by Martha Woods
“I’ll be fine, we can rest up once we get to the cabin.” His eyes went wide at a twinge in his side, before he shook his head and pushed himself off the tree, heading towards the north. “Come on, we need to keep going. We’ll cook up some of this meat, hop in some beds, it’ll be fantastic.”
“I appreciate you saying beds, plural,” She laughed, deciding to push the worries to the back of her mind for now, “Like I’m some poor innocent maiden or something.”
“Oh I’m sorry, let me rephrase it since you’re such a woman of the world,” He chuckled, “How about when we get to the cabin I just throw this meat on the ground and strip all my clothes off? Do you have any problems with the way that I like to relax?”
“Oh no, none at all,” Jennifer drawled, voice taking on a tone so smoky that they both couldn’t help but laugh at it, “I like to recline nude and pose for scandalous paintings in my free time, I hope that you’re good with your hands.”
“I’m sure that given enough time together you’ll be more than familiar enough with my hands.” He smirked, though when he looked at her his eyes were carrying some hint of worry over going too far. It had been only recently that they’d met after all, he didn’t want to cause offense by overstepping his bounds. Sure they were joking, one could call it flirting, but there was a limit before it became just you shouting propositions at someone.
“I like the sound of that,” Jennifer said, sending a wink his way and both settling his nervous thoughts and making an armada of them rise again. He would be the first to admit that seeing her wink at him, before stepping forward and shoving a log out of their way with a minimum of effort and a maximum of muscle tensing, he had to say that she was definitely doing things to him that he did not have the time to be thinking about with everything else that was going on.
“So, how much further?” She asked after a few minutes of comfortable, if not slightly awkward silence.
“We should only have about fifteen miles left,” He answered, readjusting the bag on his shoulder and grimacing at the pain in his side, “No time at all really, we should get there as the sun starts coming back, won’t that be nice?”
“A romantic forest cabin getaway? Now I’m really being spoiled aren’t I?” Jennifer grinned, taking the bag from him when it was clear that it was starting to weigh him down. “Do you want to sit down for a bit? You’re not looking very good, and walking’s not doing that any favors.”
He thought about deflecting again, but it was obvious that she could see right through it. Resting himself against the tree, he rubbed his hand along the side of his ribs and shrugged. “We take too long and I’m not going to last out here, we both know that. It sucks, and I know that I’m hurt, but there’s not much that we can actually do about that until we get to the cabin right? So let’s get going.”
Looking him over for a minute, debating whether or not she should force him to rest for a while, she couldn’t help but accept that he was right. She was in no position to actually help him out here, not so many miles away from everything and with people on the lookout to kill them both, the best chance that he had was dragging himself to the cabin and letting her look him over there when she actually had the means to patch him up.
“Fine then,” She said, extending her hand to him to help him straighten up, “Let’s get going then, the sooner we get out of this cold the better.”
“Oh? Do you have some plans to warm us both up?” He asked, cracking a smile when she scoffed, “What? Too much?”
“With your ribs the way they are trust me, I’m not about to hop on top of you and try some warmth sharing. You can take care of that yourself for now.” Shuffling the bag on her shoulder, she guided them along through the trees, their pace slower than it had been before out of necessity, though even if they were both completely healthy they would have had to slow down eventually, they still weren’t sure of the exact location of the cabin. For all they knew they could end up completely level with it, but a few miles east or west of it, it had been a long time since Orson had visited after all.
“So you were kind of like the rebel of your clan right?” Orson asked, “That’s the impression I’m getting, always hard to control, sure that their way is the right way, because it usually is, am I right about that?”
“Not completely, but they couldn’t stand me half the time because they thought I was like that, so I guess that you’re half right.”
“Ah, I get that,” He laughed, pain flaring up in his side, “Always trying to do the right thing but some of the others are idiots who are determined to do things their own way, where have I heard that before.”
“From the way you tell it you weren’t exactly instilling amazing confidence in them,” She chuckled, “Didn’t you tell me that you sucked at your job?”
“I didn’t say that, I just said that I’ve been kind of arrogant sometimes and let that guide me, but that was years ago. As for not knowing how to grow the food right… well, almost everyone in our clan isn’t sure how to do that, so we’re all idiots. The only exceptions are Frank and Helga, and they’re barely there half the time anyway, I’m thinking they probably had the right idea.”
He stopped, doubling over into himself and gasping in agony, arms wrapped around his stomach and his knees buckling, dropping him face first into the frost. It took a second for Jennifer to notice, but when she did she dropped the bag of deer to the ground and rushed to his side, kneeling down next to him and turning his head up towards her, finding him completely passed out and his breathing growing weaker.
“Shit, no no no,” She said quickly, hand shaking for a moment before she grabbed him by the back of his collar and hoisted him up, placing him on her shoulder with a grunt and stepping forward to pick up the bag next to her, running as fast as she could in the direction of the cabin, or at least where they thought that it might be.
Half an hour of dead sprinting and he was growing weaker on her shoulder, forcing her to push herself further and further along in an effort to save his life, before she took a downward slope the wrong way and had her feet collapse from under her, sending the two of them tumbling down and slamming back first into a collection of rocks. She grunted in pain, scrambling over to him and checking to see if he was still alive, breathing a sigh of relief when he was, though barely at this point. She was about to pick him up again and continue on when she smelled a nearby creature, a mile away and closing fast, forcing her to choose between running as fast as she could to try and outrun it or stay and fight if that’s what it was looking for. One look at Orson was all the evidence she needed to know that with him weighing her down she wouldn’t be able to make it far, leaving only one option.
A bear burst through the brush, skidding to a half and snarling at her with a full mouth of teeth, spittle and blood dripping from its jaws as it looked at first at her then turned its gaze to Orson. To her confusion, in her mid-shift state, the bear dropped all pretense of hostility upon seeing Orson, before rearing up and dropping itself into a form much more human.
“What are you doing to him?” The bear, now a roughly twenty-four-year-old woman asked, clearly ready to shift back at any second, “Get away from him!”
“No way!” Jennifer snapped back, taking a step in front of him and protecting him with her body, “I heard from him about what you did, you’re not going to kill him like you wanted to!”
“What are you talking about?” The woman asked, staring down at him with his stomach visible, dark black and purple bruises winding their way across his skin, “You didn’t do this?”
“No, I’m trying to save him, what are you trying to do?” Leaning down, Jennifer pulled him up and onto her shoulders. “If you’re not like the others, then grab that bag and take us to the cabin up north, that’s the only hope that he has now.”
“The cabin up north?” The woman asked, taking a second before picking up the bag and stepping closer, “That’s my cabin, mine and my husbands, why are you taking him there?”
>
“He was taking me there, not the other way around, once we rested up there… we were going to try and stop the rest of you from going insane. You want an explanation? Get us there and keep him alive.”
“A-Alright,” The woman said, reaching out her hand to introduce herself, “My name’s Helga, I guess let’s go to my home.”
Chapter 6
The trek took another hour, but now that she had an actual guide to get her there it likely took far less time than it would have otherwise, especially since Helga was actually familiar with the territory. There was an uneasy alliance of sorts between them, there was no doubt that Helga knew that she was a wolf, but the fact that she wasn’t attacking at all and was willing to listen to her in the first place… maybe Orson was right, maybe she was one of the only smart ones.
“How much further?” Jennifer asked, perhaps a little snappier than she meant to, “I don’t know how much longer he can take all this moving.”
“We’re almost there, trust me, he’ll be as safe as anyone could be for now once we get him there and in a bed. After that… well, you both have some explaining to do, I’ve been wondering what’s been happening since yesterday.”
The cabin loomed in front of them once they stepped through the thick tree cover, much to Jennifer’s surprise since she hadn’t smelled it at all. Helga must have seen the look of surprise on her face, saying, “We put a lot of effort into covering up this cabin from everyone else, Orson’s the only one that’s ever seen it and even then I doubt that he could tell you exactly where it is. Since you seemed kind of lost when I found you he probably didn’t know for sure huh?”
“No, he didn’t. We were… just kind of winging it since we didn’t have a choice,” Jennifer sighed, “Probably would have died out there.”
“Well, no dying just yet,” Helga said, pushing the door open and welcoming them inside, “Walk down the stairs, there’s a table down there that we can look at him on. I’ll get everything together than I can.”
Jennifer nodded, walking down the old oak staircase and pushing the door open at the end of the hallway, a simple metal desk sitting in the middle of the room with a few books set on top. Sweeping her hand across the top, she knocked the books to the ground and place Orson as gently as she could on the surface, opening his shirt slowly without moving him too much. The skin was black and looked to be almost bloody, a thick cut having been opened up in his side that had stopped bleeding but looked severe enough to have caused some damage inside. Their healing factors were good but… were they good enough to outlast this?
“Ok, you got him set up,” Helga said, stepping through the door with a pair of rubber gloves and a medical bag, “Let’s see what the damage is…”
Placing her bag next to them and leaning over his body, Helga looked him over with an analytical eye, fingers poking and prodding at him to say if something seemed to be out of place, small hums of concern in the back of her throat as she leaned over and popped the bag open. “He’s definitely got bruised ribs, but I think one might have been broken in the fight that caused this. I think that little by little his lung has been filling up with blood, it’s a wonder that he isn’t dead yet.”
“What about the rest of this?” Jennifer asked, pointing at the cut in his side, “That looks pretty bad right?”
“That’s a lower concern right now, this is the one that’s an actual danger to him. Please put some gloves on.” Returning to the bag, Helga pulled out a needle and tossed her a pair of rubber gloves. “What we need to do right now is drain his lung, and that means that I have to poke this through his chest and suck out the air that’s gathered in there along with the blood. Your job is… to make sure that he doesn’t lunge up and smack my face off when I do it.”
Jennifer nodded, placing her hands on his shoulders and making room for Helga to work, placing the tip of the needle against the skin of his right pec. “I’m sorry Orson,” She said with a grimace, before pushing with all her might.
It sunk in easily, a spurt of blood ejecting into the container attached to the needle, his body shaking underneath Jennifer’s grip as instinct took him over, thrashing weakly for a moment before he resettled on the desk. With her other hand Helga reached up and pulled the plunger up, air and blood rushing up into the container with a disgusting flowing sound, before his breathing rushed back and caught in his throat for a moment. Helga breathed a sigh of relief, pulling the plunger until the container was filled almost to the top, before she was satisfied that she’d gotten everything out.
“Thank you for holding him down,” She said, smiling at Jennifer, “I wouldn’t have blamed him for hitting me when I did that, it never feels nice.”
“Yeah… no problem,” Jennifer replied, letting go of him and collapsing back into a nearby seat, “What’s going on with the rest of him? His stomach doesn’t look good at all.”
“I think he’s either bruised his liver or his spleen, he must have been in complete agony the entire time that you’ve been together. So long as I set him correctly and give him enough food and fluids to jog his healing along he should make a quick recovery, he just couldn’t while his body was pushing itself to move on such limited energy.”
Jennifer leaned back in her chair, taking a deep breath and exhaling it gratefully, exhaustion setting itself into her body as she sat there. “Thank god, I wouldn’t have known what to do if we made it here…”
“Good thing that I found you out there while me and my husband were hunting, coming home to see you standing over our dead friend would have been a very awkward introduction.”
“Yeah, you’re telling me…” Jennifer yawned, leaning her head back and covering her mouth, trying to get to her feet but stumbling for a moment when her legs wouldn’t obey her. Helga saw and took pity on her, nodding her head over to the side of the room where a cot was situated.
“Go and rest for a few hours, I’m sure that whatever happened, you earned it. We can talk about what happened once you’re rested up, I’m not about to interrogate someone who can barely connect thoughts together.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Jennifer protested, though she got up and made her way towards the cot nonetheless, “Thanks though, I really needed this…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Helga said, making to say more but noticing that she was already out completely, snoring lightly with her face buried in the thin pillow. She laughed to herself, shaking her head and reaching into the bag to pull out the supplies that she would need. “Who exactly did you find out there for an ally Orson? And just what the hell happened back at camp?”
When Jennifer next woke up it was with a pain in her neck and a tremendous dryness in her throat, from that same kind of rest that you always took for too long when you really needed it. Looking up and almost falling off the cot, she reached out for the jug of water that had been placed next to her and all but upended it into her mouth, swallowing greedily with big gulps that sent coldness rushing into her chest and waking her right up.
“Oh my fucking God that’s good,” She moaned, wiping at her mouth before drinking the rest of the jug, not stopping until there wasn’t a single drop left.
“Wow,” Helga said, sitting next to the desk where Orson was still laying, “If I didn’t know you were a shifter before, I definitely would have known after that. Not always that you come across a regular person who can do that sort of thing so easily.”
“Yeah well, we’ve been under a lot of stress, it’s kind of taken its toll.” She swung her legs over the side and rested her boots against the floor, placing her head in her hands. “How long has it been?”
“Since you went to sleep? About twelve hours, I’ve been watching over the two of you and making sure that there were no complications that I hadn’t foreseen. So far both of you seem pretty stable, and he’s even made some progress with the bruising.”
“Really?” Jennifer got up and walked over to where Orson was laying, and Helga was indeed right. His stomach was still a
mess of bruising, but it had already started to fade compared to how it had been only twelve hours ago, the swelling starting to subside and revealing the lines of his abs once more. She hadn’t even noticed that he had abs before, the swelling had been horrendous. “Thanks for… you know, taking care of him and everything,” She said, “I didn’t know if you would but… thanks.”
“I don’t blame you for thinking that I wouldn’t, neither of you have had the best experiences over the last few days I’m guessing? Orson apparently was working on a way to solve our food problems with the wolves, and now he’s ended up here. There was word spreading around camp that he’d sold us out, and then some of the guards stormed his house when he got back, but I’m willing to believe that the story is crap.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because me and Frank have known him since we were all kids, and we’re not idiots. He would give his life for any one of us, he almost did in the war, the idea that he would sell us out to a couple wolves after all this time… no, that’s not the Orson that I know.”
“Well, he was working on a way to fix your crop problems, he and I came up with it ourselves. I was going to talk to my Elder and he was going to take it to the council or whatever you have over there, and he was going to let us grow food on your land in exchange for half the crops. They didn’t like the idea where I was, and it looks like they didn’t like it where you were.”
“No, they didn’t… Patrick’s taken over since Orson ran away, it was probably him who was responsible for spreading the rumors in the first place. Slimy little rat.”
“Well, sorry to throw your entire world view into the trash, but that’s not where your problems end… my clan wants to go to war with yours, they locked me up so that I couldn’t do anything about it but I got free and ended up linking up with Orson out in the middle of nowhere. But after this… we both need to stop this fight that’s coming.”