Elias slid to the cabinet, one hand clamped to his forearm, blood slick to the elbow. His face went a color that didn’t belong in a living person. "I can—" he started, and didn’t.

"Shut up," Sera ordered, already pressing her palm to the wound. "Zubair—heat."

He didn’t argue. Heat bloomed through his glove like a held coal. She lifted her hand. He took her place, expression blank, and put his palm on Elias’s forearm.

The room smelled like burnt fur and coins and human.

"Tourniquet," Elias ground out, not quite conscious and still trying to give instructions.

"Already there," Alexei grunted, cinching a belt above the injury until Elias hissed.

Lachlan crouched with his hands on his knees, blue still riding his skin, breath a saw. He stared at the wolf like he wanted it to stand up again so he could hit it more. Blood laced his mouth. He spat red on tile and wiped his arm over his face.

"The seal?" he rasped.

It had wedged itself into the narrow space between the stove and the cabinet and gone blessedly still. It watched them with a dark, furious eye and trembled.

"Alive," Sera confirmed, and finally exhaled for a single moment.

But they didn’t have time to relax at the moment.

They moved like they’d rehearsed it in nightmares.

Sera forced gauze into the bite. For once, the sight of blood and flesh didn’t make her hungry. Maybe it was because her creature had already claimed Elias as part of her horde, so any harm to him was a slap in the face to her.

Zubair fed heat in pulses that wouldn’t char too deep. He knew as well as Sera did that if he wasn’t able to cauterize the wound and stop the bleeding, Elias was going to die.

Alexei held Elias upright with a grip that did not shake. Lachlan stripped his shirt off to use as pressure wrap, blue fading out of his skin in ugly blotches.

"Keep talking," Sera told Elias, already knowing he wouldn’t. His lips thinned; sweat ran in a cold sheet down his temple.

"Name," she pressed, because the living need chores. "Yours."

"Elias," he gritted.

"Mine."

"Sera."

"Who is being an idiot right now?"

"Me," he admitted, because he tried to look at the wound.

"Good boy." She didn’t smile.

Zubair checked the meat the heat had sealed and gave a small nod. "Again."

She pulled the soaked gauze out and stuffed fresh in. Elias went through a noise and came back. Alexei’s arm barred his chest and kept him present.

"Bullet count," Zubair requested without lifting his hand.

"Low," Alexei answered, eyes folding to slits. "We make do."

"Ropes?" Zubair threw to Lachlan.

"Clean," Lachlan replied, voice rough. He was already collecting the coils off the floor, cutting away stretches soaked in blood they could not trust again. "Door hinge’s angry."

"We’ll make it forgive us," Zubair muttered.

They worked. The storm worked the glass. The generator pitched a notch and settled. The wolf’s body cooled by inches.

When Elias went limp, it wasn’t a faint. It was his body buying him a minute he hadn’t paid for yet. Sera took advantage and wrapped tighter. Zubair withdrew heat and checked skin for the line where help turns to damage. It was fine. It wasn’t good, but it was fine.

"Done," he decided, because decisions keep men alive.

They lifted Elias to the couch and wedged cushions under the arm to keep the pressure where it needed to be. He woke and blinked and didn’t ask if it was still attached. Smart man.

"Water," Sera told Alexei.

He brought the brackish stuff without making a face. Elias drank because she put it to his mouth and because he was obedient when it mattered.

Lachlan stood over the wolf with his head cocked, listening to a sound only he could hear—the leftover music of a fight in his bones. "Big boy," he rasped. "Fur like a mattress."

"Bigger ones out there," Zubair warned.

"Good," Lachlan growled, feral bleeding the edges of his grin. "Hate being bored."

Sera looked at the blood glaze on the floor, the smeared path the seal had made, the crack in the table where she’d turned an animal’s skull into a tool, and had one clean thought:

They were lucky this time.

She did not say it aloud. Luck hears and then leaves.

The seal shifted, a clumsy, shuddering attempt to back out of the corner. Its breath came fast and wet. Sera knelt again, palms open where it could see them. "Easy," she murmured. "Quiet."

Her creature liked the smell of its fear. She told it no. It listened.

But barely.

It let her touch the thick neck. Heat pulsed there, heavy and wrong. The gash along its flank was deep; the fat and meat had frozen and thawed and frozen again and then torn. It should have been dead. Panic had kept it running on a body that was trying to stop.

She looked to Zubair.

"No food here," he guessed, reading her face. "Not tonight."

"Not with him bleeding," she agreed, nodding at Elias.

They moved the carcass of the wolf instead, three men to a leg, Sera on the skull. It took all of them to drag it to the far corner near the service stairs. The head lolled. The jaw she’d cracked hung wrong.

Lachlan stared down at it without triumph. "It would make a great rug for the front room," he muttered, and wiped his mouth on his wrist. "I’ll take great pleasure wiping my feet on it before I use his head as a footstool during movie nights."

"Later," Zubair cut off the thought that wasn’t going to go anywhere good. "Door first. Hinge. Frame."

They calmed the door the way you calm a horse—slow, with hands where it can feel them. Alexei set the plate back against the frame and listened for the pitch he trusted. The hinge knocked twice, then quit complaining. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

"Tomorrow," he promised the slab. "You get your love."

They cleaned as much as they could. Blood stayed where it had soaked into seams they couldn’t fight yet. The rest went in rag swipes that turned red and then pink and then something like clean.

Sera sat by Elias and watched his breathing settle into a rough rhythm that promised sleep, not shock. His fingers twitched like he wanted to write with a hand that wouldn’t obey. She caught the twitch and stilled it with her palm.

He was starting to burn up.

"You did fine," she told him, ignoring the heat and patting his hand.

He didn’t argue. He closed his eyes and gave into being alive.

Lachlan dropped onto the floor, back to the couch, eyes on the door, blue completely gone now. He looked human again. It didn’t stick all the way to his eyes.

Alexei leaned in the doorway and finally let himself smile. It wasn’t kind. It didn’t need to be.

Zubair stood until standing wasn’t useful, then sat and took first watch without announcement.

The storm kept trying to get in.

But for now, the door held.