( Rhydian)
I notice it first in the training yard.
Not because I’m looking for sothing wrong — I’m not, I’m trying to rember the footwork Elena drilled into yesterday without making it look like I’m thinking about footwork, which apparently is the entire point of footwork. But I notice it because four years of surviving alone rewired sothing in my brain that I can’t switch off. The part that’s always cataloguing. Always asuring. Always asking *what’s different today.*
What’s different today is Brennan.
He’s one of Elena’s senior warriors. Thirty-sothing, solid, the kind of wolf who moves like he was built for it — efficient, economic, no wasted motion. I’ve watched him run drills every morning since I got here because watching other people train is how I’ve been trying to catch up without anyone noticing I’m behind.
This morning he drops his sparring partner’s strike that he caught clean two days ago.
Not a close thing. Not a matter of timing or a tricky angle. Just — drops it. His arm cos up and then it’s like the ssage gets lost sowhere between his brain and his body, and the strike lands on his shoulder, and he shakes his head like he’s trying to clear water from his ears.
His partner doesn’t say anything. But I see the look.
I keep moving through my own warmup. Don’t stare.
But I’m watching.
By the end of the session I’ve counted seven separate monts that don’t fit. A warrior who trips on flat ground. Another one who sits down between drills when she didn’t sit down yesterday or the day before. A young wolf, couldn’t be more than nineteen, who goes pale in the middle of a run and walks the last hundred ters with his hand pressed to his temple.
Headaches.
I know what headaches look like. I lived in a cave — in damp, in cold, in altitude that took so getting used to. I know the particular way a body moves when sothing inside it is wrong.
These wolves have headaches.
---
I don’t say anything at breakfast.
I sit across from Elena and eat and watch her face and try to figure out if she’s feeling it too, if there’s sothing behind her eyes today that’s different from yesterday. She looks the sa. Reads the sa note three tis before setting it aside, which isn’t like her. Rolls her shoulder once, twice, the way you do when a headache is sitting at the base of your skull and won’t commit to being a full headache yet.
She catches looking.
"What," she says.
"Nothing."
She holds the look for a second, then goes back to her cup.
I turn my own cup in my hands. The water in it is from the main house supply — I know that because I watched the kitchen girl fill it from the sa pitcher she fills Elena’s from every morning. Sa source. Sa water.
I set the cup down without finishing it.
"You’re not drinking," Elena says, without looking up.
"I’m not thirsty."
"You sparred for two hours."
"I’m still not thirsty."
She looks up then. Sothing in my voice maybe, or just the fact that I’m usually not the one who argues with my body about what it needs. She studies my face with those grey eyes that don’t miss much.
"What’s going on," she says. Not a question.
I look at the cup.
"How long has the Pack been using this water supply," I ask.
A beat. Her expression doesn’t change but sothing behind it does — a sharpening, a stillness. "Since the settlent was built. It runs off the main spring under the back house." She pauses. "Why."
"Brennan dropped a block this morning that he’s caught clean every day for at least a week. Mira sat between drills. That young one — red-haired, runs near the fence—"
"Corvin."
"He went white in the middle of a run. Finished it walking." I et her eyes. "I’ve been here three weeks. I know what these wolves look like when they’re moving right. They’re not moving right today."
Elena is quiet. Completely quiet, the kind she gets when she’s taking sothing seriously enough that she stops performing composure and just — goes still.
"It could be a virus," she says. Careful.
"Could be."
"Winter’s starting. Sothing moving through the Pack—"
"Could be," I say again. "But it hit fast. Yesterday Brennan was fine. Mira was fine. Whatever this is, it didn’t build up slowly."
She looks at my untouched cup.
Then at hers.
She sets it down.
The silence between us does sothing — stretches in a specific direction, toward a specific na, and neither of us says it out loud yet. But I can see it landing on her. The sa place it landed on in the training yard when the seventh wrong thing happened and sothing in my chest went cold and certain.
"You think soone put sothing in it," she says quietly.
"I think I’ve seen people poisoned before. In the territories outside the border. Rogues use it on each other’s water sources when they want to take a cave without a fight." I pause. "It doesn’t always look like poison. Sotis it just looks like a bad week."
Elena’s hand is flat on the table. Very flat. Very still. The kind of still that ans she’s holding sothing in that doesn’t have a clean shape yet.
"How long would sothing like that take to—"
"Depends what it is. If it’s a suppressant — sothing that just takes the edge off, makes wolves slower, more human-tired — you might not see real impairnt for three, four days." I look at her. "We’re seeing it now. Which ans if it started in the water, it started two or three days ago."
She stands up.
Not dramatic, not fast — just standing, the way she does everything, with that economy of movent that ans she’s already three steps ahead and her body is catching up. She goes to the window. Looks out at the yard, the training grounds, the settlent spread below the hill.
Her back is to .
"Rhydian," she says.
"Yeah."
"Is there any part of this that you think I’m overreacting to."
I look at her shoulders. The line of them. The way they’re held too level, too careful.
"No," I say.
She nods once. Like confirmation of sothing she already knew.
"Marcus," she says. Just the na. Flat and quiet and landing like a stone.
I don’t say yes. I don’t say no. I turn the empty cup in my hands and I think about the way he walked into our room that morning and didn’t look at , not once, and I think about Elena saying *he suspects but suspicion isn’t proof* and I think about Viktor’s tea.
"It fits his tiline," I say carefully. "Whatever’s coming, whatever he’s arranged — he’d want the Pack weakened before it happened. Not obviously sick. Just—"
"Just slow." Her voice is barely above a breath. "Slow enough that when sothing hits us we can’t et it properly."
"Shadowpine," I say.
She turns around.
Her face is controlled. Completely controlled, the mask she wears in council etings, and underneath it — I’ve gotten good enough at reading her to see it now — sothing that is genuinely frightened. Not for herself. For them. For all those wolves in the training yard moving wrong and not knowing why.
It’s the first ti I’ve seen her scared for soone else and it does sothing to my chest that I don’t have ti for right now.
"We can’t go to the council," she says. "If Marcus has anyone there—"
"He has Henrick at minimum."
"—they’ll know we’re looking. He’ll move faster." She crosses back to the table. Doesn’t sit — stands with her hands on the back of the chair, thinking out loud now, which she doesn’t usually do, which tells how fast her mind is moving. "I need to confirm it first. The water. I need soone who can test it without it getting back to him."
"Your healer," I say. "The one who did my wrists. She didn’t look at Marcus when he ca in that first morning. People who are loyal to soone look at them when they enter a room."
Elena stares at for a second.
"That’s—" She stops. "That’s a very specific thing to notice."
"I spent four years alone. You learn to read rooms." I shrug. "She’s not his. I’d bet on it."
"Her na is Senna." Elena straightens. Pushes the chair in. "I’ll go to her alone. You don’t co — if Marcus is watching he’ll make it look like the rogue husband dragging the Alpha into paranoia." Her jaw tightens. "You go back to the yard. Keep your eyes on the water situation. Count how many wolves seem impaired. Build a number."
"And if I see soone getting worse. Actually worse, not just headaches—"
"Co find imdiately. Don’t tell anyone else. Don’t—" She pauses, looks at directly, "—don’t let Marcus see you notice anything."
I hold her gaze. "I know how not to be seen."
"I know you do." Sothing moves through her expression that isn’t quite softness and isn’t quite gratitude but lives sowhere adjacent to both. "You were right to tell ."
"You would’ve noticed."
"Maybe." She picks up her coat from the hook by the door. "But you noticed first."
She says it without looking at — matter-of-fact, already moving, already thinking forward to Senna and the water and whatever cos next. But I feel it land sowhere specific. Sowhere it was needed without knowing it was needed.
That I was useful. That what I am — the paranoid, cataloguing, survival-wired, cave-living thing that I am — wasn’t in the way for once.
That it was exactly right.
I pull on my jacket. Move toward the door.
"Rhydian."
I stop. Turn back.
She’s looking at properly now. Not the Alpha-reading-the-room look. Just her.
"Be careful," she says.
It’s two words. She says them plainly, without weight, already turning away by the ti they’re out.
I stand there for one second longer than I need to.
Then I go back to the yard.
---
The morning moves around and I move through it, doing what she asked — watching without watching, counting the hesitations and the pale faces and the too-careful movents that don’t belong to these wolves. I find fourteen by midday. Fourteen in a fighting force of sixty.
It’s not catastrophic yet.
Yet is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
I’m standing near the water trough at the yard’s edge, watching Corvin attempt drills with a focus that’s clearly costing him more than it should, when I feel soone watching .
I don’t look right away. Old habit. You look right away, you tell them you’re paying attention. You let it sit for ten seconds first.
Ten seconds.
Then I look.
Marcus is standing at the far fence. Just standing, hands clasped, face pleasant and distant the way it always is. He’s not looking at the drills. He’s not looking at the water trough.
He’s looking at .
When our eyes et he doesn’t look away. He holds it for one long mont with that almost-kind expression, like a man who wants you to know he sees you. Who wants you to know it doesn’t worry him.
Then he turns and walks away.
My hands are fists in my pockets.
Three weeks ago I would’ve gone after him, I think. Cornered him sowhere and made him tell what he’s done and not cared what ca after.
Three weeks ago I had nothing to lose.
I breathe out slow through my nose. Watch him disappear around the corner of the main house. Then I turn back to the yard, to Corvin, to the fourteen wolves moving wrong, and I think about Elena’s face when she said be careful and didn’t make anything of it.
I stay in the yard.
I count.
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