"Like it matters," Grady grumbled. "The whole of our pack is almost completely dead."
"Sasha," I said. "Sasha was the last birth."
A stillness lowered over the cabin, wrought with melancholy and deep sadness. I opened my mouth to ask why, but Archer blew out a shaky breath like he did when his hands trembled. It made me wonder about Sasha’s mother, if the mother was close to Archer. Was he the father? Had he conceived a baby with a female shifter? For some reason, the thought of him being with someone like that twisted my heart around. It shouldn't, but it did.
Maybe Grady was the father, though that seemed less likely since he snapped and hissed like a feral beast. Archer was a lot more loving…and heated. They were both fiercely protective and doting of Sasha, which made sense because she was just a baby. Not only that, she was the last baby of their pack.
"Sasha is a wolf," I said carefully, redirecting a little to hopefully easier topics. "Will she shift soon? Or has she already?"
"Pups don't shift for the first time until they're around four or five,” Archer explained. “They keep warmer that way with the extra fur while they're little."
"I see." A sudden idea occurred to me, and it made my blood pound with anticipation. "When I first woke up here, you offered Sasha to me to hold." I sawed my teeth across my lower lip, my cheeks flushing at how badly I'd reacted to that. She was just a baby. Completely harmless, Archer had said. "Um, so, can I do that now?"
"No," Grady said simply.
The word crushed me far more than I ever thought it could.
"Not until you wash your hands in the snow. You didn't wipe all of Archer's blood on my coat." There was almost a smile in his rough voice, or at least the suggestion of one down deep.
I grinned, not feeling guilty about wiping blood on him in the least, and turned in the direction of the door.
"There's a bowl of it by the fireplace I haven't used yet,” Grady said. “I can get—"
"No. I can do it."
"Well, okay then. I'll go get Sasha."
His limping footsteps faded down the hall, and I crossed to the crackling fire.
"Aika…" Archer said, his voice tense with worry.
"I'm not going to stick my hand in the fire. I've been alive for nearly twenty years, and see?" I waved my hands in the air and then winced at the resulting bolt of pain through my ribs. Damn it. Never do that again, Aika. "No burns."
"No fear, either.”
I didn’t have to see his smile. I could feel it, just as clearly as I felt my own.
My toe hit a pot, and water sloshed inside. I knelt, hovered my palms over the surface to test for steam, and dipped a finger inside. Warm but not hot.
“Are you doing okay with all of this?" he asked.
Was I? Honestly, I might never know.
"Are you?” I asked. “With me, I mean, and my blindness."
"Yes and yes," he said quietly.
I could feel him watching me as I scrubbed my hands beneath the water, and something about his voice, the slight wonderment of it, took me back to the time when I lay in bed with him sitting next to me. Touching my heart. Feeling it beat for him, skin to skin. A tingle spread low in my belly, and I wondered what it would be like if he touched me right there.
A human and a wolf shifter.
The wolf shifter still waiting for my answer.
"I think…it's a lot to take in, but I'd like to try."
A devious chuckle wound through the limping footsteps from down the hallway. "I'll bet."
I was about to demand what he was talking about when my vision slid back into place, like with a click of a button, from Sasha's eyes drawing closer. There I knelt with the fire behind me and stared back at her, my mouth slightly open, my long dark hair an absolute nightmare of a mess.
