Lydia's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

By noon Lydia's own stomach settled. She could sit up. She could stand, slow and careful. The four new wolves slept across her cottage floor. She stepped over them to check on Malia, the youngest of her pack, the brown-haired girl who had collapsed here the day before. Malia was not better. She was worse. Malia threw up on the floor again. Then she cried, the way a tired child cries, with no breath left to fight it. Lydia knelt and smoothed her hair back. "Okay. Okay, sweetheart. I've got you." Lydia made a plan. Malia needed somewhere quiet, away from the others, close to the toilet. She dragged blankets and pillows into the bathroom and built a nest on the clean tile floor. She half-carried Malia inside and settled her down. Malia clutched the stuffed wolf Stiles had brought her, the soft gray toy she never let go of now. Lydia brought in the old TV with the rounded screen and turned it low. Cartoons flickered. A pair of goofy dogs bounced across the glass. Malia's eyes followed them for a moment, then closed. For a while it seemed enough. Then Malia moaned and curled tighter around the toy. This was not moon sickness. Lydia had nursed the whole pack through moon sickness before. It passed with rest. It did not make a girl sob like this hours after the others started mending. Something worse was wrong. Lydia felt it in her gut, the same way she felt a hunter near the tree line. She knelt by the nest. "Malia. I need to look at your tummy. Hold still for me." She lifted the hem of the floral sweater dress. She stopped breathing. Malia's belly was covered in bruises. Dark purple, yellow at the edges, spread across her stomach and up one side. Old bruises and new ones on top of each other. Lydia pressed one with two fingers, gentle as she could. Malia screamed and jerked away. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Lydia pulled her hand back. Her mind raced. These were not from the shift. The shift swelled you, made you sick, but it did not do this. Someone or something had struck this girl, again and again, over days. And Malia had said nothing. Lydia lowered the dress. She held Malia's hand while the girl cried herself quiet against the stuffed wolf. The cartoons kept playing. Lydia did not watch them. She had thought the danger was outside, the hunters in the town. The danger was already in her bathroom, inside one of her own. She did not know who had hurt Malia. She did not know if it would happen again. But she knew one thing now, kneeling on the cold tile. Resting for a week was over. She had to find out who had done this. Tonight.