Chapter 14: Stitches

Alaric didn't fall.

He looked down at the knife in his side.

Then he took the lantern man by the wrist and squeezed.

The man screamed and let go of the handle.

Alaric's voice came out of him, and it wasn't the voice he used at supper.

It was the Alpha of Eastmarch, low and enormous, and it filled the hut.

"Out."

The second man dropped his rifle.

The first was already crawling for the door.

The lantern man ran last, holding his broken wrist against his chest.

Far off on the moor, a wolf howled.

Then another, closer, answering.

Alaric's two wolves had heard him.

The men outside heard them too, and I listened to them run, crashing down through the snow toward the valley road.

Alaric looked at me.

"Are you hurt?"

"Am I hurt?"

He pulled the knife out of his side.

He did it in one motion, and dropped it on the floor, and sat down rather suddenly on the bench.

The blood came fast and dark down his shirt.

I was on my knees in front of him before I knew I'd moved.

I pressed both hands flat over the wound.

It was hot and wet and wouldn't stop.

"It won't close," I said. "It's silver. It won't close on its own."

"I know what it is."

"Then why did you do that?"

He looked at me with his eyes gone silver all the way across, and he didn't answer.

The old shepherd tore the sleeve off his own shirt and handed it to me without a word.

I packed it into the wound and held it there.

Alaric's wolves came through the door as men, wild-eyed, half dressed.

They took one look and started arguing at him in Eastmarch.

He told them to shut up and carry the old man.

We came back through the postern at two in the morning.

The shepherd rode on the back of one black wolf, clutching his ruff.

Alaric walked the whole way on his own feet, because he was an idiot.

I had my dress and cloak from the gate step bundled under one arm and my other arm around his waist.

I knocked on Prue's door with my bloody fist.

She opened it in her flannel nightgown with her kerchief over one ear.

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