Unbound

Chapter 22

He looked even worse than I'd expected.

Angus Sewell was frail and thin. Surrounded by pillows and sunken into the center of the mattress of a large four-poster bed, he appeared much smaller than he likely was. He shouldn't look this old: without complications, he should live well past 100. At this rate, I wasn't sure he'd make it to summer.

Ephraim stood by his bedside, running him down a list of questions, the same he asked each time: how are you feeling; are you in any pain; when is the last time you ate, you drank, you used the bathroom? How has your disposition been? Your breathing? Your sleep? Angus knew the list by heart and could have rattled off the answers before the questions were even asked if he'd had the energy to do so.

The room had a peculiar smell, too sweet, like overripe fruit or flowers that had sat in a vase for too long. It was overpowering if I lost focus and inhaled through my nose, though I wasn't sure whether I was picking up on whatever Ephraim had noticed or if this was just the smell of someone who was all but bedridden. If I had indeed caught the scent of his disease with my limited ability on that front, it had progressed far beyond what was likely curable.

There were very few diseases that could kill a wolf. During my years as a healer I'd only encountered two, and each one only once. My very first year as an apprentice at the clinic, one of our pack elders had reached the fatal stages of Lycan's End. Her DNA had been under attack for well over a year by a virus that targeted the genes responsible for regulating cell growth and division. Over time, the abnormal tissue that formed as a result slowly strangled her organs. The best we could do was provide palliative care and keep her comfortable until her body finally shut itself down.

The other I'd seen when a pack from the Midwest brought their afflicted member for a consultation several years before. He suffered from Lycanthropic Dementia, and his cognitive function had steadily declined to the point that he was constantly battling paranoid delusions. We never saw him again after that, but Rosalind said that he would eventually lose control over his transformations and become stuck in his wolf form, half-rabid from the hallucinations.

But whatever was afflicting Angus was neither of those things. As I stood against the wall and watched Ephraim conduct his exam, I continued to mentally catalogue his symptoms against things I'd seen and things I'd read about.

"Who's the girl?" He croaked.

Ephraim beckoned me forward. "This is Kiera, our new healer. She'll be my partner once I've gotten her up to speed."

Angus sniffed. "She's not one of ours."

"No," I confirmed. "I'm from Sawtooth, but I live here now." I left out the whole life-debt part of the story.

"Ahh," he sighed. "Yes. We discussed your arrival on the Council. That may have been the last meeting I made it to."

So he knew who I was after all. I was grateful that he left out the life-debt part, too. The less I had to be reminded of it, the better.

"How's your appetite?" Ephraim flipped through his notebook, turning pages back and forth. Comparing today's scribbles with those from previous visits.

"Some days I feel like I never stop eating."

"But you're down another two pounds since I last saw you." His frustration was obvious; he felt responsible for Angus' continued decline. I knew the feeling well—even for the most experienced healers, the most detached, it never truly went away.

Angus shrugged. The quick movement seemed to exhaust him and he sank deeper into the pillow behind his head. Slight movement in his lap caught my eye as he ran his thumb back and forth across the pads of his fingers. I watched for a moment before I cleared my throat.