The Bind

Medic

CLAIRE POV

I wiped sweat from the face of a skinny blonde woman and handed her a bottle of electrolytes. The tired grasp of her exhausted fingers were not up to the task and the bottle fell to the ground and rolled away through the dirt. I picked it back up, and tipped it gently down her tired, parched throat. As my hand supported her head, an errant tendril of thought grew through my mind; Wishing that she was strong enough to lunge at me from the shadows with a knife again.

Wolves were going to begin shuffling off the mortal coil if this went on much longer. It had already been two weeks.

I wondered if I could heal the pack in the same way I healed myself? I had never known these wolves in their prime... but could I expedite the process of their withdrawal? The woman in my arms performed a projectile rejection of the electrolytes, all over my shirt. I sighed and set to mopping her face up. Could it hurt to try?

After delivering her to the clinic we had set up for creatures needing IV fluids - and changing my clothes for the third time this afternoon - I set to puzzling out the best way to go about this. For the remainder of the day I searched out every single creature in my pack. Once found, I imagined what they could be, lustrous hair, plump happy cheeks; The very picture of health. Then I mentally switched could for would and poured the energy of an alpha command into the scene painting my minds eye. The same mental force, without the call to action that bent their will to my own.

It worked. In a sense. Just like healing my arm and tongue, they experienced all of the pain the natural healing process would exact, but in a compressed time frame. The process was brutal, but the natural timeframe was too taxing.

It. Was. Exhausting. I was inhaling food at every turn, practically drinking oil and snorting protein powder just to get calories in. Tina took to dropping in at odd hours in an attempt to catch me with the company I must be hiding from her. According to her expertise, the pantries were being emptied with the gusto of at least three hungry were creatures, and her critical eye on my flat stomach refused to believe I was the black hole.

After encountering me halfway through a four liter tub of honeycomb ice cream at three am, she then decided that perhaps it was me, and I had developed an eating disorder. Taking away the tub, to my strangled nose of protest, she sat down for a lecture and a half on coping mechanisms. Within a few minutes my metabolism had shrunk the distended belly to a normal size and was loudly requesting the requisition of the ice cream.

"Por el amor de Dios!" She exclaimed with a great flap of her sky blue apron. "It is... a wolf thing?"

I nodded, and reached for the melting tub of honeycomb heaven. She slapped my fingers away with a sharp thwack of my long handled ice cream spoon, snapping "No more sugar! If you must eat it will not be this." My eyes narrowed to suspicious slits at her retreating back, but the pot of seafood paella she whipped up absolved her of all sin.

"Will it always be so...much?" Tina asked carefully, setting the entire wok in front of me with a fork and a warning about the heat.

"Espero que no!" I replied with gusto. Her eyes widened to the horrified realisation that I could understand Spanish, and therefore the unparalleled profanity that streamed fourth from her unending font of frustrated creativity. She patted me on the shoulder on her way out and I didn't see her for a while. But the sugar disappeared from the pantry, and my fridge was stocked with massive casseroles, keto desserts, and endless sandwich rolls to snack on between meals from then on.

The pack was consuming me; body, mind and soul.

As well as satiating the cavernous maw inside my stomach, I had to cleave my mind into a new and confusing mental skill set. As their Alpha, I experienced what the pack experienced. Yet simultaneously needed to forget that they had ever embodied anything other than the picture of health and vitality.