“Russel,” she said, a bit louder. She picked up his head and pillowed it on top of her thighs. One hand gently cupped the side of his face and she felt tears slide down her cheeks. “I’ve already lost everyone else in my life, I can’t lose you too. Come back to me, please.”

He was still unconscious but he was breathing, which was good. His color started to improve as well. A rosy flush spread through his cheeks. She kept a watchful eye on as many of his wounds as she could. Most had pretty much closed up all the way. The one on his back shoulder was getting smaller and smaller but she could still feel the blood coming from it soaking her pants.

During all of this, and in her blind haste to help him, she never noticed that the cuts she’d gotten from the ghouls didn’t have the same effect on her. They stung and bothered her but other than a possible, irritating itching sensation, she was completely fine. Even now, she didn’t really notice them. Her focus was centered too heavily on Russel and making sure he would be fine. His breathing continued to improve and the wounds kept healing over. The gory wound in his shoulder had stopped bleeding completely and had closed almost all the way now.

The fears and worries over his safety started to ease. His body relaxed and his rest seemed more peaceful. The rapid movement of his eyes slowed and then stopped altogether.

She bent forward, relief surging through her, and kissed his forehead. She gently laid him down on the ground and went over to the creek to wash off some of the blood and gunk off her skin. Once properly cleaned, she bound them with bandages she pulled out of her pack. The itching sensation to the cuts from the ghouls were intense and she had to force herself not to actively scratch at them. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how one looked at it, her concern for Russel still overpowered the sensation for the most part. She found herself scratching at the bandages absentmindedly.

She finished up at the creek and made her way back to Russel. He was beginning to stir now. When she got to him, his eyes were just starting to open again.

He groaned.

“Well n-now…this is just emb-embarassing.” He chuckled a little but it quickly turned into a harsh cough.

“Shut up,” she said. “Quit talking. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I f-forgot…the…pp-poison.” He coughed a little more and then stopped. “Fu-fucking gh-ghouls.”

Then his eyes widened and filled with concern. Despite the pain, he got up and looked at her. His hands went to her bandages.

“You okay?” he asked. He was starting to sound better but his voice was still a little hoarse. “You g-got…cut too.” Concern gave way to outright confusion. “How are you still…aliv-alive?”

“Here, this will help,” she said and handed him the water skin and he took a deep pull from it. “And I honestly don’t know. You got cut a bunch. I only got hit twice. Maybe that’s the reason.”

He was already shaking his head no. He grunted as he moved but eventually he got to a sitting position. The only wound at this point that was still open on him was the hideous one to his back shoulder.

“Ghoul poison is potent. The poison paralyzes you first and then, the longer it is in your body, the more fatal it becomes,” he said. He rubbed the still injured shoulder a bit. “You didn’t have any reaction at all?”

“No, nothing like that,” she told him. She looked down at the bandages and wondered why she wouldn’t be affected by the ghoul’s poison.

Then again, why would a werewolf from the Harvenk Kingdom want her dead?

“Good thing, I guess,” he told her. “I would’ve been fine given enough time, even with the amount of poison in my system, but you shouldn’t be. I haven’t heard of any human with a natural immunity to ghoul poison before.”

He looked at her, his thoughts spinning around and around each other. Each time though, his thoughts seem to centralize around a single question.

Who was this human girl?