Page 58 of Wolfsbane

No, I reopened my eyes to find Daire looking up at me. “You need to sit, and . . . he implied it, is that a thing with wolves too? When you overextend yourself, you have to eat a lot?”

“It is,” Mama agreed. “I suspect I’ll need to make extra for supper.”

“Extra extra,” Daire said, a twist of apology in his voice. “My magic has drained Viktor. The wards this morning were a bit, but a healing? This much healing? I have no idea how he walked all the way in here.”

That was all it took to have Leo also wrapping an arm around me, and both of them leading me over to the table to sit on the back bench and lean hard against the wall.

Mama watched me, nodding. “A big lunch and a big supper, then. Drew, malysh, come help me make more sandwiches.”

Drew, giant grin on his face, jumped to comply. The kid was still just wearing an oversized shirt, but I supposed whatever made him happy was fine. I didn’t know how he wasn’t freezing his balls off, though, quite literally.

Daire seated himself next to me and started handing me food, a little at a time. He looked . . . worried. I lifted a brow at him, or tried to. “What is it, zaichik?”

Leo’s head whipped around to stare at me, at the nickname, but he didn’t say anything, so I paid him no heed.

“I just . . . did I do something wrong? Cash still seems . . . ”

Leo did speak up at that, and I was grateful to not have to explain it by myself. “It’s not you. It’s”—he glanced at the stairs and lowered his voice—“this isn’t even related to Cash’s grudge against the coven.”

I nodded, and my own voice came out a paper-thin whisper, so weak it annoyed me. “His father lost a leg. He has . . . ”

“Trauma,” Mama said with finality. “We all have trauma. Cash has it about this. He needs time to think and calm down, and then all will be well again, because of your quick thinking. Well done.” She nodded to Daire, a tiny smile on her lips.

Daire’s breath caught, and that, I could understand. Mama’s approval was a heady thing, and I didn’t think he’d ever had it from his own mother. So I leaned into him, letting him hold some of my weight.

Let him feel this.

What it was to be family.

Maybe, when all this was over, that would be enough to make him want to stay. Or at least visit.

It didn’t seem likely, since we still didn’t have hot baths and electricity and pre-sliced bread, but I could hope.

CHAPTER 32

Daire

Cash and Aleks never came back down. I tried not to listen too carefully, but it was hard to ignore the devastated whines from upstairs. Cash sounded like a man whose heart had just been ripped out of his chest, and Aleks’s words were so quiet I couldn’t make them out, but they were soft and comforting.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only person at the table with half an ear out for what was going on. Katya and Leo talked less than usual, leaving Drew and me to fill the quiet.

He was curious about magic though—if it always needed a spoken spell to hold, which it didn’t. We hadn’t said anything when laying down the wards, but it helped focus intention and that was important when the need was great and specific.

Most of lunch, we talked through how to approach spell work while Katya was just as determined to see that Viktor ate as I was. She took a whole plate of sandwiches up to Cash and Aleks, and rejoined us at the table to eat her own lunch.

Once everyone was full, Leo raised a brow at his brother. “You think we should get back out there? It might assure everyone things are okay . . . ”

And as it stood, I wasn’t sure Cash and Aleks were coming down any time soon. Maybe if Aleks thought the pack needed him, but the kinder thing would be to give them time to themselves.

I just wasn’t sure if Viktor was up to it. When I glanced his way, he shrugged.

“Not like I’m doing a bunch of heavy lifting without my wolf anyway. We’ll take it easy.”

I smiled. “Okay, yeah. Let’s get back out there.”

But I still stayed close to his side and held onto his hand. He wasn’t going down without me being there to catch him.

We got outside to find that Evie was already there, directing people on what to do. Notably, no one was using anything dangerously sharp or large. Some people were sanding and treating logs, some people were working on . . . well, when I asked what it was, they called it chinking.