Azure had headed directly for his den, his mate and his warm and comfortable bed the moment he'd gotten back into the territory. Riddled with cuts and bruises and missing half an ear, he would ignore all need of medical attention until it were absolutely necessary to avoid adding validity to what Sparrow and her pirates had accomplished. That moment, it had seemed, came much quicker than he had anticipated.

Awakening suddenly, the pain in his ear had grown to a point so painful that he could not ignore it for a second longer. Stumbling out from the bed as carefully as he could and out into the hall, he found Lyre's bedroll, kicked it, and continued silently through the tunnels to the outside. The rest of his wolves should be sleeping and Azure would be damned if he let any pack member lose even a minute of rest over anything those fucking pirates accomplished. Lyre, he assumed, was following dutifully behind, though Azure did not stop to check.

Arriving in the cove where no wolf denned, Azure finally spoke. "Can you fix it?" He presented his maimed ear to her with a tilt of his head, twitching occasionally as the pain and warmth ebbed and grew in sharp sudden stabs. Perhaps it was a mistake to wait so long to see it looked at.

"Speech"

Having been a servant her entire life, Lyre was a light sleeper. When Azure's claws scraped the nearby stone, she was awake. Even as he was kicking the pile of furs that she lay upon, the woman was rising. Without word, she picked up her pack and followed. She could smell the infection in his ear and imagined that this might be the reason for waking her.

Together they walked out to the cove, though they needn't have gone that far. Not unless he had other tasks in mind. Once they stopped, the giant man tilted his head, showing his ravaged ear, and asked if she could fix it. Lyre's brow furrowed. "There's not much left to fix, my king," she spoke softly. "I can clean the infection and bandage the wound, but there's not much else to be done." Nothing would bring his ear back.

Lyre began pulling items from her pack including clean rags, an ointment of her own making and a bottle of hard alcohol that would surely disinfect the wound. Azure was tall and so Lyre cleared her throat, ears pulling back as she made a request of her king. "If you could lay down so that I can reach, I can try to get this over with quickly." Then she waited. If he refused, she'd find a way to get up to his ear to clean it.

"Lyre"

Whatever he'd expected to come out of Lyre's mouth, it wasn't that. Lips pulled back, teeth flashing. "I know that." His paw snapped up, aiming to come down hard upon the side of her snout with the force to knock her off balance (or at least knock the idiocy from her skull). How stupid did the woman think he was, that he expected her to be able to regrow ear tips? Mind muddled from pain, exhaustion and infection, Azure's patience was a very thin line and easily crossed.

Thankfully the offensive words had been quickly followed with an explanation of what she could do - which was, of course, exactly what Az had wanted to begin with - and following his abrupt reprimand, Azure lowered himself to present to her the remnants of his ear. Perhaps with another wolf he'd think twice about putting himself in a vulnerable position below a wolf he'd just struck, but Lyre had quickly earned his trust. The slave had made a stupid comment, that did not make her suicidal. "Quickly, yes." He confirmed coldly.

"Speech"