She walks me to my cabin without another word.
She pushes the door open. Waits for me to go in. I sit on the cot and grip the frame with both hands and fight the wave while it moves through me. Everything is tight. Belly, thighs, the place between them that is not taking requests.
Sienna stays by the door.
“This isn’t a normal one. You’ve never gone down like that.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“You can barely stand.”
“I said I’ll handle it.”
She gives me a look. Puts her hands in her pockets.
“Want me to get you anything?”
“Privacy.”
She goes. The door shuts. I curl forward with my arms wrapped around my middle, and I breathe through my teeth. The sensation of an emptiness needing to be filled is fucking unbearable. Damn wolf biology.
Don’t think about the clearing. Don’t think about his hands. Don’t.
I think about his hands.
I think about the clearing.
The animal in me is smug. She is not on my side. She hasn’t been on my side since we first saw him, and whatever switch a body flips when it decides it’s in heat, hers is flipped and locked.
I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood. The pain helps. Briefly.
I wait the next wave out. Twenty minutes, maybe thirty, my body slowly unclenching from the fist it makes of itself. Then I stand, splash water on my face from the basin, and walk to the lodge.
I pass Dane near the barn. His scent hits me the way scent isn’t supposed to hit a wolf — not his own specific smell, but the fact that he’s male, alpha-adjacent, and not mine. My wolf snarls hard enough that I stumble half a step.
Dane stops. Looks at me. Doesn’t speak.
“I’m fine.”
“Didn’t ask.”
I keep walking. He lets me.
I don’t want to admit it, but I need help. I walk straight past the rooms where the healers are stationed because I need someone who understands that sometimes life is… complicated.
Greta is at the stove.
Greta is always at the stove. She’s the oldest wolf at Ravenclaw, and she operates from the range the way generals operate from a command post. She’s stirring something thick and brown in a cast-iron pot. She sees me come through the screen door, and her hands keep moving, but her eyes sharpen.
“Sit down, honey.”
I sit at the long table. My hands are shaking. I put them flat on the pine.
“When did it start?” She doesn’t waste time with small talk, and that suits me fine.
“An hour ago. Checking wards. Though I think it’s been brewing for a while.” I think back to the restless night I suffered through, thinking I’d come down with a bug.
Wolves don’t get bugs.