A Stitch Between Time
1962 Words
Naylea
The fire had been burning for a while now–long enough to throw shadows up against the cave wall, but not long enough to warm the place. She sat crouched low, elbows braced on his knees, hands hanging loose. Smoke rose slow and uneven. Her eyes stung. Probably the wind. Maybe not.
It had taken her longer than usual to get it going. She fumbled the flint. Twice. Dropped it once. Her hands weren’t shaking, exactly–but they weren’t steady either.
She still couldn’t believe she’d gotten him inside.
He was dead weight.
Heavy as a moose.
Except a moose bled clean and fed the pack.
This one just bled trouble.
And he was her trouble for now. They hadn’t made it to her home. The snow had started falling thick across the trail–too dense to pull through, too wet to burn. It came down heavy and fast, eating her tracks as she made them. The time between his breaths had grown too long for her liking. And–if she was honest–she didn’t want this stranger in her den.
She didn’t want him.
Not in her space. Not on her trail. Not bleeding across her furs like some broken omen.
He wasn’t hers. And she didn’t want him to become hers–not in any way that mattered. She was going to hand him off to the old druid the moment the weather held, and he wasn’t perched at death’s edge.
Beg her if she had to.
She exhaled through her nose, low and sharp, then stood. He wouldn’t last through the night soaked and half-frozen. She didn’t need the threads to tell her that. Warmth meant survival. Which meant stripping him down to the skin.
She didn’t hesitate.
But she was gentle.
She knelt beside him, breath catching as the firelight reached across the body. She started with his coat–leather, stiff with blood and snow.
She eased it away, layer by layer, her movements careful and quiet.
Underneath, everything was worse.
Clothing torn. Layers matted with ice.
Skin pale, bruised, cut open in places than she could count at a glance.
His skin was too pale.
His fingers were the wrong color.
His lips are not far behind.
And still-he breathed.
Just barely.
She didn’t speak. Didn’t let herself think too much.
But the more she uncovered, the worse it got.
There was a bite on his shoulder. Deep. Infected. Too precise to be wild. Too cruel to be an animal.
A wound meant to mark–or to break.
Her jaw tightened. She didn’t touch it. Not yet.
His hip was worse. Torn. Flesh ragged where something had ripped through. The wound wasn't fresh, but someone hadn't cleaned it. The blood had crusted in thick layers. The edges were black with cold.
She eased him to one side, just enough to see his back–
And stopped.
Claw marks. Four, maybe five, raking down from shoulder to hip.
She didn’t move at first. Just stared-at the bite on his shoulder, the torn muscle at his hip, the claw marks raked down his back like someone had tried to strip him from spine to ground. Not wild. Not clean. This wasn’t a kill. It was a warning. Or an ending.
Something twisted in her gut. Low. Familiar.
She exhaled through her nose and reached for the next layer.
Didn’t think about it.
Didn’t want to.
But her fingers were careful when they touched his skin again.
Not because she pitied him.
Because something in her recognized it.
Even if she wished she didn’t.
She wrapped him in dry furs first. Tucked them around his body with quiet efficiency, layer after layer. It didn’t take long to realize they wouldn’t be enough. His skin was still ice beneath her hands. The kind of cold that stayed. That didn’t flinch from fire or fabric. It clung deep.
She frowned. Braced a hand over his chest.
Still breathing. Barely.
She didn’t hesitate.
Her hands went to the ties at her waist, the wet outer layers still clinging to her from the haul through snow. She stripped them off in practiced motions–jacket, tunic, the top layers of fabric peeled away and tossed near the fire to dry.
She kept her underclothes on. Boots, just in case.
Enough to keep her decent.
Enough to keep this what it was.
Bare skin to frozen skin, through linen and breath.
The cold shocked up her spine, stealing air from her lungs.
He didn’t move.
She didn’t expect him to.
She reached out, fingers curling once in the thick ruff of her lead wolf. He shifted, silent and sure, and came to lie at her back. Another followed. And another.
Instinct moved them.
A circle of breath and heat and silence.
She said nothing. Thought nothing.
Just pressed in closer, her arm across his chest, cheek against his shoulder.
Not for comfort.
Not for kindness.
To keep him here.
A little longer.
Time passed in slow drips, measured only by the soft collapse of logs in the fire. She didn't move, not because she was resting but because stillness seemed like the only thing that fit. He hadn't stirred, not from the heat, not from her presence, not even when she pulled the furs tighter around his ribs. She didn't need to check his pulse to know he was closer to something else than her. Or look to the thread between them, thin as old stitching, like it had already come undone but hadn’t gotten the chance to fall. The latter she refused to acknowledge.
She knew what it was to stop trying, to stop rising, to let your body become something someone else might find too late. And she hated that she could read it so easily. Hated that it bothered her. Bloom and decay came like the seasons, yet still she still felt something pause beneath her ribs—tight, uncertain.
She remembered the hands that had pulled her back—and the way she had wanted to bite them.. She'd been furious the first time she realized she was still breathing. And that was another problem, this stranger with this thread between them
She feared what would happen if he lived. If he wakes up.
She had felt nothing like this before. The first time had been a scent—sharp and certain. Her wolf known. She had followed, trusting her instincts. And still it left her hollow. Emptied in ways she never found language for. And now this. She didn't understand this. Didn't want to.
The fire cracked. Soft and brittle. Lost beneath the weight of the cave. Rokh shifted beside her. Not urgently. He pressed close, his weight settling against her hip, then nosed gently at her arm. Not for attention. For comfort. The kind mammals gave when words had no use. Settling her inner turmoil and bringing her back to what was important.
His survival.
Her fingers moved where they already rested against him, slow and searching against the skin that was no longer frozen but still wrong. Trailing up to where the muscle met the shoulder. Something stuck there. Not scab. Not sweat. She lifted her hand slowly. Blood clung to her skin, dark and soft. The wound hadn't closed after all. Or maybe the warmth had loosened what the cold had sealed.
She had felt this before. Not the same, but close. Blood blooming slow as warmth returned. She had stitched him up—quiet, careful–while the others had watched far enough away to not get bitten.
She hoped this stranger didn't bite, too.
She let her hand fall away and sat up slowly, shoulders curling forward like the motion might protect her from whatever she’d started to feel. She didn’t glance back–told herself not to. But by the time she was on her feet, tending the fire, she was already looking. Just for breath. Just to know he was still breathing. She moved his clothes toward the heat, shook out a damp sleeve that clung to itself like it didn’t want to let go. Her satchel followed–opened, emptied, sorted. Anything to keep her hands busy.
She didn’t want to return to him. But the wound wouldn’t wait. She took what she needed and crossed the cave before she could think twice. She knelt beside him and rolled the furs down to bare his shoulder again. The wound had spread—heat rolling off the skin there like fever already lived beneath it. She dipped the cloth in the cooling water she had set near the fire, wrung it out, pressing it into the wound. Cleaning it as gently as she could, each pass slow and steady. He didn’t move. Pack wouldn’t have either. But tending pack never felt like this–never made her aware of where her body ended and someone else’s began. She took a breath that almost caught halfway through, then reached for the salve and began. The salve went in cool. Then her fingers found the cooling needle, and she set to stitching.
The bite was stitched–tight, raw, enough to hold. That should’ve been the end of it. But it wasn’t Not even close.
She eased the furs lower, exposing the curve of his hip and the deep tear that split it. Her hand braced gently against his thigh to keep him steady while she cleaned the wound–blood pooling slower now, but still fresh. She cleaned it the way she had the last–press, wipe, rinse. Then again. And again. Her hands didn’t rush, didn’t pause. Just moved. Breath, stitch. Breath, stitch. She didn’t think beyond the next pull of the thread.
The silence pressed in. The fire whispered. One wolf shifted and sighed. She didn’t. Her knees ached and her shoulders burned. But she didn’t stop. There were still places that bled.
They were strips–like something had tried to peel him open. She followed the lines down, furs bunched beneath her knees. She cleaned them all, one by one, but the back felt different. Vulnerable in a way that made her chest tighten. Each pass of the needle felt like pull thread through something that didn’t want to close.
She had done what she could.
Every wound had been cleaned, salved, and stitched when needed. Wrapped in quiet cloth and steadier hands, then she’d thought she still had. Her back ached from crouching. Her legs had gone stiff. Her fingers now moved only on memory. But it was done.
And somewhere in the middle of it all—somewhere between the blood and the fire–he had stirred.
Not much.
Just a shift. A sound. A breath too sharp to be nothing.
And that was enough.
She reached for his fingers at last. She curled his fingers into hers, her palms already warm from tending to the fire, her warmth seeping in slow. Her head drifted down, heavy with exhaustion.
Sleep came in fragments—slow, uneven. Breath by breath, she drifted. And somewhere in the quiet–maybe from her dreaming mind–she thought she heard it.
A word.
Rough. Cracked. Full of something that growled beneath the breath.
“Mate.”
She didn’t move. Didn’t wake.
Outside the fire’s edge, the wolves stirred. One shifted first, then the others. They circled in, slow and silent, until they curled around her and the half-living body she’d pulled from the snow–shoulder to flank, warmth to warmth.
The cave held them like breath, muffling the storm that still whispered against the stone beyond.
And in the dark, the thread between them pulled tighter.
She didn’t feel it.
- Writer
