POV: Elara
I told myself the glowing hands were stress.
People did strange things under pressure. Their hearts raced, their palms sweated, their skin apparently lit up like a paper lantern in a dark kitchen. Completely normal. Completely explainable. I just needed water, sleep, and for a certain gold-eyed Alpha to vacate my bar at the earliest possible opportunity.
Simple.
By afternoon the Wyvern had settled into something almost manageable. The worst-wounded warriors were stable. Two of them had already been moved to proper pack lodging on the other side of the district, escorted by a small team Kael sent out once the streets were declared passable. The merchants who'd sheltered overnight had gone home. Garrett had eaten actual food, which I counted as a personal victory.
Kael had not left.
Of course he hadn't.
He'd moved from the barstool to a corner table, which I told myself was an improvement. Farther away was better. The problem was that the corner he'd chosen had a direct sightline to every part of the room, which meant he was still watching me — just with more distance and better angles. His two remaining senior warriors sat with him, speaking in low voices about breach strategy or pack business or whatever it was powerful wolves discussed. Kael listened, nodded, responded.
But his eyes kept finding me.
Every single time, without fail, like they had a compass and I was north.
I focused on cleanup.
The afternoon lull was always when I reset the room — wiping tables, restacking chairs, sweeping the floor back to the standard I kept it at before a dungeon crisis turned it into a medical ward. Methodical work. Good work. The kind that lived entirely in your hands and left your head quiet.
Four cots were still occupied along the left wall. Three of the warriors were sitting up, eating, arguing about something in low voices with the easy comfort of men who'd been through bad nights before and knew how to shake them off. Soldiers were like that — they bounced.
The fourth was not bouncing.
He was young. Maybe nineteen, maybe twenty, with a bandage wrapped thick around his middle where something had caught him bad during the breach. He'd been unconscious when they carried him in last night. He was conscious now — barely — lying very still with his eyes half open, staring at the ceiling.
I picked up my cloth and moved along the wall toward him, wiping down the surface of the low shelf nearby, keeping the motion smooth and quiet so I didn't disturb him.
Two steps away.
One step.
I drew level with his cot.
And a voice came crashing through my head like a bucket of ice water thrown from a height.
It hurts so bad. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. Please. I don't want to—
I stumbled.
Not a small trip — a full, graceless lurch backward, my shoulder hitting the wall behind me, the cloth dropping from my hand. My head was ringing. The voice had been so clear, so close, so completely inside my skull that for one split second I genuinely couldn't tell if it had been real.
I pressed myself against the wall and stared at him.
He hadn't moved. His lips hadn't moved. His eyes were still half-closed, fixed on the ceiling, breathing slow and shallow. Around me, the three sitting warriors kept talking. Garrett, across the room, was writing something in his old notebook. Nobody had heard anything.
Because there had been nothing to hear.
Not out loud.
My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my teeth. I pushed off the wall, picked up the cloth with a hand I forcibly steadied, and walked in a very straight, very controlled line back to the bar. I set the cloth down. I gripped the bar edge with both hands.
You are tired. I told myself this clearly, the way you speak to someone who needs to calm down. You slept two hours. You've been on your feet for twelve. Your brain is filling in sounds that aren't there.
Sensible. Rational. Completely believable.
Except.
Except the voice hadn't been blurry the way tired-brain sounds were. It hadn't been vague or distant or dreamlike. It had been sharp and close and soaked in feeling — raw, young, terrified feeling. The feeling of someone very far from home lying on a stranger's floor wondering if they were going to make it to morning.
I don't want to die.
My throat tightened.
I turned around and looked at him again from across the room. Really looked. He was so young. The hand resting on top of his blanket was loose and slightly curled, the knuckles scraped. Someone's son. Someone's kid brother, maybe.
I was moving before I made the decision.
I crossed the room, crouched down beside his cot, and touched the back of his hand lightly — just to let him know someone was there.
His eyes shifted to my face.
"Hey," I said quietly. "You're okay. You're in the Weary Wyvern. You're safe here."
He stared at me for a moment. His lips moved.
"Am I going to be okay?" His voice came out thin as paper.
"Yes," I said. Firmly. Like it was fact and not hope. "The bleeding stopped last night. Garrett says the wound is clean. You just need to stay still and let it close."
Something in his face loosened. Not fully — fear didn't leave that fast — but the tight, locked look around his eyes softened the smallest amount.
"I was scared," he said. Like a confession.
"I know," I said.
I didn't say I heard you. I didn't say anything else strange. I just stayed crouched beside his cot for another minute until his eyes grew heavy and he slipped back into sleep, and then I stood up and walked calmly back to the bar.
From his corner table, Kael watched me.
I didn't look at him. I picked up a cup and started polishing it.
My hands were not glowing this time.
But they were warm. Warmer than they should have been. Like something had moved through them — out of me and into him, just for a moment, just a thread of something steady and calm.
Like I had given him something without meaning to.
"Elara." Garrett's voice, low and private, appeared just behind my left shoulder.
"Not now, Garrett."
"You heard something."
I went very still.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
A pause.
"Yes you do," he said quietly. "And I think it's time we talked about your mother."
The cup slipped from my fingers.
He caught it before it hit the bar.