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She gets him one, then goes back to the fire, and fat hisses when she lays the meat in the pan. Both my ears go to it, and so does my stomach.
Kestria loosens the cloak and lets it slide off her shoulders. I fold it up behind her with my left hand.
She leans back against it carefully. “Better.”
Her shirt collar’s caught against my bite on her right shoulder. I ease it clear with a blunt fingertip, and she touches my wrist before I can take my hand away.
She’s smelled of wanting me since the other bench. It’s faint under two days of walking and the smoke off Mel’s fire, but I’ve had my tongue in her and I know it, warm and slick.
Her niece has hold of my finger, and her brother saw the bite when I moved her collar. He hasn’t taken his eye off me since.
Neither has the rooster.
Perkele. I’m going hard anyway, and all I can do about it is sit closer to the table and look at the fire.
Mel has stopped beside the fire with a root in her hand. “Keer told me what he could, but I want to hear it from you. What happened after you left?”
Kestria looks across at her brother. “I went back to the trail.”
Keer’s eye stays on her. “I know.”
She tells them about the Warden standing out in the open and the others waiting in the trees, then the bolt and the river. Mel puts the root down on the board when she gets to the bolt, and Kestria touches the left side of her shirt before Mel can ask which shoulder.
Keer’s hand moves over Colm’s back, then stops. “You shut us out.”
Kestria doesn’t look down. “I didn’t want you coming into it. They were waiting for wolves.”
“We were already coming.” His hand moves on Colm’s back again.
She looks down at the spoon Birdie’s hitting against the bench.
“Axan found where you’d gone in.” Keer looks toward him.
Axan sits on the other side of the boys, his bad wrist across his lap. “Where they jumped you, then the river. Nothing after that. We kept going back.”
“I tried to get upstream the next day.” Kestria rubs her palm along her knee. “I kept falling. I thought it was the blood I’d lost. My wolf was still there. She was there when I went into the water again.”
Mel leaves the board and comes back to the table. “And when you woke up?”
“She was gone. But Rauk was there.” Kestria turns toward me, resting her hand on my leg. “He’d taken the bolt out. Washed me, dressed the shoulder. I couldn’t even sit up without him.”
She’s not leaving anything out.
Keer’s eye comes to me. “Where did you find her?”
“On the bank. She was barely breathing.”
His jaw sets, split lip and all.
I look at Kestria’s hand instead. “She woke up arguing with me.”
“I wanted to know where I was.” Her thumb moves on my leg.
“You asked what the fuck a Gulon was.”
“You never answered. I remember.”
I didn’t. I thought she’d forget the whole night.
