Chapter 6
We descend.
The staring doesn't stop. If anything, it gets worse—more faces appearing from doorways, from behind structures, from whatever they were doing before the human with the pink chicken walked into their home.
Are those all werewolves?
Of course they're all werewolves.
What else would they be?
Normal people don't live in the middle of nowhere surrounded by trees so wide two people couldn't link arms around them. That one's missing a finger. That one has a burn scar across her neck.
How do werewolves even get burn scars? Do they heal from fire differently than—right.
Not the time.
Nugget's basket needs adjusting, the handle's digging into my wrist, and I shift her to the other side while a gray wolf trots past us.
Actual wolf.
Not person-shaped.
It glances at me with amber eyes before disappearing between two structures. Human one second, wolf the next. Apparently normal here.
There's too much happening.
"That's a wolf," I whisper to Kestria. "Walking around. Like a dog."
"Mel, don't call them dogs."
"I didn't call them a dog. I said like a dog."
"Still don't."
"Noted. Is it someone? Like, is that a person right now, or—"
"It's complicated."
"Everything about you people is complicated."
Nugget shifts in the basket. Pink and unbothered.
There's a smear of mud on her beak from earlier—I pick at it with my thumbnail while we walk, scraping at the dried edge.
Half comes off. The rest is caked. I'll need water for that.
Where's the water here? Stream, Kestria said. How far? Should've asked before we—
"Stay close," Kestria murmurs beside me.
"Wasn't planning on wandering off."
"I know. Just—stay close."
"You keep saying that. Is someone going to jump out and eat me?"
"No."
"That was too fast. You didn't even think about it."
"Mel."
"I'm just saying, a little hesitation would've been more convincing."
The structures are rougher than I expected. Built for function, nothing fancy. Wood and stone. Smoke rising from central fires—three of them, no, four, the fourth one's almost out, someone should tend that before it dies completely.
Hanging racks with meat drying. Venison, probably. Maybe elk. Someone was in the middle of skinning a rabbit when we arrived—good size, clean kill—and they've stopped now, knife in hand, watching us pass.
Watching me.
The knife needs sharpening. I can tell from here by the way they were sawing instead of slicing.
"That man's going to ruin the pelt," I mutter to Kestria. "Someone should tell him."
"Maybe not your first introduction."
"I'm just saying. You can see it from here. The angle's wrong too—he's cutting against the grain. You start at the hind legs and work up, not—"
"Mel."
"Fine. But it's painful to watch."
Nugget clucks. One sharp note. Everyone within ten feet turns to look at the basket.
"Shh." I tuck her wing back in. "You're not helping."
That one's hostile, arms crossed, jaw tight. That one's curious, leaning forward, no visible weapons. That one—a woman with a baby on her hip—oh my gosh, she's so cute, look at those chubby thighs—pulls the child tighter against her, stepping back into her doorway. Not hostile. Scared. Of me.
A young man near the drying racks elbows the boy next to him, muttering.
An older woman is sitting on a stump near the far fire, gray-haired, weathered, watching me with eyes that don't blink.
She doesn't move. Doesn't react. Just watches—sharp and still and taking everything in.
She's been doing this a long time, whatever this is.
"Who's the woman on the stump?" I keep my voice low—not that it matters with their hearing.
"Which—" Kestria follows my gaze. "Orel."
"She looks like she's deciding whether to let me live."
"She looks like that about everyone."
"That's not comforting."
"Wasn't trying to be."
Then I see him.
A man steps forward from the crowd.
I don't recognize him at first. Lean. Sun-dark. Shirt hanging loose, and there's a scar across his shoulder where the fabric slips, and—
Oh.
Oh.
I stitched that.
I was twelve. He was bleeding in a ditch, leg caught under a branch, barely conscious, and I didn't know what I was doing but he was going to die if nobody did something and nobody was going to.
So I did. Thread boiled three times because once didn't seem like enough.
Hands shaking the whole time. I remember the shaking.
He was the first wolf I ever treated.
I didn't know he was anything else.
He's walking. Toward me. Into the open space between me and everyone else, and everything goes quiet, and everyone is looking, and I'm holding a pink chicken.
"Melori."
"I—" My voice climbs. "I didn't know your name."
"Rhen."
"Rhen." My fingers are picking at dried mud on Nugget's feathers because they need something to do and I can't stop them. "You look—better. Than the ditch. Which I realize is not saying much, because the ditch was—the ditch was a low point for both of us, honestly."
"I'd hope so."
"The scar healed—mostly okay, I can see from here the lower edge is a little uneven, but the tissue took, and considering I was twelve and—"
"Melori."
"Sorry. I'm—sorry."
He turns. Looks at the crowd behind him. At the hostile faces and the wary ones and the scared woman in the doorway. When he speaks again, his voice carries.
"Your stitches were terrible."
I choke out a laugh. "They were not. They held."
"Barely."
"You're alive."
"By accident."
"You're being dramatic."
"You were twelve."
"I was a thorough twelve-year-old."
The woman with the baby loosened her grip.
Just a little. Not much. But the whispers around me have shifted—still wary, not as sharp. Someone actually nodded at me. One person. It's something.
The hostile ones are easier to spot.
A big man near the back. Dark hair, permanent scowl, built like he could snap me in half and not think about it afterward.
He's staring at me with a hatred that didn't start today.
I just gave it a place to go. Another woman, arms crossed, jaw tight, fresh scratch across her cheek.
A cluster of younger ones whispering to each other, eyes flicking between me and—
Keer.
He's stopped walking. We've reached the central area—a cleared space with benches, fire pits, structures arranged around it in a rough circle.
The biggest fire pit has a cooking setup I don't recognize, some kind of spit mechanism.
Clever. The rotation joint—is that a socket hinge?
I should look at that later. Figure out the counterweight system, because if the spit's balanced wrong the meat cooks unevenly and you end up with one side charred and the other—three wolf pups are wrestling near the far edge, tumbling over each other, too young to care about the human invasion.
One of them yips and the others pile on.
Keer's standing in the middle of it all.
And I haven't really looked at him. Not since we got here.
Too tired, too flustered, too focused on not dying and keeping Kestria from dying and carrying Nugget and my bag is heavy and my wrist hurts from the basket and I should check Kestria's bandage when we stop because she's been holding her side for the last ten minutes and won't admit it—
I look at him.
He's massive. I knew he was massive. But seeing him surrounded by his own people is different—he's bigger than most of them, easily. Shoulders wider. Neck thicker. Black hair loose, gray threading through it at the temples—I forgot about that, how did I forget about that—
The scars are worse in daylight. Across his arms, disappearing under the too-small tunic—everywhere. The missing eye. The torn ear.
The tunic is too small. I noticed that before, definitely noticed that before, I noticed it for hours during the walk while the seam under his arm threatened to quit. But now I'm noticing it again—straining across those shoulders, riding up his thighs—
Don't look at his thighs.
I look at his thighs.
There's a hole near the hem. Small. I could fix that. I have a needle in my bag and thread—no, the thread's in the bottom under the herbs, I'd have to unpack everything, but if I had the thread I could reinforce the whole hem because that fabric's on its last legs and one more branch is going to—
Why am I planning alterations to his clothing right now.
Because the alternative is thinking about what's underneath the clothing and my brain WILL NOT be doing that.
Someone near me inhales. Sharp. Another one a second later. Heads are turning—not toward Keer anymore. Toward me. The woman with the scratch on her cheek wrinkles her nose. The scowling man's face somehow gets worse.
Kestria makes a choked sound beside me.
"Mel." Her voice is barely there. "They can—we can—"
"What?"
"Smell."
"Smell what?" I glance down at myself. "Did I step in something? Is it the chicken? Nugget's clean, I bathed her last week—"
"No, not—" Kestria's face is red. Actually red. "We can smell when someone's—when your body is—"
"When my body is what? Sweaty? I've been walking for hours, of course I'm—"
"Aroused." The word comes out choked. "We can smell arousal."
What.
"What?"
"Your scent changes when you're attracted to someone. We can all smell it. Everyone here can smell it."
Oh.
Fuck.
Fuckidy fuck.
Just my luck.
"That's not—I wasn't—" I grip the basket handle so hard my knuckles go white. "I was thinking about paste ratios."
"Your body wasn't."
"My body is a liar. My body is a lying traitor and it doesn't speak for me."
"Unfortunately it kind of does. Here."
My face goes hot.
Half the crowd is looking at me. And it's not the fact that I'm aroused that's registering on their faces—it's who.
The scowling man looks like he's been personally insulted.
The woman near the front goes still and stares.
Two of the younger ones exchange a look, eyes wide.
The woman with the baby turns her head away fast, like she walked in on something.