Chapter 6: A Fire in the Den

The den at MacClellan Ridge had a fire in it.

It was a real one, in a stone hearth, with split logs stacked to one side and a copper kettle ticking on the hook.

I stood in the doorway with Lark on my shoulder and could not walk in.

For six years I had lived in a house with no fire.

"You can sit," Rowan said behind me. "The chair won't bite."

"Is that a joke?"

"It's a chair," he said. "Sit."

I sat.

He carried in a crib himself, a plain pine one with the paint worn off the rails. He set it beside the hearth and tested the legs with his boot.

"The pack passes it around," he said. "It has been in the loft since the last pup outgrew it."

He did not say whose crib it was first, and I did not ask.

An old midwife came in next, with her sleeves rolled and a basket on her arm. She did not wait to be introduced.

"Up on the cot, girl. Let me see the damage."

She checked my stitches, and clicked her tongue, and checked them again.

"You tore them," she said. "Who ran you across a ward with these?"

"I did."

"Hm." She wiped her hands. "Four weeks to mend. Not three. Not tomorrow. You sleep, you eat, and you let that man carry things."

"I don't need anyone to carry things."

"Everybody needs someone to carry things. That's how we all got here."

She left me a bottle of fever-root tonic and a bowl of broth, and she took Lark for the first feed without asking.

Lark latched. Her mouth worked, steady and fierce.