Why hadn't he listened? The signs had been wrong. A flock of dark birds had crossed his path, a known omen of bad luck. A portent of negativity that Merrick would soon pay for. He'd ignored those signs against his better judgement to go out and hunt. Why? Because he hadn't killed something in a while and staying in territory was driving him crazy. So he left, striking out on his own now that Relm was a blemish to his sight. He had no friends or acquaintances that he might take with him. That would prove to be his undoing.

Merrick had caught the scent of elk and had followed it off into the winter snows of the north. An elk wasn't ideal to drag back, but he could bring a bit of it. A haunch, if anything. While the black and purple brute had been murdering an elk cow, an angry bull had run up on him, goring the wolf and losing its antler in the process. The sudden lack of rack had frightened the young bull and it fled quickly, along with the cow that he knew would die of blood loss.

There was a hole in Merrick's side and blood poured from the wound. Curling his neck, he noted that strange bits of pink were hanging out, so he pushed them back inside. Casting his gaze about, the brute found some vines which he wrapped around his body to cover the hole. Then... he made the long trek back to Elysium.

Many times during his journey, Merrick didn't think that he was going to make it. His body was bruised and he knew that a tine or two of the elks antlers had snapped off within his body. He could feel them grinding against his ribs. He'd suffered from a tremendous amount of blood loss, leaving a swath of red across the northern snows. Like a ghost he padded along, head drooping, eyes constantly drifting shut. Eventually the wounded man's mismatched eyes lit upon the land bridge. He tried to make it across, but it was as though seeing home had taken the last of his strength. Collapsing to the ground, Merrick let out one choked howl with the last of his energy, then placed his cheek in the sand.

"Merrick Mendacium"

Keelin didn't always expect Merrick to come home each and every night, but it was pretty uncharacteristic of him to not return after a day or two, especially unannounced like this. The first night she hadn't thought much about it, but as they got into the second day with still no word she started to get a little concerned. It was strange, feeling this kind of worry over someone who had once just been her owner and nothing more, but since they left the ship and she had gotten to see different sides of him outside of what she had experienced around the other slavers she had slowly grown more and more attached to him. He was a sadist and an asshole, but he was her sadist and asshole and the cave felt too empty without him.

She just had a feeling that something was wrong. She couldn't really explain why, she just did. Keelin packed small satchel with some healing supplies that she had kept around from their various travels and then headed out to see if she could track him down. Maybe she wasn't the best wolf for the job, but if she didn't find him right away then she'd come back and get his sister perhaps to help her hunt him down. However, she didn't get far on her search because as soon as she started nearing the side of the island that had the land bridge that would take her to the main land she heard a struggling howl that made her fur stand on end and a chill of dread run over her skin. "Merrick...?!" she gasped softly before she took off running in the direction of the howl, the satchel around her neck streaming out behind her.

When she reached the shore she spotted the large form of his violet and black marked body laying on the sand of the land bridge and her heart sank, silently cursing herself for not worrying about him sooner. He usually seemed so invincible that the idea of anything taking him down almost seemed absurd, but here they were. She noticed that the howl had caught the attention of a couple of other pack members that had started to hurry toward the land bridge as well and she waved them forward, rushing them to his side. She reached him first and made a couple of futile attempts and getting him up by nudging lifting his head and neck, muttering, "Don't you fucking die on me now..." Luckily the brutes that came to check out what was going on were able to lift him and she guided them back to their den so she could get him patched up—or at least she hoped she could. On the way she felt for his pulse and it was almost too weak for her to find and she took a peak at the wound that he had crudely covered in vines and she didn't like what she saw.

Once the males got him into their cave and laid him down on the furs there she shooed them out so she could work, rushing around the cave to gather up her supplies. A bowl of clean water, a sea sponge she had cleaned and dried, a thin needle made from bone, long horse hair for the stitches, and every herb and extract she had on hand, all set up around where he was laying within moments. "You fucking idiot, what did you get into this time, gods damn it..." she muttered to herself under her breath as she worked. She could see the rise and fall of his chest, but it was shallow and labored and didn't give her confidence in his current condition. A bit afraid of what she was going to find, she picked up a small bone knife and started cutting away the vines he had tied around himself and as soon as they were peeled away and the pressure they had been putting on the large wound across his gut was relived a part of his intestine slipped free and a bit of panic gripped her chest.

Taking a shaky breath, she mixed some trillium extract into the water before soaking her sponge with it and beginning to clean the wound carefully, removing all the dried blood from around the edges and cleaning off any dirt and plant matter the vine might have left behind. She also started carefully applying a thick, concentrated paste of yarrow along the torn edges of the skin to help prevent them from bleeding any more. As she was trying to decipher what could have caused this she noticed something poking from the edge of the wound and she pulled it out, finding a tine of an elk antler. She frowned deeply, her brows pulling together as she started gently and carefully feeling across his side, and gently lifting the skin to try and find any more. She certainly didn't want to sew him up with elk antler caught up inside of him.

"Keelin"

Merrick was unconscious. He didn't remember being taken to the den. He didn't remember Keelin cursing at him, but he would have found it amusing if he had. A reflexive growl pulled from the injured giant as he was moved, but his lids never lifted. His body wouldn't allow it. It needed every ounce of energy to keep him alive and being awake would have pushed him over the edge. The man was on the brink; closer than his soul had ever been to rejoining his ancestors. It teetered there and the barest gust of wind could sent him careening over the precipice to sweet oblivion.

The bull that had gored him had left some souvenirs. Keelin had found one, but there was another lodged right next to one of the man's ribs. As the vines came loose and the pressure against his side lessened, that tine rubbed up against his innards and the man groaned, lids fluttering for a moment. A visceral reaction, purely involuntary. He had no idea what was going on. His fate was in the paws of someone who had every right to kill him. Every right to let him die after all of the abuse that he'd put her through over the years.

"Merrick Mendacium"

As Keelin worked she heard Merrick give a quiet groan and she glanced to see his eye lids fluttering, holding still for a moment as she prepared to stop him from moving if he did manage to wake up, but after a moment he fell quiet and still again other than his shallow breathing so she went on about her work, hurrying to get him closed up as soon as possible. She held her breath as she leaned down to be able to see into the wound a bit better and peeled back a portion of his skin to get to the piece of antler that had been buried deeper than the first. Her dexterous toes very carefully caught the end of the tine and when she pulled it out she did it slow and gently so that it wouldn't scrape or damage anything else internally than it already had. She let out a sigh with the breath she had been holding and dropped the bloody piece of antler off to the side before she peeked around a bit more, ensuring there was just the two pieces before she moved on to anything else. She used the trillium laced water to finish rinsing out the wound to clean it as best as she could before finally reaching for her needle and thread.

She was forced to very gently place his intestine back where it should be and then held the skin closed while she started binding the two edges together using steady and practiced passes of the thin sliver of bone. She had stitched him up countless times before, but it had never been anything this serious or intense. A bad cut here, a nasty bite there, but a huge wound like this big enough for his guts to be spilling out of his belly... This was more than she was fully confident that she was reasonably able to treat, but she had to try. There wasn't time to go looking for a different healer. Time was very much of the essence and she had to save him. Never once did the thought cross her mind that she could have just let him die, that maybe he deserved it for how she had been treated, that this was really her chance at a real freedom, to not have to carry his children or play the role of his mate. She didn't want any of that. She wanted Merrick to survive so that they could keep living this life she had grown to enjoy.

Once she had made one pass down the length of the wound she doubled back and made a second row of slanted stitches over the wound. It would likely make a thick scar once it healed, but that felt like fair trade to make sure this didn't kill him. Once the stitches were in place she sat back a bit and gathered some some dandelion root, marigold, and the little bit of marshmallow she had, crushing them together with a bit of water to make a thick ointment. With one toe she carefully painted it across the wound, pressing it in gently around the stitches to make sure they didn't get infected and help keep down some of the inevitable inflammation. The last thing she did was take some sticky horsetail and make one last seal over the whole wound and use some almost like hair gel to press back his fur around the wound to keep it out of the way. With that done she sat back, falling onto her haunches with a heavy, shaky sigh. Her paws were bloody and covered in various herbs and concoctions, her toes ached from pushing the needle though his skin, and her nerves were fried from the pressure she had suddenly been placed under, but she felt like she had done all she could possibly do.

She went and washed off her paws, gathering up all the remnants of her work and placing them in a pile on the other side of the den, including the pieces of antler she had retrieved from his chest cavity, and then turned back to Merrick. She leaned down and placed her ear on his chest, listening to his heart beat and his breathing for a few moments. He wasn't out of the woods by any stretch, but at least his guts were contained once more. She quietly laid down beside him, resting her head on her paws while she watched his face, waiting and hoping that he would pull back from this and wake up sooner rather than later, still occasionally muttering a frustrated and exasperated curse under her breath while she waited. Her paw absently fiddled with the long, deadly talons on his massive paw after a while, but her ruby gaze never left his face.

"Keelin"

The violet man didn't feel as the brindled woman pushed his guts back into place and stitched him shut. He hadn't felt when she plucked the elk tines from his body either. Merrick didn't feel anything and it was probably a good thing. The only thing he did feel was when a paw began to fidget with his talons. How did he feel that and not his intestines being replaced? Who knew? He felt it though and the brute's mismatched eyes slowly drifted open.

A groan pulled from the man and he blinked his eyes. It felt like they were full of sand. So did his throat, for that matter. Merrick coughed and the tightening of his belly as he did so brought a white hot flare of pain throughout his entire body. It sucked the air right from his lungs and a loud gasp followed. He tried hard to stay still, but his chest rose and fell rather quickly as he worked his way through the pain. An uncharacteristic whine pulled from the brute's tight throat and he rested his head back against the furs once more.

"Kee...Keelin," he choked out, still rather delirious from blood loss and pain. His throat was so, so dry. What had happened? Merrick vaguely remembered his trek back to Elysium, but he wasn't sure if the injuries had been real. Lifting his head again, the man looked down at his side, noting the sutures and the slicked back fur around the wounds. He groaned again, gently putting his head back down. What a fucking mess. As soon as he was healed, he was going to murder every elk that he could get his paws on. That was a promise.

"Merrick Mendacium"

Keelin's steady, gentle stroking over his claws stopped when she noticed his eyes start to open, her breath catching with the overwhelming wave of relief. With the trauma and the blood loss that he had gone through she had almost been afraid that he had ended up in some kind of coma, but luckily that didn't seem to be the case. He had gotten very, very lucky in so many ways today. She started to get up and was about to warn him against trying to move when he coughed and set off a chain reaction of reactions from his side contracting and aggravating his still very tender wound. She winced and went back over to her supplies while he struggled through the pain for a moment. Gathering up a few more things to use now that he was awake, she was back at his side by the time he was struggling to say her name.

"Shhh, I'm right here," she told him as she sat down by his head. She laid out a couple of vials of various medicines, but before she got to any of those she took a rolled up fur and gently lifted his head to place the makeshift pillow under him to raise his head up a bit and then pulled the cap off of a water skin. She held it to his lips for him, letting him get a drink before she put that aside again. She very well knew that he was going to have a long recovery ahead of him from this, but the fact that he was alive and awake was such a relief that she almost couldn't believe it. Her paw gently stroked over the top of his head in a rare moment of tender affection, her toes grazing his ear as she muttered, "You fucking reckless idiot... You scared me half to death."

She sighed and reached for the vials she had brought over. "Open your mouth." She wasn't going to fuss around with convincing him or asking. This was for his own good whether he liked it or not. She gave him a dose of a wintergreen extract, dripping maybe a half dozen drops on his tongue before she had him swallow. "We'll start with that and see how the pain feels once it kicks in," she told him. It was quite concentrated so she didn't want to give him too much. She kept the other vial aside for now, waiting to see if she would need it or not. She wanted him to get some more rest, but he might be able to just go back to sleep on his own once the pain dissipated a bit. She gave him another drink of water before she settled down onto her stomach, her ears flicking back a bit as she stroked over the shorter fur on the top of his head again, feeling the soft black and lavender fur under her paw pads.

"Keelin"