Chapter 4

Perrin

“Can I see Jack?”

“He’s not awake yet,” sighed Deidre. She looked troubled about that. She had been walking me back to the front lobby.

“I don’t care.” It was the truth. Throughout everything, Jack had been there when it had mattered. He helped us narrow down where to find Kira, covered for me after the announcement ceremony with the press, and above all else, he forgave me for not believing in him or expressing any confidence that he was worthy of being my Beta.

“Right this way,” she said, leading me down another series of halls, then stopped short in front of a door. “Can you find your way back on your own?” She glanced at her watch. “I have a call in ten minutes.”

“I’ll be fine.” She left and I pushed open the door, the low lighting of the room familiar to when I first met Ethan in a similar fashion. The smell of blood was palpable; I could almost taste it.

Jack was lying still on a patient bed, eyes closed and face relaxed. An oxygen tube extending from his face to a machine emitting slow beeps on the right. His coloring looked good, his dark skin radiating the neon colors of the medical machines nearby. His hair had grown in a week, and his black whiskers of his unshaven face stood out. I realized I had never seen him look so… so mature? Jack had always just been another face at the Lodge, a third of the trio with Toby and Skylar.

But seeing him like this made me uncomfortable. Likely because it wasn’t the first time I hadn’t noticed something about Jack right under my nose. I shifted uneasily, forcing myself to look. He looked otherwise unharmed, except for the massive bandages and casts from his hips to his feet on both legs.

“It was pretty bad,” a voice said behind me. Naineeve stepped into the room. I recognized her as a purple-level healer, close to applying for her Ascended Trials. She was also close friends with Jesamine. Well, they had been friends, when Jesamine had still been Jaz. I wasn’t sure what Naineeve thought of Jesamine anymore, and I didn’t really feel like asking her at the moment.

“How bad is ‘bad’?” I asked her, gesturing for her to join me.

“Pretty bad,” she said, stepping fully into the room. “I haven’t seen anything like it.”

I stilled, suddenly unsure if I should have invited her in here. Few people had been privy to the truth about the attacks on Ethan, Petrus, and Rashaad. Asking too many questions here might be a bad move, and lead Naineeve onto a trail she wasn’t welcomed to explore. I poked my head out of the room, swiveling quickly to see if Deidre was still visible.

“It’s ok,” Naineeve said, as if reading my sudden hesitation. “The Luna and Jennivah asked me if I would keep an eye on him. I agreed, and so they told me everything.” I raised my eyebrows in a tentative question and she smiled, though it was tight at the corners. “Yes, everything.” Her emphasis on the last work set me at ease.

“Thank you,” I said, suddenly relieved and exhaling slowly. “I’m sure they’re grateful for someone else they can trust right now.”

She smiled shyly and turned back to Jack. “He will be my patient for the foreseeable future, but I won’t be seeing your uh, … uh, Jesamine,” she said awkwardly. “I mean, she isn’t under my care.” 

“I understand,” I said. “I’m sure Deidre and Jennivah want to keep her as close to the vest as possible.”

Naineeve nodded, her almond-shaped eyes squinting as if lost in thought. 

“What do you think?” I asked her.

She blinked, as if forgetting I was there. “Of what?”

“All of it,” I said, arms gesturing wide. I found myself suddenly anxious for her opinion of any of it.

“I won’t pass judgment on the mother of your child, Perrin,” she said demurely. I should have seen that coming. Of course she wouldn’t, and that wasn’t what I was asking. But then she spoke again. “But as for Jack? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

I waited for her to elaborate. “His legs didn’t just break, Perrin. It’s like they disintegrated. Shattered to a level that’s made it nearly impossible to realign.” My stomach twisted uncomfortably. Naineeve sighed. “We’ve done about seventeen hours of procedures on him, and we’re still not even sure if he’ll walk again.”

I gasped at this, the unwelcome news pouring over me like a bucket of ice cold water. “Are you kidding?”

Her face showed anything but a joke, a perfect mask of Ascended poise. She was mastering that part of being an Ascended beautifully. “He’s in for a long recovery. Wolf bones heal much more quickly than humans; that we know for a fact. But the healing is also propelled by proximity; when bones fracture or break, they almost seem to sense each other; wolves more so than humans, and reknitting that break or repairing a crack is easier. But Jack’s legs were so damaged, it’s like the bones splintered so badly and into so many pieces, it’s like they lost the ability to find their rightful place, like they ended up rearranging themselves because they didn’t know where else to go.”

My mouth was dry and I tried hard to swallow. “Rearrange themselves? You talk as if bones can think.”

“Think? No. Sense? Absolutely. In hosting two forms in the same body, we’re naturally more attuned as to what each part of our body does, whether we realize it or not. Where each part of us goes when we shift; how parts of us change or morph–all of it. It comes out in healing, too.”

I had never thought about it this way, though I had certainly taken our healing abilities for granted.

“So Jack was human when he was attacked?”

Naineeve nodded, her eyes focused on the casts on Jack’s legs. “Yes. And when his bones attempted to reheal? Well. The scans revealed preliminary when he got here that his ankle bone had mended, but it was all wrong. Smaller, as if it hadn’t used all the pieces to reform itself. The metatarsals seemed to shrink a bit, too, and his femur as well–like his entire leg was trying to shorten itself.”

I shuddered. I had done enough studying with Jesamine over the years to know what she was talking about. Werewolf legs, even in human form, were longer distinctly than human proportions. It was one of the genetic pieces that kept us distinctly different from humans; and also aided our ability to phase quickly. The distance between our hind legs stemmed directly from our legs. It wasn’t typically detectable in human form, if you compared a regular person to a werewolf. But it was most certainly there. 

“So… he was close to phasing?” I asked, slightly choked. “Or turning into a human?”

She nodded, clearly having explored this train of thought before and unphased by the implications. “Perhaps. It’s impossible to tell. The attacker did a number on him. But whatever happened, his body was confused. We got him back here as quickly as we could to assess the damage, but just like regular werewolf fashion, he had already begun to stitch himself back together, only in the wrong ways. So we intentionally re-broke his legs and tried shifting bone fragments around to hopefully reset the process.”

I blanched, feeling what small lunch I had gurgling up my throat. “You rebroke his legs?”

“Of course,” she said, as if this was simply the most normal thing in the world. Then, upon seeing my look of mangled horror, added, “Don’t worry, he couldn’t feel a thing. We made sure he had enough drugs for that.”

“Ok. So you rebroke his legs and he re-formed them into–?”

“Their original shape,” she finished for me, meeting my eye for a moment. “Once broken again, he returned to his natural wolf form.”

“So…” 

“So he’ll be alright, Perrin. But it’s going to take a lot longer than you’d expect. We’re going to have to constantly monitor him, scan each joint as it heals to make sure it goes back to normal. It will take weeks, most likely.”

I digested this, trying to ease my stomach and not visualize the graphic procedures she had laid out. “Has he woken up at all?” 

“Yes, but we’ve drugged him enough to keep him out for a while.”

“How was he?”

“Disoriented, as expected.”

“Could he remember anything?”

“No.” I wasn’t surprised. It was worth a shot.

“What color were his eyes?”

Naineeve blinked, as if confused. “I beg your pardon?”

“What did his eyes look like?”

She paused, brow furrowed. “Like, blood shot, you mean?”

“Nevermind.” Deidre had been telling the truth. Naineeve would have noticed if Jack’s eyes had turned gold versus their normal dark brown color. That would be impossible to miss, and likely impossible to feign confusion about, too. 

I felt a stab of annoyance at myself, for distrusting Deidre about whether or not extra measures were enough to keep Jack from turning back into a regular human. She hadn’t given me any reason since everything went down with Jesamine. We had found a mutual, civil space. It was then that I noticed Naineeve staring at me, puzzled. 

I grunted. “Just curious. When will you wake him up?”

“Maybe another week. The less energy he uses to stay awake, the faster he may heal.” I nodded, having heard that logic before with Ethan. Organs always took longer and the same principle applied.

“Thank you,” I said.

She turned once more to me. “For what?”

“For your confidence. For your skill.”

She merely nodded in humble acceptance. “You don’t need to thank me, Perrin. I’m a healer. It’s what I do.”

“Will you call me when he wakes up?” I asked. “I have a question I’d like to ask him.”

“Of course,” she said. “Though if you’ll excuse me now, I have a few other patients to see.” I nodded in thanks and she left the room.

I turned back to the bed, wondering just which question I was going to ask him when he woke up, my mind turning over with the possibilities. After sitting for a few minutes, I stood up to leave. My head instantly swam, the darkness in the room filling my vision. I put a hand out, eager to balance myself. Images, darker than the room itself, swam in front of my eyes, too foggy to be clear. They were familiar in their strangeness, moving and visible whether my eyes were open or closed. I blinked hard, shaking my head despite feeling more nauseous with every movement.

And then they were gone, as if I had imagined it. But the cold sweat on my neck told me otherwise.

What had the Goddess been trying to tell me?