Of course she was in no hurry to leave, with those deadly injuries to her ankles, collar, shoulders. Even as a human they seemed to burden her movements as if they were scarlet shackles, and the boiling blood in her veins seemed to be doing little to aid. He was afraid to ask if her blood ran as hot as a wolf's, but he had to know if she needed to be treated for a fever. Her brief moment of talking to him had ended when she drifted back into sleep, snuggling into his musty pillow as if it were the finery of a queen's bed but he could not pry his eyes away from her body. It was not just a naked woman, it was a living, breathing creature, something vulnerable and perhaps dying by the moment. Her flesh may be hot to the touch, but she breathed the cold frost of the reaper and he was not about to let her expire in his home, not while he had the strength and determination to see her through such grievous injuries. While she rested—fitfully, he noticed, as she seemed to whimper and woof softly—he made several trips to the stream to stockpile water for her, and he brought clean rags to her bedside so that he could clean her wounds again if needed, and any bandaging supply he may have stashed for emergencies was brought to a more accessible location on the top of his little table. Almost terrified of offending her, he also pulled a quilt over her nude back so that all he could see was her rich mane of midnight locks and the slim, petit face that nestled somewhere within it. He hid the wolf pelts as well, though he wondered to himself if she despised the beasts or loved them.
Her identity struck him as odd, as well. For a werewolf, she did not seem to have possessed the hulking beast form, the hunched back and barely humanoid arms, the ability to walk upright but the necessity to chase prey and howl with the wolves. He had found her as a wolf, a creature identical to those that prowled his woods, and yet she had called them his "pack" and claimed that they had attacked her. She was an intruder, she was not an equal or an alpha. Her beast blood worried him, especially when night fell again and he was susceptible to her animal form. Or would she transform at all? He would have to wait and see, and in the meantime begin his own hunt so that he had plenty of meat on hand to sate her no-doubt voracious appetite.
Before he could stand to leave for perhaps the rest of the day, he knelt beside her and murmured almost hopefully, "I need to hunt, but I've left water in the buckets. They're at the foot of the bed, if you get thirsty. I should be back before dark."
She slept on, though he saw her eyelashes twitch and he took that to be a response. He left her then and entered the woods, armed with just a dagger because all he planned to do was check his traps and carry home whatever he found. He had some cured meat stored away that he could break into if he returned empty-handed, but that was not the case today. Perhaps the struggle of the wolves the night before had scared wildlife directly to his snares, for he returned to the cabin with six rabbits slung over his shoulder and a fox in his other hand. That would last them a few meals, he assumed, though he still had not gauged whether or not the woman would be able to eat like a man or a beast, or if she had the strength to eat at all. When he opened his door-slowly, so that he would not scare his guest-he found her sitting up, leaning forward as if she could detect the scent of fresh prey. There was fatigue in her eyes, and weakness in her posture, but he was glad to see that at the very least she seemed to be capable of moving.
"What did you bring?" she asked curiously, the lilt of her voice almost intoxicating as well as savage. Her words sounded as if they had come from the tongue of the wolf and not the woman, as if it had been the deadly blood of the beast to stir at his arrival.
"Just something to eat. Hungry?" Modestly and more than a little nervously, he averted his gaze from her and focused solely on laying his catch out on the table, inspecting it, hoping that it met her standards, whatever they might be.
"Starving." She pushed herself up entirely, his quilt sliding away as she peered across the room to admire the creatures he had captured. "You will feed me, too?"
"I'm not letting you leave until you are healed. Food is part of healing." He glanced back and noted that in his absence she had torn at the bandages on her ankles and the wounds were more terrible in the light of evening. "But you will get nothing until you redress that wound."
"Hm?" Confusion in her eyes, she examined the bloody gashes across her calves and shook her head. "I don't like them there. Look, I left all the others."
"I can see that," he muttered, dragging a chair closer to the bed, then bringing a bucket and a rag in front of it so that he could sit before her and perhaps aid her with cleaning up. "These wounds won't heal, and then you won't be able to walk. Is that what you want?"
"No." She offered her foot like a trained lion, tentatively and as if he had a blade at her throat and would slice if she did not comply, and in the back of his mind he questioned if she was perhaps some backwards creature that was truly wolf and thus not accustomed to a pelt of flesh nor a life of bandaging and wooden walls.
He unwound the soiled wrappings, marveling at the vermillion dried into them and also the tooth marks that seemed to have obliterated them. He tossed them aside for the time being and set about washing away congealing blood, praying that his insensitive fingers did not cause her further pain. "Good. If you let the bandages stay a few days, you will be well enough to go outside."
Sitting there in the cabin built for one, washing the foot of a woman wolf who had been mauled by her own kind, forcing himself not to gawk at her magnificent body-which he realized was muscular as well as flawless, it was not an event he ever considered partaking in, but there he sat. He could hear her shallow, uncertain breath echoing off the too-close walls, and he saw her fingers twitching and grabbing at nothing as she fought off either obscure, terrifying memories or instinctual discomfort. Somehow she was so strong, able to allow this stranger's care, yet at the same time she was so horrifyingly weak that he knew if she attempted to retract her foot and tuck herself away in his quilt that he could overpower her with a word. Blood flowed lazily in her veins, boiling but languid, carrying all manner of emotion from her head to her heart and back. Her eyes betrayed it all; they began to look like the stream as she wept silently for her own pitiful behavior, and suddenly he pulled his hand away from her foot to see that her wounds were, once more, bleeding and raw. Had he dug into them and done this to her? He could not remember. But he was still calm, as tranquil as an ancient maple rooted firmly to the earth and to his own life, and he began to wrap bandages around the scarlet mess so that the poor little pup quivering before him would be able to run again. She was so small, so youthful and so absolutely argent. He had to protect something so precious, nurse it until it could stand proud on its own.
"Lucina," he said as her named reappeared in his mind, "are you thirsty?"
"Just a bit," she whimpered, shivering all over now and hiding her tears beneath her unkempt bangs.
"Drink, then." He released her foot and located a suitable cup, which he handed to her so that she would feel more empowered while he retrieved another bucket of fresh, clean, clear water. He helped her dip and fill the cup, then bring it to her lips, and when she nearly dropped it he was there to catch it and refill it for her. A little water on the floor did not bother him, but the droplet streaming from the corner of her mouth did, and he caught that as well, with only one finger.
"It hurts," she murmured, rolling her ankle for him to see.
"It will now, but you will heal, pup."