Nahla
Voices drifted around her in broken pieces, like sound traveling underwater.
"She is losing too much blood."
"Human blood, Alpha. It smells wrong."
"Quiet. She will hear you."
"She should not be here."
Nahla tried to open her eyes, but her lashes felt glued together and her head felt too heavy for her neck. Every inhale burned. Her thigh throbbed as if fire had been stitched between bone and muscle. The world kept tilting, slipping out from under her.
Warmth circled her shoulders. Strong arms. She dimly remembered fighting them. Clawing, screaming, pleading. She had tried to run. Tried to survive. But the world had blurred into pain and darkness.
Something brushed her cheek.
A rumble. Low. Close.
She tried to flinch but could barely move.
Her vision cracked open for a heartbeat.
A face hovered above her. Not human. Not fully.
Dark hair tied at the nape. Carved cheekbones. A jaw that looked like it had been carved from mountain stone. Eyes the color of burning amber flicked over her, sharp and assessing.
She blinked again.
It wasn't a face.
It was a shadow.
No—fur.
A wolf. Massive and brown, barely contained beneath the shape of a man.
Her mind couldn't tell the difference.
She let out a thin whimper.
The man's expression tightened. The arms around her shifted. Carried her.
"Stay awake," he growled. "Human, look at me."
She tried. For half a breath, she managed to lift her gaze. His eyes locked onto hers—amber and ancient. The kind of gaze that stripped you bare, saw too much.
Her throat worked. "Please... don't..."
His jaw clenched. His voice dropped. "I am not going to hurt you."
It should have been a comfort. It wasn't. He was a wolf. A real one. Alive and breathing and holding her as though she weighed nothing.
Then exhaustion swallowed her again. The world slipped.
She felt her coat being peeled off her shoulders. Fingers brushing mud and blood from her arms. A cloth pressed gently against her thigh wound. Warm water trickling down her calves.
She tried to speak but her tongue wouldn't move.
A voice murmured near her ear. A woman's voice.
"You are safe, little one. Sleep. Let us work."
Fabric slid against her skin. Clean linen. Soft wool. Someone dressed her in clothes that weren't hers.
A cool palm pressed to her forehead.
"Her fever is rising."
"Work faster."
That second voice—
She knew it.
Low. Gravelly. Commanding.
Him.
Her breath hitched, but sleep claimed her again before she could open her eyes.
When she surfaced the next time, the air smelled different.
Pine. Smoke. Frost. Wolf.
And something clean. Herbal. Sharp enough to burn through the fog in her skull.
A woman's voice murmured somewhere near her. "She is lucky you found her when you did."
"She would have died on our land," another voice answered. A male voice. Quiet. Heavy as stone.
Nahla's heartbeat stumbled.
She forced her eyes open.
A ceiling of dark wooden beams swayed above her. Light from a lantern flickered, throwing golden circles across the room. Her cheek rested against soft fur blankets. A thick hide lay beneath her, warm from the fire crackling nearby.
It took a full breath for her to realise she wasn't outside anymore.
She wasn't dying.
She was in a cabin.
A wolf cabin.
Memories slammed into her:
The rogue with the one eye.
The crash.
Her leg.
The claws.
The second wolf crashing into the rogue.
The earth shaking.
Her chest tightened. She tried to sit up.
A hand pressed gently to her shoulder.
"Easy," the woman said.
Nahla blinked up at her. The woman was tall, with long braids streaked silver at the ends. Her eyes were warm brown, her clothes simple but layered in leather and fur. She smelled faintly of mint and wildflowers.
Wolf. But calm. Soft in presence, not in power.
"I am Lira," the woman said. "Healer of the Wildmane Pack."
Pack.
The word throbbed behind Nahla's ribs.
Her voice cracked when she tried to speak. "Where... am I..."
A movement in the corner pulled her attention like a magnet.
He stood watching her.
He leaned against a wooden pillar, arms crossed, muscles coiled beneath his shirt. He filled the space, broad and still, like a storm contained in human skin. His hair fell in loose waves, dark and slightly damp as if he had washed recently. His eyes were fixed on her.
She couldn't look away.
"That depends on how much you remember," he said quietly.
His voice rasped through her like heat.
She swallowed hard. "You... you found me."
"You were being mauled by a rogue wolf," he said. "Found is a generous word."
Her stomach rolled. Her hand flew to her thigh before she could stop herself.
Nahla shifted, trying to sit up higher. Pain lanced her leg again, bright and vicious. "How bad... is it?"He answered before the healer could. "You will walk again," he said. "If you rest." Her throat tightened. Relief washed through her, shaky and overwhelming. "And if I don't rest?" she asked. His gaze hardened. "Then you will die." The words were blunt. Not cruel. Just truth. Nahla's breath caught.
Lira caught her wrist gently. "You are safe. I treated the wound. You lost a dangerous amount of blood but the bleeding is controlled."
"Controlled?" Nahla whispered.
"For now," the healer said.
Something cold slipped down her spine.
She had survived the rogue. Survived the forest. Survived bleeding out on the ground. She wasn't going to die in a wolf healer's bed. She clenched the blankets.
"What about... the other wolf?" she asked, voice trembling. "The one who fought the rogue."
His expression changed. Barely. A shadow passed over it. "He lives," Riven said.
"For now." Her chest tightened again.
"He saved me too." Riven exhaled through his nose. "He is young. Foolish. Reckless."
"But brave." Riven's eyes met hers again.
Something flickered in them. Something sharp. "You do not know what it means to be brave in our world," he said quietly.
The way he said it made her stomach flip.
She forced herself to breathe and looked around the room again, desperate to ground herself.
It wasn't a hunting shack. It wasn't crude. It wasn't what humans imagined when they pictured wolves in the wilderness.
It was lived in.
Hand-carved shelves lined with herbs. Soft pelts arranged neatly. A desk piled with papers. Maps pinned to the wall. A massive spear mounted above the fireplace.
This was a leader's home.
His home.
Her gaze flicked back to the Alpha.
His eyes had not moved from her face.
"Why... did you bring me here?" she whispered.
His jaw flexed.
"Because you were dying," he said. "And because you were on Wildmane land."
The way he said it—quiet, calm, absolute—made something deep in her chest twist.
She swallowed again. "You saved me."
His eyes narrowed slightly. "Do not say it like an accusation."
She stiffened. "I'm not."
"You are trembling."
"I almost died."
"And you are in a room full of wolves," he said. "You have every reason to tremble."
Lira shot him a sharp look. "Riven, do not frighten her."
Riven.
He had a name.
He didn't acknowledge the healer. Only continued watching Nahla, gaze heavy with something she couldn't interpret.
"You smell afraid," he said.
Her cheeks heated. "Well, I wonder why."
He didn't blink. "Fear sharpens your scent. It makes you bleed faster."
A cold prickle crept along her skin.
Lira muttered, "Very comforting. Truly."
Her mind scrambled to understand what was happening.
Wolves were real. Wolves lived in packs. Wolves saved her life.
And she was inside a wolf sanctuary, a place humans were forbidden to enter.
Nahla pulled her gaze away and tried to take a deeper breath.
Her mother.
Her father.
Mari.
Her niece.
God.
Her family.
Her breath seized. Panic surged sharp and overwhelming.
"My family," she whispered. "They're going to think I've... disappeared. They're probably calling the police. I need to call them. Please. I need a phone."
Lira hesitated, compassion softening her face.
Riven's expression didn't change, but the air shifted around him.
Lira crouched beside the bed. "Little one... we do not have phones here."
Nahla blinked. "What?"
"Technology does not function this deep in the Wildmane territory," Lira said. "Wolves are not as up to date with the human world as you may think."
"No," Nahla breathed. "No, no, no. You have to have something. A radio. A satellite phone. Anything. Please."
Riven finally spoke.
"The nearest communication point is a patrol cabin several miles into the territory," he said. "You cannot travel. Not for days."
Her vision blurred again.
"No," she whispered, voice cracking. "My family will think I was taken. They'll think wolves kidnapped me."
"They will not be entirely wrong," Riven said.
She shot him a horrified look.
He lifted a brow. "You trespassed onto protected land."
"I didn't mean to," she whispered. "My GPS—"
"I do not care about your excuses." Her breath hitched.
But then he added, softer, "And I do not intend to kill you."
Her pulse skipped. He pushed off the pillar and crossed the room toward her.
Every step was deliberate, predatory, as if he were relearning how to move among fragile things. He stopped beside the bed.
Nahla froze.
He smelled like cedar and cold wind and something wild beneath skin. He looked down at her and his brow furrowed, as though something about her presence unsettled him.
"You should not be here," he said softly.
A tremor ran through her.
"Trust me. I know." His eyes locked on hers.
"They already think wolves are monsters," Riven said. "One more rumor will not change much."
His honesty stung like salt in a wound.
Nahla covered her face with shaking hands. Her chest tightened with sobs she couldn't release.
Lira placed a warm hand on her shoulder. "You are safe. Focus on healing. We will find a way to reach them."
Nahla could only nod, even if she didn't believe the words.
She felt Riven's gaze on her again. Heavy. Silent. Unreadable.
She dared look up.
His expression was carved from stone, but something flickered behind the amber—something like recognition. Like confusion. Like a kind of pull he hated.
His gaze lingered.
"You are human," he said. "A human girl who should have died tonight. Yet something kept you alive long enough for me to reach you."
She frowned weakly. "What something?"
He shook his head, dismissing the thought.
"Rest," he said. "We will speak more when the sun rises."
Nahla wanted to argue, wanted to demand he take her to that patrol cabin immediately, wanted to scream that she needed to call home, needed to leave, needed to wake up from this nightmare.
But the room softened. Her vision dimmed.
Her eyes drifted closed against her will.
As darkness pulled her under again, she heard his voice, low, almost reluctant, almost wrong.
"You should have been nothing to me."
A breath.
"So why do you not feel like nothing."
The world faded.
Nahla let go.