The eastern healer’s den smelled like boiled nettles and desperation.
Mira stepped through the low doorway and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. The room was smaller than her own healing house, ceiling low enough that Rafe had to duck. Shelves lined two walls, cluttered with jars and bundles of herbs. A small hearth crackled in the corner, its smoke funneling out through a narrow chimney carved in the packed earth.
In the center, on a pallet stuffed with straw and covered in worn blankets, lay the wolf.
He was in human form, but the sense of wolf clung thick to him. Broad-shouldered, late twenties maybe, skin the color of old oak bark. Dark hair cut short, a faint streak of white at one temple. His chest was bare, scars patterned over it like old maps.
His eyes were open.
They stared at the rafters, unblinking.
Mira’s stomach knotted.
“He hasn’t moved?” Wren asked quietly from behind her.
“Not since,” the eastern healer said.
Her name, she’d told them outside, was Sera. Her voice held the rasp of someone who’d shouted over too many storms. Up close, Mira saw fine lines etched at the corners of her eyes, and a hint of silver at her temples that wasn’t just from age.
“Not to eat,” Sera went on. “Not to shift. Not to scratch his own nose. He breathes. His heart beats. The curse—” she spat the word “—slid out of him like rotten fruit, and then he just… stopped.”
Rafe moved closer to the pallet, careful, as if approaching a skittish animal.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected.
A writhing thing under the skin. Veins black as tar. That sense of wrong he’d smelled around the rogue.
This… wasn’t that.
This was absence.
Emptiness sat in the space around the man’s body, like someone had scooped out the core of him and left the shell.
“What’s his name?” Mira asked.
“Tevan,” Sera said. The way she said it held anger and affection in equal measure. “Best hunter we have when he’s not being an idiot. Strongest wolf in three valleys, or so he tells everyone.”
Mira moved to Tevan’s side and leaned over him.
His pupils were normal. Not blown. Not pinpoints. His irises were a dark brown, almost black. They didn’t track her fingers when she waved them slowly.
“Tevan,” she said. “I’m Mira. Healer from Ashridge. You’ve made quite a mess, you know that?”
No response.
She pinched his forearm. Hard.
Nothing.
“Pain doesn’t get through,” she muttered. “Or it does, and there’s no one home to feel it.”
Sera crossed her arms.
“He was bitten,” she said. “Just like your Toren, Wren. Just like the rogue you burned. The black got into his veins. He started… snarling at shadows. Biting at pups. Couldn’t stop. We tried to hold him. To cut around it. Nothing worked.”
“And then?” Rafe asked.
Sera’s jaw tightened.
“Then it… turned on itself,” she said. “Like it realized we were too stubborn. He went… still. Then his body convulsed. The black… ripped out of his throat. Like a snake. It tried to slither into the floor. We burned it.” Her mouth twisted. “He hasn’t… moved… since.”
Mira’s skin crawled.
“Kicked the rider out,” she murmured. “But took something with it.”
“Or left nothing behind,” Rafe said quietly.
She shot him a look. “Don’t be poetic. It’s annoying.”
He smiled faintly. “You like it.”
She glared.
Yara, who had been hovering near the door trying to look unobtrusive, piped up.
“So he’s… like a shell?” she asked. “Like when you find a beetle casing stuck to a leaf. Looks like the beetle, but there’s no… beetle.”
“Beautiful image,” Mira muttered.
Sera huffed. “Accurate, though.”
Mira straightened, rubbing at her sternum.
The oath and the bond thrummed there.
She reached out, almost without thinking, and hovered her hand over Tevan’s chest.
Her wolf pricked its ears.
Nothing.
No tug. No echo. Just the faint, steady thud of his heart under her palm when she finally let it rest there.
“You tried calling him back?” she asked Sera. “With herbs? Songs?”
“Till my throat bled,” Sera said. “Till his mate threatened to bite my fingers off for shaking him. He doesn’t… hear.”
“Where is his mate?” Wren asked.
Sera’s mouth twisted. “Outside. Pacing. I told her if she hovered, I’d make her lie on the pallet for a week. She’s not… calm.”
“Understatement,” someone muttered near the door.
Mira turned and saw a woman there, built like a boulder—short, broad, muscle thick in arms and shoulders. Her dark hair was cropped close, jaw clenched so tight a muscle jumped in her cheek.
“Liri,” Sera sighed. “I told you to stay—”
“I’m not leaving,” Liri snapped. Her eyes were bright with fury and something softer that made Mira’s throat hurt. “You bring strangers in to poke at him, I stay.”
Mira met her gaze.
“We’re not here to… poke,” she said. “We’re here because what happened to him could happen to any of ours. Already has, in pieces. If you want to bite us, do it after we fail.”
Liri’s lips twitched, like she hadn’t expected that.
She stepped fully into the room, fists clenched.
“Can you fix him?” she demanded.
Mira’s first instinct—to say yes with the blind certainty of someone who refused to accept limits—rose.
She swallowed it.
“Probably not,” she said. “Not all at once. Maybe… not at all. But I might be able to… tug. See if there’s anything left in there that wants to come back.”
Liri’s jaw worked.
“That’s more honest than some elders,” she muttered. “Fine. Tug. But if you break him worse…”
“I know,” Mira said quietly. “I’d feel the same.”
She thought of Kellen’s still face.
Of how she’d wanted to sink her teeth into every elder who’d patted her head and said it was his time when her bones had screamed no.
She moved back to Tevan.
“Rafe,” she said.
He stepped closer.
“We need… the bond,” she said under her breath. “Whatever the Moon did to it… it bit the curse. Maybe it can… reach… what’s left of him. If there is anything.”
“You think I’m a conduit now,” he murmured.
“I think we’re a very weird piece of wire,” she said. “Use it.”
He huffed a quiet laugh.
He reached out and laid his hand atop hers on Tevan’s chest.
Heat flared where their skin met.
The bond thrummed, stretching outward, then down.
Mira closed her eyes.
She let her wolf lean into it, teeth bared.
Anyone home? she thought, pushing the sense through their joined hands into Tevan’s unmoving body.
For a terrifying moment, nothing happened.
She felt only the faint, distant pulse of Tevan’s heart. The warmth of his skin. The emptiness.
Then—faint. Fainter than a breath on glass—something shivered.
Not curse.
Not that slick, oily wrongness.
Something… cracked.
Somewhere deep under bone, under habit, under shock.
Rafe felt it too.
Like the echo of a howl in a far valley.
“There,” he whispered.
Mira’s fingers tightened.
“Tevan,” she said, voice low but steady. “You stubborn ass. You kicked your rider out. Good. Brave. But you let it slam the door on the way. Too hard. Broke the latch. Now you’re hiding in the corner like a pup who knocked over a stew pot.”
Liri made a strangled noise.
Mira ignored her.
“Your mate is out here,” she went on. “Pacing holes in the earth. Your pack is flailing. Your healer is threatening to punch the Moon. You think they don’t need you? Fine. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they’d survive without you. But you? You going to be content dangling in the dark, listening to your own heartbeat, while something old chews on the world you left?”
Rafe’s breath hitched.
He heard more in her words than just the scolding of a stranger.
He heard her talking to herself.
To Kellen.
To him.
“Come back,” he added, surprising himself. “Or at least… try. If you decide then that you’d rather go, that’s your choice. Right now? Feels like the curse made it for you. Fuck that.”
Mira shot him a quick look.
His jaw was clenched, eyes fixed on Tevan’s face.
The bond flared.
It carried not just their words.
Their stubbornness.
Their anger at being used, abandoned, twisted.
It shoved it into the quiet space inside Tevan like a rock into still water.
The faint shiver they’d felt earlier twitched.
Then… nothing.
Mira cursed under her breath.
“Again,” she muttered.
Rafe huffed. “You sound like Joren.”
“You sound like Wren,” she shot back.
They pushed.
Words. Feelings. The sense of weight.
Of pack.
Of threads.
Mira felt sweat bead at her temples.
Her bitten arm throbbed.
Rafe’s side ached, the scar twinging with the effort.
“Come on,” Mira snarled. “You kicked a curse out of your own throat. Don’t tell me you don’t have the spine to open your eyes.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to,” Liri rasped, voice cracking around the edges. “Maybe he’s tired of this shit. Maybe the dark is sweeter.”
“Then he should say so himself,” Mira snapped without looking up. “Not hide and make you guess.”
Silence.
Then—sudden, sharp—a sound.
A crack.
Not of bone.
Of… something else.
Tevan’s body jerked.
His fingers twitched.
Liri lunged forward with a choked cry, only to have Sera yank her back by the collar.
“Wait,” Sera hissed. “Let them—”
Tevan gasped.
Air tore into his lungs like he hadn’t used them in weeks. His chest heaved. His eyes—those dark, staring eyes—focused.
On the ceiling.
On Rafe.
On Mira.
On Liri.
He choked.
“Liri,” he rasped.
Liri sobbed something that sounded like his name and a curse mashed together.
Mira and Rafe yanked their hands back at the same time, stumbling.
Relief washed through Mira so hard she swayed.
Rafe caught her elbow.
“Careful,” he murmured.
“Don’t… touch me,” she panted. “I might kiss you out of gratitude and I’d never forgive myself.”
His mouth twisted in a half-pained, half-amused smile.
“Noted,” he said.
Tevan coughed again, body shuddering.
Liri tore free of Sera’s grip and flung herself onto the pallet, dropping to her knees beside him.
“You bastard,” she sobbed, grabbing his face in both hands. “You stupid, thick-headed, curse-baiting bastard. Don’t you ever do that again.”
He wheezed a laugh that turned into a groan.
“Hurts,” he croaked.
“Good,” she said fiercely. “Means you’re alive.”
Sera wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, muttering something about dust.
Wren let out a long, slow breath.
Corin’s face was… luminous.
“Fascinating,” he murmured.
Mira glared at him. “The next time you use that word about someone’s near-possession and coma, I’m dosing you with laxatives.”
He smiled. “Duly noted.”
Rafe still had his hand on Mira’s elbow.
She realized it with a jolt and jerked away.
Heat crawled up her neck.
He let go easily, hand dropping to his side.
The bond hummed.
We did that, it said.
Together.
Mira ignored it.
For now.
She moved to check Tevan’s pulse, his pupils, the tone in his muscles.
He was weak. Shaky. But home.
“Where did you go?” she asked him quietly.
He frowned, trying to focus.
“Nowhere,” he said. “Everywhere. Dark. Quiet. Then… not. Someone… yelling. Calling me a coward.”
Mira winced. “That’d be me.”
“And me,” Rafe said dryly.
Tevan squinted at them.
“Ghosts,” he muttered. “With very bad manners.”
Mira laughed, sharp.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
He blinked.
“Thanks,” he croaked.
Liri kissed his forehead, then his mouth, then slapped his chest lightly.
“Idiot,” she whispered. “Don’t you ever leave me with your mess again.”
Mira looked away.
Rafe did too.
Their gazes met in the same motion.
Something unspoken passed between them.
See?
We can pull.
We can shove.
We can choose to try.
It was terrifying.
And… intoxicating.
Mira cleared her throat.
“We’ll… leave you to yell at him in private,” she told Liri and Sera. “We need to… report. And I need to sit down before I fall over.”
Rafe’s hand twitched, as if he wanted to reach for her again.
He didn’t.
Restraint.
Honesty.
They were doing badly at both. And yet.
They stepped out into the cooler air outside the healer’s den.
Sera followed, closing the door half-behind her to give Liri and Tevan some space.
She leaned against the wall, shoulders slumping for the first time since they’d arrived.
“Thank you,” she said.
Mira waved a hand. “We poked. He responded. You held him. You burned the curse. We just… nagged.”
Sera’s mouth twitched. “You nag very well.”
Rafe smirked. “She does.”
Mira elbowed him automatically.
Corin stepped closer, eyes bright.
“You felt it?” he asked. “When you reached? The place he was hiding?”
“Felt… something,” Mira said slowly. “Like a… shut door. We kicked it.”
Rafe nodded. “Our bond… carried… more than just our words. It shoved… us into that space. Our refusal to let curses make choices for us.”
Corin hummed.
“Good,” he said. “Curses like to take choice. Make puppets. You gave it back. That’s… rare.”
“We’re not miracle workers,” Mira snapped. “Don’t go sending us to every den in the territories expecting us to yank wolves out of whatever dark corners they fall into.”
Corin’s gaze softened.
“I know,” he said. “But knowing it can be done… matters. Even if it can’t be done every time.”
Wren eyed Mira.
“You all right?” she asked quietly.
Mira exhaled.
“Yes,” she said. “Tired. Hungry. Tempted to go home and pretend none of this is my problem.”
Wren’s lips quirked. “Join the club.”
Rafe ran a hand through his hair, fingers catching on a knot.
“Mira,” he said.
She looked at him.
“Thank you,” he said again.
She scowled. “Stop it. You’re going to make it a habit.”
“Maybe I want to,” he said softly.
Heat shot down her spine.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Not… yet.”
“Yet,” he repeated under his breath.
She heard it.
He knew she did by the way her shoulders tensed.
Corin cleared his throat loudly.
“Right,” he said. “We’ve dealt with one wolf. There will be more. But for tonight… rest. Eat. Let this… settle. You’ve tied enough threads for one Moon.”
Mira wanted to argue.
Her body overruled her.
“Fine,” she muttered. “Food. Then sleep. Tomorrow, existential dread.”
Kai snorted. “I’ll hold you to that schedule.”
They drifted toward the small communal fire the eastern pack had lit for them.
Mira sat on a log, staring into the flames, bowl of stew cooling in her hands.
Rafe sat across the fire again.
An echo of the previous night.
When their eyes met this time, something in both of them had shifted.
They’d stood under the Moon and not been broken.
They’d shoved a curse back and reached into a dark space to pull a wolf out.
They had… done something together that neither could have done alone.
The bond hummed, pleased.
The world around them, cracked as it was, spun on.
They didn’t kiss.
They didn’t touch.
They didn’t make promises they couldn’t yet keep.
But when Mira finally lay down on her borrowed pallet and let exhaustion drag her under, she did something she hadn’t done since Kellen died.
She hoped.
Just a little.
And Rafe, on his own pallet across the fire, did too.
The thing under the earth tasted that hope.
It didn’t like it.
Hope made cracks… slippery.
Harder to widen.
It turned its attention elsewhere.
For now.
But its gaze kept drifting back.
To a healer and an enforcer.
To a bond that had bitten it.
To a possibility it hadn’t accounted for.
Love.
It had seen wars. Famine. Betrayals. Oaths made and broken.
It had never liked love.
It smiled, all teeth.
This would be interesting.
Very interesting indeed.