The first thing Dove learned about the Warren was that being carried inside did not make her welcome. The second was that the man called Kael had warmer hands than his expression suggested.
Ash laid her on a narrow cot in a room off the main tunnel. A lamp stood on an upturned bucket, lighting shelves of folded cloth and mismatched bottles. Beyond a hanging blanket, somebody coughed until they had to stop for breath.
"Where did you find her?" Kael asked. Silver-gray ears turned toward Ash while his amber eyes stayed on Dove.
"At the entrance, alone. She says she came from Cleveland."
Kael paused over the blanket he was unfolding. "Recently?"
"Apparently with a truck involved. Find out whether she’s hurt."
"You could ask me," Dove said, although the words shook enough to spoil the effect. "I’m right here. Unfortunately, so is most of my chest."
Kael covered her before he asked another question. Two coins registered as surprise, bringing the balance to ten. Dove watched the number fade, wondering how much louder she would have to complain before she could afford socks.
"I’m going to check your hands," he said. "Can you tell me where it hurts?"
"Everywhere is making a strong case. My feet are winning."
He examined her while Ash remained near the door. Dove answered what she could, including the scraped palm, but when Kael asked how she had lost her boots, she had nothing to give him. She remembered the snow and the thin dress. Anything before that belonged to a different life.
"She stays here tonight," Kael said at last. "I need her warm and resting before I can tell you more."
Ash looked at Dove rather than the healer. "Don’t leave this room. If you remember who brought you, tell him."
He went before she could explain that she had no plans to tour the premises barefoot. His coat brushed the doorway, and the guard outside moved aside for him without being asked.
Sprout chose that moment to announce the completed shelter quest. Ten reward coins increased her balance to twenty, and the promised warming aid appeared in the menu as a single-use patch. The directions said to activate it against clothing near her upper body. It offered warmth, not healing.
Could you have mentioned the free patch before the hot asshole carried me in? she asked silently.
"You had not completed the objective," Sprout replied. "Your assessment of the male has been noted."
She closed the message with a thought. That worked, which was the first useful thing the system had allowed without charging her.
Kael fetched dry clothes from a shelf. His sleeves were rolled above strong forearms, and loose silver hair brushed the bare skin at his neck. Dove looked away from his hands before her exhausted brain could invent another problem involving a man. She needed the clothes he was carrying much more than she needed to appreciate his wrists.
"The dress needs to come off," he said. "Can you manage, or do you need help?"
"I can try. Is there somewhere private?"
He glanced toward the spare blanket on the neighboring cot. "For changing, yes. Give me a moment."
He hooked it between two upright supports, checked the gap at one side, and put the clothes within reach. Then he moved to the coughing patient beyond the other screen. He did not wait for her to thank him, and she was grateful that he had left before she had to work out what her face was doing.
The shirt smelled faintly of smoke but felt dry. Dove struggled out of the dress beneath her covering, working slowly when her fingers would not grip. The pants had ties at the back to fit around a tail. She discovered this only after trying to pull hers through a leg opening and briefly losing the will to participate.
"An instruction label would have killed you?" she muttered, and eased the fabric into place.
The warming patch appeared in her palm when she claimed it. She fixed it against the shirt beneath her blanket, following the displayed directions, and let herself sit still as the warmth began to spread. Outside the screen, Kael spoke quietly to his other patient. Water dripped somewhere in the tunnel.
Her old phone would have been in her coat pocket. She reached for it again before remembering, then kept her hand against the borrowed shirt. She could not even check the time where she had come from. The life she understood was still close enough to remember feeling bored in it, and there was no way to reach back.
When Kael returned, he found her sitting with the blanket pulled around her shoulders. "May I move the screen?"
She nodded, then accepted the cup of warm broth he offered. It tasted mostly of salt, and she held it carefully so he would not have to hold it for her.
"What do you remember about Cleveland?" he asked.
"Working in a store. Going home. People with terrible parking habits." She looked at his ears before she could stop herself. "People without those."
Kael followed her gaze. "Without ears?"
"Without wolf ears. Regular ears. Nobody had tails, either."
He set the folded screen aside. "Cleveland had beastmen before the freeze, Dove. The weather didn’t give us our ears. The polar shift was three months ago, not the beginning of the world."
Her hands tightened around the cup. She had hoped, stupidly, that one familiar place name might put the rest of the world back where it belonged. Instead, he had spoken about the city as though it had always existed on the other side of a mistake she could not fix.
"How long was I gone?" she asked.
"Two weeks. What happened out there?"
"I don’t have an answer you’ll like."
"I need an answer that’s true."
She looked into the broth rather than at his face. "Then I don’t know."
He let her finish the cup without questioning her again. Later, after the lamp had been lowered and the used patch had cooled, she heard Ash return to the doorway. Dove kept her eyes closed, too tired to begin another conversation she could not win.
"Can she walk by morning?" he asked.
"I’ll assess her then," Kael replied. "She still needs rest."
"Give her tonight. Tomorrow she gets a room in the women’s passage and someone watching the door. I won’t have another disappearance."
Dove waited until his footsteps faded. A room sounded wonderful. Someone deciding when she could leave it sounded considerably less wonderful, especially when he already seemed to hate everything she said.
She closed her eyes and asked Sprout for the one place Ash could not follow.
Wood appeared beneath her feet, warm and dry. Shelves lined a small stall beside a pool of glowing blue water. For the first time since the truck, Dove felt almost safe.
Then Kael’s voice reached her from somewhere beyond it. "Dove? Why aren’t you answering me?"