Chapter 7 #2
"He gave me the cooking area. The ridge path." I'm counting on my fingers. "I gave him the cache. The eastern border. The forge. And asking permission for the rest."
Nugget finds something in the crack and eats it.
"That's a good deal. That's a fair deal. He gets authority over the things that matter to him and I get—" I wave my hand at the dwelling. "Everything I actually need."
She blinks at me.
"Stop looking at me like that."
She keeps looking.
"I'm talking about the deal, Nugget. The deal was good. The deal is what matters. Not the—not the other—the deal."
I cook through the afternoon.
Bigger pots this time—the hunt from yesterday left two good-sized rabbits and a haunch of something larger, venison maybe.
I've got dried sage in my bag and wild garlic from the ridge path.
The stew takes time, which is fine, because time is what I have while the clearing fills up with voices and the smell of cooking pulls people closer.
More than breakfast. Word spread, or stomachs did.
Fourteen bowls. Fifteen. Rhen is back on his stump.
Dara takes hers without comment. Kestria eats sitting cross-legged near the fire, color better than this morning—whatever the tonic's doing, it's doing it fast. She's talking to a woman I don't know yet.
Two young wolves hover at the edge of the group—not eating, not leaving. Watching.
"There's enough," I tell them.
They look at each other. One steps forward. The other follows.
Seventeen.
I'm scraping the bottom of the pot, checking if there's enough for the ones who haven't come yet—there isn't, I'll need to stretch the grain tomorrow, maybe start the porridge earlier—when I see him.
Not at the fire. Not near the food. At the far edge of the clearing, where the trees start and the last dwelling sits apart from the others. Keer. On the ground.
With a child.
The kid is maybe eight, nine. Sitting in the dirt with his knees pulled up and his face buried in them. Shaking hard enough I can see it from here.
Keer is beside him. Not touching. Not talking. Just sitting. His back against the wall of the dwelling, one knee drawn up, hands loose at his sides. Close enough that the kid could reach for him. Far enough that there's no pressure to.
I stop stirring.
The boy's shoulders heave. A ragged sound carries across the clearing—not a word. Just air. One of the older women near the fire glances over. Looks away. Deliberate. Giving them space.
Keer doesn't move.
He doesn't lean in. Doesn't put a hand on the kid's back. Doesn't say whatever Alpha thing an Alpha is supposed to say to make it better.
I'm standing at the fire with a ladle in my hand and the bottom of the pot is burning. He's just sitting there.
The boy's breathing changes. Still ragged. But the spaces between the sobs are getting longer. He unfolds, just a fraction. His head lifts. He looks at Keer.
Keer says something. Low. I can't hear it. Two words, maybe three.
My hand tightens on the ladle.
The kid nods. Wipes his face with the back of his hand. Gets up. Walks toward the central fire. Slow, embarrassed, but walking.
Keer stays.
He doesn't watch the kid go. Just stays sitting, back against the wall, looking at the trees. Alone.
"You're burning the stew."
I jerk back. Dara, beside me.
"What? No I'm—" I look at the pot. "Okay. Yes. That's burning."
I pull it off the heat. Scrape the bottom. Salvageable. Mostly.
"The kid. What happened?"
Dara follows my gaze. "Soren. He's nine. Shifts are bad for him."
"Bad how?"
"Painful. His body fights it. Happens with some of the young ones." She takes the ladle from me and starts transferring what's left into a serving bowl. "Tomorrow's the new moon. He knows what's coming."
"And Keer—"
"Sits with him. Before every new moon. Doesn't say much. Just sits."
My throat goes tight. "Does anyone else know that?"
"The pack knows. Nobody talks about it." She sets the empty pot aside. "He'd hate it if they did."
She walks away.
Every new moon. He does this every new moon. Just—sits there. Doesn't fix it. The Alpha sits in the dirt with a scared kid and doesn't—
I look at the empty ladle in my hand. The pot is burned. I should be scraping the pot. I should—
Every new moon.
Keer is at the edge of the clearing. He hasn't moved.
He didn't eat.
This morning he didn't eat. He stood by the big structure and watched me cook and didn't come near the fire.
And now—seventeen bowls and he's not one of them.
The Alpha of this pack just gave his entire evening to a kid who was scared of the moon, and nobody brought him food, and he's sitting alone against a wall.
I look at the fire. The last of the haunch is still on the spit.
Well, someone has to.
I pull the best cut. The piece I was saving for stock—thick, fatty at the edge—falls apart when it's cooked right. I set it in the last clean pan with wild garlic and sage and a little rendered fat and hold it over the coals.
"What are you doing?" Kestria, at my elbow.
"Cooking."
"You just finished cooking."
"This is different cooking."
She looks at the meat. At the clearing edge where Keer is sitting alone. Back at me.
"Mel."
"Don't."
"You're cooking for Keer"
"I'm cooking for someone who didn't eat. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Yes. One is personal and the other is—practical. This is practical. People need to eat. He's a person. Therefore."
"Therefore."
"Shut up."
"I didn't say anything."
"Your face said plenty."
"My face is a neutral instrument of—"
"Your face is judging me and I'd like it to stop."
She grins. I hate her grin. I love her grin.
I turn the meat over because the sear on the bottom is perfect and the garlic is crisping at the edges and the sage smell is cutting through the smoke and this is going to be really good, actually.
The sear is right. The garlic is right. And I'm putting it on a plate and walking it across the clearing to—
The garlic. Focus on the garlic.
Kestria drifts away. The meat finishes. I put it on a clean wooden plate—where's a knife, he'll need a knife—find one, add it to the plate. The wild garlic has gone golden. The sage is dark, fragrant, warm.
I pick up the plate and walk across the clearing.
Nobody's watching. Everybody is watching. One of those. Packed dirt under my boots, warm plate in my hands, and the clearing is way bigger than it was thirty seconds ago. By the time I reach the edge, my pulse is loud in my neck.
He sees me coming.
"You didn't eat."
His eye moves from my face to the plate. Back to my face.
"That's not—"
"If you say 'not my responsibility' I'm going to stand here until you take this plate and it's going to be very awkward for both of us."
He looks at me for a long moment.
"I don't doubt it."
Then he takes the plate.
I sit down. Not beside him—a few feet away, against the same wall, close enough to talk without raising my voice. The wood is rough through my shirt. The ground is cold.
He turns the plate.
"You seasoned this."
"I season everything. That's what herbs are for."
"With what?"
"Wild garlic. Sage. A little fat for the sear." I pull my knees up. "The garlic was growing on the ridge path, by the way. Just sitting there. Has nobody picked it?"
"No."
"There's enough for weeks. I'll gather more tomorrow. Also there's wood sorrel by the stream that would make a decent sauce if I had vinegar, which I don't, so that's a project for later, and the—" I stop. "Eat."
He cuts a piece. Puts it in his mouth. Chews.
I should look at the trees.
Swallows.
I'm going to look at the trees. In a second.
"Good?" I ask.
"Yes."
"How good? Scale of one to ten. One being raw meat, which is apparently the standard around here. Ten being—I don't know, food that's been prepared with any thought at all."
He cuts another piece. "It's good."
"That's not a number."
"I don't rank food."
"Everyone ranks food. You just ranked it. You said 'good.' That's at least a seven."
A sound in his throat—not quite a laugh, not quite anything, really.
We sit. It should be uncomfortable but it's not, which is maybe worse, because uncomfortable I can handle.
"The boy." I lean back against the wall. "Soren."
His hand pauses.
"Do you do that every month?"
"He needs it."
"That's not what I asked."
He doesn't answer.
"How long has he been struggling with shifts?"
"Since his first. A year ago."
"That's a long time to be scared of the moon."
"He's not scared." The knife scrapes the plate. "His body fights the change. The bones don't—" He stops and sets the knife down. "It hurts him more than it should."
My hands are in my lap. They want to be doing something—sorting, stacking, rolling. I find a stick near my boot and start stripping bark.
"And you sit with him."
"Someone has to."
I look at him. "That's my line."
His eye meets mine and there's something in it that wasn't there a minute ago, something amused, and I watch him just sit with the fact that he stole my words.
"I know," he says.
"You know."
I stare at him. "Keer. Did you just—are you teasing me right now? Because that is what that felt like and I need to know if I'm having a stroke or if the Alpha of this pack just made a joke at my expense, and I honestly don't know which would be more alarming."
"Both can be true."
"That is NOT a comforting answer."
He cuts another piece of meat, calm as anything, like he hasn't just rearranged my entire understanding of what this man is capable of in polite conversation.
"You just did it AGAIN," I say. "That was another one. That was a follow-up joke. Who are you."
"Someone who enjoys his dinner."
"That is a NON-ANSWER."
"It's accurate."