Thankfully, and for which he was suddenly grateful to the gods he had never once bothered to appease, she was unharmed and only mildly shaken by the encounter. Those aggressive wolves must have tracked her through the woods, perhaps even scouted his little homestead to see when the intruder would appear once more and be at their mercy. It struck him as odd that the former alpha had not thought to attack her between the time of encounter and the moment Priam arrived, but whatever held him back did not concern Priam in the slightest. It was for the best, anyhow, and now perhaps the wolves would sing to the skies once more of their failure to dispose of the human who dominated them.
Lucina tucked herself amongst the blankets and stared at him, her eyes moonstruck and a bit concerned, and he rinsed the blood away from his arms and hands to assess the damage done. They were too severe to ignore, but at the very least he still seemed to have full use of both hands, and this was pleasing not simply because his body was his livelihood and he could not survive without it working at full capacity, but also he was the one thing that stood between his injured guest and the pursuers of the night, the beasts that prowled about and sought to harm her. She required it, and he would sooner grapple with every wolf in the woods than see her lying in that pool of quicksilver blood as he had found her.
A droplet, wisps of his blood clouding its delicate curves, slid off his hand and he watched it splash into the gory bucket below. Throughout the mixture was inconsistent; crimson swam lazily in the crystal clear fluid, forming enchanting, arcane designs that perhaps held a secret power to one trained in such forbidden arts. It was as if he had peered into a witch's brew and it was just ripening to cast the deadly spell. Had some hag cooked such a curse in her cauldron and then laid it upon the poor pup?
"You look a little pale," Lucina commented hesitantly, pulling the quilt around her shoulders tighter. "You have weapons. Why did you fight the wolf without them?"
"In the moment, I didn't even consider them," he admitted somewhat gruffly. "I'm fine. You shouldn't worry."
"But I do. You wrestled him to save me, and all I could do was sit and watch. I'm useless." She huffed a bit and glared at herself. "Defenseless. If I had been a wolf as well-"
Suddenly, it was clear to him that her unusual circumstance, the bestial blood in her veins, it was all on purpose. She must have requested it somehow, and not considered the consequences, just like the girl he had imagined. Power, leadership, loyalty, anything vaguely related to the feral canines could land her with such a curse. Now he merely wondered what the witch had wanted by hexing a young woman.
By the time he had fixed her bandaging and seen to his own, night had fallen once more and her gruesome metamorphosis had commenced. This particular night her screams were hollow, mournful as if she too wished to lament the fall of the alpha, but for whatever reason they tugged at his heartstrings in a way nothing ever had. She was terrified and wracked with pain, and he assumed this meant she was also desperate for any sort of relief, even a moment's distraction from the transformation her boiling blood insisted upon. The moon was more distinctly waning, and that seemed to prolong the ordeal for the girl, who was beginning to lose her breath. She would wail, inhale sharply and shallowly several times, and then wail once more, and finally he could stand it no more. Between her howls, he approached swiftly and laid a hand on her back. It was a simple, perhaps demeaning gesture, but the moment of surprise in her whitened eyes told him she was at least a bit distracted. He rubbed her shoulder blades gently until they morphed under his hand and the head of the wolf whipped around to observe him.
"Should I not have intruded?" he asked softly, and mostly to himself.
She licked his hand and whimpered, still sore from the transformation, but he resumed his only means of comforting her and stroked the slight ruff of fur around her angular wolf face. If it truly helped he could not be certain, but she closed her eyes and exhaled heavily through her nose and seemed momentarily content. Soothing her through the night was not originally part of his plan in aiding her, but if it helped at all he was willing to try once. She was asleep in moments, but every time he removed his hand or attempted to move beyond seating himself at the foot of the bed she would crack open an eye and question why he had stopped.