Wolven

Chapter 10 - Recovery

My body feels like it's burning as Ataneq carries me in his arms. He warned me that it might, that a fierce fever is not uncommon, following a first shift. Along with the heat, my body is also weak, incredibly weak. My muscles quiver with any semblance of using them. 

"We'll get you back to the Vale soon, we'll get you comfortable," he reassures me, smiling.

"You dont... have to carry me..." I tell him, my voice sounding soft and weak. He chuckles, giving my shoulder and knees a squeeze where his hands grip them.

"I do, actually." Did he just wink at me? This ever-calm alpha is practically giddy, and despite my state, that makes me smile. My head rolls toward him, my face burying into his coat front.

Once back at the Vale, Ataneq and Rowan set me up comfortably in a room within a large cabin. My new bed is nice, and I'm sure it would be much more enjoyable without this fever, which has been gradually worsening since I shifted back. Rowan left to tend to some work in the Vale, and Ataneq to get me some water. I sip at it feebly after he returns and hands it to me carefully.

"How are you feeling?" he asks softly, seated beside me on the bed. With my body limp and exhausted, I barely have the energy to lift the glass to my lips.

"Pretty weak and worn. And feverish."

"As you would be," he says with that comforting tone that always used to quell my troubled instincts. He tugs up the sleeves of his shirt before lifting a wet cloth out of a wooden bowl of icy water that rests on a bedside table.

Ringing it out, he looks at me again, studying me as he places the soothing cloth across my forehead. "But, how do you feel, Rheadan? Within your heart?" I take another shaky sip before answering.

"I feel... peaceful. Light. Like a heavy weight was lifted." My voice trails off, his arms distracting me. The small scars I had always noticed across his knuckles and the tops of his fingers lead down his hand to even larger ones on both forearms.

"I was hoping that was the case." He's been watching my gaze, and then my hand as my fingers slip from the water glass and fall onto his wrist. I trail the marks lightly, the patterns similar to scars my father has from hunting. Ataneq's are more numerous. I pause at a cluster of new scars upon old, before following the old ones gently up his arm. My fingers still trail over raised lines when they slip under Ataneq's gathered sleeve at his elbow.

My hand stays, fingers curling around his taught arm as I look up at him, weary.

"Will you stay?" I didn't really formulate those words myself; they seemed to have simply appeared, hanging in the air for me to wonder where they came from.

Ataneq smiles, lifting the glass out of my weakening grasp with his free hand to set it on the table beside the bowl.

"For a little while. I must arrange for the next portion of your initiation soon." As he spoke, he squeezed the arm of my hand that held his, and pulled back the blankets with the other. My head swims with the presence of a strange, new feeling. An intoxicating one.

"I don't want you to get sick..." I protest feebly with my weakened voice as Ataneq rests into the bed, beside me. I still hadn't moved my hand from his arm, and he held mine just as firmly.

"What you are experiencing is not contagious, Rheadan. I will be fine. Just sleep, now." His voice is as warm as his body, which mine migrates against. He doesn't protest, but envelopes me in his arms, in his comforting scent. My face finds his chest, his neck, gets tickled by his thick hair.

"Ataneq," I whisper into a sigh.

"Yes, Rheadan?" My name feels strange murmured against my skin... strange, but lovely.

Nothing, I think to myself, pleasantly losing my grasp on consciousness. His voice is all I wanted to hear.