ログインThe next time Elis knocked on her door, Cerys had already decided she was tired of letting every good thing arrive in a common room.
She had spent the day carefully enough that her body had no dramatic opinion about it. No sharp pull when she stood. No warning bright enough to make the walls disappear. Just the ordinary ache of healing, irritating and familiar.
That was exactly why she had asked him here.
Not because she needed help getting to bed. Not because he had come
By morning, guilt had acquired a list. Cerys wrote it at the small table in her room because lists were safer than questions she could not answer.Hydroponics. Meal deliveries for families with someone in the infirmary.The open meeting Rhys had called for later that day.Punishment. Elis had asked whether she wanted to do more or hurt more.So she crossed out three things she had added beneath the list and left only the work she was actually fit to do.Hydroponics first. The grow rooms did not care that people had died. Leaves still curled when something was wrong. The ordinary indifference of the place should have offended her. Instead, it steadied her.One of her coworkers stared when Cerys arrived.“You’re back?”“I was never assigned away.”“I thought with everything—” someone said.“With everything, people still need food.”The answer came sh
The infirmary had run out of quiet long before it ran out of people.Cerys stood just inside the doors with a stack of clean blankets against her chest while someone cried behind a partition and two voices argued in whispers about a missing brother. Every bed she could see was occupied. More mattresses had been laid along the wall.She had no bandages on her body. No fresh bites. No broken bone braced against movement. For once, she was the safest person in the room.The thought made her want to leave. Instead, she carried the blankets where Mara pointed and did exactly what she was asked.“Those three. Then water to the waiting area.”Cerys nodded.She did not touch dressings. She did not try to interpret the low words passing between Elis and the other medical staff. When a man on one of the wall mattresses asked whether the shaking in his hand meant something was wrong, she found someone qualified to answer instead of guessing
Rhys called the pack together before dusk. Some were still in the infirmary. Some had not been found at all.Those who could come filled the main level, leaving wider spaces than usual between bodies. Cerys stood near Mara, who had refused a chair and was already regretting it.“You could sit,” Cerys murmured.Mara gave her a look.“Fine.”Rhys stepped into the open space at the center. The room quieted without him asking.He looked as bad as he had that morning. The dried blood was gone from his face, but exhaustion had settled more deeply into him. One arm stayed close to his ribs. The other hung loose at his side.Cerys had seen him speak as Alpha before. This was the first time the title looked heavier than the man carrying it.Rhys waited until the last whisper stopped.“What happened on Wolf Night was not an ordinary pack fight.”Nobody moved.“We have enough
By afternoon, the room had stopped asking what happened and started asking what the injuries meant. Cerys preferred the second question.It was smaller. Smaller questions had edges. She stood near the infirmary doors while two people argued in low voices about whether the damage could have come from their own pack. Neither had been outside. Both sounded too certain.Cerys stepped away before irritation could make her join them. The survivors could not remember the fight. That was still true.The dead could not answer. That was also true. Everything else had to come from what the night had left behind.Mara sat on a bench with one leg stretched stiffly in front of her and a bandage wrapped around her side. She looked exhausted and offended by the existence of pain.“You’re staring,” Mara said.“I’m thinking.”“Dangerous.”Cerys ignored that.Across the room, another wounded
The question started before the doors had finished closing.“What happened out there?”A man near the wall lifted his head. Dried blood darkened the collar of his shirt.“I don’t know.”The woman asking him stared.“You were there.”“I know.”“What attacked you?” someone asked.The man looked at her for several seconds, then at Rhys.“I don’t remember anything after I shifted.”Silence moved through the main level faster than the question had. Cerys stood near the entrance with the answer she had expected and still hated hearing.Another survivor spoke from a bench.“Neither do I.”A third voice came from farther back.“Nothing.”Nobody argued after that. Wolf Night had taken the same thing it always took: memory. Only this time, the people left behind wanted it back badly
The first person through the doors could barely stand. A shout cut across the main level just after sunrise, and every head turned at once.Cerys was moving before she knew she had decided to.The man who stumbled inside had blood down one side of his face and somebody else’s arm around his waist. Behind him came a woman Cerys recognized from the lower residential level, limping so hard her shoulder struck the doorframe.Then three more shapes appeared in the gray outside. None of them looked like people returning from the Wolf Nights Cerys knew.Those nights left bruises, torn skin, sometimes broken bones. She had seen enough ugly mornings to stop flinching at blood.This was different.The first man’s shirt had been ripped open across the back. Deep, ragged wounds crossed from shoulder to ribs. The woman behind him held one arm tight to her body while blood soaked through cloth at her side. Another person came in with bite woun







