Page 7 of Claimed By the Wolf Heir

"That's the wall." He says it without accusation, without retreat, with the recklessness of someone who has never been taught that transparency is a liability. "Medical authority. Very effective barrier. But I'm not going to stop knocking."

"Then I'll sedate you."

"You'd have to get close enough to administer it."

The words land with the accuracy of a clinical observation—not a threat. Not exactly.

But the space between us feels suddenly insufficient. His eyes hold mine with steady patience, communicating without malice that proximity is a variable he's been tracking since I first pressed my hands against his chest.

Stepping back would be a retreat. I don't retreat in my own space.

"So what happened?" I ask with my back to him, sorting instruments at the basin. "You arrived with claw marks from pack wolves, not wild animals. You used the word 'former.' I can construct the narrative, but I'd prefer your account."

The silence that follows is different. Heavier. Older. When he speaks, the ease is gone entirely, and what remains sounds like a wound I can't reach with a needle.

"My uncle killed my father at a council meeting." The words come out steady, rehearsed, worn smooth from repetition even if the meaning hasn't dulled. "Balric. He stood, and the blade was already in his hand. The wolves behind him shifted before anyone could move. His blade found my father's throat, and I was three steps away."

The last sentence is different from the others. The rehearsal cracks on it. His jaw works around the words as if they're still lodged there, and for one second the man on my table isn't warm or curious or charming. He's furious, carrying the kind of fury that lives in the body long after the mind has accepted the facts.

He stops. I don't turn around. Turning would change this from an account to a conversation, and the account is what I need.

"I fought my way out," he continues. "Took the wounds you're treating. Ran as a wolf until the wounds and the cold forced me back to skin. Your cottage was the first shelter I found that didn't smell like Drakfell scouts."

Days of running. I set the information against the wound timeline. He'd arrived at my threshold naked and half-frozen after crossing the mountains in wolf form. Clothing doesn't survive a transformation, which at least meant no fabric contamination in the wound margins.

That kind of sustained flight should have closed claw marks on a wolf with a functional healing factor. These wounds haven't closed. They show the layered scarring of tissue that tried to knit and was torn open again, repeatedly, by the strain of running in wolf form.

The infection makes sense now: not from the initial injury but from exposure and reinjury without treatment. The older scar across his ribs, the one I noticed during the initial assessment, is healed badly in the way that indicates no treatment at all.

He's been surviving through stubbornness and the wolf's constitution, and both are finite resources.

"Your uncle seized the pack. And you came here."

"I was the heir. Now I need help standing up." His mouth twists, but there's no humor in it. His hands brace against his thighs, muscles tightening as though stubbornness alone might make his body obey. It doesn't. "If Balric could see me now, he'd die happy."

"Then don't give him the satisfaction. Besides, I have sedatives and you have ego and attitude. Neither of us should waste them."

The sound he makes is too short to be a laugh, but the surprise of it crosses his face before he can catch it. The expression is gone in an instant, replaced by genuine interest, the kind that shows teeth.

He's sitting up now, which I didn't authorize, the fur pooled around his hips, and his color is marginally better, which I'll allow. His body is doing the work I set it to do. His mind is doing work I didn't ask for, because he's turned toward my worktable with the focused intensity of an alpha reading terrain.

"You have a comprehensive pharmacopeia for a field station," he says, cataloging the drying racks, the labeled jars, the mortar and pestle that still holds the residue of earlier work. "Lavender, comfrey, calendula, elder root, valerian." He lists them without effort, the way a man names trees in his own forest. "And a few I don't recognize from this altitude. You gather above the tree line?"

"Some compounds require alpine conditions."

"What are the ones in the brown jar? Third shelf, behind the yarrow."

I don't answer immediately. The brown jar contains alpine bloodroot and glacier moss, the active base of the suppressant compound I've been taking since I was a girl.

The question is innocent. He's listing herbs the way any wolf raised in mountain territory might. He can't know what those compounds mean in combination.

"A topical antiseptic formula," I say. The lie is clean and delivered with the same clinical tone I use for accurate diagnoses. The gap between the two is a space I've been navigating for long enough that it costs me nothing.

He accepts this, or appears to, and moves on with the relentless momentum of water finding cracks in stone. "Why are you alone up here? In winter? With a blizzard building? Your pack's fortress can't be more than a few hours down the mountain."

"I gather herbs that grow at altitude. The cottage allows me to work without the round trip."

"For how long?"