Maren's Gentle Hands

I had expected something cold.

A clinical room, metal instruments lined up in a row, someone who would prod at me with the detached efficiency of a person doing a job they stopped caring about years ago. 

That was what pack physicians were like in SilverMoon. You went in, they told you what was wrong, you left feeling worse than when you arrived.

Maren's room was the opposite of all of that.

It was warm and slightly overwhelming— bundles of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, stacks of books with cracked spines, small glass jars lined up along the windowsill catching the morning light. 

It smelled like jasmine and something earthy underneath, like soil after rain.

A fat orange cat was asleep on the examination table when I walked in and Maren scooped it off without breaking her sentence, depositing it onto a chair where it rearranged itself and went back to sleep with the dignity of someone who had not just been moved against their will.

"Sit, sit," she said, patting the table. 

She was somewhere between forty and sixty, grey streaking through dark hair pinned up in a way that suggested it had started the morning neater than it currently was. 

"You must be Lisa. The Alpha told me to expect you yesterday but I had a situation with one of the patrol wolves. Are you allergic to anything?"

"Not that I know of," I said, climbing onto the table.

"Good. How far along are you?"

"About four months, I think."

"You think?"

"I did not exactly have a calendar."

She looked at me over the rim of her spectacles for a moment. Then she just nodded and reached for her instruments. "Fair enough. Let's have a look."

She was thorough without being rough, explaining everything before she did it. I found myself relaxing by degrees without deciding to.

When she pressed her hands carefully against my stomach and went quiet, I watched her face.

"What?" The word rolled off my lips in an instant.

"Nothing bad," she said quickly, and I believed her because her expression was not alarmed, it was something closer to curious. "The baby is healthy. Very healthy actually." She paused on that word. "Stronger than I would typically expect at this stage."

"Is that a problem?"

"No," she shook her head in a chuckle, already writing something down. "It is just... interesting." She added quickly changing the topic to the medications I'd be taking.

She kept talking while she prepared a tonic. Small pack details—a wolf in the eastern wing who had just had twins, a dispute over garden plots near the training grounds, the way the market came alive on Saturdays.

Then she said, "It has been quieter without Lady Seraphine around. She keeps this place moving, that woman."

I looked up from the tonic. "Who is Seraphine?"

Maren responded to it the way you would describe something so obvious it had never occurred to you to explain it.

"She manages pack affairs when the Alpha is occupied. And has done that for about three years now. She has been leading a campaign in the eastern territories and is expected back within the week." She smiled to herself. "The pack will be glad. Things run smoother when she is here."

"She is a good woman, Seraphine," Maren added, glancing at me. "You will like her."

I smiled. 

"I am sure I will," I said.

Back in my room I sat by the window and thought about it practically.

Seraphine had been here three years. She ran this pack when Ragnar could not. She was respected, capable, expected back within the week.

I had been here for two days. I had arrived in the grip of guards with mud on my shoes and someone else's rejection still fresh on my skin.

I put my hand on my stomach. The baby shifted, that steady flutter that had become the most reliable thing in my life.

"Okay," I said quietly. "We are not panicking."

The baby did not respond to that one way or the other.

I found the kitchens by accident, following corridors without a destination until I ended up in front of a door that smelled like warm bread. Inside, two pack women looked up and then looked back down when they saw I was not anyone they needed to worry about. I appreciated that more than they knew.

One of them pointed at the fruit without being asked and I helped myself to a small bowl and left before I had to make conversations.

I was rounding the corner back toward the guest wing when I walked directly into Ragnar.

His hand caught my elbow before I could stumble. I felt the warmth of his grip through my sleeve, brief, before he let go. We both stopped.

He looked at the fruit in my hands. Then at my face.

"The physician," he said. "How did it go."

"The baby is healthy," I said. "Maren said strong, actually. She seemed surprised by it."

He nodded, and there was something in the nod that sat differently from politeness. We fell into step going the same direction without discussing it.

"Maren mentioned Seraphine," I said, keeping my voice even. "That she is expected back soon."

He did not stop walking. He did not tense either, which I had been watching for. He just looked at me with that steady assessment of his.

"She is," he acknowledged.

"Will it change things. My situation here."

He didn't respond for a while and I could see worry in his eyes. 

"No," he breathed finally. "Nothing about your situation here will change."

He turned down a different corridor and I watched him go, while I left for my room. 

I was almost asleep when I heard something outside my door. A soft sound, something being set down carefully. I lay still until the footsteps retreated.

There was a bowl of fruit on the floor outside my door.

I stood looking at it for a moment. Then I picked it up and brought it inside.

I believed him. That was the thing sitting with me as I lay in the grey morning quiet. He had said nothing about my situation would change and I believed him, and I did not know what to do with that because I did not trust people. I had eighteen years of very good reasons not to trust people. And yet here I was.

Outside somewhere, beyond the eastern road, a woman was making her way home from a campaign she had led well, not yet knowing that everything she had been waiting for had already been given to someone else.

I closed my eyes and put my hand on my stomach and did not finish the thought.