Page 76 of Trapped to Tame
He turned back around to see her looking confused.
‘Your courses.’
At her blank look, he elaborated. ‘Your monthly bleeding.’
Her mouth opened and closed, but she said nothing.
‘Wait here,’ he said more tersely than he’d meant to, running quickly back into the cave, and cutting up one of their spare blankets with his knife. The other two looked at him curiously as he strode from the cave, a bundle of rags in his hand, to where she still stood.
‘Here.’ He handed them to her.
She looked at them and then back at him.
‘Put them in your small clothes,’ he said, ‘to catch the … it'll stop you from making a mess.’
Lips still trembling, she did as he said, her cheeks crimson as she pulled up her breeches and fastened her belt.
‘Am I dying?’ she asked in a quiet voice.
He chuckled at her innocence. ‘How is it that you don't know this? You must be, what, twenty winters?’
She shrugged. ‘Never happened before.’
He remembered how she’d been starved. ‘They kept you too thin and weak,’ he said. ‘I've heard of such things. They never came, but now that you are hail and strong …’
‘This happens to everyone?’ she asked.
‘Only females,’ he informed her. ‘Humans and fae alike.’
She took a breath. ‘My stomach hurts and my back. I thought it was from … my injuries. Will it go away?’
He approached her and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘It will last but a few days at most. Come. Let's get back to camp. The sun is about to set, and we need to be within the confines of the circle before it does.’
She nodded and followed him back into the cave, head down.
Priest said the words and the invisible dome enveloped the cave to keep them safe for the night.
Eve sat back on her bedroll stiffly and lay in a fetal position. He frowned, knowing what would probably help but wondering if she would accept it. He emptied a waterskin into a cooking pot and let it simmer on the fire until it was hot. He then decanted it back, and closed it up securely. It warmed in his hands, the heat of the water seeping through. He held it out to her.
‘Here.’
She took it and looked at him in question.
‘Put it where it hurts,’ he said. ‘It'll make you feel better.’
Still looking mortified, she took it from him and lay it on her abdomen, closing her eyes with a sigh of relief.
‘How did you know to do that?’ she asked.
‘I have two older sisters as well as the younger one.’
She opened her eyes and looked up at him.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, wrapping herself around the heat of the vessel and falling asleep.
He looked to the fire to find both his Brothers regarding him in something akin to shock. He shrugged.
‘Not as if one of you would have had the first notion of what would help,’ he muttered before sitting before the flames, not ready to go to sleep just yet.
