Chapter 4

When I woke in the healing room, the back of my head was still throbbing.

The rubble from the collapse had caught me on the skull, and my left leg was one long bruise. The healer said mild concussion, a few days flat on my back.

I lay in bed staring at the crack in the ceiling. Moonlight leaked in, ghost-pale. The rejected bond in my chest had started its low ache again.

My head was full of the moment Cain threw himself at Seraphine: no hesitation, no pause, like a decision his body made on its own. He half-knelt to check her wounds. She rested her hand on his shoulder, and he did not pull away. The whole crowd circling her while no one turned to look at me.

Maybe it was the head wound, but my mind wouldn't behave. All the little details I'd hoarded for three years and never told a soul came pushing up, one after another, like something had pried the lid off.

The night of the blood moon, our first resonance. We hadn't been together long. He pressed me to the stone wall, his lips at the curve of my ear, and breathed it low: my little wolf. After my mother died and my father took a mistress, he kept me at his side, and I thought I'd finally found somewhere to belong. A home. I thought it was love.

He remembered I hated the cold. Once I fell asleep against the hearth waiting for him in his council hall and woke to find one of his hunting cloaks laid over me.

The one time I dressed his wound. He'd been ambushed on a border patrol, his left arm torn open. The healer finished and left, and he sat alone on the edge of the cot with the bandage a mess. I unwound it and rewrapped it, and I had a wicked sense of humor back then, so I pulled it deliberately tight. It must have hurt. He let me do it anyway, didn't move a muscle. When I finished and looked up, I caught him watching me, his eyes quiet and soft.

I'd taken all of it as proof that he cared.

I pushed the thoughts back down, one by one. “Stop it. Nine more days. Nine days and you're gone.”

By the third day in the healing room I could already get up and move around. The wound on my head was still swollen, but the healer said as long as I didn't overexert, I'd be fine. The bruise on my leg had faded from black-purple to a yellow-green, like a patch of rotting peel.

The door curtain lifted.

Seraphine stood in the doorway, the moon-patterned shawl over her right shoulder, her left hand braced on the frame, face pale, eyes faintly red. The white dress made her look like a flower nipped by frost.

“Elara,” her voice soft as honey. “I came to see how you are.”

I didn't look up. “You've seen. Go.”

She didn't go. She came in slowly, leaning on the frame, wincing slightly with each step like she was enduring some great pain. Cain followed behind her, his eyes never leaving her.

“I'm so sorry about that night,” she said, head down, voice trembling. “My old wound flared up, I couldn't stand. Cain was only worried about me, that's why—”

“You don't need to explain it to me,” I said, turning a page of the hide scroll. “It's got nothing to do with me.”

She lifted her head, eyes brimming. The tears hung at her lashes, exactly enough, about to fall and not falling.

“How can you say it's nothing to do with you? It's all my fault. If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have been hurt…” Her voice trailed thinner, like a string about to snap. “Cain told me your injuries are serious. I was so worried I couldn't sleep all night.”

I finally looked at her.

Her face was all concern, but those eyes had something else in them. I'd seen it too many times. The omega girls in Silver Mane who'd play pathetic in front of me all wore that face. Mouths said “it's all my fault”, yet hearts said “look how much he cares about me.”

“Well, you can see now,” I said. “I'm not dead yet.”

Her tears spilled over. “Elara, I know you don't like me…” She sniffled. “I only wanted to apologize. If my being here upsets you, I can move out. I don't want anyone getting hurt because of me.”

By the last few words her voice had gone hoarse.

Cain came over.

“Don't cry,” he said, low enough it sounded meant for her alone. “You're not healed. You can't let yourself get worked up.”

Seraphine looked up at him through wet lashes. “Cain, should I not have come? Elara seems even angrier now…”

“No,” he said. “You meant well.”

He straightened and turned to me.

“Elara. Seraphine needs protecting more than you do.”

“The old wound on her left side is from taking that silver-tempered dagger for me. It nearly killed her. Her body is fragile. She can't take any impact. If that stone had come down on her, she might not have lasted until the healer reached her.”

He paused.

“But you're different.”

“So it's her every time?” I said. “Every time she 'needs help,' I deserve to get left behind?”

“Not left behind,” he said. “It's making the most reasonable call within limited time.”

The most reasonable call.

“You really have a way with words, Cain. The most reasonable call. You make her sound like fragile porcelain and me like some iron beast. She gets hurt, you tend to her. I get hurt, and because I 'can take it,' I don't need tending?”

His brow creased. “I haven't ignored you. You were hurt, I came to see you. Your wolf was wounded, I'm letting you stay here to heal. That isn't tending to you?”

“You came to see me?” I said. “And while you were looking at me, who were your eyes on?”

Seraphine suddenly stood. The motion was a little quick; it pulled at her left side and she sucked in a breath through her teeth, swaying. Cain's hand shot out to steady her arm.

“Cain, don't fight with Elara over me…” Her voice caught on tears. “I'm really fine. I can go back and live in Silver Mane, I won't stay here, then you won't be put in this position…”

“No.” Cain's voice was firm. “You're not healed. Silver Mane has no healer who can handle your old wound. You stay here.”

“Elara,” he said. “I know you're upset. On this, name any condition you want. I'll make it up to you.”

Made it up to me.

There it was again.

“Make what up to me?” I said. “Give me a silver mine? A warhorse? Or hand me another short dagger and tell me to go amuse myself?”

His jaw tightened.

“Whatever you want, you can say it.”

“I want you to stay away from me,” I said. “Go make it up to Seraphine. She needs it more than I do.”

Seraphine's lashes flickered.

Cain looked at me, silent for a few breaths.

“I'll take care of your wolf,” he said, his voice dropping. “I owe you that.”

“You don't owe me anything,” I said. “You rejected me, that's your business. My wolf got wounded, that's my bad luck. You don't owe me.”

His fingers curled at his side.

“Elara—”

“Are you two done?” I picked the scroll back up. “I'm tired.”

Silence.

Then Cain turned, bent down, and helped Seraphine up. “Come on. I'll walk you back to the side hall.”