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148
Maevryn's POV

The infirmary still smells like it did on my first day here over a year ago. Its still so clean in a way that makes me feel like dirt.

The cot paper crackles under me every time I breathe. One of the witches put a spell on the windows so the sunlight turns soft before it lands on skin; even so, the light tastes sharp on my tongue, I feel like a vampire who cant handle the direct sun. Its beyond frustrating.

The healer doesn’t hurry, which makes me want to scream. She moves with the kind of quiet that says she’s seen every kind of panic and it never helped to meet it with more.

She’s the same one from the night of the battle and the days after, her gray silky braid, shoulders wide and hands that are gentle without being too fragile.

“Let’s talk,” she says, settling onto the wheeled stool and dragging it close. The legs squeak with every movement she makes. “Start anywhere.”
“Anywhere is… a lot,” I say, and my voice sounds autimated.

“Then lets start with your body, What it’s said to you since you came back.” She looks at pe pen in hand.

I could make a joke. But I decide better against it.. “I’m… smaller,” with a small laugh i gesture to mmyself.. “You know that part.. I hate mirrors now. I keep thinking I’m going to see the old me, and I flinch at… myself. At everything really.”

She nods; it’s not unkind. “Height. Body composition. Muscle wasting maybe? What else?”

“Light hurts,” I say. “It used to be able to sit in the sun for hours but for somereason in human form it hurts me.. My eyes burn. My skin prickles. Sometimes the whole room is too loud even when nobody’s talking.”

“Photophobia,” she says, ticking it off on a small slate. “Hyperacusis. And nausea?”

I swallow. “Constant. Started about a week after I woke up. Some days it’s a slow trickle. Some days it’s… death.. Morning is worst, but food or smells can set it off any time. Burned smells. Mint is a maybe. Apples are okay.” I don’t look at her face when I say the next part. “I throw up. A lot.”

She doesn’t make a face. She just hums. “Dizziness?”

“Sometimes if I stand too fast,” I admit playing with the ends of my now brittle silver white hair. “And at night, if I lay on my back it feels like I’m drowning”

“Breasts?” she looks at me, clinically. “Tender? Fuller?”

Heat rushes my face. “Yes.” I grip the edge of the cot paper trying to keep my compossure. “I thought it was just… I don’t know. The body I got back being the wrong size for itself.”
“Fatigue.”

“Bone-deep,” I deadpanned. “Like my body is ready to give out at any minure. Running helps. In wolf form, I remember how to breathe for awhile..”

“Appetite?”

“Missing. Or picky. And when it’s here, I really can’t eat much.”

She nods. She’s not surprised.? “ Any bleeding?” she asks gently. “Cycles?”

I stare at a thread in the blanket so I don’t have to stare at her. “Before the battle I was never…umm regular. ” I shake my head. “Nothing. No cramps. No blood. Just… nothing.” I hesitate. “There was a day, about… 21 days ago? I had a little spotting. A smear, really. I thought it was finally starting. Then it stopped.”

She writes that down. “Pain anywhere specific? Pelvis? Lower back?”

“Not pain. Just—heavy. Sometimes my stomach feels like I swallowed a stone. And I’m… different in here.” I press my palm to the small of my belly. “It’s like there’s a.. A… hum.”

“Mm.” She glances up at me and then over my shoulder toward the closed door like she knows who’s waiting out there for me. “Tell me about the night with your mate.”

I shut my eyes for a second. Kieran’s mouth, his hands, the way the shadows didn’t bind me that night, how they felt like they were bowing instead. The bite. My bite in his shoulder. The way something unspooled inside me and the world felt… right. I force myself back into the chair. “It was… two and half months ago ish?” I say, and it shakes my voice even to say it out loud. “ It was my first time. We marked each other. We didn’t… we didn’t use protection.”
“Were you in heat?” she asks, still clinical.

“No.” The answer flies out before the question lands. “I’ve never—” I fumble for the right word. “I’ve never had that. Whatever other wolves talk about. The… drowning in want. The smell. The obviousness. I hear girls complain about it in dorms like a storm coming. I’ve never had a storm like that.”

“Ever?” she presses, not unkindly.

“Ever,” I say. “I thought maybe because I’m a hybrid, it would be different. Or because I was still… new. Or because my wolf doesn’t do what other wolves do on other days already. But I wasn’t in heat that night. It wasn’t like that.”

“Did your scent change? Anyone comment?”

I want to laugh. “They always comment,” I say dryly. “It’s a sport here. But no. Not like that.”

She nods. “All right. So: first-time intercourse, unprotected, two ish months ago. No remembered heat. Amenorrhea since your return with a single episode of spotting roughly twenty-one days prior. Nausea, fatigue, breast tenderness, light aversion, appetite changes.”

“And smaller,” I say, uselessly, stupidly.

She doesn’t put that on the page. She doesn’t have to. “Now,” she says, and her voice is careful. “You’ve heard it from friends in the dorms, I’m sure: conception is most common during heat for wolves because heat coincides with ovulation and the body primes itself to conceive. But it is not the only time conception is possible. Wolves can conceive outside of heat. It’s rarer. Not unheard of. Especially in the presence of fresh mate marks, strong pair-bonding, and—” she tilts her head at me “—divine interference.”
“It feels cruel,” I say, and I don’t mean for the words to slip. “If she did this.”

“She may not have done anything,” the healer says, and for once there’s iron under the gentleness. “Your body is recovering.. It may simply be doing what bodies do when given opportunity.”

“You think I ovulated without… heat?”

“Possibly.” She ticks off explanations like beads. “Silent heat—symptoms muted or masked by trauma—can happen in young wolves, especially those with complicated lineages." she says it like it’s a word she uses all the time— “could scramble your cycle. But Maeve…” She sets the page down and looks at me, really looks. “We both know what this looks like.”

My hands don’t know where to go. As I shakily head into the hallway to see my mates.. or friends, whatever they are.

The news hitting me like a freight train.

The world narrows to three faces I’ve memorized. My mouth dry. My hands don’t know what to do with themselves as the shake lightly at my sides.

I step into their gravity and feel it catch me.

“Guys—”