“You're bleeding.”
Rafe glanced down like he'd forgotten about the wound. “Oh. Yeah. Must have pulled the stitches during training.” His laugh was thin, embarrassed. “Alaric doesn't exactly go easy.”
“You should have said something.”
“Didn't want to bother anyone. Gideon's out checking the eastern wards, and Sienna's on patrol, and I figured it would stop on its own.” He shrugged, then winced when the movement pulled at the wound. “It's fine. I've had worse.”
“It's not fine. You're bleeding through your bandage.” I moved to the medical kit we kept in the library, started gathering supplies. “Let me see.”
Rafe hesitated. Something flickered across his face, uncertainty or shame or both. Then he pulled the blanket aside and started unbuttoning his shirt with careful movements that suggested more pain than he was admitting.
The bandage was soaked through. The wound beneath angry and red, stitches pulling at flesh that wasn't ready to hold. Alaric really hadn't gone easy. This was the kind of damage that came from training with someone who had something to prove.
“This needs to be re-done,” I said, settling on the ottoman across from his chair. “Hold still.”
“You don't have to...” Rafe started.
“I know I don't have to. I'm choosing to.” I met his eyes, held them.
“I'm not used to that,” he said quietly.
“Used to what?”
“People helping. Without wanting something in return.”
The words landed heavy in the quiet room. I focused on cleaning the wound, giving him space to say what he needed to say without the pressure of eye contact.
“Ash Hollow wasn't like that?” I asked.
“Ash Hollow was...” He hissed as I pressed antiseptic to the torn skin, but didn't pull away. “Ash Hollow was good. Butsmall. We didn't have the numbers you do, the structure. When something went wrong, you handled it yourself or it didn't get handled.”
“That sounds lonely.”
“It was what it was.” His voice went distant. “Alpha Warren did his best. We all did. But there was always this sense that we were one bad season away from falling apart. One attack away from...”
He stopped. Swallowed hard.
“From what happened,” I finished for him.
“Yeah.” The word came out broken. “From exactly what happened.”
I worked in silence for a few minutes, re-stitching the wound with careful, practiced movements. Rafe sat still, barely breathing, letting me work. His hands were clenched in the blanket, knuckles white.
“The nightmares,” I said eventually. “That's why you couldn't sleep.”
It wasn't a question, but he answered anyway.
“Every night. Sometimes I'm back there, listening to them die. Sometimes I'm running and I can't stop, can't slow down, just running through forest that never ends.” His laugh was hollow. “Sometimes I wake up and I don't know where I am. Don't know if I'm safe or if I'm still being hunted.”
“That's normal. After what you went through.”
“Is it?” He looked at me then, really looked, and his amber eyes were bright with something that might have been tears. “Because it doesn't feel normal. It feels like I'm losing my mind. Like I'll never feel safe again.”
“You will.” I tied off the last stitch, started wrapping clean bandage around his shoulder. “It takes time. Longer than you want it to, longer than seems fair. But eventually the nightmaresfade. The flinching stops. You start to remember what it feels like to just exist without waiting for the next attack.”
“Speaking from experience?”
“Speaking from watching a lot of wolves come through the other side of trauma.” I secured the bandage, checked my work. “And yeah. Some personal experience too.”
