It wasn't easy getting him home. His body was heavy, limp, and the forest floor was soaked by the time I reached the edge of the woods. Every drop of rain felt like a warning, but I didn't stop. I couldn't.
By the time I laid him on the bed in my small cabin, he was burning up. I could feel the heat radiating off his skin, like his blood itself was at war with something inside him.
I lit the healing ointments immediately—herbs crushed and infused with moon ash, lavender, and wolfbane. The scent filled the room, thick and grounding. It was meant to soothe the inner self… to calm the wolf beneath the skin.
While the fumes worked their way into his lungs, I soaked a soft cloth in cool water and gently pressed it against his forehead, then down his neck. He was trembling.
Up close, he looked even worse.
His lips were cracked. Deep cuts ran along his side—too clean to be from a beast, too vicious to be from anything ordinary. His veins pulsed a strange color beneath his skin… like something was corrupting his blood.
He should've started healing by now.
Wolves always did.
But his body… it was fighting itself. Whatever he'd been given—or cursed with—was strong enough to suppress his natural healing. It was poisoning his wolf, drowning it in silence.
I paused, cloth in hand, staring down at this stranger fate had thrown in my path.
"What happened to you?" I whispered, brushing a strand of wet hair from his forehead.
"And why does your wolf feel... ancient?"
A gust of wind howled outside, rattling the windows.
And for a second—just a heartbeat—I thought I saw his fingers twitch.
The storm had begun.
Thunder cracked across the sky like a warning from the gods, and rain pounded against the roof of the cabin in relentless waves. The herbs I had gone to collect were now unreachable—soaked, ruined.
But at least I had saved him.
His fever burned hotter with every passing minute. I could see it—the way his chest rose in uneven jerks, how his body trembled as though it were being torn in two. Whatever poison had been forced into his blood was trying to suppress the wolf inside him. And his wolf… was fighting back.
But it was losing.
Wolves aren't supposed to stay down this long, I thought. Something is very, very wrong.
Then I remembered something—an old teaching whispered to me by the elders.
"When the spirit is weak, the presence of another can act as a tether. A grounding force. A healer doesn't just treat wounds—they become the stillness when chaos is loud."
So I stayed.
I sat beside him, placing both palms over his heart. I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing, letting my energy settle into a calm, steady rhythm. I focused everything I had—my warmth, my essence, my will—into being the stillness he needed.
And slowly, almost imperceptibly… the tremors faded.
His breathing evened out, just slightly. His body, though still burning, stopped convulsing. His wolf—silent for so long—gave the faintest whisper beneath his skin.
He was stabilizing.
Not because of the ointments.
Not because of the cloth.
Because I was there.
Somehow, I was helping his body fight.
I didn't understand it.
But I felt it in my bones.