“I can give you a moment,” the Madame said.
“No,” I said. “Just tell me what it is you want.”
With a grim expression, she lifted part of her shirt and lowered her pants just enough to expose an old, grotesque scar that ran from her hips to her lower belly. It took me a moment to recognize the significance of it.
“I killed those two wolves,” she said bluntly, owning up to the actions, knowing there was no way to take back them back now. “But I didn’t come away from the exchange unwounded.”
As her fingers traced the scar, a shiver ran down my spine. My own hands went to the same area on my own body and held my lower belly firmly, protectively. Before the Madame said it, I knew what had happened to her. The dull pain in her eyes as she watched me touch my pregnant body said it all.
“They took away my ability to bear children,” the Madame finally said. “My womb was ruined. Cursed by wolf’s fangs.”
A sick feeling coursed through my blood. I thought of my own womb--not just empty, but scarred and ravaged, never able to bring a life into this world. A small whimper escaped me.
Ramsay was quiet during this exchange, slowly glancing back and forth between us. The fury in his face had dissipated.
I looked into the Madame’s eyes, seeing a new side of her. She wasn’t just the leader of the humans and an enemy of our packs. She was someone forcibly denied the chance to be a mother. She was someone doing her best to survive in this world.
She wasn’t our enemy.
I approached her slowly. “What is it you want me to do?”
“Heal me.”
“I don’t know if it will work,” I admitted. “I’ve only healed surface wounds.”
The Madame looked to Ramsay with slight guilt in her expression. “His wounds were deeper than that. Will you try, pregnant wolf?”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Ramsay shoot me a sympathetic glance. What was he thinking? His anger from earlier had faded, thankfully. As much as I understood his frustration, I knew he was more down-to-earth than that. He must have known this was the best decision--both from a logical standpoint, and a moral one.
Despite the pain that I felt thinking about what happened to Eric’s parents, I knew this was something I had to do. Nothing was going to be solved by layering pain on top of pain. The first step to unraveling this tension and conflict was going to be healing.
I knew I couldn’t say no. The idea of what happened to her happening to me sent a shock of cold dread through me, like a wave of nausea.
“Yes, I’ll try,” I said quietly.
The look of hope that crossed her face lit up her eyes, like she was seeing the sunrise for the first time. Anticipation and panic mixed together in my gut. Could I really do this? I’d never tried to heal anything deeper than a surface wound, or in Ramsay’s case a few particularly deep flesh wounds. But this was something else entirely. This was healing an entire organ system. What if I couldn’t manage it?
“Thank you,” the Madame said, her voice almost wavering.
“If Matheson does this,” Ramsay began, “do you promise not to sell us out to the gryphons?”
“I will not,” she said firmly. “And if I wanted to do so in the first place, he would have already been gone.”
I winced, realizing I should have been thankful she didn’t trust Neil or his scheme. I didn’t know what he was planning by sacrificing me to the gryphons, and apparently the Madame didn’t either. She’d been keeping us safe this entire time.
“But then you won’t have your little pact with Neil,” Ramsay pointed out. “He wanted refuge here, since he was kicked out of the packs, right? And in return he hunts for you in the winter?”
“That’s right,” the Madame said.
“And you’re okay with that?”
She turned to face him, and we both saw that her expression was deadly serious. “Yes. We will find some other way.”
Ramsay narrowed his eyes. “By killing more wolves?”
She blinked slowly. “No. If Matheson heals me, I will never hunt another wolf--shifter or not--for the rest of my days.”
“And if Mathe can’t heal you? Then what?”
