Chapter 2

Lucia's POV

The wolf's eyes held mine.

I knew I should back away from the huge, broken thing in the dirt. I should run back to my pack and tell a gamma leader what I found.

But something deep inside of me drove me to get closer to the wolf.

I crouched closer, and the first thing I did was breathe in. No sour, garbage stink of a rogue. Whatever this wolf was, it hadn't crawled out of the wildlands to raid my pack.

Knowing that, I finally made my mind to reach for him. I pressed two fingers below the wound. The pulse there was fast and thin, the beats skipping. I knew that rhythm. If I didn't stop the bleeding now, this wolf would be dead before the moon came down.

I tore a long strip from the hem of my dress and looped it tight above the wound, knotting until my knuckles ached. Then I laid both hands flat over the torn flesh and pushed.

The warmth came the way it always did. Out of my palms, into the wound, a slow heat I had never once been able to explain to anyone. I'd stopped trying years ago. A wolfless girl with a healing touch was just one more reason for the pack to hate me.

The blood slowed. Not stopped. Just slowed.

I sat back on my heels, breathing hard. The cloth was already soaking through again, and something dark crawled under his skin, spreading from the wound in thin black threads. No amount of pressure was going to fix that. This was poison. Real poison. I needed my whole shelf of bottles, and those were back in my hut.

I looked at the wolf. The wolf looked at me.

"Okay," I whispered. "Okay. Don't die on the walk."

I had never seen a wolf this big in Graywind. If he belonged to some other pack, harboring him could drag me in front of the Alpha. Wolfless and a thief of strays. They would love that.

But I looked at those eyes again, and I could not leave him in the dirt.

I got my arms under his shoulders and pulled.

It was the worst walk of my life. He outweighed me three times over, and the path back was all roots and loose stone. I hauled, stopped, hauled again, swearing under my breath the whole way.

Halfway there his breath went ragged. I dropped to my knees and pressed my forehead against his big, rough head.

"Hey. Big guy. Stay with me a little longer."

He huffed against my cheek. We kept going.

By the time I got him through my door and onto the floor, my arms shook and my dress was ruined past saving. I lit every candle I owned and dragged my kit off the shelf.

Then I found the problem.

I had a clean blade, boiled cloth, a whole row of bottles. What I didn't have was anything for the pain. I'd used the last of my numbing tincture on a snared fox two weeks back.

I knelt by his head. "I have to cut the dead flesh out. There's no way around it." I made myself say the rest. "And I've got nothing for the pain. It's going to hurt. A lot."

He dragged one heavy eyelid up and looked at me. Then he made a low sound deep in his chest, almost a grunt, and let the eye fall shut.

I took that to mean: get on with it.

I'd read about this a hundred times. I'd practiced on fruit, on raw meat, on my own steady imagination at two in the morning. I had never once done it on something alive and breathing.

His breathing hitched, shallow and slowing. The fear went quiet then. There wasn't any room left for it.

I cut.

I worked the blackened, poisoned flesh away from the good. I rinsed the wound, packed it, rinsed it again. Every pass had to hurt worse than anything I could name. The wolf never made a sound. His whole body held still under my hands. Only the very tip of his tail twitched, once, then again.

"You're the strongest wolf I've ever met," I muttered, and my hands did not stop.

I worked in the antidote I'd mixed myself. I laid my palms over the wound one last time and pushed the warmth in until the bleeding finally, fully stopped. Then I bound it clean. By the time I tied off the wrapping, sweat dripped from my chin and my fingers had stopped wanting to obey me.

I sat there a while. Just breathing.

And then the great, terrible beast that had gritted its teeth in silence all night turned its head and pushed it into my open palm.

He nuzzled my hand. Slow. Soft. Like a dog saying thank you.

I laughed. It came out cracked and worn, but it was real, the first real laugh I could remember in a long time.

"Don't go getting sweet on me." I scratched behind one ragged ear before I could think better of it. "The floor's yours tonight. Sleep. Heal."

I pulled my old sleeping mat down beside him and spread it on the floor. I cleaned the blades, scrubbed my hands, capped the bottles. My eyes kept trying to shut on their own.

I told myself I would just listen to his breathing one more time.

I lay down on the mat to count it, deep and steady now, and somewhere in the counting I fell asleep.

When I woke it was morning, grey light coming through the one window. I was warm. I was never warm.

I shifted, still half in a dream, and my hand slid against something. Warm. Firm. Smooth.

Skin.

My eyes flew open.

There was a man on the mat beside me. Bare to the waist, lying close enough that I'd curled into his side in the night. His face was turned toward mine, still and impossibly handsome, his chest rising and falling slow and even under my flattened palm.

My hand was on his chest.

I made a sound, half gasp and half squeak, and he stirred.

Then his eyes opened.