She heard the whimper before she smelled the blood.
Afternoon sunlight slanted weakly through the spindly pines, turning the air a thin, watery gold. Snow from the last small storm clung in patchy drifts, crusted and dirty where the sun had reached it, soft and powdery in the shadows.
Luna picked her path carefully along a narrow game trail, boots crunching through the thin top layer of frost. The cold bit at the exposed skin of her cheeks and nose. Her breath steamed in front of her.
Her body still hadn't grown used to the new current threaded through it.
Some days, she felt as if she wore a second skin of invisible lightning. Tiny tingles in her fingertips when she brushed tree bark. A faint, restless hum along her spine when wind picked up, as if ready to leap if she only whispered.
Today, the sky lay low and grey, heavy with unspent snow. The hum in her bones was quieter. Watchful.
She listened to the forest.
The creak of branches.
The distant caw of a crow.
The irregular, soft sound of something dragging itself through leaves.
Her head jerked up.
That sound did not fit with the usual rhythm of the woods.
It came again: a short, high whine, followed by the scrape of fur against branch, the faint *thump* of a body too heavy for its limbs.
Her wolf tensed inside, ears pricked, tail held low but not tucked.
*Hurt,* the animal part of her recognized. *Not hunting. Hunted.*
Luna's hand went automatically to her knife hilt.
She sniffed.
The air carried a sharp, metallic tang.
Fresh blood.
Not her own.
Not wolf.
Deer? No. Different.
A muskier note.
Fox.
Caution warred with something warmer in her chest.
The Rogue Lands hadn't been kind when she let pity lead. But leaving something to suffer—
Her fingers tightened on the knife.
"Careful," she murmured to herself. "Careful does not mean cold."
She moved toward the sound, steps as quiet as she could make them.
The trail dipped into a shallow, brush-choked hollow.
At first, all she saw were tumbled branches, a rotting log collapsed in on itself, snow crusted in uneven patches.
Then one of the snow mounds shifted and let out a low, pained growl.
Luna froze.
A fox lay there, half-buried in the drift, its red coat soaked dark along one side. One leg jutted at an impossible angle. Its flanks heaved in shallow, fast breaths.
Its eyes rolled, catching her movement.
Gold-brown met green-silver.
Its lips peeled back in a silent snarl.
Luna's own lips parted on a sharp inhale.
"…oh," she breathed.
The scent hit her fully now—sharp, wild, predator-not-wolf. Under it, a sour note of old fear and the ripe, heavy smell of infection just beginning.
A trap, she realized.
There, half-hidden under snow and leaf-mold, lay the cruel gleam of rusted metal teeth.
They had snapped shut around the fox's lower leg, crushing flesh and bone. Blood had frozen in stiff, blackish clumps around the wound; fresher red oozed sluggishly where movement had broken scabs.
Anger flared, instant and white-hot.
Traps.
Wolves used them.
Humans.
Rogues.
She didn't know who had laid this one, only that it was too heavy for the fox to drag and too cruel to leave.
The fox let out another low growl, weaker this time.
In it, she heard not threat, but warning. Stay back. I bite.
Her wolf bristled in sympathy.
*Trapped.* it hissed. *Pain. Teeth in leg.*
Luna knew that feeling in her own way—different teeth, different traps. Memories of corners, of voices, of being held in place by words sharper than any metal.
The ember—no, the storm—inside her stirred.
Not with lightning.
With something… softer.
She dropped into a crouch several paces away, hands open, palms out.
"I'm not going to hurt you," she said softly. "I swear it."
The fox bared its teeth anyway.
It tried to scramble backwards, but the trap held it fast. The effort tore more flesh. It yelped, high and raw.
Luna flinched as if struck.
"All right, all right," she murmured. "No more moving. Just… breathe."
The words came out of her without thought.
Her own breath slowed as she spoke them.
The fox's ragged panting stayed fast, but its eyes, while still wild, lost a fraction of their glassy, panic-bright sheen.
She inched closer.
Two steps.
Three.
Each movement was painfully slow.
"Good," she whispered. "Good, clever thing. Just lie still. Let me see."
Her hand trembled as she set her pack down.
The knife at her belt felt heavier than usual.
She would need it to pry the trap's jaws apart.
The thought of pushing metal into already-ruined flesh made her stomach twist.
"Goddess," she breathed. "If there's any favor left in You for me today, I'll take it now."
The wind shifted.
Cold brushed her cheek, but there was a faint, familiar tingle in it—like the lightest touch of moonlight through cloud.
Her heart steadied.
She sidled the last few steps to the fox and knelt beside the trap.
Up close, the wound was worse.
Bone gleamed white in one place.
Torn muscle pulsed sluggishly beneath, dark and wet.
The smell burned her nose.
Her vision blurred for a second.
She swallowed around the urge to gag.
The fox's body trembled subtly under its matted fur.
"Hey," she murmured. "Hey, look at me."
She extended her empty left hand, keeping the knife low and out of the fox's direct line of sight.
Slowly, it turned its head.
Teeth still bared.
Ears flattened.
Its gaze met hers again.
Up close, she could see the faint rings of darker color near the pupils. A tiny notch missing from one ear. A scar over the bridge of its muzzle.
Not a pup.
Not a stranger to pain.
"You're not new at this," she whispered. "You've survived worse, hmm?"
Her wolf settled fractionally.
Recognition.
Predator to predator.
"I'm going to touch your leg," she went on, voice barely above a whisper. "It's going to hurt more for a minute. Then… maybe less. If I can do this."
If.
Doubt whispered.
She shut it down.
Her right hand—stormhand now—would be the one to ease.
Her left would deal with iron.
She shifted her weight carefully and set the fingers of her left hand on the trap's thick spring.
Rust flaked under her skin.
Old blood stained the metal.
The jaws were half-buried in slush; she brushed the worst away, hissing when her fingertips brushed the fox's mangled flesh.
The fox's muscles bunched.
Its lips peeled back, a warning growl rattling in its throat.
"I know," she whispered, almost hissing back in sympathy. "I know, I'm sorry."
She looked at the mechanism.
Old.
Stiff.
Not meant to open easily once sprung.
Someone had sunk stones around it to hold it in place, to keep struggling prey from ripping it free.
She'd have to force it.
Her fingers flexed on the spring.
The metal did not budge.
Even with her full weight, it would take effort.
She glanced down at her right hand.
Those fingers still remembered how lightning felt.
She could not blast.
That would fry flesh and bone both.
But maybe…
The stormthread stirred, curious.
She reached for it tentatively.
"Not for breaking," she thought toward it. "For easing. For *softening.*"
It flickered in her blood.
Uncertain.
She directed it not to her fingertips this time, but deeper—to her palm, to the fine network of nerves just under the skin.
Her skin warmed.
Not a crackle.
A slow, steady heat, like a stone set at the edge of a fire and left there.
She placed her right hand, carefully, on the back of the fox's neck.
It flinched.
Snapped.
Teeth clicked shut on empty air, inches from her wrist.
Her wolf snarled inside, but Luna did not pull away.
"Easy," she breathed. "Easy, little hunter. I've got you."
Her thumb, resting just behind one ear, stroked once.
The warmth in her palm seeped into fur.
Skin.
Muscle.
Not burning.
Spreading.
She didn't push power.
She let it seep.
*Soften,* she thought. *Not the bones. The fear.*
Her breath matched the fox's now—still fast, but slowing, a fraction with each inhale.
Her pulse, racing, steadied.
Under her palm, the tremors in the fox's muscles eased, just a little.
Its eyes, still bright, lost some of their frantic edge.
The growl in its throat dropped to a lower, warning rumble.
It was as close to consent as she was going to get.
"All right," she whispered. "All right. Now."
She shifted her focus to her left hand.
Braced her feet.
Then pushed.
The trap's spring resisted, groaning faintly.
She gritted her teeth.
Called a whisper of her power into the muscles of her arm.
Not lightning.
Not wind.
Strength.
The same way she'd asked the earth to hold her on the slope.
"Help," she gasped to metal this time instead of soil. "Just this once. Give."
The rusty jaws creaked.
Moved.
Millimeter by millimeter, they opened.
The fox whined, high and pained, as pressure shifted on shattered bone.
Under Luna's right hand, its neck muscles bunched.
She poured more of that strange, new warmth into her fingers.
"Almost," she rasped. "Almost, I promise."
Every heartbeat was an eternity.
Her left hand screamed with effort.
Her wrist shook.
The stormthread wanted to leap—not into metal, but into sky.
She held it, teeth grinding.
Finally, with a harsh, scraping sound, the trap's jaws gaped just wide enough.
The fox yanked its leg free on pure instinct.
Fresh blood welled, hot and bright, steaming in the cold air.
The fox twisted, body trying to launch itself away.
Luna held firm on its neck, putting as much gentle weight as she dared.
"Stay," she hissed. "You'll tear it worse, you fool—stay."
Shock warred with instinct in the animal's eyes.
Her hand—warm, humming with that not-quite-light not-quite-heat—pressed firm.
Something in the fox's body *recognized* it.
Not as pack.
As… pack-adjacent.
A force older than its fear.
It sagged, a fraction.
Its head dropped to the snow.
Luna exhaled shakily.
The trap snapped fully open with a clang as she let the spring go.
The sound rang against the surrounding trees, bouncing, harsh.
The fox flinched.
So did she.
Silence rushed in afterward, heavy and close.
The leg was free.
But ruined.
Torn flesh gaped.
Shattered bone jutted white.
Already, blood seeping into the snow turned it a dark, ugly red.
"There," Luna whispered. "There. Free. Free, you hear me?"
The word echoed oddly in her own head.
Free.
The fox's chest still heaved.
Its eyes squeezed shut briefly, then opened again.
Pain etched its entire body.
Luna swallowed bile.
If she walked away now, it would bleed out slowly.
Or some larger predator would come and finish what the trap had started.
She lifted her hand slightly.
Electric warmth still pulsed under her palm.
A thought slipped in, unbidden:
*What if you could do more than just hold?*
Her human mind balked.
Power had always been destruction, in other wolves' stories.
Ulfs with fire in their veins burning enemies.
Alphas with earth at their call cracking ground.
The few tales of healers were soft things, almost forgotten. Old myths.
Her own pack had had no true healer. Just omegas with good herbs and good hands.
But the Moonstone Grove had shown her a different side of power.
Gentle.
Amplifying.
And hadn't the Goddess said, when the storm mark sank into her bones, that storms could *feed* as well as fell?
Lightning shocked hearts back into rhythm, some of the oldest human tales said.
What if that current in her didn't only know how to burn?
"What are you waiting for?" she muttered to herself, not taking her hand from the fox's neck. "Permission?"
A faint sense brushed her awareness then.
Not the full, focused weight of the Goddess' presence at the grove or in the stone basin.
A thinner thread.
Approval.
*Try,* it seemed to say.
Her heart thumped hard.
"All right," she whispered to the fox. "One more thing. Then I'm done, I swear."
She slid her right hand slowly, carefully, from the fox's neck down along its side.
It tensed.
But the warmth followed her fingers, leaving a trail of faint relaxation in its wake.
She stopped just above the ruined leg.
Heat radiated from the wound already—fever-sparks of infection taking root.
She hovered, not quite touching torn flesh.
"You're not… going to like this," she murmured. "But maybe you'll like what comes after."
She called to the stormthread again.
It rose, curious.
She did not call lightning.
She did not call thunder.
She called *pulse.*
The steady, rhythmic throb of her own heart.
The slow, deep beat of the earth's hum she'd felt in the grove.
She imagined that beat moving through her arm, into her hand.
Into the torn place.
"Not burn," she thought fiercely at the power. "*Mend.* Not scorch. Seal. Knit. Remember the shape before it broke."
The warmth in her palm intensified.
Not blistering.
Deep.
Her skin tingled.
Her bones ached, a little, as if in sympathy.
Under her hovering hand, the blood's bright flow… slowed.
Not stopped.
Thickened.
Her breath caught.
The fox let out a high, keening sound, legs twitching.
Luna almost jerked back.
"Wait," she gasped. "Wait. Please—"
She pushed more of the pulse-pattern into the air above the wound.
Her vision narrowed.
The rest of the forest faded.
There was only her hand, the fox's leg, the ragged edges of flesh.
At first, nothing visible happened.
Then, slowly, the edges of the torn skin stopped gaping wider.
Blood beaded, then drew back, like small, reluctant creatures crawling toward home.
Tiny, trembling threads—so thin she might have imagined them—spun between the torn places, like cobwebs made of pale light.
They sank out of sight beneath fur and blood.
Her entire arm shook with the effort.
Her head pounded.
Her stomach churned.
She kept going.
Only when blackness crept in at the edges of her vision did she let the flow ease.
She sagged, catching herself on her other hand.
Her chest heaved.
Her skin felt too tight, too hot and cold all at once.
"Enough," she rasped. Maybe to herself. Maybe to the power.
Reluctantly, it cooled.
Sank back to its usual, watchful hum.
The world came into focus again, piece by piece.
Trees.
Snow.
Her own harsh breathing.
The fox's.
She dared a look at the leg.
It was still ruin.
Not miraculously whole, as in the old tales.
Bone still jutted, though a little less starkly.
The bleeding had almost stopped, thick clots damming the worst of it.
The raw edges of flesh seemed… less angry. Less open.
Faintly, maybe, the smallest bit… drawn together.
It was not a miracle.
But it was something.
The fox's eyes blinked slowly.
Its panting had eased.
It no longer thrashed.
Exhaustion had settled over its frame like a heavy blanket.
Luna's own exhaustion matched.
She let her hand drop to the snow, fingers splayed.
Her palm throbbed as if she'd held hot coals too long.
"Okay," she said on a shaking exhale. "Okay. That's… that's all I've got. The rest is yours."
The fox watched her for a long moment.
Then, with an effort that made every muscle in its small body stand out, it rolled onto its stomach.
It pushed itself up on three legs, the ruined one held gingerly off the ground.
It wobbled.
Luna's hands twitched up, instinctively ready to steady it.
She froze, not wanting to add more fear.
The fox stayed upright.
It took one hop.
Swayed.
Paused.
Then another.
Slowly, with halting, awkward movements, it limped away from the trap, away from the blood-stained snow, toward the shelter of the underbrush.
At the edge of the hollow, it stopped.
Looked back over its shoulder.
Gold-brown eyes met Luna's once more.
Something passed between them.
Not gratitude in the human sense.
Recognition, perhaps, of a strange, two-legged wolf who had smelled like storm and stone and not like the iron-toothed thing that had crushed its leg.
Then it vanished into the scrub, tail a ragged blur.
Luna sagged where she knelt, letting herself sink to sit in the snow.
Tremors shook her arms.
Her heart pounded in her throat.
"What," she whispered to the empty air, "was *that?*"
The faint thread of the Goddess' presence thickened a little, like a hand pressing lightly against her back.
"Remembrance," the Goddess' voice murmured, brushing the edges of Luna's thoughts. "Healing is not a new gift. It is one your kind forgot how to ask for."
Luna let out a short, disbelieving laugh that wobbled on the edge of a sob.
"I just… I thought I was going to… cauterize," she said. "Or make it worse. Or—"
"You *felt,*" the Goddess interrupted gently. "You did not demand. You did not grab. You listened to the wound as much as to your fear. That is the first craft of healing."
Luna pressed her hands to her thighs to still the shaking.
Memory washed over her in a wave—not of what she'd just done, but of old stories.
Half-heard tales from elders about Seers whose touch could cool fevers. Rumors of ancient packs who had kept one wolf whose only job was to mend what battles broke.
They had always sounded like fairy tales.
Everyone knew real wolves healed with time and herbs and rest, not with glow and hands.
"Why is it… forgotten?" she asked, voice low. "If it was… real once. Why didn't Moonshadow have anyone like that? Why didn't *any* pack I ever heard of?"
The Goddess' presence dimmed slightly, as if shading Her eyes.
"Because power that mends is power that can choose not to," She said. "Too many who held it were claimed by others as tools. Forced to heal only certain wounds. Forbidden from touching others."
A heaviness entered Her voice, an old sorrow.
"Some refused that leash and were feared," She went on. "Better, it was thought, to forget that such a thing existed than to let it be twisted. So packs turned to poultices and clean water and called it enough. And when My healers died, no one asked Me to make new ones."
Luna's stomach knotted.
"So You—" The thought made her throat tighten. "You gave up on it?"
"No," the Goddess said, firm. "I do not give up on My children. But I do not push gifts on those who will not carry them with care. I waited until a wolf came who knew what it meant to be used as a tool. Who would never place another in that place if she could help it."
Silence stretched.
Cold air burned Luna's lungs.
"You mean me," she said, unnecessarily.
A whisper of wry amusement brushed her mind.
"Yes, Stormcaller," the Goddess said. "I mean you. Did you think your hands were only meant to crack stone and call flame?"
Luna's gaze dropped to those hands.
The right still tingled.
The lines of her palms looked the same—callused from work, scarred in small, pale lines from burns and cuts.
But under the skin now lay more than lightning.
She flexed her fingers slowly.
"I don't know how to… do it again," she admitted. "I didn't even know what I was doing. I just… *asked.*"
"Asking is the start of most true magic," the Goddess replied. "You will not knit bone back to perfection with a single thought. That is not My way, nor the world's. But you can nudge. You can pour strength into tired blood. You can slow a bleeding long enough for a wolf to see another dawn. You can ease pain when there is no other easing."
Images flickered in Luna's mind unbidden: a warrior on a battlefield, flank ripped open, eyes clouding. Her hand on his wound, warmth seeping in. A pup feverish and panting, breath coming too fast. Her fingers on a tiny forehead, heat drawing out into her own bones.
Her own bones ached in sympathy with those phantom aches.
"Will it… hurt me?" she asked, small. "Every time I… give… like that?"
"Yes," the Goddess said, without hesitation. "Healing takes as well as gives. You felt it just now. Tiredness. Ache. That is the cost. You will need to learn when you can afford to spend yourself and when you must hold back."
Luna swallowed.
A strange, fierce protectiveness rose in her chest.
Not for herself.
For whoever might one day lie under her hands.
"I won't be… their door," she said, voice thick. "The packs. The Alphas. I won't be… something they stand behind while I pour myself out for whoever they choose."
"Yes," the Goddess said softly. "That is why the gift woke in you now, and not in some well-fed wolf behind stone walls. You have learned the price of being taken for granted."
A bitter laugh caught in Luna's throat.
"Moonshadow would have used this until I dropped," she whispered. "And called it honor. Called it *my duty.*"
"They still might try," the Goddess warned. "When they see. When they understand."
Luna's jaw clenched.
"Then they'll learn," she said quietly, "that my hands close as well as open."
Pride hummed faintly in the Goddess' nearness.
"You are storm and salve both," She said. "They will not know what to do with that. Good."
Snowflakes began to fall, soft and slow.
One landed on Luna's knuckles.
Melted almost instantly against the lingering warmth.
She lifted her hands and looked at them again.
"I didn't… even think," she murmured. "I just saw something hurting and—"
"And you moved," the Goddess finished. "Not to strike. To mend. Remember that instinct when blood runs thicker and voices scream louder. There will be moments when the easier path will be to let someone fall because of what they did or did not do. Sometimes that is justice. Sometimes—it is old hurt in a new coat."
Old hurt.
Her mind skittered, unbidden, to Selene.
To the other omegas who had averted their eyes.
To Elia's rough kindness.
To Orion, standing proud and choosing stone over her.
If one of them lay bleeding at her feet one day—
Her gut twisted.
Her wolf snarled, confused.
"If they've been… cruel," she whispered, "if they've done nothing while pups starve and wolves are thrown out—"
"You will decide," the Goddess said. "Not Me. That is the burden and blessing of free will. I can nudge. I can name. I cannot force your hand without unmaking what you are."
Luna clenched those hands into fists.
Opened them again.
"I don't want to become what hurt me," she said.
"Then you won't," the Goddess replied, as if it were that simple.
Maybe, in some ways, it was.
Every choice a small step away from that cliff.
The faint presence faded again, withdrawing like a tide.
Luna was left with the trap's rusted teeth, the churned, blood-black snow, and the echo of the fox's limp.
She pushed herself upright, legs protesting.
Her head still swam faintly from the use of power.
She knew she should move.
Find shelter before snow thickened.
But the metal gleam in the ground drew her eye.
She stared at the trap.
At its cruel design.
At the stones bracing it.
Anger flared anew.
"How many?" she asked the woods around her, voice shaking. "How many of you have bled here while whoever set this went home to a warm den?"
There was no answer.
Only the quiet hiss of new snow dusting old blood.
Luna stepped forward.
Her stormhand tingled, eager to crack, to snap metal.
She did not call lightning.
She did not need to.
She braced her boot on one jaw and pushed with both hands on the other, using leverage and all the mundane strength left in her.
The trap bent.
Not much.
Just enough.
She grunted, teeth gritted, as rusted hinges screamed.
One of the teeth warped.
Another snapped.
It wouldn't be catching anything cleanly again.
She kicked it once for good measure, sending it skidding under the crumbling log.
"Enough," she muttered at iron, as if it could hear her. "No more."
Her hands ached.
Her wrists burned.
She flexed them, breath ghosting white.
As she walked away, she kept her senses open.
Watching.
Listening.
Not just for threats now.
For hurts.
Her healing, whatever it was, would not knit traps out of existence.
It wouldn't stop curses from creeping or shadows from whispering.
But it was something.
A counterweight.
A choice.
She followed the faint track of the fox's limping trail for a while, making sure no new blood marked the snow too heavily.
It was clumsy, three-legged, but nimble enough to weave itself into a thicket where larger predators would hesitate to follow.
Satisfied—mostly—she turned back toward her own wandering path.
Snow thickened as evening approached, falling in a steady, gentle curtain.
She walked with her hood up, face turned toward the dim line of horizon.
Her thoughts kept circling back to her hands.
Destruction in one.
Comfort in the same.
She flexed her fingers.
Lightning and warmth answered, both.
"All right," she said softly to the storm in her blood and the new, fragile thread of healing. "We're going to have to learn to share."
Her wolf snorted in agreement.
*Teeth and tongue.* it said. *Bite and lick. Pack is both.*
She smiled despite herself.
"Yes," she murmured. "Pack is both."
She was still packless.
Her bed was still whatever hollow she found.
The road ahead still long and cold and shadowed by curses.
But that afternoon, crouched over a bleeding fox and feeling the world shift under her palms, Luna had touched something she had never expected.
Power that did not burn or break.
Power that remembered.
She tucked that revelation into her chest, alongside her loneliness and her new stormgift, and walked on into the snow, a forgotten healer learning, step by step, how to use her hands for more than just clawing her way through.