Fever came that night like a thief.
Mira knew the signs long before the sweat beaded on Rafe’s brow. The heat of his skin had been wrong all afternoon. Too flush. Too bright. His eyes, when he drifted in and out, had a glassiness she didn’t like.
“Fever,” she muttered under her breath for the tenth time as she wrung out a cloth in cool water. “Because patching up his liver wasn’t enough fun on its own.”
She laid the cloth across his forehead. He flinched faintly, then settled, a low noise rumbling in his chest.
They’d eaten a strained kind of meal earlier. Yara had doled out stew and bread with the air of a mediator doling out treaty papers. Rafe had protested that he could feed himself; Mira had shoved a spoon into his hand and dared him to spill a drop on her table.
He hadn’t.
Now, the cabin was quiet. Yara had gone to snatch some sleep between shifts. Wren had poked her head in once, eyes sweeping the room, but had not entered fully. Mira suspected she was giving them space on purpose and hated her a little for it.
Space meant less distraction. More room for the bond to roll over them both like fog.
Rafe muttered something unintelligible and shifted, his hand twitching against the blanket. Mira caught it before he could tug at the bandage, fingers closing around his wrist.
His skin nearly burned her palm.
“Hey,” she murmured, leaning over him. “Stay with me, Ironclaw. Don’t go wandering off into whatever hell your pack believes in.”
His lashes fluttered. “Mira,” he slurred. “Hot.”
“Flattering,” she said. “But I meant the fever, not me.”
His mouth twitched as if to smile. It turned into a grimace instead.
“Hurts,” he mumbled.
“I know,” she said softly. The honesty slid out unbidden. “I… felt it.”
He blinked blearily. “Felt…?”
“The first time.” She swallowed. “When I pulled the arrow. I felt it like it was… mine.”
Something in his unfocused gaze sharpened slightly. “You… too.”
Too.
The admission shouldn’t have eased her. It did, in a crooked way. Misery loved company; apparently, so did mating bonds.
She smoothed the cloth on his forehead again, fingers lingering a fraction longer than necessary.
“I need to bring your fever down,” she said. “If it burns too high, it’ll undo everything I stitched. And I am not spending another night digging around in your insides.”
“You… can look,” he mumbled, delirious. “Not touch.”
A startled laugh burst out of her. “Mother save me from Ironclaw pride.”
“Pretty,” he slurred.
She stiffened. “Don’t.”
“Can’t… help it,” he murmured. “Smell… good.”
Her throat went dry.
He was feverish. Out of it. The bond fuzzed the line between truth and delirium. She shouldn’t take anything he said now to heart.
She also couldn’t quite force herself to pull her hand back from his.
“Shut up and drink,” she muttered, sliding an arm under his neck to lift his head. His weight settled against her forearm, hot and heavy. She held a cup of bitter willow-bark brew to his lips.
He grimaced at the first sip. “Poison.”
“Medicine,” she corrected. “You can threaten to kill me later. Right now, swallow.”
His throat worked. He drank.
Her arm trembled with the strain of holding him up; he was all solid muscle, no give. When she eased his head back down, a few errant curls of her hair fell forward, brushing his cheek.
He turned his face into them with a low, involuntary sound.
Her heart clenched.
“Stop,” she whispered.
He didn’t hear. Or if he did, his wolf overruled him. His fingers flexed around hers weakly, like a pup kneading at a teat.
Her wolf keened, raw.
“You’re making this impossible,” she muttered, shaking off his grip and stepping back. The loss of contact hurt in a stupid, physical way. Her hand tingled where his had been.
She moved through the familiar motions of fever-care on autopilot. Cool cloth. Willow. Mugwort under the tongue. A smear of pungent salve at his temples. She opened the shutters a crack to let a thread of night air in; the chill brushed over his sweat-slick skin, raising gooseflesh.
He tossed, mumbling under his breath. Names, maybe. Fragments of words.
“…Da… don’t… stay… not… yours…”
Once, clear as a bell, he rasped, “Kellen.”
Her spine locked.
She stepped closer. “What did you say?”
His eyes rolled under closed lids. Sweat dripped from his hairline.
“Kellen,” he breathed. “Ashridge boy. Blood on my… hands…”
Mira’s stomach lurched.
Of course. Of course his fever would drag that night into the open.
She saw it sharper now, dragged from the half-formed images that had plagued her since Dela named him.
Smoke thick enough to choke. Wolves clashing in the snow. Her own hands pressed to a wound that wouldn’t close.
And somewhere in the chaos, her brother facing down an Ironclaw wolf with eyes like green glass and teeth bared.
“What happened?” she whispered, unable to stop herself, even knowing he couldn’t hear the question in any conscious way. “Tell me. Show me something other than his body in the snow.”
He sucked in a breath, rough. “Didn’t… mean…”
Her throat burned.
“You ripped him apart,” she said. “You ‘didn’t mean’ to?”
The bitterness in her voice cut even through the thick haze of his fever. He flinched.
“Defend,” he slurred. “Alpha… orders… fire… boy—no… pup…”
His words tangled, scrambled. Whatever detail she might have gleaned dissolved.
He arched suddenly, a low growl tearing from his chest. His fingers clawed at the blanket.
“Shift,” he gasped. “Need—”
Mira swore under her breath. “Absolutely not. You tear these stitches in half a fur, I swear I’ll—”
He was halfway there already.
Fever and pain and the press of bad memories pushed his wolf to the surface. Claws thickened at his fingertips, scraping the wood. Fur sprouted in rough patches along his forearms, his chest, streaking dark over the bandages.
His jaw stretched, teeth lengthening, a half-formed maw snarling.
“Rafe,” she snapped. “Listen to me.”
He didn’t. His pupils had gone blown and gold, the human green swallowed by wolf amber. He panted, chest heaving, muscles twitching with the urge to tear out of his own skin.
Her wolf surged in response. The bond roared.
Down, some instinctual part of her wanted to command. Lie down. Submit.
She grabbed his shoulders instead, fingers digging into hard muscle.
“Rafe!” she barked, voice cracking like a whip. “Stop. You shift, you die.”
His head snapped toward her, half-formed muzzle wrinkling. A snarl rumbled low.
For a heartbeat, he didn’t recognize her. Didn’t care that her hands were what had held him together.
Then her scent hit him full-force.
His nostrils flared. His snarl stuttered.
“Mira,” he ground out through half-changed teeth. It came out mangled, but unmistakable.
“Yes,” she said, leaning over him until her hair curtained them both. “Me. Your healer. Your…” Her tongue stumbled on the word. “…mate. Stay in your skin or I will drag you back there by the scruff.”
His chest heaved. Muscles knotted and unknotted under her grip. The fur along his arms shivered, then receded a fraction. The claws at his fingertips retracted, leaving ragged, bloodied nail beds.
“Hurts,” he gasped.
“I know,” she said.
She did.
The bond flooded with his pain. It wasn’t as sharp as when she’d pulled the arrow, but it was broader now, deeper. Like a bruise pressed from the inside.
Images flickered unbidden at the edges of her vision.
Rafe as a boy, small and scrappy, teeth bared at some imagined enemy. Rafe at twelve, taking his first real wound, an Ashridge fang dragging across his shoulder. Rafe at sixteen, standing over a body in the snow, chest heaving.
She didn’t know how much was his memory and how much her imagination. The bond blurred the line.
“Mira,” he said again, voice cracking. His hands—blunt-nailed now—flew up, clutching at her forearms. “Too… hot…”
“I know,” she repeated. “Breathe. With me.”
She inhaled, slow and deliberate, exaggerating the rise of her chest. Then exhaled, steady.
He tried to match her.
Inhale. Exhale.
He stuttered, then found the rhythm.
In. Out.
She counted under her breath.
“One. Two. Three…”
His human eyes reappeared, pale green rimmed in gold. Sweat trickled down his temples.
“Good,” she murmured. “Stay. You are not dying on my table, Rafe of Ironclaw. I forbid it.”
His lips twitched weakly. “Alpha, now?”
“Always,” she said, though the word tasted strange in her mouth.
The fur along his chest smoothed, sinking back into skin. His jaw shortened. The half-formed muzzle receded.
He collapsed back against the cushion, trembling.
She realized belatedly that she was half sprawled across him, thighs pressed to the side of the table, upper body draped over his, their faces inches apart.
Her braid had slipped again, falling to one side. A few strands stuck to the sweat on his cheek.
He was breathing hard. So was she.
“Better?” she asked, though her own lungs burned.
He swallowed. “A little.”
Her hands were still on his shoulders.
She should move them. She didn’t.
“You can’t shift yet,” she said quietly. “Not even a little. Your body needs time to knit. Your wolf is helping, but if it takes control fully, it’ll tear apart everything I did trying to fix you.”
His fingers tightened faintly on her arms. “You… stopped me.”
The barest thread of wonder wove through the words.
She swallowed. “I yelled at you. Your wolf didn’t like the idea of me being displeased.”
“Yours is… loud,” he murmured.
“So I’ve been told,” she said.
He huffed weakly. “Mine’s… stubborn.”
“So I’ve observed,” she said.
Silence hummed.
Her heart pounded. She could see the pulse in his throat, beating fast.
The bond thrummed between their skin, hotter now, pulled taut by pain and proximity. If she leaned down a fraction, she would feel his breath on her mouth. If she dipped her head a little more, she would—
“Don’t,” she whispered.
His eyes snapped to her lips and then jerked away.
“I wasn’t,” he lied poorly.
She almost laughed. It came out strangled.
“I’m not…” Her voice shook. She forced it steady. “I’m not kissing you when you’re half-wolf and half-delirious, Ironclaw. I refuse to let our first be because you were too fevered to fight me off.”
His pupils blew wide. “First?”
Heat scorched her face.
“Sleep,” she snapped, pushing herself upright and ripping her arms out of his grasp. “If you have enough wit to argue word choices, you’re not sick enough.”
“You… fluster… easy,” he slurred, but his eyelids were already drooping. The exertion of holding back his shift had drained what strength the fever hadn’t already stolen.
“Go to hell,” she muttered, adjusting the cloth on his forehead with rougher hands than necessary.
He smiled faintly as sleep pulled at him. “If you’re there, might be… worth it.”
She swore under her breath and stalked to the hearth.
Her hands shook as she tossed more wood on the fire. Her wolf paced, agitated, a thousand snarled emotions tangling in its fur.
Anger. Fear. Want.
She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes.
“This is a mess,” she told the empty room. “An absolute, steaming, catastrophic mess.”
No one argued.
* * *
Rafe dreamed.
Not the formless, fever-blurred tumble of images he’d endured in the first hours after collapsing on the table. These dreams had teeth.
His father loomed, larger than life, fur bristling, blood spattering his jaws. “Ashridge,” he snarled, lunging. Snow sprayed. Rafe knew what came next and tried to shout, to warn him.
No sound came.
The Ashridge wolf that met his father’s charge had Kellen’s eyes.
Rafe jerked, tried to move. His limbs were mud.
The scene shifted.
He was back in the burning village, smoke thick, flames licking at thatch. Wolves clashed in the square, snarling, blood-flecked. A boy—Ashridge, dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat—stumbled backward, clutching his side. Rafe saw his own claws flash, dig into the boy’s ribs.
He saw, now, the shock on the boy’s face. The way his pupils had blown. The way his mouth had opened as if to speak.
“I…” he’d tried, and then blood had filled his throat.
Rafe had turned away then, dragged back into the larger fight.
Now his dream-self didn’t.
He knelt by the boy as the chaos swirled around them, hands coated in red. The boy’s breath rattled, bubbles of crimson at the corners of his mouth.
“Don’t…” the boy wheezed. “Don’t… stop…”
“Stop?” Rafe rasped. “Stop what?”
The boy’s eyes flickered toward a cowering pup behind him, pressed against a broken wall—no, a girl, a sliver of wild dark curls and wide eyes. A girl who would grow into a woman who smelled like thyme and thunder.
“Her,” the boy gasped. “Don’t… let them…”
His chest hitched. His eyes went glassy.
Rafe woke with a strangled sound.
He stared up at the dark ceiling, heart pounding.
The room was dim, fire banked low. His body felt wrung-out, bones made of lead. His side throbbed in a deep, achey way instead of the sharp, stabbing agony of before.
Something warm weighed against his forearm.
He turned his head carefully.
Mira slept with her head pillowed on her folded arms on the edge of the table. At some point, exhaustion had claimed her where she sat.
Her hand lay lightly over his wrist, fingers curled, not gripping—just… there.
In sleep, the tightness around her mouth eased. Her lashes cast shadows on her cheeks. A curl of hair stuck out at an odd angle behind her ear.
She snored very softly. Just a faint, almost-whistle at the end of each exhale.
His chest did something strange.
The bond glowed, banked but present. Not the wild blaze of pain, not the crackling awareness of near-shifts and fever, but a steady ember. Warm. Dangerous.
He watched her for a long time.
His father’s voice whispered in his head: Ashridge killed me. Ashridge killed your brother. Ashridge would do it again if you let them.
Another voice, older and colder: Joren’s. Your duty is to Ironclaw. You are my teeth. You bite who I tell you to. You don’t go soft over pretty faces and sad stories.
Memory pressed close: Mira’s hands, blood-slick, in his side. Mira’s eyes, furious and terrified, inches from his when she’d dragged him back from the brink of shifting. Mira’s voice, raw, saying I felt it.
His loyalty pulled one way. His wolf pulled another.
Some ties could be cut cleanly. Others tangled until every tug risked tearing out something vital.
He tested the limits.
Very slowly, he turned his hand under hers until their palms met.
Her fingers tightened in her sleep, reflexively, curling around his.
His breath stuttered.
He waited for some lightning strike. Some voice from the Mother, booming in his skull, telling him he was a fool.
None came.
Only the crackle of banked coals. Her soft not-quite-snore. The distant hoot of an owl.
He closed his eyes again, not in surrender, not fully.
Just… resting.
Their fingers stayed tangled.
* * *
In the morning, Mira woke with a crick in her neck and Rafe’s hand in hers.
For a few precious seconds, before memory crashed back, it felt… right.
Warm skin. Steady pulse. The soft give of another palm against hers.
Her wolf purred.
Then her eyes snapped open.
She jerked back so fast she nearly fell off the chair.
Rafe’s fingers loosened immediately, but too late. The contact had registered. Her palm tingled.
He was awake. And watching her.
“Morning,” he said.
His voice was rough but clearer than it had been. The fever’s glassiness had retreated from his eyes, leaving them sharp.
“Why,” she demanded, “were you holding my hand.”
He lifted a brow. “Why were you holding mine?”
“I—” She sputtered. “I wasn’t. I mean—I must have—when I…”
“Fell asleep mid-watch,” he supplied. “Exhausted from saving my life twice?”
She glared. “Don’t spin this into some… sentimental nonsense. Did you grab me?”
He shrugged slightly, wincing at the motion. “Maybe we… met in the middle.”
She made an inarticulate sound of frustration and stood, scraping the chair back.
He watched her stalk to the basin, splash water on her face, rub at the back of her neck.
“You didn’t have to stay,” he said quietly.
She froze, water dripping from her chin.
“Yes,” she said. “I did.”
“Your oath—”
“Not just that,” she snapped, whirling to face him. “You almost ripped your own stitches out last night. I had to stop you from shifting. If I’d left and you’d done it, I’d have come back to a pile of intestines and one very smug raven on my roof.”
His lips quirked. “So it was… practicality.”
“Mostly,” she said. “Don’t get ideas.”
“Too late,” he muttered.
Something in her expression softened despite herself.
“How’s your head?” she asked.
“Full of things I don’t want and can’t ignore,” he said. “Physically? Less like it’s going to split open. I remember… parts of the night.”
“Like what?” she asked, wary.
“Pain. Heat. You yelling at me,” he said. “You smelled… stronger. Like the middle of a storm.”
She rolled her eyes. “You were delirious.”
“Delirious doesn’t mean wrong,” he said.
She considered arguing. Dropped it.
“How’s your side?” she asked instead.
He shifted gingerly. The movement pulled at his wound but not as viciously as before. “Achy. Not… tearing.”
“That’s an improvement,” she said. “If you keep this up, I might even let you sit up fully by tonight.”
“Be still my heart,” he drawled.
“Not too still,” she snapped. “I don’t resurrect the dead. That’s someone else’s department.”
He eyed her. “You look tired.”
“Thank you for that insightful observation,” she said dryly. “Next you’ll tell me water is wet and Joren’s an ass.”
He snorted. “Won’t argue the last one.”
“Good,” she said. “We’re making progress.”
She moved back to his side to check his bandage again. He tensed slightly as her fingers slid under the edge of the linen, then forced himself to relax.
Her touch was gentler this time. His fever had broken enough that she didn’t need to shock his body into cooling; now it was about steering it down, slow and steady.
“You were talking in your sleep,” she said without looking at his face.
His jaw went tight. “About what.”
“Your father,” she said. “The raid. Kellen.”
He flinched. “What did I say?”
“You said you ‘didn’t mean,’” she said. “You said ‘defend.’ You said… ‘pup.’”
Shame crawled up his spine. “I don’t remember. Not clearly.”
“Lucky you,” she murmured.
“I remember that night,” he said. “When I’m awake enough to choose.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “I do too. I’m sure they do.” She nodded toward the small carved wolf on the mantle, the bundle of dried rosemary hanging near the ceiling—old markers of the dead.
“Tell me,” he said.
Her hands stilled. “No.”
“Please,” he pressed. “If you’re going to hold it against me—and you have every right—you should know what I remember. So we’re not fighting different ghosts.”
She hesitated.
“Fine,” she said curtly. “You first. What do you see when you close your eyes?”
He inhaled, slow.
“Snow,” he said. “Everywhere. Ashridge dens smoking. Joren’s voice in my head, over and over: ‘Hit hard. Hit first. End it fast.’ My father… in the snow, years before, throat ripped out by an Ashridge wolf with your colors. His blood steaming. Me howling.”
Her throat tightened.
“I see… you,” he went on, eyes faraway now. “Not then—now. In the square, that night. Hair wild. Hands deep in someone’s chest. Screaming at a warrior twice your size to hold the wound closed, damn you, do you want him to die?”
She jolted. “You… saw me?”
“From across the fire,” he said. “I was ripping someone off Oris. I looked up and there you were. Ash on your face. Blood to your elbows. You looked… furious. And so… alive.” He huffed a humorless laugh. “I remember thinking, ‘Ironclaw would be unbeatable with a healer like that.’”
Her stomach lurched. “Charming.”
“I didn’t know he was your brother,” he said softly. “The boy I… hit.”
Her jaw clenched. “That matters how?”
“It doesn’t,” he admitted. “Not to the dead. But it matters… to me. To you. To us, if there’s ever to be an ‘us.’”
The word hung.
She swallowed. “Kellen went looking for you. For your kind. He didn’t have to. He could have stayed in his bed. In mine. But he heard the alpha’s howl and ran. He shoved me under the table and said ‘Stay.’ I didn’t.”
“Good,” Rafe said. “If you had, more would have died.”
“Don’t make a hero of me,” she snapped. “He was the one in the square. He saw you go for Wren. He lunged. You… collided. His chest met your claws.”
His stomach turned. “I felt… ribs. Under my hands. Something gave.”
Her vision blurred for a second. She forced it clear.
“I saw him fall,” she said. “Saw him… twitch.” Her throat closed. She cleared it roughly. “By the time I got to him, you were gone. Someone else had dragged you off, or you’d moved on to the next throat. It doesn’t matter. His chest was…” She exhaled. “I tried. It wasn’t enough.”
Silence pressed.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She laughed once, sharp. “You keep saying that. It doesn’t change the pile of ash his bones turned into.”
“I know,” he said. “But I needed you to know I remember more than just… him as a body on the ground. I remember his eyes.”
She looked at him sharply. “His… eyes.”
“He looked… surprised,” Rafe said hoarsely. “Not scared. Not exactly. More like… ‘oh.’ As if a piece clicked into place. Like he’d always known it would end like that.”
Her hands shook.
“Sometimes,” she whispered, “I hate you. Not just you. All of you. Your pack. Your alpha. Your gods. I hate that my wolf doesn’t. I hate that some part of me smells you and thinks home when you are everything that burned it down.”
He flinched. “I get that.”
“Do you?” she demanded. “You didn’t lose half your pack in one night.”
“No,” he said. “We lost them slowly. Over years. One border skirmish at a time. One winter hunger at a time. One elder turning their back on us at a time. Ashridge took my father. The council took my uncle. Hunger took my mother. Joren took my youth. It’s not the same as a raid. But it’s a different kind of… attrition.”
She stared at him.
“Joren took your youth,” she echoed.
“He made me enforcer,” Rafe said. “Too young. Maybe I was always going to end up there. But he sped it along. Gave me teeth before I was done growing.”
“You could have said no,” she said automatically.
He laughed, bitter. “You know alphas. You think yours would take ‘no’ from you if she thought you were the only thing between her pack and a blade?”
She stilled.
“I was good at it,” he went on. “Bite this one. Break that one. Drag this one back by the scruff. I told myself it was for my pack. For my father. For all the ways Ashridge had wronged us. It made it… easier. To not wonder who they were when they were home. Who would burn for them when they didn’t come back.”
She saw it then, flickering behind his eyes. Not just brutality. Weariness.
“How many have you killed?” she asked.
“Enough that I stopped counting,” he said. “Enough that when yours ended up on my claws, he was… another. Just another. It’s only now…” He swallowed. “Only now that I know his name. His sister. His alpha. It changes the weight.”
She let that settle.
“Names make ghosts heavier,” she said quietly.
“They do,” he agreed.
She finished re-wrapping his bandage in silence.
When she tied it off, his hand shot up.
She stilled, braced for another grab.
He didn’t clutch. He simply laid his palm, very lightly, against the side of her neck.
His thumb brushed the fine hairs at her nape.
She froze.
“If there’s to be any hope,” he said softly, “of us not burning the world down between us, we have to speak these things. The ugly. The bloody. Even when it cuts.”
Her throat felt too tight. His hand was very warm.
She swallowed against his fingers.
“Hope,” she said. “You’re already using words like ‘hope’ and ‘us.’ We’ve known each other two days.”
“I saw you before that,” he said.
Her brow furrowed. “In the square. During the raid. You said.”
“Before that,” he said.
She blinked. “When?”
“Council moot last year,” he said. “You were standing behind Wren, arms folded, glaring at everyone. The elders droned on. Joren postured. I was bored. Then I smelled…” He shrugged, lips quirking. “Something. I thought it was just… herbs. Or maybe some trader’s perfume. It was faint. But it stuck. When I left, it clung in the back of my throat. For days.”
Her heart kicked.
“I told myself I’d imagined it,” he went on. “That I was going soft. That I was smelling ghosts. Now I think… I think my wolf caught a thread then. Didn’t have the other half to tie to yet. But it knew.”
She reeled.
She remembered that moot. Remembered standing too close to Wren, muttering under her breath while elders from three territories argued about grazing rights. Remembered the Ironclaw delegation across the firepit, Joren’s flat gaze, Reva’s smirk. Remembered an enforcer at their back, arms folded, eyes scanning the crowd.
She’d thought he looked bored. Dangerous. Arrogant.
She hadn’t let herself look long.
“I didn’t smell you,” she said.
“You did,” he said. “You just didn’t know what it meant. You were… busy. Hating us.”
She wanted to argue.
She couldn’t.
Because if she was honest, there had been a scent that day. Under the smoke and sweat and old incense. Sharp. Cold. Like snow under pines. It had snagged at her then, just a little. Enough that she’d gone home and burned extra sage, unsettled.
“I thought it was… fear,” she whispered.
He smiled crookedly. “Maybe it was both.”
His hand still rested against her neck. Her skin burned under his palm. The bond thrummed.
Slowly, carefully, she reached up and wrapped her fingers around his wrist.
She meant to pull his hand away.
Instead, for a heartbeat, she just… held it there.
“If we’re going to tell ugly truths,” she said quietly, “here’s one: if you’d died on that riverbank, part of me would have sung.”
His throat worked under her grip. “I know.”
“And when I realized you were my mate,” she went on, voice barely above a whisper now, “part of me wanted to carve the bond out of my ribs with my own hands.”
His eyes closed briefly, as if against a blow.
“Same,” he said, with a huff of humorless laughter. “I woke up on your table and thought, ‘Mother, why would you tie me to her of all wolves.’”
Her lips twitched despite everything. “Comforting.”
“It means we’re both equally miserable,” he said. “Equal footing.”
She exhaled. “I suppose that’s… fair.”
She let go of his wrist and stepped back.
He didn’t reach for her again.
But his gaze followed her as she moved through the room, measuring.
Storms brewed behind those pale green eyes.
For the first time, Mira wondered if perhaps, just perhaps, they could learn to stand in the same rain without tearing each other apart.
She wasn’t ready to test it.
Not yet.
* * *