Mira had cut herself before.
By accident, mostly. Kitchen knives. Broken glass. Once with intention, a thin, shallow line across her palm under a new moon, blood mingling with Wren’s to seal her healer’s oath.
This was different.
The knife bit deep into flesh above the rogue’s bite, silver edge parting skin and fat with an ugly, wet sound. Fire lanced up her arm. Her vision blurred black at the edges, then snapped back sharp.
“Breathe,” Rafe said. His voice sounded oddly far away. His grip on her free hand was the only solid thing anchoring her.
She sucked air in through her teeth.
Blood gushed around the blade, hot and dark, sliding down her forearm to drip onto the ward-marked wood. It hissed where it touched the symbols, smoking faintly.
“Mother,” Wren whispered. “It burns.”
“Good,” Mira said through clenched teeth. “Means it doesn’t like leaving.”
She twisted the knife.
The pain was white-hot, a flare that shoved her out of her body for a heartbeat. She heard a noise—half-snarl, half-sob—and realized dimly that it came from her own throat.
Rafe’s hand tightened, strong and unyielding.
“Easy,” he murmured. “You got this.”
“Don’t—” she gasped. “Encourage—me—”
“I’ll insult you later,” he said. “Focus now.”
She dragged the blade again, widening the incision. Her skin parted, then muscle, exposing a throbbing well of red shot through with something darker.
Not just blood.
It writhed.
Thin, blackish tendrils threaded through the meat of her arm, like roots sunk deep. They pulsed, trying to burrow further up, slithering against the tourniquet’s pressure.
Mira’s stomach clenched.
“Fuck,” she breathed. “There you are.”
Wren swore, a hissed stream of old curses. “That’s not any sickness I’ve ever seen.”
Rafe swallowed hard. “It’s… like the stories.”
“Save the storytelling,” Mira snapped weakly. “Bowl. Tongs. Now.”
Wren moved, fingers sure despite the tightness in her jaw. She set a clay bowl beside Mira’s elbow and pressed a long-handled bronze clamp into her good hand.
Mira dropped the knife. Her fingers felt numb, clumsy. She forced them to close around the clamp’s cool metal.
“All right,” she told the thing in her arm, voice rough. “You’re not invited. Time to go.”
She plunged the clamp into the wound.
The sensation of something else inside her, something that was not flesh, not blood, resisting the intrusion, made her gorge rise.
Rafe squeezed her hand hard enough to hurt. She clung back, grateful.
The clamp’s jaws closed around one of the black tendrils.
It squirmed.
“Mira,” Wren breathed. “Careful.”
“I am being—very—fucking—careful,” Mira snarled, and yanked.
It fought.
She felt it like a live thing, hooked into her nerves, screaming as she dragged it away. Pain rode those screams, sharp and electric, stabbing up toward her shoulder, down toward her fingers.
Her back arched. Her heels dug into the mattress.
Rafe leaned in, pinning her forearm gently with his free hand, keeping it from jerking away and tearing the wound wider.
“Stay with me,” he said. “Look at me.”
She tried.
His face swam in her vision—pale green eyes, jaw clenched, sweat on his brow. Pain lined his features too; the bond echoed her agony in him, a hollow sympathetic ache.
“I—” she choked. “I’m fine.”
“Liar,” he said, voice rough. “But you’re my kind of liar.”
The black tendril tore free.
It came out with a sickening, sucking sound, like roots ripped from wet soil. The clamp shuddered in her hand. Something squealed—high, thin, just at the edge of hearing.
Mira flung it into the bowl.
It writhed there, a clump of oily blackness, twitching like a nest of dying worms. Smoke rose from it where stray drops of her blood hissed against its surface.
“What in the Mother’s cursed name,” Wren whispered.
Rafe’s gorge rose. “Burn it,” he said thickly.
“In a minute,” Mira gasped. “There’s more.”
They all looked at her.
“More?” Wren demanded.
Mira’s bitten arm throbbed. Under the tourniquet, the wrongness still pulsed, ropes of dark threading through her tissue.
She gritted her teeth and went in again.
* * *
By the time it was done, Mira was shaking so violently she had to lean her head against Rafe’s shoulder to keep from toppling sideways.
She’d pulled out four more black tendrils. Each had fought, each had screamed in her bones, each had left her whiter and sweatier than the last.
They lay in the bowl now, a hissing, twitching mass of oily filth. The smell rolling off them was worse than any rot; it was like old crypts, stagnant water, the breath of something that had never known sunlight.
Rafe wanted very badly to vomit.
“Now,” he said again. “Burn it. Before it figures out how to crawl back.”
Wren needed no further encouragement.
She grabbed the bowl with a cloth-wrapped hand, lips pulled back from her teeth, and strode to the hearth. The fire still burned there, low but steady. She upended the bowl into the flames.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the fire screamed.
The sound wasn’t audible in the normal way; it resonated in their teeth, in their bones. The flames went black at the heart, licking hungrily around the writhing mass. Smoke spewed up, thick and choking, carrying with it a chorus of whispers in a language none of them knew.
Mira clapped her good hand over her ear instinctively. Pain flared in the bitten arm.
“Fuck,” she hissed. “Rafe—”
He moved before she finished, wrapping both arms around her shoulders, dragging her bodily away from the hearth.
The ward-marks on the floor glowed faintly where the smoke drifted near them, lines of salt and blood flaring white, repelling the dark haze. It rolled like fog against glass and then slid up, finding the chimney.
Seconds stretched like hours.
Then, with a final, awful sigh, the black mass in the fire crumbled to ash.
The flames shuddered back to normal orange, crackling like any other hearth.
Silence fell.
The absence of that wrong sound felt like a physical weight lifting from Rafe’s shoulders.
He realized belatedly that he was clutching Mira too tightly. Her cheek was pressed against his collarbone, her breath hot and ragged against his skin.
He loosened his grip a fraction. “You alive?”
She let out a shaky laugh that tipped into a cough. “Define… alive.”
“Heart beating, eyes glaring, mouth insulting,” he said. “You’re three for three.”
“Then yes,” she said. “Barely.”
Wren turned back from the hearth, face pale under the soot and blood.
“That,” she said, “was not normal.”
“No,” Mira agreed weakly. “Definitely not in my healer’s handbook.”
Rafe eased her back onto the pillow. Her arm lay stretched out, the deep, raw gash above the original bite packed with clean cloth for now. The skin around it looked angry, but the black threads were gone. Her fingers tingled, flexing sluggishly.
“How does it feel?” Wren asked.
“Like someone shoved hot coals under my skin and then stepped on my hand,” Mira said. “But the… crawling… stopped.”
Rafe’s shoulders dropped an inch. He hadn’t realized how tense they’d been.
“You should rest,” he said. “Let your body do the rest of the work.”
She shot him a withering look. “You don’t get to use healer words on me.”
“They’re your own,” he pointed out. “I’m just… parroting.”
“Badly,” she muttered. But some of the edge had gone from her voice.
Wren exhaled slowly, then moved to stand by Mira’s head. She stared down at her cousin, eyes dark.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” she said softly.
Mira smiled, a twisted thing. “Runs in the family.”
“You could’ve let someone else take that hit,” Wren went on. “You could’ve hung back. You’re our only healer and you threw yourself in front of a possessed wolf like a green pup.”
“I did the math,” Mira said. “He couldn’t move fast enough.”
“I wasn’t talking about him,” Wren snapped. “I was talking about you.”
Mira’s gaze slid to Rafe, then back to Wren.
“I know,” she said quietly. “And I’d do it again.”
Rafe’s gut clenched.
Wren cursed, then bent down abruptly and pressed her forehead to Mira’s for a brief, fierce second.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” she whispered. “I don’t have anyone else who can yell at me about herbs and politics in the same breath.”
Mira’s eyes flickered. “Bossy.”
“Learned from you,” Wren muttered, straightening. She wiped a hand over her face, smearing ash. “I have to get back out there. Make sure the pups are calm. Check the wards. And… send word to the elders about whatever the hell that was.”
She jerked her chin toward the hearth.
“Good luck explaining that,” Mira said.
“I’ll blame Ironclaw,” Wren said. “It usually works.”
Rafe snorted. “You’re not wrong.”
Wren’s gaze flicked to him.
“For what it’s worth,” she said grudgingly, “you did well. For a half-mended idiot.”
“High praise,” he murmured.
“Don’t get used to it,” Wren said. “You’re still Ironclaw.”
He met her stare. “And you’re still Ashridge.”
Something like mutual, wary respect passed between them.
“Watch her,” Wren ordered him. “If she starts muttering in strange tongues or her eyes go milky, shout.”
Mira rolled her eyes. “I’m right here.”
“Good,” Wren said. “Stay that way.”
She left in a gust of cold air and pine scent.
The door clicked shut.
The room felt strangely small with just the two of them again.
Mira let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“Check my pupils,” she said. “Make sure I’m not… cursed. More than usual.”
He blinked. “I’m not a healer.”
“You have eyes, don’t you?” she snapped. “Come here.”
He leaned over her obediently.
Her hazel eyes stared back up at him, the gold flecks bright even in exhaustion. Dark circles smudged the skin beneath them, but the whites were clear. No cloudiness. No creeping black.
He swallowed.
“You’re… you,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “I’d hate to share a body with anything that smells like that.”
He grunted acknowledgement.
She studied his face in turn, as if reassuring herself he was still himself.
“You shouldn’t have moved like that,” she said. “Your stitches—”
“Are bitching at me,” he admitted. “But they held.”
“Lucky,” she muttered.
“Stubborn,” he countered.
She snorted.
Silence stretched for a few heartbeats.
The crackle of the hearth seemed louder now. The residual taste of that curse lingered on his tongue, metallic and foul.
“Thank you,” she said suddenly.
He blinked. “For what.”
“For not… freezing,” she said. “At the pens. Some wolves… do. When it’s not a normal fight. When it’s… wrong. You didn’t.”
He shrugged, uncomfortable. “You moved first.”
“And you followed,” she said. “That’s… something.”
“Don’t get sentimental,” he muttered.
“Don’t make me want to,” she shot back.
They stared at each other.
His hand was still loosely wrapped around hers where it had anchored her through the cutting. Their palms were slick with sweat and smeared with their own mixed blood.
The bond hummed, satisfied in a dark, fierce way.
Together, it said. Fought. Bled. Lived.
She could almost hear it purring.
“Let go,” she said softly.
He didn’t.
“Can’t,” he said hoarsely. “Not yet.”
She inhaled shakily.
“You hold on any tighter,” she warned, “and I’m charging you rent.”
He huffed a laugh. “What’s your rate?”
“Two apologies,” she said. “One for Kellen. One for stepping between you and that thing.”
His face sobered.
“For Kellen,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. For what I did. For what I didn’t do. For every moment I thought of him as just another enemy and not as your brother.”
Her throat tightened.
“For stepping between me and that thing,” he went on, jaw clenching, “I’m… grateful. And furious. And afraid. Don’t ever do it again. Please.”
She blinked. “That’s… three.”
“I overpay,” he said.
Despite herself, her lips curved.
“Noted,” she murmured.
The pain in her arm pulsed, harsher now that the adrenaline was ebbing. Fatigue swept over her like a tide pulled hard.
Her eyes drifted closed.
“Stay with me,” he said quickly.
“Bossy,” she murmured. “You’ll be a great patient.”
“I’m better as a guard,” he said.
“Too bad,” she mumbled. “You’re both now.”
Sleep tugged.
He felt it through the bond—a thick dragging, heavy-limbed. He knew she needed it. Her body had been through hell. Her wolf needed to curl around her bones and knit them.
“Rest,” he said softly. “I’ll watch.”
Her lashes fluttered once. “You always… say that. ‘I’ll watch.’ Like no one ever… did for you.”
His breath caught.
“Sleep,” he repeated. “We’ll talk… later.”
She made a faint noise of assent.
Her fingers slackened minutely in his, then tightened again as if even her unconscious mind refused to let go fully.
Rafe sat on the edge of the table, his side throbbing, Mira’s hand in his, the smell of burnt curse lingering in the air.
He watched.
He had always been good at that. At standing guard. At taking blows.
He’d never done it for someone who made his heart feel like this.
That was new.
He wasn’t sure he liked it.
His wolf did.
It laid its head on its paws inside his chest and stared at the sleeping healer, hackles still raised, teeth still bared at threats that might come.
They’d cut one curse out of her.
There would be more. Of different kinds.
He’d be damned if he let any of them win.
* * *