Page 25 of Wolf's Providence

“So? I’m waiting,” he pressed.

“I feel like shit,” I told him the truth. “Every day is a battle.”

Silence enveloped us as we walked. “You’re still fighting,” he murmured. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Is it?” I glanced upward as the moon came out of hiding. “She seems to think so,” I told him, pointing to the moon.

“Then you must be doing something right,” he said calmly. “Willow is healing well.”

“Good.”

“She still feels the pain,” he added with no softness, but I’d learned quickly that wasn’t his style. “Her wounds healed quickly, alarming for a human, I would add.” I felt the weight of his side-eye but said nothing.

“The pain?”

“Doc thinks it’s her body’s way of trying to deal with the healing.”

I glanced at him. “By making her feel the pain as if she was still suffering?”

Cannon shrugged. “I don’t know. I know little about human pain, but it seems unfair that she gets healed but still has to suffer the phantom pain.”

I felt my knees weaken, the reality at his bluntness resonating more than I expected.Phantom pain. I knewexactlywhat that was. The feeling of being healed on the outside but still torn apart on the inside. It was a cruelty that I’d never imagined she would have to bear.

“Like she’s being punished…” I said, more to myself than to Cannon. My voice was low, broken. The idea that she was being made to feel pain because of me—that it may be some twisted consequence of our bond—cut deep.

Cannon didn’t say anything for a moment, but when I glanced at him, I saw the same doubt flickering in his eyes that mirrored my own.

We exchanged a look, the question hanging between us. I once more cast a glance to the heavens, to the pale moon hidden behind the shifting clouds. The shaman had said this was Luna’s Will, but was it her Will to make Willow suffer? I was no longer sure.

Maybe Luna wasn’t as aligned as the shaman implied.

The doubt gnawed at me, dark and insidious. What if her pain wasn’t just a side effect of the healing? What if it was something more deliberate? A cosmic test, or…Goddess forbid, a punishment? For my sins? For what I’d done?

My fists clenched tightly at my sides as the familiar anger rose inside me, hot and sharp. If that was true…if the Goddess was making her suffer because of me, then…then what the hellwas the point? What was the point in saving her if she was going to have to live with the pain? Willow already lived with pain, and she didn’t need any more of it.

Cannon picked up on my tension. “Maybe it’s just a side effect that will fade,” he told me, his voice gentler. “Maybe it’s just…maybe it’s what happens when someone gets caught in something they shouldn’t.”

I didn’t respond to him, and I didn’t think he expected me to. I knew deep down that this wasn’t justsomethingthat happened. Not when it came to Willow. This was bigger than the blood I’d given her or the bond we shared.

This felt a lot like fate. My top lip curled. This was the Goddess’s Will. Maybe Ned and Cannon were right; maybe I’d dragged Willow into something that she was never meant to endure.

But I was the one she was tied to. And now I had to find a way to make it right.

For her.

EIGHT

Willow

The room was too quiet,the kind of quiet that made every breath feel as if it was too loud. I sat up in the bed, my legs tucked beneath me, my sketchbook lying forgotten on the covers beside me. The night held a strange stillness to it, like the world was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.

Even the snow had stopped falling.

I wasn’t sure what time it was, but I knew it wasn’t too late. Time was different here in the bunker. I mean, obviously time wasn’t different, it just seemed to pass differently. Some hours rushed past, while some dragged so slowly I could almost feel the seconds passing.

I’d spent most of yesterday mulling over the shaman’s words. Between his first visit and his second, I wasn’t sure he’d helped. He’d given me a mix of answers and riddles that left me more confused and uncertain than before. The explanation of the bond and the Goddess choosing me, at the time, had made sense. And now…well, now, none of it felt real.

None of it felt like it was me.

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