Nugget is going to rupture something. She's pressed against the slats of the coop, feathers puffed, beak open, screaming with a fury that rivals mine on a bad day. Still pink. Still the angriest chicken alive. I unlatch the door and she barrels out, hits the ground running, and attacks a clump of grass. The coop floor is also pink now. Pink droppings everywhere. Called it. "I know, it's been a day." She ignores me. Pecks the grass with murderous intent. The other two are calmer, st epping out cautiously, eyeing the blood in the dirt. I scatter feed—handful, two handfuls, that's enough for now— and they settle into pecking while Nugget wages war on nothing. Done. Chickens handled. Blood next. I kick dirt over the worst of it. The dark stain in front of the cottage door, the smear where Kestria collapsed, the trail I left dragging her inside. It doesn't cover completely but it'll ke ep the flies from getting worse. My hands are still crusted with her blood—dried brown over the purple that never washes off. Should wash them. The basin inside is already pink. Need fresh water from the stream but that means leaving and I don't want to leave because Kestria's— The deer. I make myself look at it. Flies thick on the carcass, buzzing in a black cloud that lifts and resettles when I wave my hand. Half-pr epped, meat already going gray in the warmth. Waste. Complete waste. Kestria hauled that thing for miles and now it's— "Nothing I can do about you." I grab the edge of the worktable and shove. The deer slides off, hits the ground with a wet thud. A fox or a bear will find it tonight. Better than it rotting on my worktable. I'll drag it to the tree line later. Or Kestria will, when she's not busy being stabbed. The clothes in the grass—Kestria's, shredded when she shifted. I pick them up. They fall apart in my hands, fabric torn along every seam, buttons scattered. These were on her body this morning. I toss them by the woodpile. Can use them for rags. Or bandages. The practical ones, not the good ones—the good bandages are inside and I'm going through them too fast and I need to— Go back inside. I go back inside. Kestria hasn't moved. The blanket rises and falls with her breathing —shallow, too fast, but steady. Her face is gray-white against the rough wool. Sweat beading at her temples, her hairline damp. Fever's climbing.
I press the back of my hand to her forehead. Burning. Hotter than when I wrapped her, which was—twenty minutes ago? Thirty? Time's gone strange. "That's not great, just so you know." I pull the blanket down and check the bandages. Red at the edges— se eping through. And the gray. The gray at the wound's edge has cr ept outward again, past where I pasted it. Spreading into healthy skin in thin veins. That's not right. That's not—it's always worked. It's always— "Okay." I'm already moving. Shelf. Jars. I grab one—second from the left now, the ones I used earlier are empty on the worktable. Crack the wax seal. Sharp green smell floods the room, strong enough to make my eyes water. "See. This is fine. Totally fine. Maybe she's sensitive to it. Can werewolves be sensitive to moonbright? Why wouldn't they be. People are sensitive to stuff all the time. Pollen. Shellfish." I scoop paste onto my fingers. "Maybe she needs more. Maybe she needs less. I don't know. I'm going to go with more. More paste, same process. More paste, can't go wrong with more paste.” I spread it thick across the gray edges, pressing it into the veins, covering everything. Same motion I've done a hundred times on wolves who were— People. Wolf-people? People-wolf? I wonder which came first— My fingers ke ep working. Scoop. Spread. Press. The paste is cool and gritty against the heat of her skin. The gray retreats where I touch it, pulling back from the moonbright. "Good. That's good. Ke ep doing that." "Did you understand me? All those times I was talking to wolves in my kitchen—did you understand every word?" I'm wrapping fresh bandages as I talk, pulling them snug around her ribs. "Because if so, I want to apologize for about a hundred things I've said. Or not apologize. You all should've warned me." Fold, wrap, tuck, tie. "You probably thought that was hilarious." No response. I pull the blanket back up and check her pulse. Racing. Fever's still climbing. "Cool cloth." I grab the rag I used earlier, dip it in the basin—wring it out, press it to her forehead. "I don't know if this helps for—for whatever you are. For werewolves. But it helps for humans and you're at least half that, so we're going with it." She doesn't react. "You could wake up and tell me if this is useful. I'm working with very limited information here because someone didn't mention she was a wolf for the entire duration of our friendship." Nothing. I settle beside her, back against the wall, cloth in one hand, the other resting on my knee. The floor is hard and cold through my skirt and I should've grabbed a cushion but I'm not moving now. Not until her fever breaks. The cottage is quiet exc ept for her breathing and Nugget screaming outside. That chicken is never going to forgive me for today. My hands have nothing to do.
Werewolves are real. That's—established. Kestria shifted in my front yard. I watched bones crack and fur grow and my friend disappear into an animal that fought five armed men. It happened. It's a fact now. Right next to "water is wet" and "Nugget hates mornings." Werewolves are real. Fine. "The strangers." I'm talking to her again because the silence is worse. "The ones who showed up two years ago. Three? Four of them. They dragged logs and cleared brush and helped me build the back wall of this cottage. I left out food and they ate it and I thought they were just— travelers. Passing through." I refresh the cloth. Her forehead is burning through it. "Those were your people, weren't they. You sent them." She doesn't confirm or deny. She's very committed to being unconscious. Most annoying thing she's ever done, and the competition is ste ep. "I made them stew. Rabbit stew. They ate three bowls each and I thought, well, they worked hard, big men, big appetites, perfectly normal. They were wolves. Werewolves. And I was standing there in my apron feeding them rabbit stew and chatting about the weather..." My stomach growls. Loud. Loud enough that Kestria would laugh if she were awake. I ignore it. She needs me here more than I need bread. "And the wolves I fed. The actual wolves—the ones in wolf shape, who came to the edge of the clearing and waited. I'd leave out scraps and they'd eat and go. Every few days. For years." I press the cloth harder against her forehead. "Those were people too. People I was feeding table scraps." "I hope the stew was better than the scraps. For your sake." Wring the cloth. Check the wound. Same—gray holding, not spreading, not retreating. "Also—" I shift against the wall, trying to find a position that doesn't make my spine hate me. "—who decided I was the one to come to? Was there a meeting? 'Attention, everyone, there's a short human with a squeaky voice who lives in the clearing, and she'll patch you up if you sit still and look pathetic.' Did someone give that speech? Because someone must have given that speech." I'm gesturing at an unconscious woman. This is what my life has become. "You know what the worst part is? It worked. I fell for it every single time. A wolf would show up looking pitiful and I'd drop everything. 'Oh no, you poor thing, let me help.' Every time, Kestria. I am a very easy mark." The gray has stopped spreading. The paste is holding it. Not healing it yet, just holding. "Come on," I mutter. "Work. You always work." The light through the window shifts. Past midday. Maybe later. I should eat. I'm not going to eat. The perimeter needs checking—Theron said he'd come back, and he didn't seem like the bluffing type. Blood still on my hands.
Deer carcass attracting everything bigger than flies. And the paste stores—how many jars left? Do I have enough petals to make more? I don't move. "The thing is," I tell her, "I'm not even angry about the werewolf part. Not really. The werewolf part is—it's a lot, obviously, it's a whole situation, but people don't get to choose what they are. You didn't choose to be a wolf any more than I chose to be five foot nothing with a voice that makes dogs tilt their heads." I wring out the cloth. Dip it. Wring it again. "I'm angry about the lying. Years, Kestria. Years of you watching me treat your people—treat you—and never saying a word. You watched me talk to wolves about their day. You watched me scold them for chewing their bandages. You sat right there while I told a wolf he needed to stop getting into fights, and the whole time you knew." My throat is tight. The words come out thin. "Was it funny? Did you go home and tell everyone about the little human who thinks she's a wolf doctor? Because I would have laughed too, honestly. It's objectively hilarious. I just would have liked to be in on the joke." I stop. Breathe. Press the cloth to her forehead. "Okay. I'm a little angry about the werewolf part too." The afternoon crawls. I check her wound every time I refresh the cloth—every twenty minutes, maybe thirty. The gray edges are paler now, retreating slowly. Healthy pink underneath. My paste is working. It's just working slow. Slower than usual? Or the same? I've never timed it. Never had to sit with a patient this long. The wolves—the people—always came to me, got treated, and left. I never watched the full process. Never sat through the hours while moonbright fought poison inside someone's body. "You could heal faster," I tell her. "As a personal favor to me." Her breathing stutters. I freeze. Hand on her forehead, other hand crushing the cloth, pulse hammering in my throat. The stutter stretches. One beat. Two. Then steadies. "Don't." I barely get the word out. "Don't do that." I press my hand flat against her chest. Her heartbeat thumps against my palm—fast, uneven, but there. "You're fine. That was nothing. You're fine." My hands are shaking. "I'm adding that to the list of things I'm yelling at you for. When you wake up. Which you're going to do. Because you don't get to die on my floor. That's rude. I'd have to clean it." Nugget screams outside. A crash—the water bucket, probably. I should check. I don't. I stay. The light shifts. Late afternoon. Golden. My stomach has given up growling and settled into a dull, persistent ache. The chickens have gone quiet, which either means they've calmed down or something got into the coop. I
heard sniffing around the deer carcass earlier. Didn't get up to check. Didn't care enough to check. "How many of you are there?" I ask her. "A whole group, right? A pack. Has to be. The men who built my cottage—four of them. And the wolves who came for treatment, they weren't all the same wolf. Different sizes, different injuries. That's at least fifteen. Twenty." No answer. "Is there someone in charge? Do you have—meetings? Assignments? 'You go get stabbed on Tuesday, you go get stabbed on Thursday'?" Nothing. Just her breathing, and Nugget honking at the dark. "You could wake up and answer these. I'm ke eping a running list and it's getting long." The cottage gets darker. Evening. I light a candle with numb fingers, then two more. The wicks need trimming—they're smoking, burning uneven, casting shadows that jump when the draft hits them. The gap in the ceiling lets in a thin thread of cooling air. Add it to the list. Ceiling. Bandages. Paste. Water. Deer. Chickens. Werewolves. The list is getting unwieldy. My eyes are gritty. My back is one solid ache from the wall. Her pulse—still fast. Her temperature—still burning. The wound—gray edges paler, retreating, but slow. So slow. "Any time now," I tell her. "Fever breaking would be wonderful. I'd like to eat something this decade." I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes. Just for a second. Just while the candles burn and Kestria breathes and the world outside gets dark and quiet. My hands are crusted with her blood—dried brown under my fingernails, in the creases of my knuckles. I need to wash them. Need to eat. Need to sle ep. Need to figure out what comes next, because Theron is coming back and he's going to bring more men and they know where I live and they know about Kestria and— Later. The next time I open my eyes, the candles are guttering. One's already out, a thin ribbon of smoke curling from the wick. The other two are stubs. And the room sounds wrong. Not wrong. Different. The rhythm of— Her breathing. I jerk forward, hand on her forehead before I've fully woken up. Warm. Not burning. "Oh." I pull the blanket down, check the wound. The gray is gone. Healthy pink spreading out from under the paste, new skin forming at the edges. "Oh, thank—it worked. Of course it worked. It always works." My whole body is wrung out—back screaming, knees locked, neck stiff, so hungry I'm nauseous, which is a fun contradiction— "You're going to be fine." I'm smoothing the blanket back over her, tucking it at the edges, and the words come out so high they crack. "Fever broke. Wound's healing. You're going to be fine and I'm going to eat an entire loaf of bread and then yell at you. In that order."
Her breathing is de eper now. Easier. Color coming back to her face —faint pink where there was nothing, warmth where there was gray. I let my head fall back against the wall. I don't relight the candles. Just sit in the dark and listen to her breathe. I wake to fingers brushing my arm. My neck screams when I lift my head—I fell asle ep against the wall, chin on my chest, and everything has locked into place at terrible angles. Dawn light leaks through the window, gray and thin. The candles are cold puddles of wax. My mouth tastes stale. My back is going to be furious with me for a week. "Kestria?" Her eyes are open. Human eyes. Brown, warm, clear. The same eyes that were laughing at my pink chicken yesterday morning. "Mel." Her voice is a rasp, barely there. "You look terrible." My whole body goes loose. "You got stabbed by a poisoned sword and turned into a wolf in my front yard. I think I'm entitled to look terrible." "Fair point." She shifts and winces. "Ow." "Don't move. The wound's still closing." "Everything hurts." "You got stabbed. That tends to hurt." "How long was I out?" "All day. All night." I hold up a finger. "Which I spent sitting on this floor. My entire skeleton hates me. When you can walk, you owe me a cushion. A good one." "Noted." She's almost smiling. Weak, barely there, but real. "Have you eaten?" "Don't change the subject." "That's a no." "I was busy ke eping you alive. Eating seemed selfish." "Mel. Go eat something." "When I'm done checking your wound." I pull the blanket down. The bandage is stained but the bleeding's stopped. The skin around the wound is pink, healthy, new. "Healing well. Better than I expected, actually. Is that a—is that a wolf thing? Faster healing?" "Faster than humans, yeah." "That's incredibly useful information that would have been great to have at literally any point in the last decade." She winces, and not from the wound. "I deserved that." "You deserve worse. I'm being generous because you almost died."
I pull the blanket back up and sit back on my heels. My knees pop. Both of them. Loudly. "I have questions." "I figured." "Many questions. A truly unreasonable number of questions." "Ask." "How many of you are there?" She hesitates. "In the pack? Thirty. Thirty-five, d epending on—" "Thirty-five." "Give or take." "There are thirty-five werewolves in the forest." "Not all in one place. We're spread—" "Thirty-five werewolves. In the forest. Where I live." "Yes." "And the wolves I've been treating—" "Pack members. People who got hurt and needed help." "People." I rub my eyes. They're gritty, swollen. "The wolf with the infected bite last spring. The one who came back three times because he k ept reopening it." "Rhen." "He has a name." "They all have names, Mel." "Of course they do. They're people. You just said they're people." My voice is climbing and I press my palms flat against my thighs. "Rhen. The wolf with the—Rhen k ept reopening the wound because I wrapped it too tight, didn't I. He couldn't tell me because he was a wolf. He just k ept coming back and I k ept wrapping it the same way and scolding him for being difficult." "He doesn't hold it against you." "That's very gracious of Rhen." I push myself up. My back spasms. Water first, then food, then—no. Food first. No. Water. "The strangers. Who helped build my cottage. Four of them. Big men, showed up one morning, worked all day, ate my stew." "Pack members. I asked them to help." "You asked them." "You needed a back wall. I couldn't exactly explain why I knew that." "You—" I stop. Start again. "You sent people. Your people. To build my cottage. And they showed up and dragged logs and ate rabbit stew and I never—I never even asked their names." I walk to my food stores. The bread is stale, dense. I tear off a chunk and shove it in my mouth. Best thing I've ever tasted. My jaw aches from chewing. "Ke ep talking," I tell her through a mouthful. "I can eat and listen at the same time." "What else do you want to know?"
"Everything." I take another bite. Chew. Swallow. "But start with— the shifting. The wolf thing. How does that work? Is it a choice? Can you just—whenever?" "We can shift whenever we want. But the new moon forces it." "Forces it." "We shift whether we want to or not. For the whole night." "That's—" I grab the water skin from the shelf. Empty. Right. I tossed it during the chaos yesterday. There's a cup by the basin. I pour water —still pink—stare at it—pour it out, grab the other water skin, the emergency one. Drink. "The new moon. Not the full moon?" "Everyone gets that wrong." "Everyone doesn't know werewolves are real, so I think we can forgive the confusion." I drink again. My stomach cramps around the water, not sure whether to be grateful or furious. "What about the full moon?" "Weakens us. We can't shift during the full moon. Can't heal as fast. It's—it's our vulnerable time." "The full moon makes you weak." "Yes." "And the new moon forces you to shift." "Yes." "That's backwards from every story I've ever heard." "The stories aren't exactly written by wolves." I laugh. Can't help it—it tears out of me, slightly unhinged. Kestria watches me with that worried expression, the guilty one, but her mouth twitches. "This is insane," I tell her. "You know that? This is completely insane." "I know." "I've been living next to a pack of thirty-five werewolves for ten years and treating them with flower paste and scolding them for chewing their bandages." "You were very firm about the bandage chewing." "It's a hygiene issue." I tear off more bread. "Does the moonbright —the paste. It works on you. Obviously. But does it work differently than I think?" "Moonbright's poison to us. In the wild, touching the flowers can burn. Concentrated, it can kill." "Kill." "That's what was on Theron's blade. Concentrated moonbright." I look at the jar on my shelf. The paste I've been making for years. The paste I've been spreading on wolf wounds with my bare hands. "But the paste heals you."
"Something about the way you process it. The mixing, the ratios—I don't know the details. Keer might." She shifts on the floor, careful of the wound. "All I know is wild moonbright hurts us and your paste fixes us. That's why wolves started coming to you in the first place." "Because I accidentally invented werewolf medicine." "Basically." "While trying to make a nice salve for cuts." "You're very talented." I huff, wave a hand. "Well, yeah. We all know that. Come on." I scrub a hand down my face. "I'm going to need a minute." I press my hand over my eyes. The bread is half-gone. My stomach is cramping around it, confused by actual food after a day and a half of nothing. "Wait. You said Keer." "I did." "Keer. Your brother, Keer?" "Yes." "The one who won't let you take certain roads. The one who grunts in three words or less. The one you complain about every single time you visit." "Yes." "Keer might know the details about moonbright." "Yes." "How? Oh—is he a healer? A WEREWOLF HEALER!" My whole body lights up. "Oh my gosh. He would know so much. How do medicines work on you? Because I've been dosing wolves with willow bark for pain and I have no idea if it's even doing anything or if I'm just giving them a tea and they're being polite. And what about the yellow flower by the stream—the one with the bitter leaves? I use it for headaches, but wolves process things differently, so does it even work? And the bone pain —fuck, the bone pain. Shifting has to hurt. I saw what your body did. That can't be pain-free. Do you have something for it? Or have you just been dealing with it? Because I have things I could try—" "Mel." "—and I don't know if any of them would work, but there's mullein root and there's—" "Mel." "—a compound I make from—" "Mel. He's not a healer." "Oh." I sag back against the floor. "Then why would he know about moonbright?" She hesitates. "Kestria." "My brother." Her fingers pick at the blanket edge. She's not looking at me. "He's, um. He's the—" "The what?" "The alpha."
I stare at her. "The alpha." "He knows." "He knows about everything. Mel, he—" She stops. Chooses her words. "He doesn't like it. Wolves coming to you. A human knowing where we are, what we look like, how we get hurt. It's a risk." "But it's not like I knew. I thought I was treating wolves. Like, actual wolves. What's so wrong about that? Wolves needed help. I helped them. That's how it works." "I know." "I'm not a risk if I didn't know what I was looking at." "I know, Mel." "Then what's his problem? I'm a very nice and useful human—" "Mel—" "But they need help anyway, so they come to me. Which means he can't exactly let his own people bleed out to make a point." "Yes." "So he just grits his teeth and tolerates it." "That is a very accurate description of my brother, yes." "So what, he's—" I wave my hand, grasping. "Is he like you? I mean, obviously he's like you, you're siblings, but when he shifts—is he bigger? Do alphas work differently?" "He's bigger. A lot bigger. Strongest in the pack. He's been alpha since he was twenty-three." "And he's how old now?" "Early forties." Early forties. Someone's been running a pack of wolves for almost twenty years. Where do you even stand? Is there a rock? Do you just be tall and angry until everyone listens? "And he's never—visited? Himself? Never come to check on the strange human who ke eps patching up his people?" "You'd have to ask him." "Kestria." "What? He doesn't tell me everything. He's more likely to have sent someone to check on you than come himself." "So he's been having his people r eport back on me." "Probably." I drop my hands. Kestria's smiling now—not the guilty smile from before. An actual smile, warm and fond and so familiar it makes my chest ache. "Would I know him? If I saw him? In human form. Have I—have I met him without knowing it?" "No. He would never come as a human." She hesitates. "But he will be coming now. He'll want to—he has to, after what happened. With Theron." My stomach tightens. The alpha of a werewolf pack is about to show up at my cottage and I'm covered in blood and I haven't sl ept and Nugget has destroyed the garden. Great.
"Is there anything else? Any other massive life-altering revelations you'd like to drop while I'm sitting here covered in your blood?" "I think that covers the major points." "Werewolves are real, you're one of them, your brother runs the pack, the wolves I've been treating are people with names, and my flower paste is apparently the only medicine that works on you." "That's about it." "Great. Wonderful. I'm going to finish this bread and then I'm going to check on my chickens and then I'm going to have a very quiet breakdown in the garden." "Mel." "What." "Are we okay?" I look at her. Blanket. Bandages. Color in her cheeks that wasn't there twelve hours ago. She lied. She also— Her blood is under my fingernails. "You apologized already." "That's not the same as asking." "Isn't it?" "No." "Mel." "We're okay." I say it and mean it and my voice cracks on the second word. "We're okay. The wolf thing is—I told you, it's a lot. The lying is worse. But we're okay." Her eyes go wet again. "I'm going to make it up to you." "You're going to start by dealing with that deer when you can walk. It's been outside simmering in the sun and I'm not touching it." "I can do that." "And you're going to answer every question I have. No more secrets." "No more secrets." I stand. My knees crack. My back screams. Everything hurts and the cottage smells like blood and moonbright and candle smoke, and outside the deer is rotting and Nugget is probably plotting my death. "I'm going to get fresh water. And check the chickens. And try to figure out what Nugget knocked over last night. Don't move." "Where would I go?" "Knowing you? Anywhere exc ept where you're supposed to be." "That's fair." "I know it is."
I head for the door. The morning light is thin and gray, just cresting the trees. The air smells cool, clean, nothing like the cottage. Tracks near the deer carcass—something big got to it overnight. Good. Less to deal with. Nugget is in the garden, still pink, pecking at my herbs. She's knocked over the water bucket, the feed container, and somehow dislodged three fence stakes. Impressive, honestly, for a chicken her size. "You—are a menace."