Aldrien woke up already irritated, though it took him a moment to work out exactly why.
Something felt wrong in a way he couldn’t immediately place, an unfamiliar tenderness that made ordinary movement more complicated than it should have been.
He shifted against the blanket and winced, and reaching for his shirt made it worse.
Hazel noticed almost immediately.
“What’s wrong?”
He gave her a look that suggested she wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Your body is uncomfortable.”
She sat up properly, studying him.
“What do you mean?”
He hesitated, clearly reluctant to specify, but she pressed until he finally admitted it had something to do with his chest, how even the fabric of his shirt felt like more than he wanted to deal with.
Understanding crossed her face almost instantly.
“Oh,” she said.
“What?”
“I think my bleeding days are coming.”
Aldrien went completely silent, processing that for a moment.
“Your what?”
Hazel explained it as simply as she could, that her body tended to get more sensitive in the days leading up to it, everything a little more tender, a little more uncomfortable than usual.
She wasn’t clinical about it, just matter-of-fact, the way someone explains something they’ve dealt with their entire life and never had the luxury of dwelling on.
“And you just continue your day like this?” he asked, genuinely baffled.
She shrugged.
“What else am I supposed to do?”
That landed somewhere he hadn’t expected it to.
He’d spent years assuming, without ever really examining the assumption, that Hazel simply had a tendency toward drama, that she got distracted easily or complained more than the situation called for.
Now he was sitting there feeling exactly one small piece of what she apparently pushed through on a fairly regular basis without a word of complaint, and he found himself considerably more careful with her for the rest of the morning.
“You’re finally experiencing something women deal with.”
He glared at her.
“I don’t need congratulations.”
“You’ve survived ten whole minutes.”
“Barely.”
Her wolf found the entire situation delightful, clearly enjoying every second of Aldrien’s discomfort far more than was strictly necessary.
Aldrien’s own wolf, by contrast, offered no sympathy whatsoever, remaining thoroughly unimpressed by his complaints.
The whole thing stayed light, a bit of teasing that neither of them pushed too far, and eventually they packed up and got moving again.
They reached a small trading settlement by midmorning, the kind of place that existed mostly to serve travelers passing through, and Hazel suggested they find a proper map before continuing any further.
It hadn’t fully occurred to either of them, in the rush of leaving, exactly how little they actually knew about the geography ahead.
The map seller was an older man with ink-stained fingers and shelves full of rolled parchment, and he laid out a detailed map of the continent once Hazel explained what they needed.
Elaria stretched out across the table in faded colors, and he traced their route with a weathered finger as he talked them through it.
They were starting in Blackwood Territory, Aldrien’s northern lands, all forest and mountain and colder air.
From there the Silverroad would carry them south through smaller packs and trading posts toward Pinecrest Territory, Hazel’s homeland, warmer and more fertile, known for its moonstone temples.
Beyond that lay the Wildwood, a forest large enough to swallow whole villages, home to old wolf clans that kept mostly to themselves, and travelers were warned to stay on the marked roads.
Past the Wildwood sat Moonfall Valley, scattered with ancient moonstone ruins, and beyond that, the Veiled Mountains, the last real obstacle standing between them and wherever the Great Priestess actually lived.
“That’s how far we have to go?” Hazel asked, staring at the distance laid out in front of her.
The map seller nodded, explaining that the journey could take several days depending on weather and road conditions, longer if the Wildwood proved difficult to cross.
Aldrien’s expression sobered considerably at that.
This wasn’t a short, symbolic pilgrimage anymore.
They were about to cross a significant portion of the entire continent.
Their first real destination, the Moonstone Shrine of Asterra, sat marked near the edge of the Wildwood, and the map seller’s expression shifted slightly when Hazel pointed to it.
“Haven’t seen a royal couple visit that shrine in decades,” he said. Get faster updates on g.com.
“Why not?” Hazel asked.
He shrugged, folding another map as he answered.
“Old story. Some ritual went wrong there a long time ago. Shrine’s been mostly abandoned since.”
Hazel and Aldrien exchanged a look, neither of them offering any further explanation, and the man didn’t press for one.
It sat there between them anyway, a small thread pulling toward something larger neither of them fully understood yet.
Once they’d purchased the map and stepped back outside, Aldrien was still visibly uncomfortable, and Hazel dug through her bag until she found something that might actually help, offering it to him without much fuss.
He hesitated at first, then took it anyway.
“You deal with this every month?” he asked quietly.
“Most women do,” she said.
He looked at her for a long moment, something settling behind his expression that hadn’t been there before.
“You should have told me.”
“Why?” she asked, a faint smile tugging at her mouth.
“So you could complain for me?”
“So I could understand.”
She didn’t have a quick answer for that, and something about the sincerity in his voice told her he meant it, that this wasn’t just about sympathy for a temporary discomfort.
He was starting to understand her, not just the body he was currently borrowing, but the life that came attached to it.
They unfolded the map again once they’d found a quiet spot to sit, and Hazel traced the route with her finger, following the line from where they stood all the way toward the distant edge of the Wildwood.
“So,” she said.
“Wildwood first.”
Aldrien nodded, looking out toward the horizon where the trees began to thicken into something darker and denser than anything either of them had traveled through before.
“And apparently,” he said, “that’s the easy part.”