Chapter 6: Terms

I woke to light and a ceiling that was not stone.

The sheets under me were clean and dry and smelled of cedar.

For a moment I thought I had died, and it was an unexpectedly gentle afterlife.

Then I tried to move, and everything below my ribs answered in agony.

That was how I knew I was alive.

"Don't," a woman said.

She sat at the foot of the bed with a bowl in her lap, and her sleeves were stained to the elbow.

"You've been out three days. Your legs are set and splinted. Your spine is knitting, but slowly, and it will only hurry if the wolfsbane leaves you."

"How long will that take?"

"With the charcoal I'm giving you, a week."

"Maybe less."

Something warm moved in my chest.

It was faint, and it was wolf.

My wolf was awake.

I turned my head on the pillow.

Roan Quartermaine sat in a chair by the window with his elbows on his knees.

His suit jacket was gone, and his sleeves were rolled to the elbow.

There was dried blood on one cuff, and it was mine.

He looked as though he had not slept in three days.

"Leave us," he said to the healer.

"The hand isn't finished."

"Then finish it and go."

She did not argue.

Her fingers closed around my crushed little finger, and I couldn't stop a hiss.

"The bone's out of place," she said.

"I can pull it straight, but I don't have a steady hand today, and a poor job leaves it crooked for good."