"Five minutes," Dove said. "Just until I stop feeling like he’s about to come around the corner."
Kael sat on the crate outside the sleeping tarp. He left the gap open, exactly as she had asked, and did not fill the silence with assurances he could not prove.
Dove rested her hands on her knees. Red marks circled her wrists, and her shoulder hurt when she moved it too far. She could fix at least some of that with the water. What she wanted first was to stop explaining why it mattered.
"Does that happen often?" she asked. "Men losing control and everyone deciding the nearest woman caused it?"
"Ruts happen. Grabbing someone who refuses isn’t a rule you’re supposed to accept. Thorne should have stayed away from the occupied passages."
"Ash seemed confused about that part."
Kael looked toward the hall, then back at her. "I wasn’t there. I won’t tell you he meant something kinder."
She had not realized she was waiting for that excuse until he failed to give it. Her throat tightened, and she looked down at the blanket instead of letting him see how much the answer had helped.
He checked her shoulder only after she agreed. The examination stayed practical. He asked where it hurt and stopped when she told him to. She did not have to turn refusal into a little performance to keep him listening.
"Tell me if the pain changes," he said when he finished. "You don’t need to come through the wash bend alone to find me. Call from the hall."
"You can’t escort me every time I need a tap."
"No. I have patients. But I can make sure you know a route where people can see you."
He pointed toward the public wash entrance off the hall. The nearer taps could be reached through the benches there instead of taking the service bend behind the column. It meant passing more people, which she would have disliked yesterday. Today she listened carefully and repeated the route, refusing to let embarrassment keep useful information out of her head.
She liked him a little more for not pretending he could abandon everything to become her personal wall. She still wanted a wall, preferably with hinges, but it would be unpleasant if hers had other patients waiting.
Varek stopped at the counter and stayed outside. Ash had ordered Thorne kept in his outer quarters until the rut passed, with another enforcer covering his duties. The guard delivered that information without offering an opinion on it.
"He isn’t assigned near this stall," Varek added. "Report it if he comes here."
Dove nodded. It was a measure she could use, even if it arrived without anyone admitting she had deserved to be heard.
Varek also brought tomorrow’s instruction. Ash would inspect her stock at midday and question her about its source. She was to keep the common passage clear during it, as usual.
"Lovely," she said. "I was worried tomorrow might develop a personality of its own."
The guard left, and Kael looked at the neatly written list of goods. "Do you have an answer for him?"
"One he’ll like? Probably not. I can show what I own. That’s all I’m promising."
Kael did not press. He had already stayed longer than five minutes, and a man from the clinic appeared at the hall entrance looking for him. Dove told him to go before he had to ask whether leaving would upset her.
He stood, then paused at the gap. "You asked me to wait. You didn’t do anything wrong by asking."
"Thanks for not making it weird."
Before deciding what she could afford, Dove asked Sprout for her balance. It showed the plain record: two coins for Kael’s surprise. Sixty-two in total. She closed it, glad she did not have to read some cheery assessment of their chances of breeding.
After he left, she sat alone for a while. Her body was beginning to settle, but the quiet did not feel restful yet. She wanted coffee, a long shower, and one person who would hear her old name without thinking of someone else.
She could afford one small part of that. Not the coffee, unfortunately. The universe remained deeply committed to that particular insult.
Behind the pinned tarp, Dove entered the space and filled her personal bottle with healing water. She returned, poured a little into her palm, and dabbed it over the sore marks on her wrists and shoulder. The pain eased, then the redness faded.
She waited, testing the movement carefully. The water had helped her skin and soreness. It had not made her want to see Thorne again, and she did not owe it that kind of miracle.
The bottle went back with her personal things. She paid fifty coins for shampoo, leaving twelve, then held the ordinary plastic bottle for longer than the purchase needed.
Nobody else had bought it for her. Nobody could call it a courtship gift. She had budgeted, traded, lost things, and still reached a point where she could choose a comfort that did not keep anyone alive.
She wanted that to be enough of a reason.
Before the evening meal, she called the salvage keeper over from his counter across the hall. They measured the gap and agreed on one pair of thick socks for a panel, hinges, an inner latch, and fitting the next morning. No payment changed hands yet. Dove put the agreement with Varek’s permission so she could check both before accepting the work.
Later, she asked the attendant collecting meal bowls to watch the stall entrance while she took a short wash turn. He could wait during the regular collection, he said, but not beyond it. She accepted the limit and put every sale item inside the space before leaving.
She used the occupied route Kael had shown her, stayed within hearing of the hall, and washed behind the screen at the heated taps. The shampoo smelled clean and ordinary. For a moment, with her eyes closed and her fingers working through her hair, she could almost believe she was getting ready for a shift she would complain about later.
Then her tail knocked the basin, and she was here again. Dove steadied it before the water spilled and kept washing, because remembering what she had lost did not mean she had to waste what she had.
Back at the stall, she thanked the attendant and pinned the tarp shut. Her clean hair lay damp over the blanket while she checked tomorrow’s inspection time on the paper Varek had left.
Ash wanted to count her stock. Every piece of it was sitting on shelves inside her head, and she had until midday to decide how much of the truth she could survive telling him.