"She should stay inside."
I grunt. "Are you going to tell her that?"
"Keer."
"She'll do what she does." I pull my shirt over my head. Fold it. Set it on the bench.
"She'll probably end up out here anyway."
"Probably."
Axan snorts. "With the chicken."
"Probably."
Whatever he thinks of it, he keeps to himself. He nods once, and goes.
The open ground changes at dusk. Voices dropping. Clothes being shed—folded, stacked, set in doorways. Bodies moving to open ground.
Kestria's at her dwelling. Sitting on the step, arms around her knees. She straightens when she sees me, wincing.
"Don't push through the pain."
"I've been shifting since I was a child, Keer."
"You've never shifted with a healing wound."
"It'll hold. Dara packed it fresh." She meets my eye. "I'm fine."
She's not. The bond hums. Her pain muted but there. She'll grit through it. Always does.
"Stay near Hella tonight." The stab wound closed but the tissue underneath is still knitting. Poison slows everything.
"I was going to stay near Mel."
"Kestria."
"She doesn't know what's coming. Not really. Hearing about it and seeing it are different things." She stands slowly, careful, hand braced on the doorframe. "I'll be near her dwelling. In case she needs someone she recognizes."
"Your wound—"
"Will hold better lying down in wolf form than sitting up in human form. You know that."
Inside her dwelling, a thud. The bird. Then her voice, muffled through the wall—high, fast, scolding the chicken for knocking over whatever the chicken knocked over.
Don't turn.
I turn.
Kestria's eyes are already on me when I look back.
"Stay off your feet."
"Already planned on it." She smiles, small and knowing. She saw.
I nod. She goes inside. The camp is quieter now—fewer voices, fewer footfalls. Just the breathing of people waiting for the change.
The light bleeds out of the sky. Orange to red to gray to nothing. New moon. No light at all. And underneath my skin, the wolf pressing harder. Closer. Inevitable.
