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Chapter Text

They say the woods are cursed.

Jaime used to lift his hand to trap the wolves in their wolf-skin. Used to need it. His fingers would shake, but he needed the gesture to direct his magic at the right wolf, needed it to make the curse stick.

The hunters bring him a wagon load of heavily drugged wolves, all of them in their human-skin, and Jaime doesn't even need to look at them to lay eight new curses, gossamer-light and stronger than steel.

Jaime looks. He doesn't need to. He has to, though. Has to see what he's doing. It feels like nothing at all. It was once his magic, but now it flows through him like nothing. Eskender holds the key to his collar, and what was once Jaime's magic, what was once Jaime, is his.

The camp is quiet, despite the addition of eight new wolves who haven't yet realized that they are already dead. It's early. The drivers who brought this group in are exhausted from traveling through the night, and no one but Jaime is necessary to receive the new wolves. Later, someone will move them into a cage that has room. Multiple cages, maybe. The hunters don't care about things like pack.

Jaime is cold and hungry, but he's been cold and hungry for long enough that they feel like second skins. The wolves have their human-skin and wolf-skin, one more valuable than the other. Jaime has his cold and his hunger.

His skin has a value to it. The hunters like to touch it, and it contains him. The collar touches his skin and turns his whole body into a cage.

The new wolves struggle against the skin that Jaime forces them into, but holding them in place is effortless. As effortless as the collar around his own neck.

He looks at them until he's seen all eight. It takes long enough for the camp to start waking properly around him, fires stirred back up and breakfast started, spreading the smell of warmth and food that will not be for Jaime through the air.

It takes that long because the eighth wolf is tiny, a pup, ears and paws too big, fear writ into every inch of its skin.

They say the woods once belonged to Men who had fought back and tamed the wild of it, clearing the underbrush to create hunting trails and killing all the wolves that would scavenge their traps under the light of the moon and spread disease.

Eskender used to be a middleman. He had a whole crew of hunters who would catch the wolves and bring them in. Once he had enough for it to be worth it, he'd find a buyer - usually a mage - for the whole lot, in nines or thirteens or twenty-sevens. After that, the wolves died. Eskender didn't do the killing, though. He couldn't do the rituals that imbued the wolf-skin and wolf-bone with power, anything a man could want or need.

Wolves are magic. Mages are magic too, but of an entirely different kind. Where a wolf-skin could be etched with lines that would hold a protective ward for as long as that skin lasted, a mage could do the etching.

The collar around Jaime's throat is wolf-skin, wolf-bone. He is a mage. Eskender had only had Jaime for a season before he realized that he could more than double his profits by having Jaime turn the wolves from... living things into objects of power.

Jaime waits, bones loose under his skin, his knife dripping blood slowly into the damp earth at his feet. Amarie brings the next wolf. Jaime has prepared four so far, and every one has been a wolf fully grown. This one is too.

"This one is for a plague-pelt," Amarie says, grinning at him, bright as the sun overhead. She's been gleeful since - "War breaking out is always good for us, but this is better than ever, thanks to you."

They say that once Man had tamed the woods, things were good for a long time. Man lived and grew, their children and their children's children keeping the woods tamed and growing healthier and wealthier for it every passing year. Eventually, as Men are wont to do, they started to fight amongst themselves rather than face the woods as one. There were so many of them it wasn't a simple conflict.

Jaime lifts his knife from the wolf, who is motionless in death now, but still breathing. He figured out, at some point, how to make the blade pass through the thick fur every wolf has like it isn't there, cutting only the skin below. It makes things easier, and faster. Less messy. The wolf's pelt is thickened with its own blood, and Jaime's hands are red. Sticky. It is more effective to do all the cutting first before setting the etchings in.

Jaime lays his hand on the wolf's heaving side. He doesn't need to do it, but this is the only moment of gentleness Jaime is able to take in the entire shape of his life.

Eskender's will shapes Jaime's magic. It would shape Jaime's magic even if Jaime fights back.

Jaime doesn't fight back.

He heals the wolf, all at once, entirely. He closes up every break in its skin, fixes every old patch of scarring, and makes sure that the cuts he made in the ritual form scar distinctly, each and every rune perfect.

A plague-pelt, disguised as something else, sold to whoever the hunters can convince to pay more for them. Jaime doesn't do that part. He only turns the wolves, who are innocent in this above all else, into things far worse.

Jaime doesn't know what the consequences of his actions are. He knows what the etchings do. He can feel it clearly with every cut. He was... before Eskender took him, Jaime had known how to heal. Hadn't needed to be taught that part.

Eskender keeps his crew far away from the places Jaime's plague-pelts go.

They say it was War unlike any that had come before.

Jaime cleans himself up after he finishes with the last wolf of the day. Eskender doesn't like Jaime to shy away from the truth of what he does, but he prefers Jaime clean when they fuck. He doesn't need wolf blood dirtying his bed, he tells Jaime.

Jaime hasn't seen the pup yet. No one has said anything about it. Likely they won't, either. A pup is a wolf. He can feel the curse he put on the pup if he concentrates. But if he concentrates, he can feel other things, and Jaime prefers... Jaime doesn't need to concentrate to hold all the magic Eskender demands of him, not even when Eskender is demanding other things of him.

Eskender lets Jaime eat after. It's the first time he's eaten all day, and Jaime goes slow. His food is rich, made for mages doing heavy workings, and it's difficult for him to stomach. Eskender buys it for him, but he says it's too expensive for Jaime to eat all the time. It's a lie. He wants Jaime starving and depleted. Jaime doesn't care. Nothing would change if Eskender wasn't lying to him.

Jaime doesn't clean up after Eskender finishes with him for the day. Unlike the wolves, what Eskender does to him isn't considered unclean by the rest of the hunters. They like it. They like having power over Jaime, who is a mage, and they make it very clear how much they like it when Jaime shows signs of their ownership.

Eskender is a jealous man. He punishes Jaime for the way the other hunters touch him, and he shares Jaime with them in the first place.

They say that when Man had turned their back on the woods, thinking it safe because it had been tamed for so long, and waged war on each other, the woods proved why Man had been fighting it and not each other. By the time Man realized their mistake, it was too late.

"This one's kinda small," Amarie says.

Jaime looks up from sharpening his knife. It cuts more cleanly when it is sharp. Hurts less. It isn't enough. Nothing is. If Jaime could kill the wolves before cutting them, he would. It doesn't work that way, though. The etchings have to be set. Scarred in. He hasn't worked any wolves yet today, so his knife and his hands are deceptively clean.

Amarie kicks the pup closer to him. One of Jaime's curses keeps it quiet, but he can hear it whimper. He's heard every sound of distress a wolf can make, he knows what they look like well enough to hear the sounds they can't make thanks to him.

"She's too small," Jaime's mouth says before he can stop it. It's been weeks since he last spoke beyond begging Eskender for more and to stop in the same breath - Eskender likes it that way - and it's been months since Jaime has earned a real punishment that isn't one of the myriad of ways the hunters punish him because they want to hurt him and pretend there is a reason for it. "I can't use her."

"Can't, mage?" Amarie asks, both brows up. Jaime looks at her and not the pup crumpled at his feet in the mud. "Thought Eskender taught you better than to talk that way."

Eskender has taught Jaime a lot of things.

"She's too small," Jaime says again.

It might be true. It might not be. The plague-pelt ritual takes up a lot of space, but Jaime is very good with his knife. He could cut the pup cleanly enough for the scars to be distinct as they need to be.

He should do it. Not doing it is pointless.

Jaime stays where he is, feeling still as a stone at the bottom of a cold, dark well.

"Do as you're told," Amarie snaps, pointing at the pup. "Plague pelt. We promised two dozen, and this is the last one. I'm not hunting down a bigger wolf because you're fussy about the materials."

Has Jaime destroyed twenty four wolves for something so evil? He barely remembers the last seven. They are distinct only because the eighth is this one.

This pup.

They say the woods sent wolves like a plague across the places Man had tamed, killing more than the war killed, killing indiscriminately, monstrously, men and women and children alike, no matter that there were more Men than those who raised swords against each other or the woods.

Amarie brings Eskender when Jaime doesn't start cutting the pup into a plague pelt. She backhands him to the ground first. Threatens him. It barely registers. They won't kill him, and they won't hurt him so badly he can't serve their purpose.

Everything else is already being done.

"Jaime," Eskender says the way he always does. He uses Jaime's name like a knife. Most of the other hunters just call him mage, or other things.

"She's too small," Jaime says. The pup is still laying where Amarie kicked it. It's hurt, probably. Jaime isn't allowed to heal the wolves until he's done cutting them.

"She?" Eskender asks. He isn't asking.

"It," Jaime says, "is too small for the plague-pelt layout."

"How long has it been since you've tried to lie to me?" Eskender asks.

Nine hours.

Eskender wants those lies, though.

"You know how detailed the plague-pelt runes are," Jaime says. The question Eskender asked is a trap. Jaime doesn't need to respond to it. It's already been sprung. "This pelt is too small."

"Do you know how I know you're lying?" Eskender asks. Jaime is holding his knife, and it is still clean. He has only ever cut wolves with it, and that isn't going to change today. "This is the exact same pathetic excuse you gave me last time."

Jaime…

Jaime didn't remember that. He would've said something else if he'd remembered that.

He hadn't meant to say anything at all in the first place.

They say when Man finally realized the threat that they'd forgotten, entire armies went to fight back the wolves and the woods that sent them.

"Chain him to the stake," Eskender says.

Jaime isn't fighting. He doesn't do that. Halbrun and Jon are rough because they're always rough, yanking Jaime back against his stake and locking the manacles around his arms above the elbow, tightening the chain between them until his shoulder joints both hover at the edge of dislocation. That would be enough to hold him, but they cross a chain around his hips and lock his ankles together, and wrap another around his neck, looped so that if he pulls it will tighten.

Jaime thinks he would be afraid of what this all means if he were still capable of feeling fear.

The pup is in a cage small enough for a hunter to lift. Jaime isn't looking at it. He isn't looking at anything.

Eskender crouches in front of Jaime. Jaime looks at him, feeling cold and hungry.

"I'm going to punish you, too, for deciding you aren't going to do your job now," Eskender tells him. "But you're too broken to care about that. So first, you're going to watch me skin this wolf alive. You don't want to hurt it because it's too small? I'm going to hurt it worse. Next time, you'll remember that, won't you?"

Jaime takes a breath and Eskender smirks, sharp as a knife.

"You will," he says. "Don't think you can stop it. This is a lesson for you."

His words are simple and final.

Jaime's entire world is defined by Eskender, as if Eskender is his god.

Eskender straightens and goes to where the pup is waiting, trapped by Jaime's cage and Jaime's curses.

They say they don't know when the woods became cursed, but not a single Man returned uncursed. They say the dead were so many the living left them behind, but there were no living.

Jaime is making a high, thin noise and he can't stop. The pup is silent and she is -

Eskender cuts fascia slowly. Jaime's shoulders are both dislocated. He can't stop his throat from making the noise that the wolf pup isn't allowed, but the chain tethering him to his stake does that for him when he tries again to get to where Eskender -

The camp's perimeter alarm sounds.

Jaime's vision is fading at the edges. He can't breathe.

Eskender stands, anger and annoyance familiar on his face.

"The fuck is it now?" he asks. He's pinned the wolf pup to the ground with sharp metal stakes. Silver. It’s so small.

The alarm sounds again, closer.

"We're under attack!" Amarie shouts from across the clearing. She's already got her preferred weapons, twin shortswords, in hand.

"Hold this for me," Eskender tells Jaime, driving the knife he is using to skin the wolf pup into Jaime's shoulder. "I'll be back shortly."

They say not a single Man ever returned from the woods uncursed again.

Jaime watches the wolf pup cry silently, only distantly aware of his own tears. She is still alive. The hunters' camp is also alive, full of the sounds of fighting, but no one has found Jaime and the wolf pup yet.

Eskender has been careful. She's not bleeding too badly. She might die anyways of shock, just from the pain. Jaime is selfish and rotten to the core, though, and in his rotten core he thinks…

If there is any chance at all for him to save her, it's while all the hunters are distracted defending their camp.

He's keeping her alive.

He should let her die, he should kill her himself. Jaime can't kill her himself, not from here, because Eskender told him long ago that he couldn't kill any wolves with magic unless explicitly ordered to, and so Jaime can't.

But he can keep her alive. Eskender isn't done hurting either of them. Jaime can keep her alive without touching her, muting her pain as much as his magic will allow him to, and pray to the gods that have forsaken him that she gets a chance.

Any chance at all.

They say that after the horror of losing their armies and those who returned faded, Man ventured into the woods and emerged again. It took too long to realize that those who had gone to the woods may have come back, but they brought with them a plague that killed every Man it touched.

"You stupid, thoughtless, greedy - selfish -"

Eskender is laughing wildly, the way he does when he's enjoying a fight, and the man screaming accusations at him is bleeding from a dozen places.

Eskender, Jaime realizes slowly, is bleeding from more.

"It's war, boy, if I don't do it someone else will!" Eskender roars.

Jaime watches the wolf pup, and Eskender's feet, still praying. He can't feel his arms, and the numbness is spreading out from the knife still in his shoulder, but she's still alive.

"No! No other mage does what yours does!" the man screams back.

Jaime hopes that isn't true. Jaime hopes that is true. The things he does are awful, cannot be undone, and no one should do them. Jaime doesn't... he doesn't want to be stained by something so terrible no other mage will do it.

More fighting spills into the clearing where Eskender punishes Jaime.

"Stupid of them," Eskender says, feinting. Jaime knows what it looks like when Eskender feints. "It pays damn well."

"Your mage is a plague on everyone!" the man fighting Eskender says. "How much are you paying him? How much is enough to do what you two have done?"

Eskender laughs again, wilder, rage at the edges. He's hurt. He's too wild to remember that he can tell Jaime to heal him as easily as breathing. The wolf pup is still breathing.

Jaime has made at least twenty four plague pelts.

More, maybe.

Almost certainly.

He doesn't remember.

"I don't know, mage, how much am I paying you?" Eskender asks Jaime mockingly.

Jaime has brought so much suffering to the world that other humans, who usually eagerly invite the hunters into their homes, have come to kill him.

The man he's fighting looks at Jaime with shock that melts quickly into disgust.

Jaime brings nothing but suffering into the world.

Two things happen very quickly after that.

Eskender fails to block a blow that doesn't come from the direction he expects, taking a step back, his foot heading directly for the little wolf pup that Jaime is keeping alive with everything he has, and someone slashes a knife across Jaime's throat.

Across the collar.

Eskender falls, another man’s sword buried deep in his body.

Jaime's vision goes black, then white, whiter still, searing through him, and when it clears there is nothing to see at all.

They say greed made Man go into the woods, to find the armies that had fallen, or the wealth the woods had given before. They say it took as many deaths over years and decades that had all fallen in a single battle to stop Man from going into the woods.

Chapter Text

"We don't have a choice," Lada says grimly. She is carrying Taron, who is too young to keep running, despite her broken arm. Ash has splinted it, and that is the best that she is going to get. Under usual circumstances, as alpha she could ask the pack to help her heal and it wouldn't be an issue at all, but this isn't usual circumstances.

"It's cursed, Lada. We go in there, we're going to get sick and die," Ruslan says. He said it flat and exhausted, which makes it easier to overrule, but Lada thinks she'd prefer if he were angry about what she is asking them to do. Making them, if it comes down to it.

Khalida has already agreed they don’t have a better option. She'll support Lada. Ash has treated spreading sickness before, he can watch for the earliest signs of infection and they can... do something.

"If we stay where the hunters can find us, we're going to be a lot worse off than sick and dying," Lada says. They still haven't figured out what is keeping Dima and the others locked in their wolves, or how the hunters are tracking them. That even with Lada pulling their human forms forward as hard as she can not a single one can so much as blunt their claws means a mage is involved.

Lada can't protect them, can't hide them, not from a mage.

The Plague Wood, as every child knows it, looms heavy behind her, and her pack look to her for answers.

"We're wolves," Khalida says. Her parents had a lot of old stories, and some of them said that the woods sheltered the wolves that it had sent against the humans before no one at all could go into the woods. "There's a chance, if we go in as wolves, the curse won't take root."

A prayer more than a chance.

They don't have even a prayer if the hunters catch up again.

Half of them are trapped as wolves already.

"Shift. We'll divide our things and the pups between us. Anyone too injured won't carry anything. We stay together no matter what," Lada says firmly, before anyone can point out any more flaws in this plan.

Ash mutters something sour about all of them being injured, but he shifts first, his pack already positioned right to stay on his back even as a wolf. He is good at that - Lada hasn't ever gotten the trick, and he likes to show off.

After that, everyone shifts, and Lada puts Taron on Khalida's back herself. Her arm is broken, which is fine when she is running on just her feet, but on her paws she can't keep him close.

Lada shifts last, but she goes into the woods first, silent as she can be, her pack behind her. It is darker, immediately, and the trees close around them unnaturally fast. She refuses to show her unease, keeping her ears forward, taking each step with care. They need to go in deep enough that the hunters won't follow, and after that they need to find a good water source, preferably one with some kind of shelter close by.

Half an hour in, brambles close in overhead so thickly that Lada, as one of the biggest wolves, has to crouch down and slink under them, thorns catching at her fur. She breathes, keeping her emotions level and focusing on her determination over everything else. She will save her pack, and all the other wolves that they'd broken out of that hunters' encampment.

They find the first bones under the brambles. Khalida trips on them, Taron whining sharply. It is human bone, blackened by fire. The humans tried to burn the woods early in Lada's memory. It hadn't worked, but the fire had obviously made it in this far.

Khalida turns her head to lick Taron's face comfortingly and nudges Lada to keep going.

It takes another hour, she thinks, the dark making it feel endless, for them to make it out of the brambles. Lada almost loses control of her scent to the fear that the thorns will never end, that her pack will be just another collection of bones under the brambles, and she can't help the panting gasp she makes when she straightens out and looks up to see the moon high over the trees, visible again.

The moon has risen while they've been under the brambles, and she hangs high in the sky, watching them with her full face from the deeper side of the woods. Lada thinks that is a good sign.

The moon favours wolves and always has. Lada lets the moon watch her back while she makes sure that all of her pack and all of their new wolves make it out of the brambles, nudging and licking each of them. Everyone looks up to the moon, relaxing under her light.

Lada thinks that is a good sign too.

She shifts, pressing a finger to her lips, holding her other hand out to stop anyone else from shifting. "If they want to follow us through that, they're going to have to burn it again to get to us," she says quietly. "We're going to find water, and stop to rest then. We're -" Lada looks up at the moon, silver and pure, not a cloud in the sky that she can see - "going to follow Mother Moon to water."

In woods entirely unfamiliar, heavy with magic, there isn't any better option for finding what they need.

No one argues, so Lada shifts back to her wolf, and leads her pack on.

The remains get thicker as Lada follows the moon and her pack follows her, until they're picking more carefully through bones than roots. The woods smell clean and green, nothing at all of rot, and that makes it all the more unsettling, frankly. There isn't so much as a puddle, though, not that Lada would let any of her pack drink from water so close to... whatever happened here, nor a break in the trees, so Lada keeps going.

What feels like most of the night later, the bones are deep enough on the ground Lada has taken to leaping over each new mound. Her wrist isn't bothering her as much as she thought it would. She leaps over one more pile, and -

The bones stop, abruptly. The trees do as well, in a sharp line that curves away from them in both directions.

It's a circle. A very, very perfect circle, which in nature is... concerning.

Nothing larger than a wolf has moved in the woods the entire time they've been pushing deeper, though, and every single skeleton has been human. Lada looks up, and the moon is directly over the open space, so clear she doesn't even have her haze rings.

Lada decides whatever is wrong here, it isn't any worse than the rest of the woods; if it wasn't for how worried she is, how hurt and exhausted her whole pack is, the rest of the woods would be nearly pleasant. She keeps going, into the moonlit clearing. Her pack follows, tightly clustered around her at first but slowly spreading out as they relax.

The ground is soft beneath her paws, damp and green. The air smells past clean now, almost medicinal, like Ash's now burned-down hut, but still living. Lada breathes deep and closes her eyes. Their village is gone, but her pack is here.

Her next step comes down into softly-flowing water, cold enough to feel amazing on her sore paws.

Lada shifts, right where she stands, ankle-deep in the water. "We're stopping here," she says. "Anyone who can shift and wants to can. I'm going upstream to see if there are more bones there. Don't drink until I get back, and only eat what we brought for now, please." She stretches up toward the moon, head tilting back, and listens to her pack shift around her. This has been the longest night Lada can remember since her wolves got stolen from her in the first place. The stream runs gently around her ankles. They have to be safe.

Khalida puts her hands on Lada's hips, pressing their bellies together. "I'll come with you," she says quietly. "Ash will check everyone over."

Lada nods, relieved by that, and curls her fingers through Khalida's as they walk upstream. The clearing is quiet, and utterly peaceful.

"Can we trust this?" Lada asks, far enough away that only Khalida will hear her doubts.

Khalida looks up at the moon, then to the stream, flowing so softly it's silent. "I think that trusting this is the only choice we have," she says, but doesn't sound bothered by it.

Lada laughs, shaking her head. "You're very practical," she teases, and Khalida flashes a grin at her.

The stream doesn't reach the other edge of the clearing. It bubbles up slowly from an outcropping of rock before they get to the far treeline, and it's even colder here when Lada dips her fingers into it, sniffing carefully. It smells clean, and more comfortingly, like rock.

Khalida sniffs it too, nodding. Neither one of them drink; the rest of their pack doesn't know the water is safe, and Lada will drink with them, not before.

It is only because the whole meadow is so unnaturally silent, and both Lada and Khalida have paused for a moment to breathe with each other, exhausted, that Lada hears it.

A ragged, shallow breath, hurt and animal. Almost a whine.

Lada straightens, fast and silent. Khalida is a shadow at her side, head tilting in a way that means she is listening intently.

They round the outcropping of rock and Lada sucks in a breath.

It is a camp. An old, old camp, tent cloth all rotted away, but the cages are silvered iron. Unmistakable.

Khalida makes a quiet sound, not speaking. Lada ignores the implied protest, walking carefully through the camp.

There are remains here, unlike the rest of the clearing Lada has seen.

These bones are wolves, every one of them in their wolf form, bleached white by the sun and undisturbed by scavengers. One wolf lays curled around another, their spines draped together, and Lada presses her hand over her mouth.

Something here is alive, despite how bone-deep convinced Lada is that her pack are the only living things this meadow has seen in a long, long time.

Khalida murmurs quietly, a blessing of Mother Moon as she watches them, and Lada keeps going, deeper into the camp.

The obvious and horrifying violence that happened in the camp is in jarring contrast to how sure Lada is that her pack is safe here. Safe from anything, not just the hunters on their tails.

Khalida agrees, or she would have done more to stop Lada from walking in.

Lada moves respectfully around another wolf. Whatever is breathing is close enough for Lada to hear more than when they gasp. She braces herself, and Khalida does the same with a light touch between Lada's shoulder blades.

Lada still isn't ready.

The rest of the camp is a quiet horror, layered with grief heavy as a stone.

This is…

"Go get Ash," Lada tells Khalida. "Now. Stay with the pack. Do not let anyone but Ash come here."

"If you get taken by fairies, I'm going to kill you after I get you out," Khalida says. She's trying to make light of what they're looking at, and Lada can't bring herself to appreciate it. She does appreciate that Khalida goes without arguing, dropping to her paws and darting into the night.

Lada forces herself to move, dropping to her knees by the... the little wolf who is…

She's splayed out on the ground, trapped there by stakes of silvered iron driven through her wrists and ankles, between bone. She's in her wolf form, and she's breathing.

She's been halfway skinned, her belly and chest bare muscle with almost no fat that Lada can see.

Lada swallows around a welling of tears. She can't be more than three years old, maybe four.

Nothing could be in this condition and live for more than a day. Lada would have said that no one as young as this wolf is could survive it at all.

The little wolf is nestled in a thick bed of soft moss, broken through with a flowering plant that Lada doesn't recognize, water welling up and pooling around her body. She is breathing, quick and shallow, but she doesn't move.

"Oh, sweetheart..." Lada says softly. She doesn't touch. Even here, the air smells clean, herbal and green. She can't smell the little wolf at all. Can't smell anything that would do this to a pup.

Lada blinks tears down her cheeks and covers her mouth again, breathing raggedly. Ash will come, and he'll know more than Lada does about what can be done to help. Lada straightens and steps back from the little wolf, heart breaking when she whines quietly. Lada prays to the Mother Moon looking down at them both that whatever has happened here, the little wolf isn't aware. Watching her breathe and suffer won't help anything. Lada looks around instead, making sure this place is as abandoned as the rest of the clearing before Ash arrives.

The clearing doesn't have any trees in it, and there aren't any here, either, but on this side of the rock from the spring, there are more low bushes, the tallest of which is about Lada's height. The way she and Khalida came is the only easy approach, bushes pressing in from every side. It gives the space a very private, closed-in feeling. The moon above is the only one to look in on it. Lada's chest aches, thinking about how often she must have watched her daughter suffer.

There is no proof of it, but Lada thinks that the little wolf has been here as long as the bones of the rest of the wolves.

She takes another step and the bushes all murmur like a breeze is passing over them, but the air is still. Lada pauses, tilting her head, moonlight glinting off of something in the bushes, revealed by their rustling.

Khalida likely wouldn't approve, since she doesn't want Lada to get spirited off by fairies, but Lada closes the gap between her and where she caught that glint.

She pulls branches aside carefully, praying to the moon that it isn't another wolf.

It isn't.

It's a... it looks like a human boy, only he's…

He's partially enveloped in an old, gnarled tree that has rooted him to the earth and twisted above his head, no straight trunk lifting its canopy up toward the sun. He's breathing, too, or his chest moves. Unlike the little wolf girl, Lada can't hear him, even this close. He's looking past Lada. Or Lada presumes he's looking past her; he doesn't react to her presence. He has no pupil or iris that Lada can tell, both of his eyes glowing a faint and uniform green.

There is a knife lodged into his shoulder. The tree hasn't grown anywhere near it, and he's bleeding sluggishly from the wound.

His throat has been cut. The blood welling up past the knife in his shoulder looks just like that: blood. What drips from his throat looks like... sap, built up thick and sticky over his collar bones.

Lada can't smell blood or pain.

This close, all she can smell is magic.

Lada breathes in the fresh scent of the air, looking at this human who is barely more than a boy, and back at the little wolf girl. She is the one who lead her pack away from the hunters and into the cursed woods, but this isn't at all what she expected.

It should be worse, that she feels so quiet and still in the face of this nightmare. Lada reaches out and touches the boy's face with gentle fingers, tracing the outline of a bruise that is still forming. He is cold to the touch, colder than the air around them, but his skin is soft.

Every hair on Lada's body rises the moment she touches him, magic prickling through her, nipping and tugging without hurting her.

"Lada!" Ash says sharply from behind her.

"Shit," Mirza says over him. Lada pulls her hand away from the boy and turns to frown at them, still feeling... distant. Quiet.

"I told Kali not to let anyone else come," Lada says. Mirza and Ash are both crouching by the little wolf girl.

"She can't tell me what to do," Mirza says dismissively. "You need me here, obviously. Get away from there."

"He's just a boy." Lada doesn't want to leave him alone, not after so long. Him and the pup, they both need help. Lada can help them. "Mirza, he's just a boy."

Mirza stands while Ash opens his bag, muttering curses under his breath all the while.

"He is," Mirza says gently, taking Lada's hands and pulling her away from the boy and the tree, away from the little wolf girl as well. "We'll help them, Lada. Or we'll end their suffering." She sounds sad, and she reaches up to wipe Lada's face.

Lada is still crying, she realizes as soon as Mirza touches her cheeks.

"He might be no more than a boy," Ash says grimly from where he is pouring what Lada hopes is more than clean water over the little wolf girl. "But he's a mage. He's keeping her alive when she shouldn't be. If he can do that, he can heal her. I want to know why he hasn't."

Mirza makes a sound of soft sympathy at Lada, letting go of her face. Lada is still crying. She can't stop. "Let's take a look at him. The moon's light may show us things the light of day wouldn't."

Lada nods. They cut back the bushes that have grown up around the boy, though Lada won't let Mirza cut anything that looks like it is the tree. She doesn't think that is a good idea, and Mirza doesn't fight her.

Khalida told her not to get taken by fairies, and Lada wonders distantly if this counts.

When they have cleared enough that they can see the boy under the bright face of the moon, Mirza sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth.

"That's a mage collar," she says.

Lada's breath hitches on a quiet sob. She didn't see it before, hidden under the thick build up of not-blood from the boy's cut throat. He is caught by a mage collar. It's half torn through, like whoever took a knife to his throat got the collar too, but didn't cut all the way through. Lada didn't think that mage collars could be cut off.

She shifts just enough to have her claws and hooks one around the half-cut split part of the collar, pushing through the sticky dampness of the sap bleeding out of the boy.

"Mother Moon save me from impulsive alphas," Mirza says under her breath - not nearly quiet enough - as Lada jerks down, tearing the collar the rest of the way open.

Nothing happens. The collar doesn't even fall from the boy's neck; it's stuck there with his blood. Lada doesn't care if it's not a good idea, she isn't going to do nothing here. She peels the collar off of the boy's neck, carefully as she can. It's stuck in several places, and under the bright light of the moon, if he bleeds fresh blood or sap, Lada can't tell.

"It's okay," Lada tells the boy as she scrapes the collar away from his body with her claws, digging it out from between flesh and the gnarled tree holding the boy up. "It's okay, you're okay, we're okay -"

She's crying harder, tears almost blinding her, but she gets the collar off. It's heavy and damp in her hand, disgusting, crusted with his blood.

"We need to burn this," Lada says. The boy hasn't moved at all, but she'd felt him flinch several times, tiny little movements that weren't visible, just tugged at the tips of her claws. "Burn this, get him free of the tree, we need to -"

Lada twists in place, breath catching with horror in her throat, because the little wolf girl is still staked down to the ground, how could she have just left -

Ash is humming quietly, a soothing song he came to the pack with, and he's laid the silver stakes to the side, far from the little wolf girl. He's folded her skin back into place, and looks up at Lada now, fury barely banked in his eyes.

"He's a mage," Ash repeats. "He's influencing you, Lada. That means he's aware. I can't help her. If she's going to live, he has to heal her."

"Might not be him," Mirza says. She's looking up at the moon. "How long have we been here?"

Lada isn't certain. The moon had been low enough to follow through the woods, and then directly overhead when they reached the clearing. It had been dark, but not late, when they reached the woods in the first place.

The moon is still directly overhead, and she's in her full form, almost blindingly white.

"It's okay," Lada says again. She's talking to everyone, this time. "Burn this, please. I'll get him out of the tree."

She's coaxed scared wolves out of trees before. Generally when they're just learning to climb and get stuck, or get spooked on a moonless night, but sometimes it's because they can't get away from the hunters in their minds, haunting and terrifying.

This is a hunters' camp. There are wolves here, all dead save for the little girl, and the mage boy is no hunter. Not with that collar and the knife in his shoulder. Mirza takes the collar from Lada and Lada goes to the boy again.

He's looking at her this time, eyes turning up from the pup he's been watching over.

"You kept her alive," Lada tells him, cradling his cheeks like Mirza had just cradled hers. He isn't crying, but Lada is. "You and Mother Moon watched her all this time, haven't you?"

The boy looks at her, face utterly still, eyes empty of everything save that soft green glow.

It might be a nightmare, what has happened here, but Lada... Lada is certain that he only wanted to help.

"You did," Lada says softly. "Now we're here, and we can help too."

Ash says that the mage boy is the only one who can heal the pup, and Lada thinks that he's had a knife in his shoulder and a collar around his neck for as long as it has taken for the tree to grow up around him. She wraps one hand around the knife, still cupping his face with the other hand, and pulls it out in a single jerk, tossing it away.

He's chained into the tree too. Lada barely registers what Ash and Mirza are doing around her. She has to get him out, has to free him so that he and the little wolf girl can both heal after so long of nothing but pain and the moon watching them. She is kind to wolves, but she is so distant. Lada isn't. Lada is right here, and she's going to stop whatever is happening here right now. Right now.

The boy falls into her arms and Lada catches him, holding him close as tenderly as she knows how to, turning her face up to the moon, throat and chest and bones aching with grief. She closes her eyes, breathing in his clean herbal scent.

"Lada?" Mirza touches her arm, soft, and Lada hums. She's rocking on her heels, slow, cradling the boy against her chest. Tears run down her face, over her jaw and down her neck, into his hair. "Bring him here, okay?"

Lada nods. The boy is limp in her arms. She's not certain he's breathing, but he's... he's clearly alive, in at least some way. She lifts him, aching at how light he is, too thin and too small, and carries him to where Ash and the little wolf girl are waiting.

"Sit down," Ash grumbles once Lada is in range to be fussed at. "Damned if I know what is going to happen here. He doesn't need to be dropped on top of the rest of it."

Lada sits, folding her legs underneath her, and the boy's body folds too easily with her. He is as quietly horrifying as the rest of the camp. So still, and so surreal it almost hides the awful thing that has to have happened.

"Give him the pup," Mirza says. She and Ash lift the little wolf girl carefully. The delicate flowers she has been resting in follow her, tendrils of green curling through her fur. Lada reaches out, supporting the boy one-handed, and guides the pup into the soft, safe place between her and the boy.

He moves, or Lada thinks he does. It's hard to tell. He stays limp, but he also curls around the little girl just like the plants are, until he's holding her to his chest. The little wolf shudders all over and it shakes through the boy as well. Lada holds them both, the ache in her throat and chest moving down her arms to her hands now, burning behind her eyes.

She's so sorry that any of this happened to either of them.

The little wolf girl whines, and the boy whines too. Lada barely stops herself from making the same noise. The little wolf girl breathes, and the boy – breathes.

He definitely wasn't breathing before. Lada can tell now that he is. Plants are curling up around her legs, twining around her softly, wrapping around the little girl just like the boy is.

She holds them both, the moon high overhead, and cries for every wolf who has been in this place, for the boy in her arms.

"I thought I told you not to get taken by any fairies, Lada," Khalida says. She's crouching in front of Lada, though Lada didn't hear her arrive, and her voice is very soft.

"Kali," Lada says, voice cracking. She doesn't say anything after that - she doesn't know what to say, how to tell Khalida how much it hurts. The boy has his head curled under her chin, breathing quietly against her collarbones, and the little girl is hidden entirely between them and under a tangle of vines, white morning glories all open and facing Khalida, who is lit up from behind with the rising sun.

"We've made camp," Khalida says. Her voice is still soft, and she sounds calm. Calm like something is wrong. Something is wrong, and Lada doesn't know how to fix it. No matter how long she's tried to fix it, nothing has worked. "Ruslan, Martin, and Dima hunted down a few deer. Come back with me, Lada. We can help with these two. More hands, right?"

Lada looks down, eyes welling with fresh tears when she sees that the little wolf girl is sleeping, all her fur in the right place. Khalida reaches out and lifts her to her feet, Lada catching on halfway through and getting her legs underneath her. Khalida makes sure the boy doesn't fall, that the little girl stays in his arms, and in the end, Lada is carrying them both, the boy curled up like a much younger child in her arms.

He’s so light. So small.

"Sorry," Lada says, aware that she isn't behaving quite right.

"No, it's okay," Khalida says, in that too-calm voice. Her eyes are very bright, wolf drawn to the surface. "Just come with me. I don't like this place, and I doubt they do either."

Lada nods. She carries them out of the camp, drifting around the wolves she couldn't save. There are no human bodies here, not a single rotting hunter to disturb their rest. It isn't enough, and it's too late, but at least no hunters were left to lay so much as a finger on the little girl. She's suffered enough.

So has the mage boy.

Khalida takes them back a different way than they came. They have to walk through the slow-running stream to get to Lada's pack, and the cold water sends a shiver up Lada's spine. Splashing behind her makes her realize that Ash and Mirza are still with her, following her.

"We ought to dunk her," Ash says crankily, noticing Lada's attention. "We ought to dunk all of them. Can't hurt."

"Let's have that be plan B," Khalida says. Lada snorts, and the look that Khalida sends her is pure relief.

Her pack has made more than a rough camp. There's a cleared area in the grass where a fire is crackling merrily, a spit set up with a deer on it, Ruslan turning it slowly. He's got Dima and Taron draped over his legs, both of them in their fur. Dima can't shift back. Everyone else is either sleeping in rough shelters or watching Lada.

She looks up at the gently rising sun and wonders how long this night has been, if Khalida is so worried, and her pack is looking at her like that.

Khalida nudges Lada forward again and Lada steps into the circle around the fire.

Dima flows from his fur to his skin as smoothly as Lada has ever seen him shift, and only a breath later everyone else who has been trapped in their wolf shifts as well.

"Well, that's something," Mirza says mildly into the shocked silence. "Sit down, Lada, and let someone else hold the kids. Everyone's eaten but you."

"Who is that?" Dima asks, looking a little white around the eyes.

"No idea," Mirza says. "Ash?"

"Give me my patients and get yourself some breakfast before you keel over," Ash tells Lada. He's got deep bags under his eyes and he's scowling fiercely. Lada smiles at him, filled with something that transcends relief that he's just... himself, still, and here, and she's here, and none of her pack are dead, and she did it, she protected them -

"Sit down," Ash says, exasperated. He's holding the boy, who is still cradling the little wolf girl. She barely noticed him taking them. Lada takes a breath, and the rush of air in her lungs is so shocking she stumbles to the side, legs filling with pins and needles.

Khalida catches her.

"Ow," Lada says, just about falling on her ass. Khalida guiding her down is the only reason she doesn't. "What - what."

"You're asking me?" Khalida laughs, wrapping Lada up in a too-tight hug that ends in a fierce kiss. "We have no idea. You pulled him out of a tree, Ash says, and then almost turned into a tree yourself."

"I was just... trying to help?" Lada says slowly, the urgent feeling of needing to help already fading, leaving nothing but confusion in its wake.

"He's a mage," Ash says, glaring at her like she's supposed to know what that means. "He's been influencing you, Lada!"

... That does make more sense of everything that has happened so far.

"He needed help," Lada says firmly. "I helped him. Ruslan, how much of that deer can I eat?"

Chapter Text

Jaime drifts.

The world has been quiet, as quiet and soft as he can make it, for a long, long time.

She's still alive.

She still has a chance.

He hasn't been able to help anyone else, but -

She's still alive.

She's too small.

She is too small for what Jaime will do to her.

She's so small, maybe he can -

Jaime drifts. He is insubstantial and empty. He has to be. He has to be empty to make room for all of her pain, the pain of every wolf he's ever touched. He's brought nothing but pain and suffering to the world, been nothing but a plague, a nightmare, the monster waiting for every wolf with a blood-drenched knife, and he -

She's still breathing.

So long as her heart beats, Jaime can heal her.

Jaime can't heal her until after he finishes cutting her.

She's too small.

Jaime can't cut her, not with how small she is.

Not when -

He is a living nightmare. She is the one living it, but Jaime can take her pain and put it inside of himself. He can take the nightmare, too, drink it down like poison, let it cut into his skin the way he cut into every wolf he ever touched.

Not her.

She's too small.

His magic will sink into her skin and ruin her before Jaime is allowed to heal her, but so long as she is alive, she has a chance.

Jaime has never once in his life saved a wolf from himself.

There is a nightmare in the world, a plague, its hands guiding Jaime's, forcing him to cut into wolves until they, too, are the nightmare. Jaime empties himself out until he has room inside of himself for every single scrap of that nightmare, bleeding out into the earth until the only monster left is Jaime himself.

The moon rises over her one night.

Jaime stops drifting and starts dreaming.

The moon stays high above her, watching. The moon watches over all wolves, Jaime once knew.

She's alive.

She still has a chance.

Jaime is the monster who will ruin her if he is freed. Right now he is waiting for his punishment to end. The knife that he will use to ruin her as he has ruined every wolf before her is safely inside of him.

It cuts and cuts and cuts, but only Jaime. He can't touch it, not like this. So long as it is cutting Jaime, he will not cut her.

She still has a chance.

The moon steps down from the sky on light paws, winding through Jaime's dream, through the remnants of the plague he brought into the world and did his best to take back out again. She walks right up to him as if she doesn't know that he is a monster, the monster, the very last monster, the worst of them all.

If he weren't doing everything he could to make sure that she has a chance, that she stays alive, he would let his knife that has ruined so many wolves end the nightmare.

The moon looks down on him and cradles his face. She rains warmth down into his skin. She cuts a deep splinter of poison from of his skin without using a knife to do it, and the rain washes over the hollow space it leaves in Jaime. She takes the knife that Jaime will, when he is out of his dream and has borne the entirety of his punishment, use to ruin the last remaining wolf, and she casts it deep into the earth where it cannot touch any wolf at all.

She must know Jaime is a plague brought to ruin all of her wolves, but she brings her final wolf to Jaime despite that.

Jaime has kept her alive so that she would have a chance to survive him, survive the ruin he will bring her with his knife.

The moon took his knife before she brought her final wolf to him.

She's never been this close to him before. Jaime never touched her. Everything he's done for her, he's done from a distance that cannot be closed.

The moon has closed the distance.

Jaime doesn't understand. There isn't enough left in him to understand, but she is suffering. He caused her suffering, he is her ruin, but if she is alive -

It's as easy as breathing, touching her, to give her back her skin without a single scar. Jaime is going to give her scars, but not until he has to.

She's too small for the scars that Jaime will cut into her.

It's as easy as breathing to let the moon hold them both. So long as the moon is holding him, Jaime will not ruin her final wolf. She is so much stronger than he is, bright and pure and clean. Her final wolf is stronger than he is, too.

She is still alive, after everything Jaime has done to her.

She is surviving him.

She has no pain for Jaime to fill himself with, but he takes it anyways. Nothing he has done is something that she deserves.

No wolf has ever deserved what Jaime has done.

He is dreaming, and she has been dreaming too. A nightmare, one that never ends for Jaime, but can be but a single night's terror for her.

The moon has been ascendant for so long.

A single night.

The moon lifts her from Jaime's ruinous grasp, leaving all her pain and suffering behind, light as air where it belongs inside of him.

The moon takes her final wolf and the sun rises, blinding him so that he cannot follow.

Dmitri knows none of them are supposed to cross the creek to go into the old hunters' camp alone, and he really doesn't want to, but the stupid mage is the whole reason Dmitri has crossed the creek in the first place. Being with the mage doesn’t count as having someone with him, not until he is less… weird. He's weird, and smells weird, and won't stop slipping past whoever is supposed to be watching him to go back to the hunters' camp.

Dmitri doesn't like it, and neither does anyone else, especially Lada, so the mage should just - stop doing it. He doesn't seem to be able to understand anything, and he only does stuff when someone makes him, except he keeps getting up and wandering off. He’s got a whole bunch of people who help him do stuff; Dmitri isn’t one of them, but he watches the mage anyways.

Ash says he's got to remember he's a person.

Dmitri hasn't shifted since he got shifted back. Everyone is pretty sure the mage did that, and he overheard Lada saying she was pretty sure the mage had healed everyone up, too. Her arm, for example, isn't broken, and it definitely was broken. The pack didn't do that.

"Hey!" Dmitri calls when the mage gets to the farthest-out wolf cage. He hates them, and he really doesn't want to go anywhere near them. "Wait!"

The mage stops, and turns, not quite looking at Dmitri. He doesn't ever quite look at anyone, not even Aster, the baby that Lada found with the mage, who he wants to be close to all the time. Dmitri catches up and hesitates.

Touching the mage is always... weird.

"Why do you keep coming over here?" Dmitri asks, carefully not looking at the cages just past the mage. "It's not... you don't have to be here anymore."

Lada and everyone had come to save Dmitri and the rest. They'd lost their whole village after the hunters followed them home. Dmitri had been trapped as a wolf for weeks, but Ruslan had looked toward the old camp and said he thought the mage had been trapped for a lot longer than that.

The mage keeps not looking at him. He shifts his weight like he is gonna keep going and Dmitri catches his wrist, careful not to hold too tight. The mage tended to react badly to feeling restrained, or caught. His skin prickles all over, hair rising on the back of his neck.

"Taron scraped his knees in the creek earlier," Dmitri says, making a face at himself. The mage isn't looking, and even if he was, Dmitri doesn't think he notices things like people's expressions. He definitely notices when any of them are hurt, though. "Can you come back with me?"

The mage doesn't respond, because he never responds, but he does move away from the old hunters' camp and heads back to where the pack is. Dmitri breathes a sigh of relief and goes with him, making sure to stay just behind him in case he tries to turn around. If he forgets that he’s going to find Taron, he might. Dmitri is glad the mage can’t smell like a wolf can, it makes it easier that he doesn’t know how unsettling Dmitri finds him.

"Taron's okay, it's not a bad scrape," Dmitri says, feeling a little guilty. He's let go of the mage's wrist, but their hands keep bumping together. That is the mage, Dmitri is pretty sure. He doesn't walk in a straight line, not really, and he seems to be drawn to people. "He's just - he misses home."

Dmitri does too. It feels like just yesterday he'd been trapped in the hunter's cage and terrified he'd never go home again, and even after Lada had saved him, that has turned out to be true.

They're talking about building a new village here. Clearing out the hunters' camp entirely. It will mean no trade, being totally isolated, but…

There are no hunters here. Lada took a few of the more experienced wolves - she didn't let Dmitri come - to the edge of the woods a few weeks ago. They found no signs the hunters had even tried to come in after them. Izzy says that the brambles are even scarier in the daylight, that no one who isn't crazy would try to crawl under them with all the bones.

"I miss home," Dmitri admits quietly to the one person who won't pity him for it.

"Home?" the mage asks.

Dmitri trips over a root he didn't see, almost face-planting before he manages to catch himself.

The mage is holding his arm, and he's... he's frowning, barely, brows creased so lightly it wouldn't be an expression on anyone else.

It's the most Dmitri has seen his face move ever.

"I'm sorry," the mage says. His voice is a hoarse whisper. Dmitri is pretty sure he hasn't even made a sound since Lada found him.

Dmitri's skin prickles worse, more, all over, and he feels like he could run for a whole year and not get tired. He feels bright, and light, and alive, whole and clean and healed -

"I'm sorry," the mage says again, his face crumpling like he'd just watched someone die.

Dmitri really, really doesn't want to spook the mage, but he also really, really needs the mage to stop doing what he's doing. He carefully takes the mage's hand and pulls it away from his arm. The mage lets go immediately, curling his arms in to his chest, hands wrapping around each other. Dmitri takes a careful breath, jittery with magic.

"You didn't do anything to be sorry for," Dmitri says.

The mage looks almost at Dmitri, but his expression is already clearing, going blank and empty again.