"Take her to the southern ridge. Show her where the borders are before she wanders into Graw's territory and starts a war." Axan leans against the doorframe of my dwelling. Arms folded. Face blank. "You want me to walk the human through our territory lines." "I want her to stop wandering into sections she can't identify." "So tell her." "I'm telling you." He watches me. "Take Kestria," I add. "Melori listens to her." "Melori listens to everyone. That's not the problem." He pushes off the doorframe. "The problem is you won't be there to explain it yourself." "I'll be on patrol." "Northern circuit?" "Does it matter?" "Just making sure I know where you won't be." He smirks. "Southern ridge. Border markers. Don't let the human die." "That's the idea." He leaves. I hear him crossing the clearing, his voice carrying —"Kestria. You're with me." Her response, sharp: "Why?" "Your brother wants us to babysit." "I don't babysit Mel." "Right. You babysit him. Today it's Mel." I close my eyes. The northern patrol takes an hour. Ridge clear. No Graw scent on the wind, no fresh trails crossing the line. Deer, old. Fox, older. Pack scent layered over all of it, which is how it should be. The border holds. The creek runs cold against my paws when I cross to check the traps. Two rabbits. I shift back enough to reset the wire, hands doing what paws can't, then drop down again and move on. Done. Whole morning ahead. Eastern circuit doesn't need checking until dusk. Western pass is Rhen's until midday. The southern border hasn't been walked in days.
I'm already moving south before I've finished deciding to. Graw's scouts were spotted near the southern ridge last week. One of the younger wolves r eported tracks. Unconfirmed. Could be deer. Could be nothing. I cut through the tree line. Fast, not running. Ground moves easy under four paws, faster than two. Pine sap. Wet moss. Deer trail, yesterday. Nothing that shouldn't be here. I hear them before I see them. Then—honey. Chamomile. Warm skin. Her. My paws slow. "—and that one?" Melori's voice, carrying through the trees. High. Clear. Impossible to miss. "Claw marks. Three de ep, see? That's Keer's." Axan. "He re-marks the southern line every few weeks. Other packs see it, they know whose land this is." "He scratches trees." "Yes." "So he's a cat." Kestria laughs, sharp and surprised. "Oh, please tell him that. Please. I'll pay you." I veer off behind the ridge of pines, out of sight, and shift. Bone and muscle fold back and I'm on two feet again, breathing hard. There's a cache staked into the base of the old split cedar a few yards off—oilcloth bundle, pack standard, clothes swapped out every few weeks by whoever runs this section. I dig it out. Pants. A shirt I don't bother with. I pull the pants on, tie them off, leave the rest. Back through the pines. Axan sees me first, his eyes landing on me, and then he looks away. Back to Melori. Ke eps talking. Kestria glances over her shoulder. Sees me. Her eyebrows go up and she looks at Axan—Axan bites the inside of his cheek. "The markers are de eper near the overlap zones." He hasn't acknowledged me. Just ke eps walking, explaining, gesturing toward the next blaze on a birch trunk. "Where our territory meets Graw's, Keer marks higher. Closer to eye level. So they see it in human form, not just wolf." "That's smart." Melori is looking at the tree, tracing the claw marks with her finger. She hasn't turned around. "Keer's thorough." Axan shifts a branch out of her path. "Every detail. Every gap. Same with borders as you are with healing." "Is that a compliment or a warning?" "Both." I fall into st ep behind them, and Kestria slows until she's walking beside me. Doesn't look at me, doesn't speak, just matches my pace. "Morning patrol?" she asks. Innocent. Looking straight ahead.
"Southern border." "The southern border you sent Axan to walk." "Different section." "Mm." She watches a bird cross overhead. "Different section." We walk. Axan is good at this. Melori asks questions, and not just where and what. Why. Why scent over claw in certain stretches, why the eastern border uses different spacing. Axan answers all of it. Thorough, clear, none of the information wrong. He knows the borders as well as I do—we've walked them together for years. Melori matches his pace without effort, hands swinging at her sides as she walks. "What happens if someone crosses?" "D epends on who." Axan ducks under a low branch, holds it for her, and she passes underneath. "Another pack's scout—we drive them back. Challenge if they press. A loner—evaluate. Could be someone looking for a pack. Could be trouble." "And a human?" He glances back at me. "Hasn't come up much." "It came up once." "Yeah." He faces forward again. "It did." She's quiet for a few st eps. "Keer didn't drive me back." "No." "Why not?" Axan doesn't answer, just looks at the trail ahead and adjusts their path around a fallen log. Melori turns to check if he heard her. "Ask him." A beat. "He's right behind you." She turns and jumps, a small sharp inhale, her hand flying up to her chest before she catches herself and drops it. "How long have you been there?" "A while." "You're supposed to be on patrol." "I am on patrol." "This is Axan's patrol." "This is my territory." Her eyes narrow. Not buying a single word.
"The southern border," Kestria offers from somewhere behind me, "apparently has a different section that happens to overlap with this exact trail." "Very convenient." Her arms fold. "Isn't it?" I look at my sister and she looks at the sky. Axan has stopped walking, leaning against a tree and watching this. "Ke ep moving," I tell him. He pushes off the tree. "Thought we'd take a break at the stream. Another half mile." He starts walking and doesn't wait for agreement. Melori falls in beside him and they pick up a conversation about Graw—how big his pack is, how long the border tension has been building. Easy back and forth. Asking things nobody else asks him. Kestria walks beside me again, close enough that her shoulder almost brushes my arm. "He's doing this on purpose." Low. Just for her. "Axan? Being helpful and informative and good with people? Yes. Terrible habit." "That's not what I mean." "I know what you mean." She looks at me. "Maybe try being helpful and informative and good with people. See how that works." I grunt, low, not looking at her. "Or ke ep lurking ten paces behind her. That's also a strategy." "I'm not lurking." "Oh, you're lurking." The stream cuts through a low clearing—shallow. Good water. Clean. Axan calls the break. Kestria drops onto a flat rock near the bank and pulls her boots off, one hand pressing her side—gone before anyone's supposed to notice. She tips her head back and closes her eyes. Melori crouches at the water's edge. She rolls her sleeves up, forearms pale and freckled in places, colorful stains climbing past her wrists. She cups water in her hands and splashes it over her arms, scrubbing at the stains. They don't come off. They never come off. She tries anyway. She splashes her face, pushes her hair back, the white braid loosening and pieces falling around her neck. She pulls the whole thing off her shoulders, twists it up, holds it with one hand.
Water on her throat. The back of her neck. I was saying something to Axan. She tilts her head and water runs behind her ear, down along her jaw, and she wipes it with the back of her hand and the sleeve slips down and she pushes it up again and— Axan is standing beside me. He walks to the stream, crouches a few feet from her. Casual. "Getting anywhere with those stains?" She holds up her hands. Purple from knuckle to wrist. "I've acc epted my fate." "Distinguished. Very healer." "Very 'I dropped a jar of paste and it exploded on everything I own.'" She splashes more water. "Does it bother the wolves? The smell, I mean. Moonbright on my skin all the time." "Burns a little up close. Nothing bad. Most of the pack's used to it by now." "Even Keer?" My hands curl at my sides. "Keer?" Axan tilts his head. "Keer seems to manage just fine around you. Can't imagine the smell is the hard part." I'm going to kill him. "What do you mean?" "Nothing." He gives her a wink, quick and easy, having the time of his life. "Just that you're a lot to get used to. In a good way." Melori snorts. "That's the politest version of 'you're a lot' anyone's ever given me." "I'm a polite person." "Weren’t you holding a young man by his ankles right before we left?" "Politely." She laughs, sharp off the water, and Axan grins. He did that without trying. Her head tips back and their shoulders almost touch and— My teeth itch to lengthen. My wolf surges to the surface, wanting out, wanting to do something I can't do, and I breathe through my nose and shove it down. I look at the trees—the bark on the nearest birch, the moss on the north side, anything else. "We should move." My voice comes clipped. Axan stands and offers Melori a hand. She takes it. His hand closes around hers and opens—brief, nothing, the kind of touch that means nothing—and my wolf doesn't care. It snarls under my skin, teeth itching again, hackles I don't have rising anyway, and I'm halfway to a st ep forward before I catch myself and lock my knees. Mine. Not a thought. A fact. I breathe through my nose and shove it down, again, harder this time. "He's right." Axan rolls his shoulders. "Southern ridge gets ste ep past this point. Better with daylight." Kestria is pulling her boots back on and she catches my eye, holds it for one second, two. "You look tense, Keer." The word lands exactly where she aimed it. Pleasant. Casual. Completely without mercy.
"I'm fine." "You sure? You look a little—" Her mouth presses flat and I know that expression. It is the expression she has worn at me since we were children and she was about to get me in trouble with our mother. "A little wound up." "I'm fine." "He's been on the ridge all morning," Melori says, brushing grass off the back of her trousers, trying to help. "Probably just tired." "Probably." Kestria does not look away from me. "Or hungry. Are you hungry? I could bring something by when we get back. I've got stew left—" "I'm fine," I say, a third time, a fourth, I've lost count. "He's fine," Axan agrees, with the kind of casual inflection that is not casual at all. "Probably just needs some air." "He's outside," Kestria says. "Different air." Melori looks between them, confused but game. "Is there... special air? Is that a wolf thing?" "Yes," Axan says. "No," I say. "He gets like this sometimes," Kestria tells Melori, patting her arm. "It passes. Usually." She pauses. Just long enough. "Maybe he should do something about it. Release all that tension." Her eye cuts to me, bright and lethal. "I'm sure our healer knows something that could help." My teeth are going to crack. "Kes—" "Oh!" Melori's face lights up. "I know a tea that could help! Valerian, a little chamomile, maybe some skull cap if you've got it, which you probably don't because nobody does around here, but I could put something together—it's good for sle ep, good for stress, good for general wound-upness—" I don't breathe. Nobody does, exc ept Melori, who is cheerfully running through her herb inventory. Axan coughs into his fist. Kestria is fighting something that is trying very hard to become a laugh. Melori, still earnest: "I'd have to see what I have. Probably tomorrow? I'm short on chamomile but I passed a patch on the ridge path —" "That would be great," I say, because my mouth has decided to take over from my brain. "Thank you, Melori." Her whole face lights up. She claps once, bounces on the balls of her feet, and I feel that bounce land somewhere behind my ribs with more force than any touch has ever had the right to. "Oh! Okay. Tomorrow, then. Actually—I could bring two. A nighttime one and a daytime one, because if you're wound up during the day you don't want valerian, that'll knock you sideways, but something lighter—lemon balm maybe, if there's any growing around here—and passionflower, if I can find some, which I probably can't because nothing useful grows in this specific patch of forest exc ept for pine, and pine is many things but it is not medicinal. Well. A little medicinal. Pine tea is fine. But it's not sle ep tea." She's counting on her fingers now. "I should probably also look at what you're eating. Stress tea works better if your diet isn't actively fighting it. Are you getting enough protein? Never mind,
obviously you are, look at you." She looks at me. She runs her eyes from my shoulders down to my chest to my stomach and lower and back up, a full swe ep, clinical for approximately one and a half seconds before her entire face goes a color I have never seen on her before, a de ep and unr epentant red that starts at her collarbones and climbs. Her mouth opens. Closes. "Protein," she says, clearing her throat. "Is. Fine. Very fine." Kestria makes a sound. It is the sound a person makes when they are using every ounce of their body to not die laughing on their brother's behalf. "Good," Melori says, nodding too many times. "Good, that's. Good. Stress tea. Chamomile. Tomorrow. Right. I'm going to—we should ke ep moving." "Absolutely," Kestria says. "Southern ridge," Axan says, unprovoked, unbothered, savage. Kestria is grinning now and Axan is not hiding it well. My wolf is snarling quietly under my ribs at the fact that I cannot explain to her what my sister and my Beta have just done to me in plain daylight, and also at the fact that she just agreed to brew me a tea, and also at the fact that she is standing three feet from Axan. It is going to be a long walk. Axan starts us moving. The path narrows at the bend and we fall into formation without thinking—Axan at point, Melori and Kestria in the middle, me last. Kestria is saying something low to Melori. Something in volving the word protein and then a small choked laugh. Melori makes a sound that might be a groan. I ke ep my eye on the trail and my ear on the wind. The bear has been dying for days. Every wolf on patrol has heard it. The pack agreed to stay off that side of the ridge until the thing finished— too close to the iron, too much risk of a second trap nobody's found yet. I've been routing patrols around it. I was going to route us around it today. A quarter mile down, the wind shifts. Melori stops walking. "Wait." Her hand goes up. "Wait, do you hear that?" I hear it. I heard it before she did. I was hoping it wouldn't carry this far. "Hear what?" Kestria, careful. "Something's crying." The sound again. Low, ragged, broken up. Not close. Not far enough. The smell hits next. Blood, old, and underneath it rot and infection and dying. And something else. Iron. Rust. Axan catches it at the same time I do, his chin lifting, nostrils wide, eyes scanning left. "Off the trail." Just for me. "Thirty paces. Maybe forty." I nod, already adjusting our path—circle wide, give it space, ke ep moving.
"Bear." Axan's voice drops quieter. "Wounded. Days ago. Infected." "How can you tell?" "I can smell it." He pauses. "And iron. A trap." Melori's face changes. "A trap." "Leg trap. Human-made." Axan looks at me, the same thought on both of us—humans setting traps this de ep in our territory. Not for bears. "We go around," I tell her. "Trapped bears are worse than wounded ones. Pain and panic—" "A trap." Her voice has gone hard. "Someone trapped it and left it there." "Melori—" "We're not—" "In a trap. Alone. With its leg rotting." I st ep in front of her, between her and the trees. "A trapped bear kills you before you get close enough to help." "Maybe." "Not maybe. That is what will happen." She looks up at me, and the height difference means she has to tip her chin. Her eyes are clear—certain. No fear. "It's dying, Keer." "You are not walking toward a bear." "I'm not asking permission." She st eps around me. I grab her arm. She stops, looks at my hand, looks at me, and her scent hits—honey and chamomile. Her pulse hammers under my fingers. She's going anyway. "Let. go." I let go. She walks. Kestria st eps in front of her, hands on Melori's shoulders. "Mel. Stop. That thing will tear you apart." "The wound's infected. If I can clean it and pack it—" "You can't clean it if you're dead." "Then help me not be dead." Kestria stares at her and Melori stares back, and neither of them blinks. My sister looks at me. Do something. The bear's breathing is labored, the clink of chain against iron. Big. Probably a male, from the d epth of the breathing.
Melori is walking again, Kestria beside her already pulling the waterskin off her shoulder and handing it over without being asked, shifted to damage control. I look at Axan. The humor is gone. He's the Beta now. The second. "How do you want to do this?" Already moving. "Pin, don't kill. Kestria stays with Mel—hands her what she needs, ke eps clear of the head." "Two of us on a bear." His jaw sets and he nods. "She won't forgive us if we kill it." Axan reads that on my face and doesn't comment. "I'll take the shoulder and the good legs. You take the head." "If it swipes at her—" "It won't. Because we'll have it down before she gets close." The bear is worse than I expected. Massive, brown, male, half upright with one foreleg caught in the iron jaws of a leg trap. The chain is staked de ep into the ground. The leg above the trap is swollen black, the skin split where the bear has tried to pull free, bone visible through the mess. Flies. The smell up close makes my eyes water. Even Melori flinches. The trap is old design. Heavy iron. Built for wolves. Not for bears. For us. Melori has gone very still beside me. Her eyes on the bear. Her hands on the pack at her hip. "Axan." "Yeah." "That's a bear." "Yup." "That's not a bear-person, right?" "No." His mouth pulls sideways and he fights it flat. "Just a bear." "You're sure?" "I'm sure." "Because a month ago I was sure werewolves weren't real and now I'm standing in a forest with three of them about to help a bear, so I am not ruling anything out." "It's a bear, Mel." Kestria, close to her shoulder. "Just a bear." "Fine. Okay. Regular bear." She exhales. "Good." It sees us and the sound shakes the ground, low and guttural and building. It tries to lunge and the chain snaps taut and it roars, jaws wide, teeth yellow, spit flying. The good paw swipes—a full arm's reach, claws catching air.
"Now." Axan hits it from the left, shoulder against the bear's side, driving it down and away from the trapped leg. It swings—fast, faster than something this injured should move—and Axan rolls clear and comes back harder, both hands on the shoulder, throwing his weight across it. I go for the head. My hands find the jaw, both sides, and the bear thrashes and my arms strain and its teeth snap six inches from my face. I wrench its head to the ground and hold. My back screams. The bear screams. I hold. Two of us, not enough weight. The bear bucks and Axan slides, digs in, and I dig in, and the trapped leg jerks and the chain rattles and the sound the bear makes is not a roar—it's something worse. It swipes. The good paw catches my forearm and three lines of fire open from elbow to wrist. I don't let go. "Down!" Axan throws everything across the shoulder. The bear bucks again. He holds. Barely. "Now!" She's already there, on her knees beside the trapped leg, Kestria crouched next to her pulling herbs from Melori's pockets, laying out the waterskin, clearing space. Working together without talking—Kestria handing things before Melori asks. Melori's fingers find the trap and she studies it for one second, two. "I need to open this before I can treat the leg. Keer—can you reach the release?" "I'm holding its head." "Axan?" "Little busy." She looks at the trap, looks at the release lever, wraps both hands around it and pulls. The jaws loosen and the bear convulses—every muscle at once. My grip slips and I wrench it back, and the trap falls open and the leg drops free. The bear thrashes so hard Axan gets thrown sideways. He rolls, comes back, pins the shoulder again. Blood running down my forearm, dripping. "Hold him." Melori's hands are on the leg now and the wound is—I can see it from here. Crushed. Infected. Skin split to the bone. She pours water over it and the bear bucks against us. "I know," she tells it. "I know. I'm sorry. Almost done." Kestria passes her a fistful of packed herbs and Melori takes them without looking, her hands in the wound—cleaning, draining, packing. The bear's head thrashes against my grip and its eye rolls, white and wild and terrified. I press harder, close enough to feel its breath. Hot and rank and desperate. Claws catch Axan's ribs. He grunts, doesn't move. Blood spreads across his shirt. "Mel." Through my teeth. "Faster." "Don't rush me." Holding a bear's head to the ground, bleeding from both arms, and she's telling me not to rush her. Kestria tears a strip of cloth and hands it over, and Melori wraps the leg—fast, tight, practiced. Same hands. Wolves, stew, that damn chicken.
Now a bear. "Okay." She sits back and wipes her forehead with the back of her hand, blood smearing across her hairline. "Okay. Let him go." "Back up first," I tell her. She scrambles back. Kestria with her. Axan and I reset our grip, put the trap and the open ground between the bear and the women. "Now." We release and shove off the shoulder at the same time, jumping clear, and the bear is up before we land. It twists, staggers, and runs—hard, fast, crashing through the underbrush away from us, the freed leg dragging and catching and propelling it anyway. Not a look. Not a pause. Just gone. Silence. My ears ring and my forearms burn, blood dripping off my fingers into the dirt. Three parallel lines on the left arm, two on the right. Axan sits against the nearest tree, winded, one hand pressed against his ribs where the claws caught him. His shirt is dark with it. He looks at the blood, looks at me, shakes his head. Kestria is still on her knees and her hands are shaking, her eyes going from the trap to Melori to me. Melori stands up and wipes her hands on her dress. Blood, dirt, herb paste, bear. Her sleeves are soaked and her braid has come half undone. She looks at my arms and her face changes. "You're bleeding." She st eps toward me. I don't st ep back. I want to. Everything in my body wants to. But Axan is watching and Kestria is watching and Melori is a healer offering to do what healers do, and refusing her here would be louder than anything I've said all day. "Let me see." I hold out my arms. She takes my wrist. Her fingers are cool and steady and covered in bear. My pulse is not steady. I can feel it kicking against her fingertips and I know she can feel it too because she pauses, just a half-second, before she turns my arm to the light. "De ep." She's already reaching for her pack with the other hand, still holding my wrist. "Not to the bone. Lucky." "Lucky." "I'm going to clean it. It's going to sting." "Okay." She pours water over the cuts and it does sting, but that is not what I am focused on. What I am focused on is the top of her head, inches from my chin, the braid half-undone, a streak of bear blood across her hairline. What I am focused on is the way she hums under her breath when she's concentrating. What I am focused on is that she is holding my arm in her hands and I am not allowed to do anything about any of it.
Her thumb strokes once across my wrist. Unconscious. A healer's checking-for-pulse gesture. It might as well be a brand. "Other arm." I give her the other arm. She works through the second set of cuts the same way—clean, pack, wrap. Her hands are fast. Her hands have been fast all day. "Done." She st eps back and wipes her hands on her dress. "Try not to fight any more bears this week." "I'll think about it." Melori turns to Axan. "Show me your ribs." "Thought you'd never ask." He lifts his shirt—three shallow cuts across the lower ribs, already closing. She examines them and his eyes move to me over her head. I look away. Kestria's standing now and she looks at Melori—at the blood drying on her hands, the paste under her nails. "You're insane." "He was dying." "He almost killed you." "He didn't, though." "Because they held him down." "Yes." Melori looks at her, looks at me, looks at Axan. "Thank you." "You're welcome. Don't ever do that again." "I probably will." "I know. That's the problem." Axan stays beside me, doesn't speak for a long time. Our boots on the trail. Birds above. Ahead of us, Melori and Kestria. Melori is talking—explaining the wound, the infection, what she packed it with, how long recovery takes for an animal that size. Her hands move when she talks. Always. Kestria listens, nods, doesn't interrupt. Axan clears his throat. "Twenty years." He's watching the trail. "Not once have I seen you take an order from anyone." "She didn't order me to do anything." "She just walked. And you rearranged everything around ke eping her alive while she worked." He glances at me. My back straightens. "She was right, though. Bear would've died." "I know." "That bother you?"
"What bothers me is she didn't stop." He's quiet for a few st eps, then, low: "Yeah. That's the scary part." We walk without talking for a while. The trail narrows through a stand of birch and widens again. "The trap." I ke ep my voice down. "That's close." "Closer than the last ones. By a mile, at least." "Have Rhen take two wolves and swe ep the perimeter around camp. Anything staked within a half day's walk, I want to know about it." Axan nods. No argument. Humans set traps, we find them, we pull them. But not this de ep. Not this close to camp. Ahead of us, Melori laughs at something Kestria says. The sound carries back through the trees. We walk back.