Page 33 of Ravaged Wolf
“The store,” he guesses, reaching for his present with his good arm.
“Nope.” Abertha places it in his palm. “I got it in a box of Tetley’s tea.”
“You’re joking.” His brow wrinkles.
“I’m not.” She crosses her heart. “I was just as surprised as you to find him in there. Seemed an unlikely place for a buffalo.”
He examines his treasure, somber and serious, like the buffalo is the important thing, not the boot on his lower right leg or the IV in his thin arm.
My heart twinges. He is such a little guy. He can’t weigh more than forty pounds. “What happened?” I whisper, anxiety stealing my voice. Did someone hurt him?
“Harri here had the inspired idea of riding the Great Alpha Broderick Moore, but he miscalculated how slippery a bronze statue can be. By all accounts, he fell off like a pinball. Got his ankle twisted up with Broderick’s leg, brokehis arm when he landed, and cracked his head on the pedestal for good measure.”
I gasp.
Harri balefully bares his teeth. “I broke a tooth, too, see?”
“I do see,” I say, collecting myself, willing my nerves to settle down. No one hurt him. He’s in good hands, and he’ll be okay. Pre-shift pups heal slower, but they’re still sturdy. “That must have hurt.”
“It did,” he nods. “I’m in trouble now.”
“I’m sure you’re not.”
He shakes his head like I’m sadly mistaken. “Dad told me the next time I screw up, I’ve got to go live in the bogs.”
“He didn’t mean it. That’s just a thing parents say when they’re mad.” Mine said the same to me all the time.
Harri sighs. “No, I’ve done it now. Sometimes sorry doesn’t cut it.” He says it like he’s heard it a hundred times. My dad would always say, “You’re always sorry. Words won’t cut it this time.”
I don’t know what to say to reassure him. His round, solemn eyes are breaking my heart.
“This is Izzy,” Abertha interjects, finished with her cursory examination of Harri’s injuries. “She’s new. I’m going to teach her how to change a bandage. Are you okay with that?”
“Okay,” Harri agrees, already distracted by his buffalo.
“Follow me,” Abertha says and leads me over to the supply closet. The nurse has disappeared, and the voices from the break room are even louder. The place feels so empty.
I was never alone when I was here. Nurses woke me up every few hours to check my vitals, and people were in and out of my room constantly once I was well enough for visitors. Everyone dropped by—former instructors and people Iworked with at my internships and basically anyone I ever had a conversation with at the Academy.
Some of them meant well, but most of them seemed more interested in either doing the expected thing or getting the dirt firsthand. Either Mom or Aunt Catrin held court at the foot of my bed during the day and accepted folks’ expressions of horror and dismay on my behalf. I wasn’t talking much at that point.
“Here,” Abertha says and hands me a roll of gauze and some medical tape.
I glance over at Harri. He hardly makes a bump under the sheets. Why isn’t anybody keeping watch over him?
“Where is his mother?” I ask quietly.
“The High Rise,” Abertha murmurs back. “It’s the end of quarter. Mom and Dad can’t be spared. They’ve got an IQ report to finalize.”
“10-Q.” I know it. It’s the quarterly financial report that gets filed with the human SEC.
“10-4 right back at you, good buddy,” Abertha says, winks at me, and heads back to Harri.
“Ready for a fresh wrapping?” Abertha asks him.
He nods, his focus on the buffalo that he’s trotting over the hills his knees make. His relative calm lasts until the exact moment that Abertha unwinds the bandage enough that she’s pulling off the gauze that sticks to his hair with dried blood. Tears gather in his blue eyes, and his lower lip wobbles. He tries to be brave, but climbing onto a huge wolf statue is one thing, and having your hair tugged out by the root is another.
His hands dig into the sheets as he gulps down breaths, visibly trying not to cry. Males are taught young to hold in their tears, but they don’t usually master it until they’re older than Harri. He fights his hardest—screwing his eyes closed and mashing his lips together, but he loses the fight,and as fat tears dribble down his cheeks, the bitter scent of his distress singes the air.
