She sips, eyes glittering with fever and fight. Another wave grips her; she squeezes my headboard instead of my hand, meeting my count, riding it down. When it loosens, she slumps back, breath sawing.
“Textbook,” I murmur. “If textbooks were written by masochists.”
“Next time I shift,” she pants, “I’m demanding snacks.”
“Done.”
I keep my voice light, but her joke lodges under my ribs and blooms a reckless picture I have no right to touch: Scarlett flushed and laughing, belly round beneath my palms, our future a warm room I’ve never let myself imagine. The want is quiet and dangerous. A hope I fold up small and put away for some far day she chooses me, if she ever does.
“Ready?” I ask, steady again. “In for four, out for six.”
“Coach,” she whispers, mouth quirking, “if you start chanting, I’m biting you.”
I grin despite the ache in my groin at the thought of her biting me. “Duly noted. Bite reserved for later negotiations.”
“Later,” she echoes, fiercer now, and meets the next wave head-on.
I refresh the cloth and lay it across her brow again. The scent of her skin—fever-sweet, citrus, and rain—hooks into me.
Minutes—maybe an hour—unspool. The fire settles into a bright, steady bed of coals; the forest goes from listening to waiting. The bond hums.
Her eyes crack open. Green and glass-bright. “Tell me something that isn’t about wolves.”
“I can rebuild a carburetor in the dark.”
She huffs a laugh. “Of course you can. You probably name your tools.”
“Only the stubborn ones.” I tip my chin to the hammer by the door. “That’s Agnes.”
“Hi, Agnes,” she whispers, and closes her eyes again.
Another surge. She gasps, then clamps her jaw. I count with her. She curses with creativity that would make a sailor blush. When it eases, she sags into the pillow, breath ragged.
“I’m here,” I say, and keep saying it, a quiet metronome. “I’m here.”
At some point—two, three surges later—the crow returns. He clacks his beak at the window; I crack it, take the ribbon back. A single nut rolls from my pocket to the sill like payment; he snatches it and vanishes. I read the tiny scrap:I know you’re safe. I love you. —G.
Relief loosens something in my spine I didn’t know was locked.
“She sent love,” I tell Scarlett. “And she says she knows you’re safe.”
“Of course, she does,” she breathes, and a tear slicks along her temple, catching on the hairline.
I dab it away with the corner of the cloth, careful as if touching a live wire.
The night stretches thin. The fever peaks, then—at last—begins to ebb. Not gone, not yet, but the edge dulls; her breaths lengthen; the trembling eases from earthquake to aftershock.
Outside, dawn begins as a rumor—blue leaking into black between the trees.
“Almost there,” I murmur. “You’re doing it.”
Her lips shape a word without sound.
I lean closer. “What?”
“Water,” she manages.
I lift the cup to her mouth, and her throat works as she drinks, eyes on mine as if looking at me keeps her tethered. When she’s had enough, she tips her head back to the pillow and stares at the ceiling.
