barely there, but real. "Have you eaten?"
"Don't change the subject."
"That's a no."
"I was busy keeping you alive. Eating seemed selfish."
"Mel. Go eat something."
"When I'm done checking your wound." I pull the blanket down. The bandage is stained but the bleeding's stopped. The skin around the wound is pink, healthy, new. "Healing well. Better than I expected, actually. Is that a—is that a wolf thing? Faster healing?"
"Faster than humans, yeah."
"That's incredibly useful information that would have been great to have at literally any point in the last decade."
She winces, and not from the wound. "I deserved that."
"You deserve worse. I'm being generous because you almost died." I pull the blanket back up and sit back on my heels. My knees pop. Both of them. Loudly. "I have questions."
"I figured."
"Many questions. A truly unreasonable number of questions."
"Ask."
"How many of you are there?"
She hesitates. "In the pack? Thirty. Thirty-five, depending on—"
"Thirty-five."
"Give or take."
"There are thirty-five werewolves in the forest."
"Not all in one place. We're spread—"
"Thirty-five werewolves. In the forest. Where I live."
"Yes."
"And the wolves I've been treating—"
"Pack members. People who got hurt and needed help."
"People." I rub my eyes. They're gritty, swollen. "The wolf with the infected bite last spring. The one who came back three times because he kept reopening it."
"Rhen."
"He has a name."
"They all have names, Mel."
"Of course they do. They're people. You just said they're people.
" My voice is climbing and I press my palms flat against my thighs.
"Rhen. The wolf with the—Rhen kept reopening the wound because I wrapped it too tight, didn't I.
He couldn't tell me because he was a wolf.
He just kept coming back and I kept wrapping it the same way and scolding him for being difficult. "
"He doesn't hold it against you."
"That's very gracious of Rhen." I push myself up. My back spasms. Water first, then food, then—no. Food first. No. Water. "The strangers. Who helped build my cottage. Four of them. Big men, showed up one morning, worked all day, ate my stew."
"Pack members. I asked them to help."
"You asked them."
"You needed a back wall. I couldn't exactly explain why I knew that."
"You—" I stop. Start again. "You sent people. Your people. To build my cottage. And they showed up and dragged logs and ate rabbit stew and I never—I never even asked their names."
I walk to my food stores. The bread is stale, dense. I tear off a chunk and shove it in my mouth. Best thing I've ever tasted. My jaw aches from chewing.
"Keep talking," I tell her through a mouthful. "I can eat and listen at the same time."
"What else do you want to know?"
"Everything." I take another bite. Chew. Swallow. "But start with—the shifting. The wolf thing. How does that work? Is it a choice? Can you just—whenever?"
"We can shift whenever we want. But the new moon forces it."
"Forces it."
"We shift whether we want to or not. For the whole night."
"That's—" I grab the water skin from the shelf. Empty. Right. I tossed it during the chaos yesterday. There's a cup by the basin. I pour water—still pink—stare at it—pour it out, grab the other water skin, the emergency one. Drink. "The new moon. Not the full moon?"
"Everyone gets that wrong."
"Everyone doesn't know werewolves are real, so I think we can forgive the confusion." I drink again. My stomach cramps around the water, not sure whether to be grateful or furious. "What about the full moon?"
"Weakens us. We can't shift during the full moon. Can't heal as fast. It's—it's our vulnerable time."
"The full moon makes you weak."
"Yes."
"And the new moon forces you to shift."
"Yes."
"That's backwards from every story I've ever heard."
"The stories aren't exactly written by wolves."
I laugh. Can't help it—it tears out of me, slightly unhinged. Kestria watches me with that worried expression, the guilty one, but her mouth twitches.
"This is insane," I tell her. "You know that? This is completely insane."
"I know."
"I've been living next to a pack of thirty-five werewolves for ten years and treating them with flower paste and scolding them for chewing their bandages."
"You were very firm about the bandage chewing."
"It's a hygiene issue." I tear off more bread. "Does the moonbright—the paste. It works on you. Obviously. But does it work differently than I think?"
"Moonbright's poison to us. In the wild, touching the flowers can burn. Concentrated, it can kill."
"Kill."
"That's what was on Theron's blade. Concentrated moonbright."
I look at the jar on my shelf. The paste I've been making for years. The paste I've been spreading on wolf wounds with my bare hands.
"But the paste heals you."