Chapter 5 #2
"Feeding people isn't a responsibility. It's just what you do. People are hungry, food exists, you put them together. Or do wolves not do that?"
"We do that."
"Then we agree."
Ahead of us, Keer ducks a branch and holds it. His arm extended back, not turning around, just waiting until we pass it.
I walk under his arm. Pine and heat and skin, close enough that if I looked up I'd be looking at his throat. I don't look up. I keep my eyes on the path and my hand on Nugget and walk through.
"Thank you." It comes out too high. Squeaky.
Amazing.
His hand drops and keeps walking.
Kestria's watching me. I can feel it.
"Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You're about to."
"You just thanked him in a voice only dogs can hear."
"I have a naturally high voice. It's a medical condition."
"It's not a medical condition."
"It could be. You don't know. You're not a healer."
"He can hear your heartbeat, you know."
I almost trip. "What?"
"Wolf senses. Even in human form. Hearing, smell. He can probably hear both our heartbeats from where he's walking."
My face goes hot. My pulse jumps into my throat.
"That's—" Paste ratios. Dilution formula. One part paste to three parts—no, four parts for a thinner application. Potency loss at four parts is roughly—"That's very inconvenient information, Kestria. Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"I hate you."
"Your heartbeat says otherwise."
"My heartbeat is a liar and it doesn't speak for me."
Ahead of us, Keer's ear—the torn one, healed badly, catching what little light filters through—is angled back. Toward us.
Toward me.
I stare at the ferns. Count my steps. Think about comfrey storage and whether I tied the bundles too tight and if the centers will mold.
The trees get older the deeper we go, taller, the underbrush thickening until we're single file through ferns that reach my waist. Darker here. The canopy's so thick overhead the moonlight barely gets through. Things moving in the undergrowth. Small things, probably.
Hopefully.
"How are the people? At the den. Are they—healthy? Injured? Is anyone poisoned right now?"
"I don't know. I've been gone."
"Right. Sorry." I nudge Nugget's wing back into the basket before it catches on a branch. "Keer. Are any of your people injured right now?"
Nothing.
"Poisoned?"
"Mildly inconvenienced?"
His shoulders tighten. He adjusts his path around a boulder and his hand finds the rock and pushes off, and the muscles across his back shift under the tunic and the seam protests.
"The seam." I point at his left arm. "I'm serious. One more branch and you're going to lose a sleeve."
"He doesn't care about the seam," Kestria says.
"Well, I care about the seam. I sewed that tunic. Those are my stitches. Watching them die is personal."
Kestria's slowing down again. Steps shorter, her breathing going shallow, careful.
"We need to stop."
Keer pauses. Turns. The missing eye, the tight line of his mouth—I want him to look concerned. Annoyed, even. Anything. But he just looks at me, and nothing on his face tells me what's behind it.
"She's tired." I nod toward Kestria. "The wound's pulling."
He looks at Kestria. She's leaning against a tree, trying very hard to look like she's leaning casually against a tree.
"I'm fine," she says.
"You're not fine." I set Nugget's basket down—she immediately hops out and starts pecking at the ground, completely unbothered by werewolf territory or the middle of the night or anything—and walk over to Kestria. "Let me see."
"Mel—"
".see."
She sighs but lifts her shirt. Bandage holding. Edges clean—good. No fresh blood—better. The skin around it is angry red, hot when I press my purple-stained fingers near the edge, but that's healing, not infection. Healing looks ugly before it looks better.
"You're fine." I pull the shirt back down. "Well. You're not fine. But you're not worse." Need to find more moonbright soon.
"You need to rest. Actually rest."
"We're close."
"How close?"
"An hour. Maybe less."
"Then we rest for fifteen minutes and you stop pretending this doesn't hurt." I dig through my pack for the waterskin. "Sit down. Drink this. Small sips."
"You're very bossy."
"It's a personality trait. I've accepted it. Sit."
She sits, slowly, back against the tree.
Keer stands nearby. Not sitting, not resting—just standing with his arms crossed, eye moving between the forest and us. The muscles in his forearms are taut, hands still but not relaxed.
Does he ever just... stop? Just stand somewhere without looking for the next threat?
"You can sit too."
He shifts his weight. One step to the left, putting himself between us and the downhill slope where the wind's coming through the trees. The cold draft that's been hitting the back of my neck stops.
I check Kestria's bandage again. Already checked. Hands need something to do.
"So I'm about to walk into a place with thirty werewolves who don't know me." I pull the dried herbs from my pack and start sorting them. "What happens?"
"Keer's bringing you in. That matters."
"Why?"
"He's the Alpha, Mel."
"Yeah, but what does that actually mean? In practice."
"It means when he speaks, everyone stops. It means he's held this pack together for years and nobody has successfully challenged him. It means when we walk in there with you, every single person in that clearing is going to look at him first. And whatever he says about you, that's what goes."
"That's—" I stare at him. "Him. The man wearing my tunic."
Kestria's mouth trembles. "Don't."
"The tunic that barely fits. The one with the little flowers I embroidered on the hem—"
"Stop—"
"The Alpha of thirty werewolves is currently wearing a tunic with embroidered daisies—"
Kestria claps a hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking, eyes streaming. "I hate you," she wheezes. "My ribs—"
"Sorry. Sorry." I'm not sorry. "Fifteen minutes. Rest."
Nugget has found something in the dirt and she's scratching at it, head bobbing, pink feathers ridiculous against the ferns. At least one of us is having a good time.
I lean against the tree next to Kestria and pull Nugget's basket closer, brushing dirt off the handle. My back aches. Everything aches.
I pick at a loose thread on the basket strap. Wind it around my finger. Unwind it. Wind it again.
"Are you okay?" Kestria asks.
"I'm not the one who got stabbed."
"That's not what I asked."
Tired, hungry, sore, homeless, walking into a place where thirty werewolves might want me dead.
My moonbright is almost gone, and I have no idea if they'll even let me set up a workspace wherever we're going.
And I need a workspace. Because the paste doesn't make itself and Kestria needs another application in six hours and I haven't—
"Ask me once I've slept and eaten actual food. And once you've stopped almost dying."
"I'm not almost dying."
"You got stabbed with a poisoned sword yesterday. That is firmly in the almost-dying category."
"It's more of a 'had a rough day' category."
"Had a rough—Kestria, your wound was turning gray."
"Only a little gray."
I stare at her. She grins at me, tired and pale and infuriating.
"I'm glad you're alive." I bump my shoulder against hers. "Even though you're terrible."
"I'm glad you're here," she says. "Even though you're loud."
"I'm not loud. I have a carrying voice. There's a difference."
"There really isn't."
"Are any of them going to know me? At the den."
"Some of them have seen you before. The ones you treated."
"As wolves. Not as a person walking into their home carrying a chicken."
"There's Rhen. You treated him years ago. He'll vouch for you."
"One person."
"One's enough to start." She leans her head back against the bark. "You'll be fine."
"You don't know that."
"I know you." She touches my arm, quick and warm. "You'll be fine."
Keer comes back. I didn't notice him leave—he was just there and now he's walking out of the trees, and someone that large has no business moving that quietly.
He looks at Kestria. Looks at me. Doesn't ask if she can walk—just waits.
His gaze goes to Kestria's hand at her side, how she braces before standing.
He doesn't reach for her. But he's ready to.
I help her up. She's steadier—the rest helped—but still careful, still guarded.
Nugget is investigating a beetle. I scoop her up before she can eat it—no idea if forest beetles are poisonous to chickens and I am not finding out tonight—and settle her back into the basket. She protests, loud and indignant.
"You're fine," I tell her. "We're almost there. You can eat bugs I've personally verified as non-lethal."
She doesn't believe me.
The forest gets darker. Denser. Trees pressing together with their branches woven overhead until there's no sky at all.
More movement now. More rustling in the undergrowth, more life in the branches above us.
I tighten my grip on the basket and keep my eyes on the back of Keer's head because that's easier than thinking about what's in the bushes.
"You know, most people make small talk on long walks." I catch a branch before it swings back into Kestria. "Weather. Favorite food. Whether they prefer their deer raw or lightly mauled."
Nothing. But his pace is different now. Somehow I'm not falling behind anymore.
"I'll take that as 'lightly mauled.'"
And ahead—voices. Faint but definite.
"Almost there." Kestria's hand finds my elbow.
"What do I do? When we walk in. Do I bow? Is there a protocol? Do I present myself to the council of wolves or—"
"Just be yourself."
"That's the worst advice you've ever given me."
I don't argue. My boots find the path and I keep walking.
Keer stops at the top of a rise and waits for us.
I step up beside him and the heat of him hits me first—even in the cool dawn air—and then pine and sweat, and I'm standing too close, close enough to see the pulse in his throat, the dark hair at his collar—
Bandage check. Kestria's due for another paste application in—four hours? Five? I need to figure out where to set up when we get there. Need a flat surface, clean water, somewhere to store the jars. And I need to find out if there's any moonbright growing near—
I look down.
Structures. Dozens of them scattered through a clearing in the trees. Smoke rising from fires, thin and blue in the early light. People—human-shaped, moving between buildings, talking, working. The first real color after hours of darkness and forest. More than thirty.
And every single one of them has stopped.
Every single one of them is staring at us.
At me.
At the small white-haired human woman carrying a pink chicken into their home.
"Well." I settle Nugget on my other hip. "This is going to be interesting."
Nugget fluffs her feathers, unimpressed.
That makes one of us.