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“I want to stay with them until this is over. Until we’re safe from the people doing this, and my family doesn’t need us there. Then I want to come back to the den with you.”

His ears come up.

“I want it to be our home. I want my family too, so we’ll have to visit, and Keer will turn up whether we invite him or not. But I want to live there. With you.”

He’s watching my face.

I brush my thumb beside his mouth. “Would you like that?”

“Yes.”

He lays the shirt down on its hide and puts both hands on my face. He has to hold the long claws out past my ears to do it, but the two blunt fingertips rest on my cheek.

Then he kisses me.

I hold on to his wrists, keeping clear of his bandage. He takes his time about it, and when he’s done he leaves his forehead against mine.

I rub my brow into his pale fur. He breathes out, closing his eyes.

We sit there until my shoulders won’t let me keep my arms up any longer. Of all the times. He kisses one palm before letting go, then draws his father’s shirt back onto his knees.

I finish the fish while he folds the shirt back up with the patch on the inside, wraps it in the hide with the stones and puts it at the bottom of the sack. Everything else goes back in on top, the spare shirt from behind my back included, and I shake the fish bones out into the leaves.

I get the bow and stand up. My back objects, so I wait until I’m straight before I try a step.

Rauk settles the strap over his right shoulder, then holds his hand out.

“This still counts as touching,” I tell him, putting mine in it.

“I know.”

We walk the rest of the day and stop whenever his limp gets bad or my back gives out. I’ve never gone this slowly in my life. I carry the bow, he carries the sack, and we swap hands when my palm starts to sting.

By dusk I’m shuffling so I don’t have to lift my feet. Very dignified. Rauk finds a dry spot under a shelf of rock, and neither of us argues about stopping.

We eat the second fish and check each other’s bandages. He unties my foot wraps because I can’t bend that far. He wins that one by default. I lie down on the little fur he packed, with his cloak over me. He stretches out next to me with his bad leg straight. I put my hand on his chest and he covers it with his. I’ve got plans for that chest that my ribs won’t agree to, so the hand will have to do, and I’m asleep almost straight away.

In the morning it takes us both a while to get moving.

Ugh. Everything hurts worse than it did yesterday.

We eat dried meat standing up, because sitting down means getting up again, and then we set off.

That afternoon I stop dead in front of a clump of birches.

One of them leans across the others, with a branch stripped white about as high as my head. I’ve ducked under that branch in the dark. I’ve climbed over those roots with the pups chasing me, and walked past it with Mel complaining about how far we still had to go.

Shit. We’re nearly there.

“I know this bit.”

Rauk stops beside me. One ear turns toward the trees farther up the path.

“They’re coming.”

I look where he’s looking, and it’s a while before a black wolf steps out between the birches.

Keer pauses with his gold eye on me. Axan comes out behind him, limping on one front foot.