I just had two of the biggest orgasms of my life. So we're working with what we've got, vocabulary-wise." A laugh tears out of me. Real. Helpless. "There he is." She is smiling. Tired. Bright. "I knew he was in there —I mean, you ARE still in there, you're still in me, but you know what I—" "Mel." "You know what I mean." A pause. Her face goes still. "Wait." "Uh-oh." "Wait wait wait." I release a breath. "What?" "Keer. Why is the lock a couple hours?" "Uh, well...."
"Why specifically. Why that long." "Mel." "Oh my GOD. Oh my GOD. Keer. KEER. This is a baby lock, isn't it. This is for babies. Your body is currently—right now—it's actively trying to—" "Mel." "OH MY GOD." "Mel, breathe—" "Your body is BABY-LOCKING me. Right now. As we speak. KEER." "Mel—" "Is it working? Is there a baby happening right now? Are you currently—" "I don't know." "YOU DON'T KNOW?" "It's not certain. It's not every time. It's—the wolf increases the chance. That's what the lock does. Holds it. But it doesn't guarantee." "It HOLDS IT?" "Melori." "Keer, you are very calmly explaining to me that your body has me PINNED for OPTIMAL—" "Mel, I need you to breathe." "I AM BREATHING." "Slower." She breathes. Slower. Stares at me. "Okay. Okay okay okay. Let me think about this. Let me—I am thinking. Out loud. Don't interrupt." "I won't." "Okay. So. Possibility one—nothing happens. We had sex, your body did its wolf thing, no baby, life continues, I have a tooth necklace and a scar and a wolf-husband and that's that. Fine. Manageable." "Okay—." "I said don't interrupt." "You were just talking. I was confirming." "Don't." "Okay." "Possibility two. There IS a baby. Currently. As we speak. Your wolf has efficiently—we don't need to revisit that part—" "Okay." "—and I am, hypothetically, with child. Right now. In which case." A pause. "In which case." She's quiet. I don’t dare interrupt this. "In which case it's a small wolf-baby. Half wolf. Yours and mine. With your eye and my hands and probably a TERRIBLE temper—" "Mel."
"—and an extremely opinionated mother and a father who pulls his own teeth out for people, which is honestly excellent stock, that is strong stock, I would absolutely choose that stock—" Her voice catches. "—and I am—I am crying. Why am I crying. I didn't plan to cry." "Mel." "OH MY GOD." "What." "Keer. Keer. It's the hormones. The baby hormones. It's STARTED. I'm already—" "Mel. We just had sex. It wouldn't be that quick." "YOU DON'T KNOW THAT." "Mel." "—the body knows, Keer, the body KNOWS—" "Mel." "—I'm nesting, I'm going to start nesting, I'm going to want pickles, oh my GOD I'm going to want pickles—" "Mel." "WHAT." "You're crying because you mean it. Not hormones." She stops. Stares at me. "Oh." "Yeah." "Oh. That's—oh." A long beat. Her hand comes up. Wipes her face. Comes away wet. "That's worse, actually." "Worse?" "Worse than hormones. Hormones are explainable. Meaning it is —" She sniffs. "I would like a baby." Quiet. Into my skin. Her face going into my throat. "If there's one. I would like that." "Yeah." A beat. Then her head lifts. "Wait. Do you? I just—I just decided that out loud for both of us. Sorry. Do you want a baby, Keer?" Her eyes on mine. "Yes." "Yeah?" "Yeah, Mel." She settles back into me. Heavy. Quiet. A pup. Hers. Mine.
"The knot will release in—" "WAIT." I wait. "Keer. You bit me." She pushes up on one elbow. The blood on her shoulder is drying. "You bit me, and—nope. We are not done here." "... what." "With the claiming. I'm not done with the claiming." She lifts her chin. "You did the wolf-thing. Cosmic receipt. Mark on my shoulder for life." She lifts her hand. Shows me her bloody fingers. "Do I get to bite you?" I stare at her. "What. It seems fair. You bit me, I bite you, balanced ledger. Otherwise this is a one-sided wolf-marriage and that doesn't seem—" "Yes." She stops. "Yes?" "Yes, Mel. You can bite me." Her face lights up. Slow. Delighted. "Excellent. Excellent. Where. I'm picking. Don't move." "I literally cannot move, Mel." "Right. Forgot. Stuck. Okay. Hold still." She pushes up. Gentle. I shift my weight to hold her against me, carefully, mindful of the place where we are still joined. She braces her hand on my chest. Considers me. "Shoulder. Symmetry." She leans in. Sets her teeth against my shoulder. Bites down. Nothing happens. She bites harder. Nothing. She pulls back. Looks at the spot. Looks at me. Looks at the spot again. "Why is your skin like leather?" "Wolf." "I am going to murder this entire species. Why is everything about you EXTRA. You run hot, you bite hard, you’re HUGE, your skin is armor, what is even—" "Try again." "Don't condescend." She tries again. Goes for my pec this time. Bites hard. Her whole face screwing up with effort. Nothing.
"You don't even feel that. Do you?" Nope, not at all. "I feel it." "You do not. You are LAUGHING. Keer. Are you laughing?" I am laughing. Quiet. Helpless. My chest shaking under her teeth. "You're LAUGHING AT ME." "No." "You ARE." "You're delightful." "I am trying to bond you, Keer, this is supposed to be a moment, and your skin is mocking me—" She tries one more time. Throws her whole jaw into it. Her teeth slip off my skin entirely and she nearly fac eplants into my collarbone. "OH FOR—" She pulls back. Wipes her mouth. Glares at me. Eyes wet from frustration, hair wild, completely magnificent. "This is so humiliating. I have human teeth. I have HUMAN TEETH, Keer. This is not equipment-appropriate—" "Mel." "What." "Wait." I lift one hand. Cover my mouth. Close my eye for a beat. Reach for the half-shift—just the jaw, just the teeth, a small surge through my face. Bone moves. Canines lengthen. I feel the grind of one against the others, the one I'm choosing. She is staring. "What are you—Keer—what is your FACE doing—" I work the canine loose with my tongue. Wolf strength behind it. The root tears free with a sharp crack of pain that I let myself feel and don't react to. Then the half-shift releases. My jaw resettles. Human again. Tooth in my mouth, bloody at the root. I spit it into my palm. Hold it out to her. "Keer." "Take it." "Keer that is your—" "I know." "You just pulled out your tooth." "I know." "With your face. By yourself. With NO ANESTHETIC—" She takes it. Slow. Reverent. Small wet thing in her hand—four inches, sharp, white at the tip, dark red at the root. Heavy. Solid. Her eyes are very wet.
"Keer. I am extremely turned on right now." A laugh comes out of me. "STOP THAT." "What." "You laughing makes your whole self vibrate and you are very large, Keer, and I cannot handle that right now. I am holding your tooth, Keer." "Mel." "I am holding part of you." "Use it. The tip is sharp enough. Open my skin with it." “Open?—oh right. I was trying to bite you.” Her face scrunches, focusing. She lifts the tooth. Holds it carefully. Sets the point against the skin of my shoulder, above where she was trying. Her hand is shaking. "I don't want to hurt you." "You won't." "I might." "Mel." "What." "I just bit through your shoulder and locked us together for hours. I think we are well past worrying about tooth-cuts." A laugh es capes out of her, breathless. She presses the tooth in. It opens my skin clean. Sharp. Wolf-tooth, made for this. Blood wells up immediately. She drops the tooth onto the pallet. Leans in. Sets her mouth over the cut. Bites down with her human teeth this time, where the skin is already broken, and takes my blood into her mouth. The wolf in my chest goes still all over again. Different stillness. Reciprocal. Bonded back. She holds it. Then pulls back. Mouth red. Eyes red. Eyes alive. "Hi." "Hi." "I just had your blood." "You did." "Is that going to do something. Is there a wolf-receipt for me too— OH am I going to turn into a wolf now?" "It binds you to the bond. The wolf knows you now. You'll feel me. Sometimes. Distance. Mood. It's faint for humans. But it's there."
"Oh. That's. Wow. Okay. I just got a wolf-husband and a wolf- thread at the same time." "A what." "A thread. A line between us. Wolf-thread." "Stop talking." "Make me." I kiss her. Hard. Bloody mouth against bloody mouth. The tang of both of us mixed, copper and salt and the bite of it. When I pull back her face is wet. Tear-streaked. She is smiling. "Keer." "Yes." "I'm ke eping the tooth." "Good." "I'm going to make it into something." "Expected nothing less." "Everyone is going to know." "Yes." "Are you sure about this? About me. Like. Really sure. Because I am extremely going to be wearing your tooth around like a banner and there's no quiet version of that—" "Melori." "What." "I bit through your shoulder, gave you my blood, pulled out my own tooth and handed it to you, and locked us together for hours. I'm sure." "Right. Yeah. The receipts are extensive." "The receipts are extensive." She settles back down against me. Careful—we are still joined, I am still inside her, my shoulder is still slow-bleeding, hers is too. Her cheek finds my chest. Her hand curls over the cut on my shoulder, palm flat. Holding it. Holding me. Quiet. Long quiet. "Keer?" "Mm." "Is this what people mean when they say home." My throat closes. "Yeah, Mel." "Okay." Sle epy. Small. "Okay good."
Her breath evens out. Heavy against my chest. Thigh hooked over mine. Her hand on my shoulder, marking the spot. The tooth on the pallet beside us, dark with blood, waiting to become whatever she will make it. The pack is asle ep outside. The army is coming. The cottage is gone. Tomorrow there will be a hundred decisions to make and I will make all of them as the man who just claimed a human woman and locked himself to her by blood and bone and tooth, and I do not care. I am not afraid. I am not tired. I am awake in a way I have not been awake in a long time. Mine. Mine. Different word now. Different weight. The wolf knows. The man knows. She knows. I find her hair. Stroke it once. Rest my hand at the back of her neck, over the spot where her pulse is. Feel it beating slow against my palm. I do not sle ep for a long time. When I do, it is with her bite on my shoulder, my bite on hers, my body still locked inside hers, and my tooth on the pallet beside us, slow- drying in the lamp light. Mine. Sle ep takes me.
Chapter 22 Hands moving. Mortar rocking. The bite on my shoulder pulls when I lean too far forward. The tooth is on the corner of the worktable. Wrapped in a strip of leather. Two scraps of cord beside it, one knotted wrong and abandoned, one half-tied. I'd worked at it for an hour. Started the paste instead. The paste, my hands can do. "Mel." I don't look up. Crush. Scrape. Crush. "You've been at it since dawn." "Paste doesn't make itself." "Your cottage burned down yesterday." "I'm aware. I was there. I saw the ash. Very thorough burning. Whoever did it should be proud." "Mel." "I'm making paste, Kestria. The paste is more important than my feelings about a building." "Is that what we're calling ten years of your life? A building?" My pestle catches the crack in the mortar and skips. I scoop the petals back. "It was wood and stone. Wood burns. Stone doesn't. I k ept the stones." "You k ept a broken bowl." "The bowl survived. Iron and stone and stubbornness. That's what —" "What's this?" I look up. She's at the corner of the worktable. Reaching for the leather wrap. "Kestria—" "What's—" She picks it up. "—don't—" The leather falls open in her palm. The tooth rolls into view. White. Sharp. Dark red at the root. She lifts it to her nose. The casual sniff of someone double- checking a cured hide. Her face changes. "... why the fuck is Keer's tooth on your table." "Kestria." "This is Keer's tooth, Mel." "I know whose tooth it is." "This is a wolf tooth. From his mouth. Why is it here." "He was here last night."
"... okay?" She turns the tooth in her fingers. Squints at me. "Did you punch him? Like, really hard? Because I smell him everywhere, Mel, his scent is all over this dwelling, very pungent—" she sniffs again, closer to the tooth, "—wait. Too pungent. That's not just—Mel. Mel, what did you guys—" "WE HAD SEX." She freezes. "HE GAVE ME A SEX TOOTH." The tooth hits the table. She's already three st eps back, hand wiped down the front of her tunic like she can scrub it off. "OH—oh, oh no, oh no no no, Mel—" "Kestria—" "That is my brother's—" "I KNOW—" "You handed me my brother's sex tooth—" "I didn't hand it to you, you grabbed it—" "You let me PICK IT UP—" "I tried to stop you! I said don't! I literally said don't!" "You said don't like a normal don't, not a, don't, that's the tooth my brother gave me after we—" She makes a gesture. A bad gesture. Both hands. "—don't!" "Well now you know!" "NOW I KNOW." We stare at each other across the worktable. Her hand still hovering away from her body like the tooth-touch is going to crawl up her arm. I put my face in my hands. My hands smell like crushed moonbright. My face will too now. Wonderful. "... I'm so sorry," I say into my palms. "Mel." "I'm so sorry, Kestria, I should have—" "Mel." "—warned you, or moved it, or—" "Mel." "What." She's still standing three st eps back. But her hand is coming down. Slow. Her eyes are on me now, not the tooth. "He gave you a tooth." "... yeah." "He—" She stops. Her face does something. The wolf-sister underneath the horrified-friend doing math. "He pulled out his own tooth and gave it to you." "... yeah." "Mel." "I know." "Mel." "I know, Kestria." She breathes in. Slow. Her nostrils flare. I watch her process whatever she's pulling out of the air. "Mel."
"What." She breathes in again. Shorter. Sharper. "That's not just—" She stops. Tries again. "That's—there's blood. Under everything. Under yours, Mel. Old blood. Set blood. Why is there—" She stops. Her eyes drop to my shoulder. I watch her get there. "... no." "Kestria." "No, no, Mel, no—" She's standing up off the bench. "He didn't. Tell me he didn't." "Kestria—" "Show me your shoulder." "Kestria—" "Show me your shoulder, Mel." I tug my collar down. Her face goes still. The wrapping is clean. I did it myself in the dark. Kestria looks. Her mouth tightens. "It's set well." Her voice is careful. "It's de ep, Mel." "I know it's de ep." "Did he—" She stops. Tries again. "Did he ask? Before." "No. He didn't plan it." “I’m going to kill him—” I shrug my shirt back into place. "He said the wolf reached me before he did. But he would have." "He told you that?" "Yeah." She lets out a long breath. Looks at her hands. "Okay." "Okay?" "Okay." She picks up a handful of petals. Sorts—purple-edged in one pile, white in the other. "I'm processing. Out loud, mostly. Just not at you yet." I laugh. I swipe my face with my forearm because both my hands are full of crushed flower. "Left at dawn. I don't know where. Pack duty, I think. He left water on the ledge for me, which is stupidly tender by the way, he made sure there was water before he left." "Ugh. Are you two going to be one of those gross, lovey couples now."
"Have you met your brother?" "Mel. He left you water." "Tactical hydration." "Tactical hyd—he left you water, Mel.” Her nose scrunches. “I will throw up on you." "I am aware of the risk." She sorts petals. I crush. The clearing wakes up around us. Footst eps. The clang of someone at the forge. Keer Jr. screaming at the dawn from across the territory because the sun had the audacity to rise without his permission. Nugget chirps from inside my dwelling. I should feed her. After this batch. "Was he careful with you." I think about it. His hands on my face. "Yeah." Quieter. "He was careful." She nods, approving. "Good." Dara joins us mid-morning. Doesn't look at the tooth. Doesn't look at my shoulder. Sets down her satchel and crushes. Maren arrives. Reaches for the oil. "If you pour that"—I don't look up—"I will end you." "It's a drizzle." "Your drizzles are pours. There is a meaningful difference between a drizzle and a pour, Maren. I've told you this. Multiple times. In increasingly specific language." "How much, then?" I hold up my hand. Pinch my thumb and forefinger almost together. "This much. Watch me do it first." Movement at the tree line. Four figures. Staggering. Catching each other, one bent double, the other three barely upright. Coughing. Wet and de ep. Not throat—lungs. The rattling carries across the clearing and my stomach drops. I'm on my feet, running. Keer is already ahead—everyone's ahead, wolves converging—and the coughing is getting worse, getting thicker— Keer Jr. starts screaming from across the clearing. Not his usual rage at the sun—higher. Thinner. Even the rooster knows. Brennan goes down. Not a stumble. His knees just quit. The other three catch him but they're barely standing themselves, all four gray-faced —not pale, gray, ashen—and their eyes streaming and the blood coming up is gray-tinged. My hands are on the youngest one—Tarek—before I fully stop running. Tilting his chin. Checking his pupils. Constricted. Wrong.
"What did you breathe?" Fingers on his pulse. "Tell me what happened." "Smoke—" Gasping. Choking between words. "They threw— couldn't see—" He doubles over. Gray blood hits the ground. Moonbright. Airborne. They weaponized moonbright as smoke. The rumors. "Paste!" I'm already at Brennan—pressing my ear to his chest. Fluid crackling in there. Wet. Wrong. "All of it. Everything we made this morning—" I stop. The paste sits on skin and the poison is in their lungs. I cannot smear paste on the inside of someone's— Think. Paste binds poison on contact. Skin, wound, surface. The poisoned tissue is inside. I can’t reach inside. Smoke went in. Something has to follow it. "Steam." My head snaps up. "Steam. We need steam. Boiling water, the biggest pots we have, and now." Kestria's already running. Dara is right behind her. "Move that fire." Pointing. "More wood. Build it hotter. Maren— pots. Every pot, every kettle, every cooking vessel. I need water boiling in thirty seconds or I lose them." Tarek is the worst by sound—rattling, shallow. I drop next to him. His lips are gray. Spit in the corner of his mouth gone the same color. "Hold him sitting up." To whoever's closest—turns out to be Axan. "Sitting. Not lying. His lungs need to be up." Axan hauls him. "What are you doing?" Keer. Right behind me. "They inhaled it. Paste won't reach. Steam will." I'm at the first pot Kestria's hauling over—water sloshing, half from the bucket, half on her tunic. "Same route. Smoke went in, steam comes after. Drop it." I scoop paste into the boiling water. Stir hard with the handle of a knife because I do not have time to find a spoon. "I need cloth. Big cloth—wool, linen, anything. I'm tenting their heads so they can't es cape it." Dara throws me a hide-blanket. Good enough. I drag the pot to Tarek. Axan bracing him upright. I throw the blanket over both of them, the pot underneath, Tarek's face over the steam. "Breathe." He coughs. Hard. Body seizing—convulsing under the blanket, hands clawing at the wool, gray spit hitting it from the inside. Axan holds him through it. Doesn't let him pull away. "Ke ep breathing, Tarek. Through it." The cough goes on. Gets worse first. Then drier. The wet rattle changes pitch.
He breathes. One clean breath. Another. I'm already moving. "Next pot. Bring it. NOW—" Nugget is underfoot. Literally underfoot. I almost go down trying to reach Brennan and she does not move. She never moves. "Nugget. Move." Brennan. Same protocol. Pot. Blanket. Steam under. Face over. "Hold him up, Dara. Up means up. His head goes over the pot." Dara holds him up. "Breathe." He breathes. He coughs. He seizes. Gray spit on the inside of the wool. This poor blanket. But the rattle clears. Third scout. Then fourth. Maren's brother. Worst of them. Gray down past his collarbones. Breathing shallow and wet and slowing. I dump more paste into his pot. Stronger ratio—I'm inventing the ratio right now—I don't know if his lungs can take this concentration but I know what they can't take is the poison still sitting in them. "Hold him. Tighter than that. He's going to fight." He fights. Coughs so hard I think we've lost him. His body folds under the blanket. Axan and Maren both holding now. Maren is holding her brother through the seizing and I cannot think about that. "Ke ep breathing. You will breathe. You will ke ep—" His chest jerks. Once. The cough doesn't catch this time. The whole body goes for it and nothing comes back. More paste. I scrape the bowl out. Push the steam pot closer. Press the cloth tighter over his nose. "Come on. Come on—" The rattle de epens. Goes wet. Goes wrong. "Sit him up. Sit him UP." Axan pulls him forward. I get my hand under his ribs, palm flat to his chest. His heart is going too fast. Then slower. Then— "No. Stay with me. Stay—" I don't know his name. His name. I'm shouting at him to stay and I don't have a name. Maren is sobbing his name into his hair and I can't hear it, my ears are too loud, my hands are too loud— His chest rises. Falls. Doesn't rise. I push paste into the pot like volume will fix it. I push and push and Dara's hand closes on my wrist. "Mel." "He's—I just—just need to—" "Mel. He's gone." My hand stops. The sound she makes isn't a sound.
I'm still holding the bowl. My fingers won't unfold from it. Dara has to take it. She takes it and sets it on the ground beside me and I watch her hands do this because mine cannot. He was breathing thirty seconds ago. I count it backward. The cough. The seizing. My hand on his chest. Heart slowing. Heart stopping. Thirty seconds. That's all it is. That's the gap. I had thirty seconds to fix it and I didn't fix it. I have set bones and drawn fevers and stitched scalp wounds and packed shrapnel out of a thigh. Every patient I have actually treated has walked away from me. Every one of them. I was eleven the first time and I am twenty-two now and every single one of them— Until thirty seconds ago. Was that me? Was any of that me. Did they live because I helped them or did they live because they were going to live and I happened to be standing there while it happened— "Melori." Keer. He's looking at the body, at Maren, then me. I can't read it because I can't focus on a face right now. My eyes ke ep going back to the bowl Dara set down. The paste in it has s eparated. Two layers. I made it wrong. I made it weaker for the others first and they lived. I made it stronger for him because he was worse. Stronger killed him. Or weaker would have killed him faster. I don't know which. I don’t know which— "Melori." Sharper. "I'm here." "Are you hurt?" "What?" "Are you hurt?" "No." "Stand up." I stand. My knees don't work the way they did before but I stand up. Brennan tries to sit up, but Dara pushes him back down. "Stay down. She k ept three of you alive. Don't waste it." Three. Not all four. "Five of them." Brennan's voice is wrecked. Raw. "Human scouts. Camp near the border. Clay pots. Hit the ground, broke open. Smoke everywhere." He coughs. Wipes gray blood from his mouth. "We killed three. Two got away. Ran. Talking about a main force. Days ahead." The clearing goes silent. Not because people stopped talking. Because nobody breathes. Then the murmuring comes back. Worse. "Days ahead—" "This was a TEST?" "She said this would happen—" Tovar.
He's looking at the body. Then at me. The grief in his face has somewhere to go now and it goes straight to my chest. "They're coming for the human." His voice cracks. "She's why—" "Tovar." Kestria. Steel. "Not now." "He's DEAD—" "I KNOW he's dead. We're going to bury him. And then we're going to figure out how to ke ep more of us alive. Sit down." He doesn't sit. But he doesn't speak again. "Tovar." Keer. Quiet. Worse than loud. "Enough." Silence. "Council meets. Now." Keer looks at Brennan. "Scouts—rest, then r eport everything you saw." People move. Slow. Reluctant. Two wolves crouch by Vidar to lift him. Maren is still on the ground beside him, hands at his face. She won't let them. The wolves wait. Keer crosses to her. Kneels. His hand goes to her shoulder. He says something I can't hear. I look down at the bowl Dara set on the ground beside me. The paste has s eparated. Two layers. The thicker one settled at the bottom and a thin watery slick floating on top. I made it wrong. Or it was always going to do that and I didn't know. I didn't know. I don't know what I don't know. I'm staring at it and my hands are still in fists and there's gray paste under my fingernails from the part I scraped out for him and I— Motion at the edge of my vision. I don't process it as anything. Then I'm in the dirt. Air gone. The ground hits my back and my head and the breath comes out of me in one piece and doesn't come back. Weight on my chest. Crushing. Pinning. I can't— A face above mine. Tovar's face but Tovar's face is wrong. His eyes are not eyes. The dark of them has gone yellow and the yellow is not human. His mouth is open and the teeth in it are too long. The shape of his hand on my throat is not a hand. Fingers reshaping. Bones moving under the skin. Claws. His claws break the skin above my collarbone before I know I'm being cut. A line of cold. Then warm. Then real. "Vara—" His voice is half a growl. The one word. His mate's name. I can't make a sound. My body has stopped working. My hands are at my sides. My legs are not moving. The breath that should have come back hasn't. The weight on my chest is grinding my ribs into the ground and his face is closer now and his teeth are closer now and— Something hits him. Weight gone. Just—gone. The grinding stops and the cold above my collarbone is the only thing I can feel and I'm staring at the sky. A wet sound. Hot spray across my face.
Then quiet. I'm breathing. I think I'm breathing. The breath isn't going right. My ears are full of something soft, like wool, like distance. A shape above me. Not Tovar. Keer. His eye has gone wolf-gold and his mouth is open and there are teeth in it that don't belong in a human mouth. His hand is at his side and the hand is wrong, the fingers are wrong, the fingers are claws and there is so much red on them, so much— He's saying my name. He's saying my name and I can hear it but it's coming through the wool. Below his other hand: a body. Tovar. The throat is open. The throat is open in a way throats don't open and the dirt around him is dark and going darker. Keer killed him. Keer killed Tovar. The pack is silent. The whole clearing. Nobody is moving. Maren is still on the ground beside Vidar. The wolves who were going to lift the body are frozen where they stand. Kestria is two paces away with her hand at her mouth. Keer pulls back into himself. I watch it happen. The hand reshaping. The teeth retracting. He looks at the pack. He doesn't say anything. The pack doesn't say anything back. He kneels. His hand is on my face. The hand is human again but it's still warm with Tovar's blood and that's what's on my cheek now, that's the warmth I can feel, blood from his hand on my skin and— "Melori." I can't answer. "Look at me." I'm looking at him. I think I am. My eyes are open. The ceiling of sky is still there. He’s in the middle of it. "Are you hurt?" The cold at my collarbone is real. The cold is a fact. Other things are not facts right now. "Melori." "He cut me." My voice doesn't sound like my voice. His eye drops to it. He breathes out. One long breath. Then he's lifting me. I don't help. My body is in his arms and I'm watching the sky tilt. His arm is under my knees and his other arm is at my back. Cedar. Iron. The iron is Tovar.
"Kestria." Her voice answers. I don't catch the words. "With me. Now." He's walking. Each st ep rocks me a little. The pack is silent on either side of us. I feel them watching but I don't look. I don't think I could look. My eyes have decided to stay on his throat. The pulse there. Steady. Faster than usual but steady. "Council in an hour." He doesn't look at anyone when he says it. "The body stays where it is until I come back." Nobody answers. We're moving past the workspace. Past the fire pit. Past the path that goes to my dwelling. Past it. He's not taking me to my dwelling. His. I haven't been here. I know which one is his because I've watched him come and go. The one that sits a little above the others. The one nobody walks past unless they have a reason. He carries me up the slope and Kestria's footst eps are behind us and I close my eyes because the tilting is making my stomach cramp. The light changes. We're inside. It smells like him in a way the rest of the territory doesn't—denser, layered, the cedar gone de ep into the furs and the wood and the air itself. "Here." He's setting me down. Furs under me. Soft. De ep. The bed is wide. The whole space is dim. He's still close. "Kestria. Stay with her." "I'm staying." "Don't let her up." "I won't." "If she needs anything—" "Keer." Kestria. Quiet. "Go." He doesn't go yet. His hand is on my face again. The blood is mostly dried now. He's looking at me and his eye is back to ordinary and I cannot read what's in it. I cannot read anything right now. "Melori."
"I'm here." It comes out wrong. Too quiet. "You're safe here." I nod. I think I nod. My head moves a little. "I have to go." I nod again. He doesn't move. "Go run your pack." It comes out by itself. I don't even know if I meant to say it. "I'll be here." He doesn't move. His thumb traces my eyebrow. Once. Slow. The pad of it warm and the blood on his hand dry now. He doesn't lift the thumb right away. Stays there. At the corner. "I'll be back." "I know." His thumb drags down—barely—to the bone at my temple. Stops there. The hand isn't ready to come off me yet and he's making it. Then it's gone. The cold of his leaving is specific. The place above my eyebrow where his thumb just was. The bone at my temple where it stopped. The shape of him pulling out of the room. The smell of him is still in the furs and on my face but the heat of him went with him. "Mel." Kestria. On the edge of the bed. Her hand on my hair. "Mel, I need to look at your collarbone. Just look. I'm not going to do anything yet." "Okay." She moves the collar of my shirt. Sucks her teeth. Goes for water from somewhere. Comes back with a cloth. "It's not de ep. He didn't get the artery. He didn't even get close." "Good." "I'm going to clean it." "Okay." She cleans it. The cold of the cloth is the only thing I can feel for a minute. Then the sting. The sting is good. I focus on the sting because the sting is something my body can hold. "There's blood on your face. It's not yours. Can I—" "Leave it." She stops. "Mel." "Leave it. Just for a minute. I want—" I don't know what I want.
"Just for a minute." She doesn't argue. She wipes around it. Cleans my hands. She works without talking. "I didn’t know his name." "Vidar." I close my eyes. "He killed Tovar." "I know." "In front of everyone." "I was there." "He didn't have to kill him. He could have—" "Mel." "He could have just pulled him off." "Tovar had claws at your throat." "He could have—" "Mel." I stop. "He could have," I say anyway, smaller. "He chose. He chose." "Yes." "For me." "Yes." I close my eyes again. "Kestria." "Yes." "He killed someone for me." "I know, Mel." "I don't—" I don't finish. Vidar. Tovar. I have two bodies now. "Sle ep." Kestria runs her fingers through my hair. "I can't." "Sle ep, Mel." The cedar. The furs.
His pillow— I'm asle ep before I know I am.
Chapter 23 Itchy. Under the skin where I can't scratch—not nerves, not muscle, de eper than that. My ribs are restless. There's a hum behind my breastbone that won't quiet down. Oh. Right. Not me. Eyes still closed, breathing fine. The hum ke eps going—steady, underneath mine. Wolf-thread. Going to take some getting used to. Someone else's pulse in my chest while I'm trying to wake up. He's somewhere. Ahead of me. Across the clearing or past it. The hum doesn't tell me direction so much as occupied. I open my eyes to dim light. The smell of him de ep in the furs. I sit up slow. The wrapping on my collarbone pulls against the cut, tight and clean—Kestria's work, neat tension, the knot tucked. I touch it once. Fine. Empty pallet. Empty room. A clay cup of water on the low ledge by the door, set there sometime before he left, and I push off the bed and drink it standing. Same clothes from yesterday. Blood on the sleeve, dark and dry. Through the door, into the cold. The clearing is pre-dawn gray. Smoke smell still in the air from the night fires, banked low now. A wolf at the woodpile lifts his head when I st ep out of Keer's dwelling. Sees me, sees where I'm coming from, goes back to the wood. I walk south. The goats are penned at the edge of the clearing. The female is awake at the rail, ears pricked. The male is asle ep in the corner. She makes a sound when she sees me. Not a bleat. A complaint. "I know." I haven't milked her in two days. Three, maybe. The poisoning, the cottage, the—yesterday. All of it. "Sorry, lady." She doesn't acc ept the apology. Dara is already at the next station over—gloves on, mortar set up, working a fresh batch. She doesn't look up. "You look terrible." "Thank you. I can always count on you for the sweetest compliments." "Did you sle ep?" "Some." The pestle ke eps moving. The smell of crushed moonbright drifts over—sharp, sweet, scratching the back of my throat. She's running a stronger batch than usual. My paste rotation's going to need rebalancing.
I lean my forehead against the goat's flank. She's warm. Coarse hair, the dense heat of her ribs. She shifts her weight to accommodate me. Hands. Bucket. The first stream hits the bottom, then the second. The sound is so specific—wood and milk. I haven't heard it in days. She leans her shoulder against mine. Settled. Patient. I shift on the stool. My hand lifts from her udder to her side, just resting, while I switch. Movement. Under my palm. I freeze. A second one. Distinct. A small body kicking against the wall of her side, right under where my hand is. Oh. "Dara." "Yeah." "She's pregnant." The grinding stops. "Yeah." I look up. Dara is watching me. The pestle in her gloved hand, paused. "... you knew?" "We've known for a few days. I figured someone would have told you. Or you'd have caught it. You usually—" She stops. Picks a different word. "I figured you knew." I don't say anything. The kick again, soft, against my palm. I would have known. I always know. The gray hen stopped laying for two days and I had her on supplemental grain before the sun had set. The spotted goat went off her right hind for half a morning and I caught the limp before she limped. Nugget went off her grain for one feeding once and I sat with her for an hour because something was wrong. I always know. "Mel. You good?" She's looking at me, eyes steady. "Yeah." She gives me a small nod. Goes back to the paste. I move my hand back to the udder. The goat doesn't notice. Or she does and she's too polite to comment. "How far along is she?"
"Hard to tell." Dara's pestle picks up again. "Few weeks out, maybe. The spotted one's further along—she'll probably go first. Brown one a little after." "Three babies." "Yup." Dara doesn't look up. I ke ep milking. The goat leans into me, settled, patient, the warm weight of her against my shoulder, and my hand stays on her side longer than it needs to. Voices at the north edge. Not loud. I set the bucket aside. "Dara." "I see them." "Ke ep working." I stand. Halfway there, Nugget is at my ankle. I don't know when she joined. I don't ask. She has opinions about being included. Petra is at the front of the gathering. I find her first. The rest comes into focus around her—packs, bedrolls, a few faces I half-know. Her daughter on her hip, face tucked into her neck. The strap of her pack digging into her shoulder. She sees me coming. "Melori." "Petra." "I wanted to find you before we—" "You don't have to." "I do." She shifts her daughter's weight. "You stayed. With us. When you didn't have to." "Petra—" "I won't forget that." Her eyes are wet but the crying already happened. Somewhere I wasn't. The little girl peeks out from behind her mother's hair. Sees me. Lifts her hand—small fingers opening and closing. I wave back. Keer is here. Not next to me—across the gathering, arms at his sides, watching. A man st eps out of the cluster of his family. Broad shoulders. Walks up to Keer with his chin up, hands tight at his sides, bracing. "We're not cowards." Keer says nothing. "We're not." The man's voice cracks on the second word. "But I have a daughter. A son. I won't watch them—" He stops.
The clearing has stopped breathing. "Say something." He st eps closer. "Curse us. Tell us we're abandoning the pack. Tell us we're—" Nobody moves. Some of the wolves want Keer to call the man a coward. I can feel it. He doesn't. "I'm not going to stop you." The man doesn't move. For a second I think he didn't hear it. Then his shoulders drop—all at once—and he just stands there breathing. Keer waits. Doesn't soften it, doesn't r epeat it. Just lets him have the moment to understand. The man nods. Once. Then again, smaller, mostly to himself. Walks back to his family without a word. Petra is already gathering the children. The boy first, hand on the back of his neck, steering him north. The daughter on her hip, still watching me. The man falls in behind them, one hand at Petra's lower back—not guiding, just touching, the way you do when you need to confirm someone's still there. They move into the trees slow at first. Then faster, once the cover takes them. Petra doesn't look back. The daughter does. Small fingers opening and closing over her mother's shoulder, eyes on me until the green swallows her. I wave back until the trees take them. Keer breathes out. Long. Quiet. The clearing is quiet. The wolves who stayed are looking at the ground, at the fire, at their own hands. Not at each other. Not at Keer. I walk over to where he hasn't moved. "That was the right thing." Nothing. "Keer." "I know what it was, Melori." "Then why do you look like that?" "Like what?" "Like you just lost something you can't get back." His eye finds mine. Raw. Then it's gone. "Because I did." He turns and walks toward the defense positions. I watch him go. My hand finds my own collarbone, the wrap, the cut underneath. Nugget is still at my ankle. Hasn't moved. I look down at her. "Yeah," I tell her. "I know."
I stand there for a beat after Keer's gone. The wolves are rearranging—drifting back toward their stations, the woodpile, the fire pit. Nobody talking. I should go back to the goat. The bucket is half full. The female will need the second side stripped or she'll be uncomfortable later. Instead I look at the chicken pen. The eggs. That's the next thing I know how to do. The pack ate through what I gathered yesterday and there'll be more this morning if I go now. The hens lay early. It's a reason. "Come on." Nugget hops off my boot. Falls in behind me at her usual two-st ep lag—technically following, reserving the right to pretend she wasn't. I head for the pen. The hens are out already, scratching in the dirt at the edge of the run. There's a d epression in the dust where Keer Jr. has been rolling. He does that. I have no theories about why. He's not in it now. I duck under the rail. The hens flutter and resettle. Routine. The brown one closest to the perch lifts her tail at me without looking up—she's the meanest of them, but she lays the biggest eggs, so we have an arrangement. I reach under her. Egg. Warm. I tuck it into the crook of my arm. Second hen. Egg. Third— Keer Jr. screams. Shit. He sees me. I straighten up just in time to see him round the corner of the pen at full charge—wings out, beak open, beady eyes focused on the human who has dared to enter his domain. This is his routine. I have a routine for it. The routine is brace, wait for the impact, kick him sideways with the side of my boot. I brace. Nugget st eps in front of me. Keer Jr. stops. Not slows. Stops. All at once. His feet skid in the dirt, his wings fly out wider, his head snaps back. He freezes a few inches from her, bug-eyed, beak still open. Nugget doesn't move. She's standing with her usual perfect posture—pink-tinged, slightly dusty, head tilted, deciding whether he's interesting or beneath her. Mostly beneath. Everything is beneath her.
She blinks. Keer Jr. doesn't blink. He stays exactly where he stopped. "... are you okay?" Nothing. He doesn't even register me. He's just staring at her. Whole body locked. Nugget gets bored. Goes back to scratching at the dirt by my boot. Keer Jr. doesn't move. I reach for the third egg. Slowly. Crime-scene slow. The hen doesn't notice me. Keer Jr. doesn't notice me. He has not moved a feather since Nugget st epped in front of me. Nugget is studying him. He could be a piece of furniture she's not sure about and might have to move later. Egg. I tuck it into the crook of my arm with the others. Three eggs. I duck back under the rail. Look back. Nugget is still standing exactly where she was. Keer Jr. has shuffled half a st ep closer to her, trying very hard not to be noticed shuffling. His wings are still half-out. His tail feathers—the long ones he uses for screaming and aggression—are lowering. I've never seen them do that. Nugget tolerates this. She doesn't move toward him. She doesn't move away. She just stands there in the dust. Allowing it on the condition that he never speaks. "Aww!" It comes out before I can stop it. Hands still full of eggs, frozen mid-st ep, watching a rooster lose his mind over my chicken. "My chicken has a boyfriend!" Keer Jr.'s head snaps up. Right. Voice. Movement. Me. The trance breaks. He takes a st ep at me, wings flaring out from his body, that specific puffed-up I am very large and very angry posture I have seen many, many times— Nugget st eps in front of me again. Wings out. Same posture. Mirror image. And she screeches at him —the exact pitch and venom he uses on every single member of this pack, returned with interest, right into his face. Keer Jr. stops. I watch it happen in real time. The wings come down first, slow, like he's not sure they're his. The puffed-up chest deflates. His head tilts— not the threat tilt, not the calculating one, a different tilt, one I have never seen him do—and he just looks at her. Looks.
Like he's never seen a chicken before. His feet do a small shuffle in the dirt. Forward. Back. Forward again, smaller. He doesn't know what to do with himself. Nugget holds her ground. Ferocious. Unmoved. Keer Jr. makes a soft sound I have never heard out of him. Not a crow. Not a screech. Something low and bewildered. Oh my god. A laugh comes up out of me before I know it's coming. Quiet, a little broken, the first one since—. Nugget glances back at me. Handled. "Yeah," I tell her. "You sure did, girl." I cross the clearing back toward the goats with three eggs in the crook of my arm. Dara is still at her station. Gloved, working, the second batch nearly set. She looks up when I get close enough. Eggs first. Then my face. "What." "Nugget has a husband now." "What?" "Keer Jr. He's smitten. He fell over." "He fell over." "Metaphorically. Spiritually. He has gone to a place none of us can reach him." Dara stares at me. "... Mel, I genuinely cannot tell if you're joking." "Neither can I." I set the eggs down on the cloth I ke eps for them. "But I'm going to need you to handle the rooster's emotional development because I am at capacity." "Noted." "Add it to the list of things I am at capacity for." I sit down on the stool. The goat is still where I left her. She makes a sound at me—the same complaint as before, slightly more aggrieved— and I lean my forehead against her flank for a second because she's warm and I haven't finished. Three babies. A boyfriend for Nugget. Petra's daughter waving until the trees took her. I switch sides—bucket, hands, the rhythm of it. The second side strips clean. The female sighs and shifts her weight. I scratch under her jaw before I stand. The sun is up properly now. The clearing is awake. Wolves moving through their morning—somebody's children at the woodpile, somebody else stoking the fire pit, the goat on the far side of the pen calling for grain. I pick up the bucket. Footst eps on the path.
A body pushing through the trees too hard, unsteady. Wolves stopping mid-task. Heads turning toward the north path. Dara is on her feet. The runner breaks through the tree line. He's one of ours—younger, lean, one of the scouts Keer sent out after Brennan came in. His face is white. Chest heaving. His mouth opens. Keer is already moving toward him—across the camp in long fast strides, the bond hum waking up under my ribs as he does it, sharp now, urgent. The runner pulls a breath. "THEY'RE HERE."
Chapter 24 The bucket is still in my hand. Everything moves at once around me—wolves sprinting to positions, weapons up, Keer's voice cutting through the chaos, clear, controlled, holding the whole pack in his head at once, who goes where, who does what— I turn one way. Then the other. Healing station. Keer. Healing station. Keer. The milk sloshes hard against the side of the bucket, and a splash goes over the rim onto the dirt. No. Not the milk. I just—she let me—it took twenty minutes— "Melori." "The milk—" Dara takes the bucket out of my hand. Then my arm. "Melori—" "I know." I don't know. Can't think. "We're ready." "Are we?" "Close enough." Okay. Happening now. Station ready, pots boiling, blankets stacked, did I check the concentrated paste—yes I checked it, skull label, very clear, Dara knows—bandages stacked by size on the left, paste jars on the right— Us against an army—focus. Hands. Work. The pack moves past us in a wave. Wolves shifting as they run, shifted before they hit the trees, gone into the forest at a sprint. Kestria grabs my arm in passing—one second, fierce, afraid—and then she's gone too, dark gray fur disappearing between the trunks. Keer comes last. Stops in front of me. Doesn't speak. His hand on the back of my neck, brief, and then his mouth pressing hard against the top of my head—a second, no more—then he's running, shifting mid-stride, the massive black wolf tearing into the trees after his pack. The bond drags after him under my ribs. Sharp now. Moving away. Then the sound starts. Distant. Through the trees. Snarling. Steel. The wet sound of bodies meeting each other at speed. I can't see it. The fighting is too far in. Just trees and morning light and the faint flicker of torchlight somewhere de eper, between trunks, and the noise that means people are dying. "How far out are they?" My voice comes out steadier than I am. Dara's head is tilted. Listening. "Far enough," she says. "We won't see it from here." Good. That's the point. That's what Keer wanted. "Numbers?" She's quiet for a second. Listening past me. Past the clearing. Past all of it. "A lot." The first wolf stumbles back through the trees and shifts mid-stride —bones cracking, fur pulling back to skin—collapsing into human form on the ground beside me. Young. Maybe twenty. Arrow shaft sticking out of his shoulder at a wrong angle, blood soaking through.
"Arrow in the shoulder—hold him down." Dara grabs his other side. I snap the shaft—he screams, high and raw—push the head through, pull it out the back, stuff the wound with cloth, press. "Pressure. Ke ep pressure. Don't let go until I say." "How bad—" "You'll live. Pressure." Next one. Gash across the forearm, de ep but clean, bone showing but not broken. "Paste, then wrap it. You'll live." "There's so many of them—" "Paste. Wrap. Go back or don't, your choice." He goes back. Next. The smell hits first. Copper and bile and that sour edge that means the intestines are torn. Varen. He's holding himself together with both hands. Literally holding. He's not screaming. "Varen. How long ago?" His mouth works. "Just now. I think." My hands are on him, checking. I already know, but hands check anyway. Too de ep. Too wide. Even if I could stitch him closed, the infection would kill him in hours. He knows. I can see it in his face. His eyes drift to my hands, back up. Looking for the lie. I won't give him one. "Dara." She's beside me. I don't look at her but I hear her breath catch. "Make him comfortable." Dara's face goes white but she nods. Guides him to the side. Gentle hands. "Hey." Varen's voice. Cracking. "Is it—will it—" "It won't hurt." Dara's hand on his shoulder. "I promise." I'm already turning because they ke ep coming and I can't stay here, can't look at his face—there's blood under my fingernails, in the creases of my knuckles, and the paste jar is running low, where's the second one?— there, behind the bandage pile— Dara goes still. Her head is tilted. Listening. "What." She doesn't answer. "Dara. What." Her eyes come back to mine. "There's a man shouting."
"Out there?" She nods. "What's he saying?" I can tell she doesn't want to say. "Dara." "He's calling for the traitor." What? Traitor? "What traitor?" "The healer. He's calling for the healer to be sent out." The wolf I'm stitching—older, graying, gash across his collarbone —has gone still under my hands. "He says—" Dara's voice flat. Holding herself flat. "Send her out and we'll talk. Ke ep her and we burn you all." The wolf under my hands looks up at me. I look back down at his collarbone. "Hold still. You ke ep twitching and I'll stitch your neck shut." He holds still. My hands are shaking now. I work through it. Stitch. Knot. Cut. The needle goes through skin and out and back through and the sound of distant fighting is the same and Dara is still listening past me into the trees and somewhere out there a man I cannot see is asking for me by a word I do not deserve. "Done." "Mel." Dara, low. "Are you—" "I'm working." "Mel." "Don't." Next wound. Slash across someone's back—de ep but clean, paste and pressure, go. A woman missing three fingers, still snarling, holding her hand against her chest. "Let me see." "I'm fine." "You're missing fingers." "I'll grow them back." "You will absolutely not grow them back. Sit down and let me wrap it before you bleed out." She sits. Grudging. I wrap the stumps and tie off the bandage with my teeth because both hands are occupied and the cloth pile is running low —should've torn more strips, always need more strips than you think— "Done. Don't punch anything for a week."
"There's a battle." "Then punch with the other hand." Dara goes still. "Pots." Her voice flat. "They threw the pots." Shit. "Get the steam stations ready. Now—" "CLAY POTS!" The shout cuts through the trees. Seconds behind Dara. Wolves staggering back already, retreating through the trunks toward the clearing, shifting mid-stride. Coughing. Eyes streaming. Skin going gray. "FALL BACK FROM THE SMOKE!" Keer's voice. From de ep in the trees. The hum spikes sharp under my ribs—he's still up, still moving, still in command—and the order ripples out through the forest, wolves veering wide of the smoke clouds, breaking the engagement, retreating back through the trees. "Steam! Pots up!" I catch the first wolf—wheezing, gray climbing his throat. Force him sitting against the supply crate. "Up. Ke ep your chest up." Hide-blanket. Pot underneath. His face goes over the steam. "Breathe." He coughs hard. Body seizing under the wool. I count breath cycles —one, two, three—the rattle changes pitch on the fourth. "Next pot! Move him aside, ke ep him covered—" Another wolf hits the dirt beside me. Older. Gray past her collarbones. Faster now—pot, blanket, steam, breathe— "Anyone gray, anyone wheezing—under a blanket. Don't wait for me. You've watched me do this. Do it." "Got it." Maren hauls water from the trough. Soren feeds the fire. Two more pots running. Three. Then four. Back to wounds between steam patients. Arrow in a thigh—pull, pack, move. Check the steam stations. The pup is sitting up on his own, gray fading, breathing rough but breathing. The older woman next to him— better. Two more under blankets. Dara overseeing both. "Mel!" Dara. Sharp. "This one's not coming back." The wolf under the blanket is gray to his shoulders. Eyes rolled. Body slack against the supply crate. I lift the wool—steam hits my face— press my ear to his chest. Faint. Slow. Slowing. "Maren, hold him up. Higher. Higher—" We try. The cough doesn't catch. His chest jerks once and gives up. I let go. "Mel."
"Fuck!" My hands are shaking. Not from fear—from gripping and pulling and pressing for however long this has been going on. My fingers ache. My wrists. The webbing between my thumb and forefinger split open at some point—stinging now, blood mixing with everyone else's blood. My hands are already on the next one—Nera, I think, hard to tell with all the blood covering her face and chest. De ep slash across her ribs. "Hold still. I need to see how de ep." "There's more of them." She's gasping. Blood in her teeth. "So many more than we—" "I know. Hold still." "We can't—" "If you ke ep talking I can't work. Shut up or bleed out." She shuts up. Not de ep enough to kill. Paste, pressure, bandage, done. Dara goes still again. Head tilted. Listening. This time her face does something I don't have a name for. "Mel." "What." "They're coming this way." "Who—" "All of them." The sound changes. Closer now. Not distant. Trees cracking. Bodies crashing through underbrush. A wave of noise rolling toward us through the forest— Behind me, Keer Jr. is screaming—out of the coop, gods know how —shrieking through all of it because the world is ending. Wolves break through the tree line first. Pack wolves. Running flat- out, some shifting back as they cross into the clearing, some still on four legs. Wounded. Bleeding. Falling. Getting up. Running again. Then the humans. Pouring through the trees behind them. Not three, not five. Dozens. Pursuing the wolves who broke off from the smoke—chasing wounded prey into open ground— And then they stop. Some of them. The ones in front pulling up short. Heads turning. Eyes going wide. They see it. Dwellings. Cookfires. A line of clothes drying on a rope between two posts. Wounded humans laid out near my station, paste-stained and bandaged. A small pink chicken running sideways across the dirt with a rooster shrieking after her. Not a den.
Not a wolf nest. A village. They have just chased their enemies into a village. The ones behind them are still pushing forward. Still moving. Haven't seen yet. The momentum doesn't stop just because some of them did— And then he comes through the trees. Tall. Armored. Sword drawn. Lean build, weathered face, graying brown hair close-cropped. The man who was the voice in the trees an hour ago. The man at my cottage. The man who watched his own men die in my yard. Who saw Kestria shift and walked away with it. Theron. His eyes find me across the clearing. Then his face changes—seeing what's around me, seeing the dwellings, seeing the wounded laid out—and even Theron, who came knowing something was here, stops for half a second to take in the scale of what this is. Half a second. "THERE! THE HEALER!" Not Theron. One of his men. Three humans peel off and come straight at me. Swords drawn. Closing fast. "MELORI, RUN!" Dara's voice. But can't run—wounded all around me, can't leave them, they're mine, when did they become mine?—knife, where's the knife? —supply pile, there. My hand closes around it. The bandage knife. They have armor. They have training. I weigh a hundred pounds after a big meal and my knees don't even work properly right now and the knife is for cutting bandages, not for— What am I going to do, stab one of them and then get very murdered by the other two? Throw it? I've never thrown a knife. How hard can it be? It's a pointy thing. I aim the pointy end. Three humans. Closing fast. Ten feet. Eight. This is it. Something to my left—big, fast, black fur tearing through the chaos, shoving past a knot of fighting bodies—the size, the one eye cutting through everything else—Keer. Running. He hits the space between me and the three humans at full sprint.
Skids, turns, plants himself. Teeth bared. Snarling. A wall of black fur and muscle and teeth, crouched between me and three swords. The humans stumble. The front one trips back a st ep because there is a very large, very angry wolf right in front of his face and his training didn't cover this distance, this close, those teeth. "Oh fuck—" "KILL IT!" The older one raises his sword. Two-handed grip. Coming down— Keer doesn't attack. He shifts. Close enough to feel the heat of it—the wrongness, the cracking, the sound that my healer brain still protests every time because bodies don't do that, joints don't bend that way—but this time is different. This time the sound fills the whole clearing and the three humans are right there, watching, their faces— Fur pulling back into skin. Body stretching upward. The crouch becoming a stand, four legs becoming two, the massive black wolf rising and rising into a man. Spine straightening. Hands where paws were. Snout flattening into a jaw, a face, one eye. Keer. Human. Naked. Standing between me and three swords. The older human's swing stops mid-air. Just stops. Blade hanging above his head, arms locked, because the thing he was about to kill just became a person. Keer doesn't move. Doesn't flinch. Doesn't cover himself or st ep back or look away. He's just standing there, bare and scarred and bleeding from a wound on his forearm, every mark visible—the silver lines crossing his chest and arms, the missing eye, the torn ear. Three swords mid-strike. He doesn't even look at the swords. He looks at the men. The young one with the patchy beard. The older one with his blade still raised. The boy between them. Looks at them with his one eye and doesn't hide. We don't reveal ourselves. His voice hard with certainty. Shut the debate down. Shut everyone down because control was all he had left. And now he's standing naked with swords because they were running at me. My throat closes. My vision blurs—tears, shit, not now—and my hands are shaking and the knife is still in my grip and I'm looking at the back of him, the scars I know, the ones I've touched, his back, the shoulder that has my mark— He can't take it back. Everyone will know. He's standing there and he can't undo it— I can't breathe. The older one's sword is still raised but his arms are shaking now. The young one has gone white. "What—" The young one. Voice cracking. "What ARE you?" Keer says nothing. He doesn't need to. The answer is standing in front of them, bleeding and human and not attacking. "It was—" The older one. His sword arm is still up. Won't come down. Won't go higher. "That was a WOLF—" "Put it down." The young one. Barely whispering. "Garrett. Put the sword down."
"It was a WOLF—" "He's a MAN. Put the fucking sword DOWN." Five heartbeats. Six. The sword lowers. Slow. Shaking. The clearing has gone quiet around us. Not silent—there's still fighting at the edges, still steel and snarling somewhere in the trees—but here, in the center, around this naked scarred man they're forgetting how to hold, everything has stopped. He's shaking. I can see it—the fine tremor running through his shoulders, down his arms, into the fists at his sides. The control it's taking him to stand here bare and human and not fight. Everything in him wants to fight. Shift back. Attack. Take control. But he's standing still.
Chapter 25 Another wolf sees what Keer has done. Near the edge of the clearing—a young woman. I know her— treated a gash on her arm once, and she flinched when I touched her, wouldn't look at me. She's in wolf form now, standing over a body, bloody, panting. She looks at Keer—naked, human, standing in front of swords— and her whole body changes. I watch the decision move through her. The terror. The resolve. She shifts. Fur pulling back. Body rising. Naked, shaking, blood on her face and chest. She grabs a broken sword from the ground and holds it in front of her with both hands. Terrified. The human near her st eps back. Stares. "Oh—oh gods—" Then another. A young man near the center, barely out of boyhood. Shifts mid-stride, stumbles, catches himself. Ribs showing. Blood running from a cut on his shoulder. Shaking so hard he can barely stand. The soldier across from him drops his sword. Just opens his hand and lets it fall. More. Across the battlefield—wolves becoming people. One by one, then in clusters. Fur to skin. Claws to hands. A woman shifting while still standing over the human she'd been fighting, both of them freezing, staring at each other. A boy—gods, he can't be more than sixteen—shifting in front of a soldier and just standing there, thin and naked and bleeding and terrified, and the soldier backing away with his hands up, palms out, weapon forgotten. Where's Kestria—there. Human form now, blood on her arm, standing next to Axan who must have shifted too because he's human and naked and has his hand on her shoulder. Holding her back or holding her up. Can't tell which. Both standing. Good. People. Just people. And the humans staring at them with weapons half-lowered. A soldier near the tree line has his hand over his mouth. Two men looking at each other, looking away, looking back. Nobody moving. Nobody knowing what comes next. A human soldier turns to a nearby bush, puking. Weapons lowering across the line. Not all—some hands tighten, some jaws go hard, some men st ep forward instead of back—but enough. Enough to break whatever was holding the charge together. The male goat bolts across the clearing—trailing a chewed-through lead, running directly between two soldiers who both stumble sideways trying to avoid him. "HOLD YOUR POSITIONS!" Theron. Voice cutting across the clearing. "HOLD THE LINE!" Nobody moves.
"I SAID HOLD!" "Hold WHAT?" The young soldier near me. Almost shouting now. "They're PEOPLE!" Bodies on the ground—wolves and humans both, some still moving, most not. Movement from the human side. My stomach drops. But it's not an attack. One soldier breaking from the line. A woman. Middle-aged. Sturdy build, hair pulled back tight. She unbuckles the belt at her hip in one motion and tosses the whole rig backward, behind her line, into the trees. Sword, sheath, the lot. St eps over where it was. Doesn't look back. She comes forward into the open. Stops where she has a clear view of the clearing. "Look," she says. Not loud. But her voice carries because everyone has gone quiet to hear her. "All of you. Just look." She points. "There. The dwelling on the left. Window." Heads turn. Mine too. A child's face at the window. Maybe four. Watching. Wide-eyed. "And there. The doorway." Another. Older. Eight, maybe. A girl with both hands gripping the doorframe. "And the one by the fire pit." A boy. Maybe six. A wolf in human form crouched in front of him with both arms around his shoulders. Shielding him. The wolf is bleeding from a wound in her thigh. The boy is crying. "Children." The woman's voice cracks. "There are children here." Nobody moves. "And those—" She gestures wide, swe eping the whole healing station. "Those are wounded. People crying out, getting their hands held, getting their bones set. Eating. Bleeding. Surviving. Like us." Her hand drops. "I have three kids at home. I was told to come here and kill monsters. That was the order. That was the word." She looks at Theron now. Direct. "Monsters. Not children. Not mothers. Not the woman with the braid holding that boy's shoulders right now." Theron's jaw works. "Get back into the line, soldier." "No."
"That's an order." "I know." Silence. "These are aggressive creatures—" Theron's voice climbing. "They have killed our people for years—" "Yeah." From the patchy-beard kid. "Because we ke ep attacking them." Theron's head snaps to him. "Stand DOWN, soldier." The kid doesn't. He looks at the ground. Then at the woman. Then he does what she did—unbuckles his sword belt, throws it back behind the line. St eps clear of where it was. He doesn't speak. Then another. A man in his thirties, rows back. Drops his weapon. St eps forward. Then an older man. Gray beard. Limp from an old injury. Drops his sword. St eps forward. Then two more, almost together—a young man and a woman maybe my age—weapons hitting the dirt one after the other, the sound of metal on packed earth, again, again, again. The line is breaking. Theron sees it breaking. Something in his face changes. Not panic. Not shock. The cold thing underneath. The thing that came to my cottage with a group of men and a plan. "Soldiers." His voice has shifted. "Listen to me carefully." Heads turn. Everyone listening. "By the authority of the Forest Warden and the Council of Blomstradal—and by the agreed coordination of Sarveil, Volmaris, and Rynkova—any soldier under my command who refuses this engagement is in violation of his oath." The official voice. The Council voice. "Such soldiers are hereby stripped of standing. Stripped of citizenship. Stripped of the protections of any settlement under coordinated authority." Nugget squawks. Keer Jr. screeches in answer. "If you walk forward, you do not walk back. Not into Blomstradal. Not into Sarveil, Volmaris, or Rynkova. Not into any holding that signs to the coordination after today. You will not be buried in your home soil. Your names will be struck from the rolls." His eyes move across his men. Slow. Letting it land. "Choose." Nobody moves. Then his eyes find the woman who broke ranks first.
"You've earned the front of the list, soldier." Her face hardens. "I figured I would, sir." She doesn't move backward. Movement to her left. The patchy-beard kid takes one st ep forward to stand beside her. Not back. Forward. The others follow. Slower this time. But they come. Then movement the other direction. One soldier in the back ranks shouldering his weapon harder. St epping back into the line. Then another. Then a small cluster, four or five together, retreating into formation. Not looking at anyone. Eyes on the ground. Theron watches both. Counts. I can see him counting. The ones who came forward outnumber the ones who fell back. Not by much. But by enough. The forward soldiers don't move. They're not waiting for anything. Not negotiating. Not asking. They've already chosen. His eyes find me. Across the clearing. Across all of it. Hate. Pure hate. "Form up soldiers. We're going home." They form a loose column behind him, weapons gathered, eyes on the ground. The torches start moving back through the trees. Smaller. Smaller. Then gone. The sound of boots fades. The clearing exhales. The whole pack, breathing out at once. The forward soldiers too—a different sound from them, lower, more cracked, people who just gave up everything they ever knew and don't know yet what they did. My knife clatters to the ground. We're still standing. Still alive. The middle-aged woman is the one who turns first. Not toward me. Toward her own group. The soldiers who chose forward. "Alright." Her voice is rough but steady. "We get our families. The ones who have them. Anyone with kids, anyone with parents who can travel, anyone with a person—you go back, you get them, you bring them out before Theron's column reaches Blomstradal. He'll get there by tomorrow night. We have until then." A few of them nod. The patchy-beard kid is staring at his hands. "Anyone without ties—you stay. Help with the wounded. Help with the dead. Make yourselves useful. Don't be in the way."
More nods. "And then—" She pauses. The first crack in her voice. "And then we figure out where we go. Together. I don't know where yet. We'll find something. Old crofts, abandoned holdings, somewhere the coordination doesn't reach. We'll figure it out." "Where will you go?" I hadn't meant to ask. She turns. Looks at me across the dirt. "I don't know. But we couldn't do it. So here we are." "There's nowhere. If the four settlements coordinated, that's—that's all of this region. There's nothing for days in any direction that wouldn't turn you in." She shrugs. "You'll be sle eping in the woods. With children." "Yup." "In winter." "It won't be the worst thing I've done." She doesn't smile. "But we will figure something out." I look at Keer. He's right there. Hand at the small of my back. Steady. Solid. Naked. Oh god. Naked in front of all of them. Naked in front of the woman who has just been having a calm conversation with my mate, thoroughly, r epeatedly, without once acknowledging the fact that he is conducting it WITHOUT ANY PANTS ON. Naked in front of the soldiers behind her. Oh GOD. Also no one else gets to look at his giant di— STOP IT, MEL. I scan the dirt. There. Someone's cloak by the fir epit. I don't know whose. I don't care. I lunge, snatch it up, shove it at his chest without looking up. "Put this on." He takes it. Doesn't move. "Keer." "Mm." "You are NAKED." "Noticed." "In front of strangers." "Mm." "Please."
He wraps it around his waist. Slow. Behind me, Axan snorts. Keer turns to face the woman. "Stay." Her head comes up. "What?" "Stay. Here. With us." His voice is low. Hoarse. But steady. "Get your families. Bring them back. We have room. We'll figure the rest out." She stares at him. "You don't know us." "No." "You don't owe us anything." "No." "Then why." Keer's hand at the small of my back. "Because she asked." He doesn't say Mel. He doesn't gesture. He doesn't have to. The whole clearing already saw the look between us. The whole clearing knows. The woman's eyes move from him to me. Then back to him. Then to the soldiers behind her—her people, the ones who chose forward, the ones whose families are about to be rolled out of citizenship by tomorrow night—and her face does something complicated. The kind of complicated that means a hard math problem just got an answer she didn't expect to get. "We'll come back," she says. Quiet. "If you'll have us. We'll come back." "We'll have you." She nods. Then she goes back to dividing tasks. I'm shaking. I didn't notice until now. Keer's hand is still at the small of my back and I'm shaking against him and I can't tell if it's because the army is gone or because of what just happened or because I haven't eaten or because I asked my mate something with my eyes and he answered it in front of all these people without blinking. "Melori." "Don't." I can't look at him. If I look at him I'm going to cry or laugh or collapse and none of those are useful. "There's wounded. I need to—" "Dara's got them." "But—" "You've done enough."
I haven't. There are bodies to move. Wounds to treat. People I don't know the names of standing in the middle of my clearing with no swords and somewhere to go now—because Keer knew I would ask. My knees buckle. He catches me. Both hands, holding me up, the heat of him against my back for one second before he steadies me upright. "Okay," I hear myself say. "Maybe I'll sit down." Dara takes over the healing station. Someone presses food into my hands—I don't remember eating but the bread is gone so I must have. Wolves moving around me, carrying bodies, building fires, doing the thousand tasks that come after not dying. I try to help three times. I sit. The clearing goes quiet. Wolves in human form now, some of them pulling on clothes, some just sitting in the dirt with their arms around their knees. Two men carrying a body between them, careful, steady. The pyres won't happen until tomorrow. For now, the dead are laid out near the western wall, wrapped in hide, side by side. Dara finds me sometime in the late afternoon. Plants herself in front of me. Hands on her hips. "You're done." "I'm sitting. I've been done." "You're done for the day. Dwelling. Sle ep." "I'm not tired." "You're swaying while sitting, Melori." "That's a balance issue." "Go. I'll tie you down if I have to." "... only if Keer does the tying." I gasp. My hand smacks over my mouth too late. Dara's eyebrows climb. "... I didn't say that." "You did." "I didn't mean to say that." "And yet." "Pretend you didn't hear it." "No." "Dara." "I'm ke eping that. Forever." Ugh. Halfway to my dwelling, Kestria interc epts me. Grabs my arm.
Steers me toward the far wall without asking, which is very Kestria. "Sit." She pushes me down against the wall of a dwelling. Drops beside me. Our shoulders touch. We don't talk. Don't need to. The sun's dropping. Colors bleeding across the sky. Somewhere a wolf howls—long, low, answered by another. Not a warning. Grief. The sound of it settles into my chest and stays there. Nugget finds my feet. Still pink. Still pecking at nothing. Completely unbothered by the army, the battle, the dead. Chickens don't grieve. Must be nice. Keer Jr. comes around the corner, locks onto Nugget, and stations himself approximately one inch from her tail feathers. "Your chickens survived," Kestria says. I look down. "They are everyone's chicken." "Nugget sle eps in your dwelling." "Yeah. You got me there." Keer Jr. puffs himself up at a passing wolf. Neither the wolf nor Nugget acknowledges him. "That rooster is indestructible," Kestria says. "He's too mean to die." "Maybe that's his survival strategy." "Being so annoying no one wants to deal with him? Yeah. It's working." We both laugh. Tired and raw. It hurts my throat and I do it anyway. The clearing is quieter now. Fires crackling. Wolves huddled in pairs, in groups. Someone is cooking—I can smell grain and salt and something that might be the last of the dried meat. Across the clearing, Keer is moving between the wounded, checking on everyone, holding everything together while his whole body is a map of fresh injuries. The wound on his arm is still bleeding. It's driving me insane from here. Near the dwellings, the new humans who stayed behind are sitting in a loose cluster. Quiet. The patchy-beard kid is hugging his knees a little ways off. The middle-aged woman is gone—took half her people back through the trees an hour ago to start collecting families. The ones left don't know what to do with their hands. Kestria's eyes track mine. She sees them too. Neither of us says anything. Tomorrow's tomorrow. "Do you think they'll actually come back?" I ask. "With more soldiers?" "Probably." "That's optimistic." "I learned from you." "I'm not optimistic. I'm just too tired to be pessimistic." She laughs. Softer.
"Go find your brother," I tell her. "What?" "He needs you. He won't ask for it." She looks at me. Then at the clearing, where Keer is crouching talking to Axan. "He won't let me help." "He didn't let me help either. Didn't stop me." I nudge her shoulder. "Go. I'm fine." "You're not fine." "I'm fine enough. Go." She squeezes my hand and stands and walks toward him. I tip my head back against the wall. Close my eyes. Nugget settles against my ankle. Warm. Heavy for a bird her size. I didn't know chickens snored but she's making a sound that's either snoring or a very quiet death rattle and at this point I'm choosing to believe the first one. The sun is warm on my face. Not hot—late afternoon warm. A territory full of people who just revealed the biggest secret their kind has ever k ept. A handful of humans with no homes left. The settlements will be talking by tomorrow. Theron will be regrouping by the next day. I don't know what we do tomorrow. I don't know how we feed twenty extra mouths— Ohh, I know! We need more animals. We could get cows! Maybe even pigs.
Chapter 26 I'm pinning the rail for the third time and the spacing is still wrong. "Bram." He looks up from the post he's hammering. He doesn't answer. He never answers. Bram's communication is forty percent silence, forty percent eye contact, and twenty percent grunts, and it works for him. "Two inches lower on this end. Pigs are short. Pigs are also clever —they will lever. Four-inch gap at the bottom and they'll find the moonbright field, and we'll have purple bacon and dead pigs and three trade favors I cashed in for nothing. Move it." He moves it. "Thank you." Grunt. I press the rail flat against the post. He drives the peg. The hammer rhythm is steady. Working-day sound. "And the goats are getting their own pen, don't argue with me. Goats and pigs together is—no. I tried it once. Bought two pigs at the market, walked them home very pleased with myself, put them down to meet the goats. The goats had opinions. The goats had immediate, violent opinions. Within thirty seconds I had a fight on my hands. Within two hours I had a bite poultice on a goat and a pig eating my doorframe. Within two days I was walking those pigs back to the man who sold them. He refused a refund. Apparently it's a buyer-beware market. I'm still bitter. S eparate pens. Stop looking at me." He isn't looking at me. He never looks at me. That's the thing I've decided to project onto him. "The market is six days. Maybe seven if Idris is being difficult about the cow, which he will be, because he is Idris, and Idris is a hoarder, but I have a small jar of paste that historically makes him reasonable— bribery is a public health intervention if the alternative is a stubborn dairy farmer—and we need two breeding pairs of pigs, one milk goat, no, two more milk goats, you can't have too many—and a young milk cow if Idris will part with her—" "Mel." "What." "Breathe." I take a breath. He goes back to hammering. I straighten up. My back makes a sound it shouldn't make. Twenty- two and creaking. Excellent. The clearing is full of working bodies. North end, Keer's raising the third dwelling. Two wolves on the long beam, four humans bracing the posts, a fifth human up top with the lashings. Keer at the load end, taking most of the weight himself because he's Keer, and that's what Keer does. The beam goes up. He guides it into the notch. His shoulders move under his shirt. A bead of sweat slides down his spine and disappears into his waistband. I watch. I ke ep watching. Bram clears his throat.
I look at the rail. I look at Bram. Bram looks at the rail. "I refuse to engage." "Didn't ask." "I'm refusing anyway." He grunts. The grunt has flavor. Specifically, the grunt that means he is thinking something he is not going to say and wants me to know he is not going to say it. "What." "Nothing." "Bram." He gets back to the rail. Across the way, Axan's running a chopping crew at the tree line— three young wolves and two humans, all working through what was meant to be one pile and is now four, because Axan delegates by pointing. Kestria is halfway up a roof with two pups handing thatch up the ladder one careful armful at a time. The woman with the slate at the central fire is the one who st epped forward at the standoff and said they'd come back. Minette, she said her name was. She came back the next morning with the families and she's been running them since. Three children at the edge of the work. The boy from Minette's group, the small girl with the chipped tooth, and one wolf pup who has decided he is in charge of all of it. The pup has Nugget under one arm. The boy has a fistful of grain. The small girl is in charge of moral support. "Don't squeeze her," I call. "I'M NOT!" "Support her bottom." "She HAS a bottom?" "All chickens have bottoms. That is in fact where the eggs come from. We will return to this curriculum at a later date. Support her bottom." The pup supports Nugget's bottom. The boy holds out the grain. Nugget acc epts the grain at her own pace, with the dignity of a queen who has decided this peasant's offering is acc eptable. She's appointed herself their pet. Hens with jobs don't run away. I support hens with jobs. Keer Jr. is six paces off, having opinions about the children's procession. He is pacing. He has decided his hen has been kidnapped and he has decided he is going to do something about it and he has also decided that the something is going to in volve a great deal of strutting and zero actual confrontation. He paces. He bobs. He stops. He stares at Nugget. Nugget stopped acknowledging his existence two days ago. He paces some more. Then he commits. He hovers near Nugget's nothing-pile—a small mound of feed- swe epings she has been guarding for personal reasons no one understands —and edges closer. Closer. The pup sets Nugget down. Keer Jr. arrives at the nothing-pile with the air of a creature who has decided to be tolerated.
Nugget pecks him. Square on the comb. He retreats four inches. He returns to hovering. Bram's hammer pauses. "Indestructible." "He thinks she's playing hard to get." "She is not." "She isn't. He's confused her policies." Footst eps behind me. Light. Quick. "Healer." Kestria. Ladder-flushed. Dust on one cheek. Three pieces of thatch in her hair. "Wolf." "Someone is wearing my brother's shirt again." "This one is mine." "It is now." She grins, and she looks too much like Keer when she grins, so I look at the rail. "This one was clean. Mine wasn't." "Mhm." "We had been up all night." "Woah, I don’t want to know." "Kestria." "There's a tactical hydration phase, and there's a wearing-his-shirts phase, and one tends to follow the other, and I did try to warn you about this, and you said tactical hydration." "It was tactical hydration. He gave me water. Once. Well, actually twice—there is no shirt clause in tactical hydration." "There's a shirt clause now. Pack-wide. Axan has a bet." "Axan can bite me." Kestria's eyebrows shoot up. "Mel." "What?" "Don't say bite me." "It's an expression." "Not in this clearing it isn't." I open my mouth. Close it. "Oh. Right. Yeah, that's a—that's a whole thing, isn't it." "It is."
"Keer would—" "Lose his entire wolf. Yes. Don't say bite me anywhere near him." "Noted. Officially noted. Stricken from the vocabulary. I yield bite me. Bite me is retired." "Mel. You are still saying bite me." "I'm saying it in retirement context. The retirement applies to general usage. Whereas if I want Keer to bite me—" "MELORI." "What." "That is my BROTHER. Stop." "I was clarifying the exemption—" "There is no exemption." She kisses the top of my head—not a feat, given height differentials —and moves on toward the roof. I watch her go. I don't think about the shirt. I think about the shirt for one beat. Across the clearing, Dara has the healing station set up under a lean-to. The station's hers now. Has been since the standoff—she has steady hands and I have animals and that turned out to be the right division of labor. I help if she calls. So far she hasn’t. A human man—one of Minette's, broad and sweating—is sitting on the stump with his hand out. His thumb is the color of an eggplant. "Hammer?" "Hammer." "Yourself?" "Yes." "Excellent." She wraps the thumb. He looks at her. "Will I lose it?" "No." "Will it heal?" "Yes." "Will it stop hurting?" "No." "... thank you?" "Don't smash it again." He nods and leaves with his thumb in the air. She raises a hand at me without looking. I raise one back. A shadow falls across the rail. Cedar. I don't turn around immediately because I have just decided I am a person with self-control. The decision lasts approximately two seconds. I turn around.
Keer. Waterskin in one hand. Wood dust in his hair, sawdust on his forearms, sweat at his collar. He's been raising a beam. He looks it. Cedar and sweat and sawdust. I didn't think sawdust would smell so sexy— Keer's eyebrow shoots up. Behind me, Bram grunts. He picks up his hammer and removes himself to the far end of the rail. I turn my head to Bram. "Oh, shut it, Bram. Get used to it." "Mm." I turn back to Keer. "Hi." He hands me the waterskin. "I'm not dehydrated. I want to make that clear up front. I'm drinking water at appropriate intervals. Bram and I have a system. Well, Bram and I do not actually have a system, that was a lie. Bram's refusing to drink water and I'm drinking water spitefully on his behalf in order to model the behavior. He hasn't adopted the behavior. He's decided he's in a hydration competition. He's losing the hydration competition and he refuses to acknowledge—" His thumb at my cheek. Brief. "Drink. Eat." "That was—that was two words, Keer. You can't just—" He's already walking back toward the dwelling. Hmph. I drink the water. Bram, after: "He's not wrong." "Hammer the rail, Bram." Another grunt. I drink more water. The water hits my stomach wrong. I don't notice it for a second. Then I notice it. It sits there. Cold. Sloshing. The post in front of me shifts slightly. Then it's not the post that's shifting, it's me. Heat goes up my spine and across my scalp and the back of my throat fills with what is not saliva. I brace one hand on the rail. I haven't sl ept. I sl ept four hours, maybe five. The wood treatment Axan uses on the corner posts smells terrible up close—black, sticky, acrid —and I have been bending over rails for three hours. That's all this is. The heat goes. The cold r eplaces it. I push off the rail. "Pegs, Bram. Three more long pegs. Cross brace." He looks at me. Goes for pegs. I sit on the log. Not because I need to sit. Because the log is there, and it is sometimes useful to sit. I drink more water. Bram returns. He squats by the rail. He doesn't look at me. He doesn't look at the rail either, which is what tells me he is looking at me.
"I had bread. I'm fine. I'm—" "Mm." "—going to drive that peg in a minute, just give me—" I don't get up. I sit. The clearing has too much in it. Hammers and voices and somewhere a child is shrieking and somewhere else a goat is shrieking back, and the heat and the cold trade places in my throat in a pattern, and the smell of the wood treatment is its own animal now, the smell is— I stand up. I make it three st eps. I'm bent over in the dirt with my hands on my knees. The bread comes up. Comes up again. My nose runs and my eyes water and there is nothing to be done about either until this stops. There is more bread in me than I remembered eating. Bram is there. His hand is between my shoulder blades. Steady. Sparse. Bram. I spit. I wipe my mouth with the back of my wrist. I straighten halfway. "M'fine. Sorry." "Don't be." I crouch with my hand on the rail. My hair is sticking to my forehead. Bram's hand is still between my shoulder blades. "I never puke." He waits. "The only time I've ever puked in my adult life was when I ate questionable mushrooms, which, given my profession, is de eply humiliating to admit." "Must be the heat." "It's not hot." "Mm." "Thank you, Bram. Helpful." "Yeah." I stop. I'm crouched in the dirt, hand on the rail, and my brain is doing math. Days backward. Today is build day four. One. Two. Three. Four. Four days since the standoff. Before the standoff was pr ep day. Before pr ep day was the scouts and the gray blood and the dirt— Oh. Huh. That explains the bread. Bram's hand is still on my back. "Bram." "Mm." "Where is Keer."
Bram lifts his chin toward the dwellings. Keer— I think I'm—