Page 56 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

“Is there another way?”

“There’s always been another way.” She lets go of me. “You’ve simply never taken it.”

“Nobody offered.”

“Your brother did. He asked me about it the week you left for Drakoria, and I told him yes.” She goes to the cupboard. “Nobody ever came back to me.”

She tells me the same way she’d tell me the dose of something - somebody gives blood. She draws it into a vessel, with the same care she uses on everyone. I take it from a cup. Nobody’s mouth goes near anybody’s skin. That last part is why I’m still standing in this room. I’ve never fed on a person I know.

“Clean,” she says. “Clinical. That’s all it is.”

“Who?”

“Somebody who won’t make it a story afterward.” She’s already reaching for the case with the needles in it. “Leave that part to me.”

“All right,” I say.

Lyanna sends for Evren who comes in a few minutes later with his sleeve already pushed up past his elbow.

“Lyanna said blood.” He drops into the chair by the table and puts his arm out on it. “How much do you want?”

“Evren, you don’t have to.”

“I heard that part.” He’s already looking at Lyanna for the needle. “Left arm’s better. The right goes hot on me sometimes and I’d rather it not do that with a needle in it.”

There’s a heat coming off him even though he’s sitting still. His knee is bouncing under the table and none of it stops him holding that arm perfectly steady when she asks him to. Lyanna draws it the same way she’d draw anything, unhurried, both hands sure. Evren watches her with mild interest, talking the whole time about a horse that’s gone lame, whether it’s the shoe or the leg. Then she stoppers the vessel and pours. The cup goes into my hands exactly as she said it would. I hold it, warm against my palms. Decades of this. I count back. The runs down to the quarter, the coins counted out on a board in a black-stone street, every homecoming with my hood up and nothing said to anybody in this compound. Managing it by myself was the entire point of managing it. Now here it is in a cup, in my own compound, in the middle of the morning, because I couldn’t.

I drink it. All of it, without stopping, because stopping partway would mean standing in this room holding a half-empty cup while two people wait for me to finish. It goes down and goes to work fast, faster than anything I’ve bought in that quarter in years. The cold starts letting go of me from the inside out. My hands come back firs, then my legs.

“How are you doing?” Evren asks. He’s got his sleeve back down and he’s looking at my face while he says it, checking my color.

“Better.” My own voice comes back with it. “Considerably better.”

“Good. You looked gray when you came in.” He stands and stretches his arms over his head. “Say the word if you need more. I’ve got plenty and I’m not doing anything with it.”

It takes me a second to catch that he’s joking. I smile at him, and he grins back like he’s been waiting for it.

“Thank you.”

“It’s nothing.”

He offered this before we left for Drakoria. Kaspian brought it to me in the yard and I said no before he’d finished asking. It’s the first time in my adult life another living person has put any part of themselves into keeping me on my feet, it’s the second time this one has tried. He’s saying it in same the tone you’d use when lending somebody a rope.

“Thank you,” I say again.

He knocks the doorframe with his knuckles on the way out.

When they’re both done with me, I stay and help Lyanna put the room back in order. My legs will hold now although standing still isn’t going to work for me today. Instruments are back in their case, vessel washed and set on the rack, the chair pushed in. Out the window, past her herb beds, Valen’s over at the paddock rail with two of the younger wolves. He’s off the treeline, then. Back at work.

He’s the tallest thing in that group by a clear margin. I’ve him picked out before I can make out either of the boys with him, a hand on the top rail, back to the compound. His hair is dark with water from where he’s put his head under the trough. He leans down to say something to the smaller one, the boy laughs and goes off toward the barn at a run. Then he straightens, turning his head and for a moment I have the side of his face, his mouth set the way it does when he’s working. It tells me nothing, never has.

I watch him for a while from Lyanna’s window, she comes to stand next to me.

“Go, talk to him,” she says.

“It isn’t that simple.”

“It never is,” she says, going back to the table. “You’ve got until you leave.”