It was a performance, and I suspected Sira saw right through it.
The injured male was settled into the visitors' hearth with reasonable comfort. Ryke had found a way to communicate basic needs through an elaborate system of gestures and facial expressions that would have been comical under other circumstances. The wolves accepted the furs and fire we offered for their hearth with the bare minimum of acknowledgment, and I had to remind myself that they were frightened and displaced and that their behaviour was born of vulnerability, not malice.
It didn't help much.
I squeezed in a quick bath in the river and fresh clothing, before I ate a decent meal at Ryke and Maren’s hearth. I fought to keep myself occupied, my mind busy, and managed to last until full dark before I gave up pretending I could stay away.
The camp had settled into its normal evening routine, fires banked, meals eaten, younger pups herded to bed. Adults sat around the firepits talking in low voices, some went off for a run in the moonlight, leaving their young to be watched by other pack members, and from some caves came the unmistakable sounds of even more pleasurable pursuits. I made my way quietly to Daska’s hearth, carrying two bowls of Maren’s stew as an excuse. Not that I needed an excuse, I was the alpha.
Daska’s cave was set apart a little from the others. It had belonged to the healer before him, though as my father’s mate, my mother had only slept there when she needed to be close at hand for her charges. It was smaller than the other caves, but whereas they were shared by several hearths, Daska had this one to himself. The entrance was covered with a hide screen, firelight flickering warm behind it. I moved the screen aside and ducked through.
The hearth was small but well-kept, the way everything Daska touched was well-kept. Dried herbs hung in neat bundles from wooden pegs driven into cracks in the rock wall. His healing supplies were arranged along a natural ledge with the samemeticulous precision he brought to everything—pouches of ground roots, clay pots sealed with beeswax, bundles of dried moss and bark, bone needles threaded with sinew and clay pots and bone containers, each one labelled with small scratched symbols that only Daska could read—his own system, developed over years of practice. A fire burned steadily in the central pit, filling the space with warmth and the sharp, medicinal scent of whatever he'd been brewing.
The woman lay on a thick bed of furs near the fire, and the sight of her stopped me in the entrance like a physical blow.
She looked worse. The fever had stripped the colour from her face, leaving her skin translucent and waxy, flushed only across the high points of her cheekbones where the heat burned brightest. Her hair was damp with sweat, spread across the furs in dark tangles. Her breathing came shallow and uneven, each exhale carrying a faint rasp that I didn't like. Daska had stripped her of her strange outer clothing and wrapped her in soft doeskin, and the bandage on her thigh was fresh, soft rabbit skins already showing spots of something dark seeping through.
Daska sat cross-legged beside her, grinding something in a stone mortar with focused intensity. He looked up when I entered. The firelight caught his face, painted shadows under his eyes. He looked exhausted. Worried.
Protective.
"How is she?"
"Fever's still climbing. I’m trying a stronger remedy, but the blood curse has a hold. She needs rest, warmth, time..." He trailed off. "We'll know by morning whether she …"
"She will." The words came out harder than I'd intended.She has to. Henodded, and I caught a strange feeling from him. He’d cared for people near death, and people who had died. Their deaths affected him, and he struggled when he couldn't save them, or didn’t know if he could. But this was different.For the first time since we were grown, Daska seemed almost vulnerable.
I shoved the largest bowl at him. “Here. Eat.”
“I should sit with her. I need to keep her cool.” He glanced back at her.
I looked over at her too and swallowed hard before I pushed the bowl into his hands.
“I’ll do it. You eat and sleep too. You're no use to her dead on your feet.”
Daska hesitated, his hands tightening around the mortar. I could see the war playing out across his face; the healer's instinct to never leave a patient, battling against the exhaustion that was pulling at every line of his body. He'd barely slept in three days. I knew because I'd barely slept either, and I'd watched him during every waking hour, tending her with a devotion that went far beyond professional duty.
"Daska." I kept my voice low but firm. The alpha's voice. The one that didn't invite argument. "Eat. Sleep. That's an order."
His jaw clenched, and for a moment I thought he might actually refuse me. Daska had never once defied a direct command in all the years he'd been part of my pack, but I could see how close he was to it now. His gaze slid back to the woman, and something raw and desperate moved through his expression before he locked it down.
"The bowl there on the floor. It's for her face. The water skin is there if she’ll take any, but she’s not regained consciousness for some time, so I don’t know if she will," he said. "Wake me when the moon rises, or if the fever spikes. If she starts shaking, if her breathing changes, if—"
"I know what to watch for. The woman will be fine.”
“Ellie.”
“What?”
“Her name is Ellie.”
"Her name is Ellie."
Something shifted in my chest, a sharp, suddenachethat caught me off guard. Ellie. The name was round and soft, human in a way our harsh consonants never were. It didn't sound like pack names, didn't carry the weight of clan history or totems. Just... simple. Warm.
Ellie.
I'd carried her for miles. Held her while she shook with fever. Let my wolf brush against her wounded body to offer what comfort I could. And I hadn't even known her name.
