I stop there a second.
The scars are silvered and raised, laid over her ribs in patches. Wolves don’t scar unless it’s bad. And if this was Syndicate work,it was bad. Months of that. She was in one of those places for months, and today they sent something out of the sky to finish the job.
The heat that goes through me isn’t the bear alone. It’s mine too. Somebody chose her. Somebody sat in a room and decided this woman was a loose end. I want a name to go with that decision.
I’ll deal with that later. She’s bleeding now.
I fill the pot at the pool, set it on the stove, and tear a clean shirt into strips while the water heats. Then I kneel beside the cot and start with the hip.
The first touch of warm cloth pulls a sound out of her. Small, caught in her throat.
“Easy,” I say. “It’s me. You’re all right.”
I don’t plan to say it. It’s just there, low, the way you’d talk to a spooked animal, and her face loosens at the sound. So I keep going.
“You’re in the den. Nothing gets in here.”
The tears in her hip need pressure before they’ll close. I hold the cloth firm and watch her face instead of my hands, and my hands know their work well enough without me. What they don’t know is how to hurry. They’ve cleaned wounds on hard men in the field, quick and rough, get it done and move. They’re not quick now. They keep slowing down, learning her, and I let them.
She’s small under my palms. I knew that already—I’ve carried her three times now—but it’s different laid out like this, her whole side open to the lantern light. Fine bones. Skin that tore on rock a bear wouldn’t feel. The heat that’s been climbing in me since the pool stirs at all that silken skin, and I hold it down where it belongs. She’s hurt. That’s the only thing happening on this cot tonight.
Doesn’t stop me being aware of her. Every inch my hands cover, I’m aware.
I clean the flank wounds, then bind them, lifting her hip to pass the strip under and around. She makes another sound when I move her.
“No—” It comes out cracked. Her head turns on the cot. “Have to— Let me—”
“Nowhere to go tonight,” I tell her. “It’s done. You’re safe.”
“Please—”
“I have you. It’s okay.”
That reaches her. Her body eases back into the cot, and whatever she was running from in her sleep lets go of her. Two wet lines slide from the corner of her eye down into her hair. She doesn’t wake for them.
I wipe them away with the side of my thumb. My hand looks wrong doing it; too big, scarred, built for other work, not for touching something so fragile. I do it anyway.
The shoulder I can’t do much for. I fold the fur and wedge it so the joint stays supported. The ribs need her sitting up to wrap, and she’s not sitting up tonight; the wolf will have them knitted by morning anyway. That’s the mercy in all this. By the time she wakes, the worst of it will be closed, and the only thing left will be the soreness and the memory.
The wolf can do the healing. It can’t do this part: the water, the binding, keeping her still and settled through the night. That part’s mine.
That’s what I tell myself, kneeling there longer than the work needs.
I know it’s not the whole of it.
I’ve patched people up before. I’ve never once talked to them while I did it, never noticed my own hands slowing, never sat back on my heels afterward just to watch someone breathe. Whatever this is, it started the moment I set eyes on her, and it’sbeen gaining ground on me ever since. Tonight it took territory I’m not getting back.
I be more worried about that.
My chest ticks warm where the gashes are still seeping. The burns across my back have settled into a deep, steady ache. I could heat more water. There’s cloth left.
Tending it means turning away from her, working blind at my own back while she lies here.
The bear doesn’t even weigh in. He’s already decided where we’re sitting tonight, and it’s exactly where I am: on the floor beside the cot, close enough to hear every change in her breathing.
Sometime later, she comes up.
Not all the way. Her eyes open halfway, find the lantern, then me. Then they drop to my ribs and stop.
