Chapter 20 #2
"I let it go. It circled back and bit me a seventh time. Which I almost respected. Shrews have a metabolic rate so high they'll starve to death in hours if they stop eating—their entire existence is rage and hunger and the absolute refusal to hold still, which honestly—"
"You stopped."
I look down. My hand's frozen above the next flower.
"Right. Flowers."
I pick the flower.
"Why are you doing this?" It’s out before I mean it to be.
His hands don't stop. Neither do mine.
"You treated half my pack."
"That's my job."
"You saved my sister."
"Also my job."
"You built things. Taught people. Fed them." His voice is quiet. "You brought chickens."
My mouth curves. "The chickens were a practical decision."
"You named the rooster after me."
"The resemblance is uncanny."
He smiles. Small. Real. "You didn't have to do any of it."
"Someone had to."
"You chose to. That's different."
I focus on the flower in my hand. Twist. Drop. Reach.
"Others should learn to make the paste." I pick another. "I need to teach them. Properly. Not just the basics I started with Dara."
"Why?"
"Because if something happens to me, the knowledge dies with me." I keep picking. Keep my voice level. "The paste is the only thing standing between your pack and a weapon designed to kill them. I told Kestria—it's me. Right now, it's just me. That just doesn’t feel right, you know?"
"You'll be here."
"You don't know that."
"Melori—"
"Keer. A human woman living with wolves during a war between humans and wolves."
He’s quiet.
"I can't promise you'll be safe. No."
"Then let me make sure the knowledge survives even if I don't."
I reach for the next stem. After a moment, he does too. Our hands move in the same rhythm. Mine small and quick. His slow and careful.
The baskets are full by the time the sun starts dipping.
My knees ache from kneeling. My back screams when I stand.
His hands match mine. Same stain to the wrist.
"Take it all."
"That's a lot of weight."
"I'm carrying you." His eye drops to the baskets. "The baskets don't matter."
No reason for my pulse to react. This is logistics. Weight distribution. Very reasonable.
He reaches for his shirt buttons.
My throat tightens. My hands go still.
I already know what's under that shirt. I know where every scar is. Not the seeing. The already-knowing.
"I'll just—count petals from this angle." I turn.
"You've seen me shift." I hear the smile in his voice.
"And every time the petals get more fascinating."
"Mel—"
"Shh. I'm counting."
Behind me—air through his nose. Close enough to a laugh. The late sun catches the field behind us, all that blue-white stretching ridge to ridge, and the wind carries the smell of crushed petals and warm earth.
Then the rustle of fabric. Movement behind me. His hand appears over my shoulder, clothes folded against his palm.
I take them, my head starting to turn—nope—stuff them into the basket on top of the moonbright.
Bones cracking.
A nose against my hand.
I turn around and he's already lowered. Watching me.
The return is faster. Or it feels faster. My body already knows the rhythm, hips rolling with his stride without deciding to, and every shift of his muscles moves through me with nothing in the way. No clenching. No fighting. Just his body and mine and the heat building slow between them.
I press my forehead against the back of his neck and let my eyes close. His heartbeat through the fur. Earth and forest filling my lungs.
Evening light filters through the canopy when we reach the territory. He stops at the tree line, lowers himself, and I slide off. My legs hold this time. Barely.
Bones cracking.
The rustle of him standing. Movement behind me, close.
I dig through the basket, find his clothes, hold them up over my shoulder. Wave them in the general direction of his existence.
Nothing.
I wave again. Higher.
"Take them."
A pause. Then his hand. Fingers brushing mine as he takes the bundle.
I yank my hand back into the basket and rearrange flowers that don't need rearranging.
Pack members have noticed. Stares. Murmuring. The Alpha and the human, returning together, her on his back, smelling of moonbright and forest.
The animal fence has a new hole.
Eyes forward. Don't look at Kestria, whose grin is visible from across the clearing even without direct eye contact.
I head straight for my work area, baskets heavy on my back, chin held high.
I don't turn around.
The teaching session draws a crowd.
Dara. Henna. Kor—a quiet wolf who's been hovering at the edges of my work area for weeks. Three wolves ready to learn everything I know about keeping their pack alive.
"The water preparation is the foundation." I set the bowl in front of them. "Everything starts here."
"How do you tell the difference of potency in the field?"
"Color and smell. Deep color, strong smell—those are your potent flowers. Pale and odorless, useless. Leave them."
"Useless feels harsh," Henna says.
"Plants don't have feelings. Crush gentler, Dara—you want to release the oils, not murder them. Circular motion. Slow."
"What about storage?" Kor asks.
"Cool and dark. Sealed jars—clean jars. Any contamination and it goes rancid within a week. You'll know because the smell goes wrong and the color turns muddy." I take over the bowl. "See how this catches the light? That sheen. That's what you want."
"What if it's gritty?"
"More water. You can always add. Much harder to take away."
They practice. Dara's wrist angle is wrong—I adjust it physically, move her hand, show her. Henna's crush is too fast. Kor's water measurement is off.
I correct everything.
Show everything.
My hands move automatically while my mouth runs through every shortcut, every mistake I've made so they don't have to.
"What about—" Dara hesitates. "Could they make it airborne? Like, instead of dipping arrows. If they ground the petals into powder, threw it as a cloud. Could it be inhaled?"
My hands stop.
I look at her.
She looks back. Bright-eyed. Still holding the pestle.
"Inhaled."
"Yeah."
"I don't—" My brain does a thing. A stuttering thing.
"I haven't thought about that. I've never seen it.
Topical, ingested, blood contact—those I know.
Those I've treated. But airborne—" I'm still staring at her.
Mortar forgotten. "If you breathed it in, the paste couldn't reach the tissue.
Can't smear paste on the inside of someone's lungs.
The dilution would have to be different.
The delivery would have to be different.
You'd have to—" Hands moving again, but not on the paste.
Air in front of me. Gesturing at nothing.
"You'd have to get the compound INTO the lungs somehow, not just at the surface, and the ratio would change because gut absorption and lung absorption aren't the same speed, and the alveoli are—where is this coming from, Dara? "
"There's been rumors."
"What rumors?"
"From the runners. Something one overheard the humans say. About powder. About what they were testing."
"Testing."
"That's the word that got passed."
I'm staring at her.
"Why am I just hearing about this now?"
"You're hearing about it now."
"Dara."
"I'm telling you now, Mel."
I exhale. Slowly. She's right.
"Okay." Hands back to the cloth. Wiping.
"Okay. I have to think about this. I have to actually think about this.
Not now—I can't lose the paste batch—but tonight.
Tomorrow. I need to—" My brain is already three steps ahead.
"If they did weaponize it that way, the treatment would have to be something I can get into the lungs.
Something inhaled to counter something inhaled—"
"Mel."
"What."
"The paste."
I look down. The petals are over-crushed. Going to be too thin.
"Shit." I scrape the mortar out. "Start over. And next time the runners say something useful, you tell me before you let me grind petals for an hour."
"Noted."