For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten (freda ebook reader .txt) 📕

muffled sound of pain eclipsed the question. Her hand felt like it was on fire beneath the makeshift wrapping they’d made of his shirt, and Red’s knees buckled as she clutched it to her chest.

Soft shushing noises, warm hands unwrapping her palm. The cut she’d made was a line of livid scarlet, as if a month of infection had sped through in moments. Pain thrummed with her pulse, an echo of it hammering just below her elbow, around the ring of her Bargainer’s Mark.

One thought, fleeting but clear: The Wilderwood isn’t pleased with me. She’d stopped something from happening, something it wanted. The same thing it’d wanted four years ago, the first time her blood met the forest floor.

Eammon had stopped it then, and he’d stopped it again now, and the Wilderwood was growing more and more impatient with them both.

Those warm hands covered hers. A breath, and the stabbing pain was gone, both in her hand and in her Mark. Another slice opened Eammon’s lacerated palm, a twin to the one she’d cut on her own, turning heart and lifelines into messy crossroads. A curse gnashed through his teeth, his uncut hand pressing against his forearm, where his Bargainer’s Mark was hidden beneath a torn and bloody sleeve.

Taking her pain, again. Hurting for her, again.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Red murmured, suddenly embarrassed. She pushed herself to stand, though her legs wobbled, and turned over her palm to see whole, unbroken skin. Rusty streaks of blood crusted on her wrists.

“I was going to say the same thing.” Eammon paced away from her, the rush of pain he’d taken apparently manageable now, one hand on the jut of his hip and the other running shakily through his hair. It had all come unbound and hung down his back like an ink spill. “What in all the shadows did you not understand about staying in the tower, Redarys?”

Red crossed her arms, the skin he’d healed smooth and somehow tender. “I saw you.”

“You saw me?”

“I had a . . . a vision, I guess.”

His brow arched incredulously. “A vision.”

“It was like that first time. The night I cut my hand, bled in the forest, but stronger. More vivid. Like our connection is . . .” She trailed off and turned her head, cheeks suddenly burning. Her fingers picked at the fabric of her sleeve covering her Mark. “Like it’s deeper now, after the thread bond.”

Calling it a thread bond rather than a marriage was supposed to feel less awkward, even though they meant the same thing. Still, her tongue nearly stumbled over it, this fragile thing she was never supposed to have.

Silence hung heavy in the cold air. Finally, Eammon sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Well,” he murmured, “that’s something.”

Red’s lips twisted.

“So this”— his hand waved between them— “makes it so we can see each other.” A snort. “In times of distress.”

“Apparently.”

“Wonderful.” Eammon rubbed at his eyes again. “What did you see, exactly?”

“Your hands.” Red untangled a leaf from her hair, grateful for something to look at other than the Wolf. “Like last time. But also Bormain, and the sentinel.” She paused. “That’s why I knew you needed help. I saw you cut yourself, and saw that it wasn’t working.”

The leaf Red freed from her hair twisted to the ground, brittle brown brushed with green. When it touched the forest floor, the color slowly leached away.

“I suppose we should try to keep the distress to a minimum, then,” Eammon said, eyes on the leaf.

“Rather difficult around here.”

“It’s the best I can do at the moment.” Eammon turned, the movement twisting the wounds in his middle. A curse gritted through his teeth, blood and sap seeping into the fabric of his shirt. He leaned back against a tree, like he suddenly couldn’t keep himself upright.

“That looks bad, Eammon.”

His eyes darted up at the sound of his name— cheeks coloring, she realized it was the first time she’d addressed him directly with it, in over a week of knowing each other.

Well, he was her husband now. She couldn’t call him Wolf forever.

“Can you heal it?” she asked hurriedly, chasing the echo of his name away. “Like you did my hand?”

“Can’t heal yourself.” His eyes closed, head tilting back against the tree trunk. “Balance, remember? Pain going somewhere?”

Her step forward was tentative, her reach more so. “I could . . .”

“No.” His eyes snapped open. “You could not. You’ve done quite enough for one day, Redarys. Let’s not add further mangling of my insides to the list.”

That stung more than she cared to admit. Red snatched back her hand. “You’d rather I’d left you to be mangled alone, then?”

“Has it occurred to you that I wouldn’t have been mangled if I hadn’t had to protect you?”

“You needed me.”

It hung heavy as an executioner’s ax. The Wolf looked away. “I suppose I did.”

Red arched a sardonic brow, though the tick of her pulse seemed to land a fraction harder. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

His rueful laugh turned to a grimace, hand pressing harder against his abdomen. Red peered worriedly at the blood outlining his fingers. “Are you—”

“It’s fine.”

Lips pressed to a tight line, Red directed her attention to the site of her own injury, since he seemed determined to ignore his. “It didn’t hurt when I first cut it,” she mused, flexing her fingers. “Just after.” She paused. “That’s happened before, too.”

The night she’d tried to defy the Wilderwood, the night of Neve and blood and a vision she didn’t understand. After they’d been collected from the carnage, her hand had felt bathed in flame, a sharp and stabbing pain that couldn’t have come from the thin slice across her palm. The physicians were baffled and didn’t know what to do other than give her watered wine until the pain subsided. It did, eventually, but it took two days.

Eammon shifted, still leaning against the tree. “It’s the Wilderwood,” he said finally. “Something about connecting with it through blood.” The answer seemed