Chapter 4
The bond rips through me mid-sentence.
"—need the eastern patrol doubled until we know what Sarveil's warden is—"
I stop.
Low in my chest, behind the ribs, left side.
That's where I carry her. Every pack member sits somewhere different in the bond—Axan steady at the base of my skull, the patrol wolves a dull hum across my shoulders, the pups barely there, flickering at the edges.
But Kestria has always been here. Left side, between the ribs, deep. Blood bond. Family.
Right now it's screaming.
Her terror floods through, not words—the bond doesn't carry words—just fear-pain-danger slamming into me until my breath catches. Already running.
"Keer?"
Axan's voice cuts off behind me. The clearing falls away.
The cottage. She's at the fucking cottage again.
I warned her. Stay away from there. The human is a liability, a risk, a complication we don't need. She went anyway. She always does.
Another spike hits. Worse. Pain now—real pain, not fear. The bond cuts. Hot where it should be warm. Sharp where it should be steady.
Her blood.
Someone is making my sister bleed.
Shirt over my head, boots kicked off, trousers shoved down and abandoned in the dirt. Can't afford torn clothes, can't afford delay, can't afford anything except speed. The change takes me between one stride and the next—bones cracking, reforming—and then I'm down on four legs and running.
Trees blurring past. Undergrowth parting. I know this path—run it more times than I want to admit, hanging back at the tree line, watching her laugh.
The bond pulses. Weaker now.
Far past our territory. The connection thins this far out, the pack behind me gone faint and background, a low hum I carry everywhere. Kestria is what matters. The blood bond doesn't care about distance the way the others do—it fades, weakens, but it holds.
Except the fading is wrong.
Not distance-fading. Injury-fading. Her signal going thin at the edges. Fraying. And—
Don't.
Lungs burning. Muscles screaming. The cottage still miles away and Kestria hurt and someone going to pay for this. Someone going to bleed.
Then it stabilizes.
Still weak. Still wrong. But steady.
Alive.
She's alive.
Faster.
Miles pass under my paws. The sun climbs and the shadows shorten and I run until my legs go numb, until the territory markers fall behind me, until the forest thins and thickens and thins again and then I catch it—blood.
Faint at first, then stronger. Blood and horses and human sweat and fear.
Multiple humans, recent, some of them wounded.
And underneath it all, threading through everything else: my sister.
Her scent tangled with a smell sharp and herbal I can't place.
I slow at the tree line and shift back. Bones grinding, muscles retightening. Done this too many times for the pain to land. Naked. Doesn't matter.
Nothing matters except what I'm about to find.
The clearing's a mess. Blood soaking into the dirt—some human, some not. Torn clothes piled by the woodpile—Kestria's. Shredded. Drag marks from the worktable to the tree line—a deer carcass, half-eaten, crawling with flies. Hoofprints leading away into the forest.
Men were here. They're gone now.
The cottage door is closed. I move forward, quiet. Every instinct screaming to burst through. The hunter holds back. The door isn't locked. Never is. I push it open.
Kestria.
Alive. Bandaged. Sleeping on the floor by the hearth, covered with a rough blanket, face too pale but her chest moving. Breathing. Steady. Deep. The bond hums low and warm between us now—close enough to feel properly again—and it says healing, resting, alive.
My vision whites at the edges. My hand finds the doorframe. Holds on.
Blood and tallow and dried herbs. And underneath all of it—warmth. Unfamiliar. Her. The human.
Then I see her.
White hair pulled back in a braid, pink threaded through it.
Blood on her hands—dried brown under her fingernails, purple moonbright staining up to the knuckles, the rest caked with blood to the elbow.
Sitting against the wall with her knees drawn up, head tipped back, eyes half-closed.
Dark circles under her eyes. Shoulders caved in.
Small.
Soft where wolves are lean, the fabric of her dress pulling across curves.
I look too long.
Fuck.
My breath pulls short.
I look at Kestria instead.
The human looks up at me.
Blue eyes. Clear and tired and taking in my face without flinching.
The scars. The missing eye. The torn ear.
Waiting for her to look away.
Nothing. Just looking.
Then her gaze drops. Takes in the rest of me. Snaps back up.
Color floods her face. Immediate—cheeks, ears, throat. She tries to find somewhere safe to look and fails.
I glance down.
Right. Naked.
Wolves shift in front of each other all the time. Nobody cares. I'd forgotten—
Oh.
Also hard.
Half-hard, at least. Getting there—fast.
"She's stable." Her voice cuts through.
High-pitched, almost squeaky, too light for a blood-stained cottage. I've heard it before—snippets through the trees, laughter too bright for the deep forest. Up close it's—
"The fever broke a few hours ago. She woke up, we talked, she went back to sleep about twenty minutes ago. The wound's still healing but the poison's receding and she should—"
"Move."
She blinks. "What?"
"Move."
I'm already crossing to Kestria, dropping to my knees beside her. The human scrambles out of my way. I press my hand to my sister's forehead. Warm but not burning. The bandages around her torso are clean, applied correctly, tight enough to hold but not so tight they'll cut off blood flow.
Better than most wolves could manage.
Kestria's heartbeat thrums under my palm when I check her pulse—strong, maybe a little fast, but strong. Her breathing is deep. Healing sleep. The bond confirms it.
"Here."
I look up. She's holding out a blanket, eyes fixed on the ceiling above. Working hard to keep them there.
"For—" She gestures vaguely at me. All of me.
"You're—there's a lot of—just take it." She shoves the blanket at me.
"I'd be more comfortable if you were covered.
Not that your body doesn't deserve to be observed—it should.
Very observed. Thoroughly, even. In a gallery or something. Extensive viewing hours."
Her eyes widen.
"I mean. Not by me. Or. Fine, by me. But not right now. I mean, not ever—no, that's also wrong, not ever is a strong statement, I don't know you. I just—put the blanket on. Please. Before I keep talking."
I take the blanket. Wrap it around my waist. Rough wool, scratchy, barely covering what matters, but enough.
Her shoulders drop with visible relief.
"What happened?"
"Oh, you know. Normal day." She's still wiping her hands on a rag that stopped being clean hours ago.
"Nugget got into the dye pot, so she's pink now.
Kestria brought me a deer she definitely didn't hunt.
Then Theron showed up—the one who calls himself the Forest Warden—with five men on horses.
They tried to take me. Kestria shifted right there in my yard.
Got stabbed with something that turned out to be concentrated moonbright because apparently that's a thing that exists.
I used the paste I've been making for a decade without knowing what it actually was.
Fever broke a few hours ago. Oh, and I found out werewolves are real. "
She pauses.
"That last part probably should've come first."
I know that name. Theron. One of the ones pushing for more aggressive containment for years.
Kestria shifted.
In front of five men. In front of a warden.
Hot first. Then cold. Five witnesses. Five humans who saw a woman become a wolf and lived to carry that back to their settlement. Our secret—generations of it, decades of my work keeping the pack hidden—gone.
My fingers press into my palms. Release. Press in.
Kestria couldn't stay away. Too late now.
Deal with it later.
"—and then she asked if we were okay, which, yes, we're okay, she almost died, we're processing, but then I had to yell at her for the lying which, fair, and then we both cried a little, but she says the wound's healing and she says it usually only takes a few days for wolves to—you're staring."
Her arms cross.
"I'm—"
Shit.
"—checking for injuries."
"On me?"
"You were in a fight."
"I hid under the table." She gestures at it. "Very heroic."
"Effective."
"I thought so." She pauses. "Still staring, though."
"What's your name."
The question surprises her.
"Melori." Blue eyes on my face. Holding.
"Mel, if you want. My friends call me that.
Which—I mean, not that you're my friend, not that you can't be, I'm not saying you can't be, I'd be fine with it, great even, like who wouldn't want to be friends with a sexy mountain man.
Wolf? Mountain wolf? Anyways—you're Kestria's brother and she's my friend so by extension you could be—but also not if you don't want to be, no pressure, I don't need to be your friend, we barely know each other, you can just call me Melori, that's fine, that's my actual name, so—"
I know.
I've known it for years.
"—so, yeah. Melori works. Or Mel. Whatever you want. I don't care. I'm just going to stop talking now."
"Melori."
"Mel."
"I heard you."
"And you chose the longer version." Her face lights up. "Noted."
That smile.
Don't.
"How long until she can move?"
"Tomorrow morning, probably. Maybe tonight if she pushes it."
I nod and stand. The blanket threatens to slip. I catch it.
Her eyes track the movement. Drop to where the blanket meets my hip.
A small sound escapes her—something between a squeak and a choke.
"Sorry. That was—I didn't mean to make a noise. My throat just—sometimes throats do noises. Independently. Without permission."
I'm still hard.