Savage Abandon

When she winced and drew quickly away from him, with a look of fear in her eyes, he was stunned.

“Why are you behaving so strangely?” he asked, searching her face. “You are trembling, yet the lodge is not cold. Are you ill?”

She shoved him away.

“Why would you do that?” he asked, taking a step back.

He knew that something was terribly wrong and yet she would not confide in him what it was.

“Please leave me alone,” Mia blurted out. In her mind’s eye she again saw the mist, and Wolf Hawk appearing out of thin air.

In her mind’s eye she also saw the poison ivy reaching out for her like devil fingers, ready to kill her if it could!

“You wish to be alone…you shall get that wish,” Wolf Hawk said tightly, then turned and left. The clean, fresh smell of his hair and his body wafted through the air behind him. Mia inhaled it and imagined him, holding her, embracing her, loving her.

Tears filled her eyes.

She fell to her knees beside the fire and held her face in her hands.

Suddenly everything was so confusing. She feared what tomorrow would bring.

Chapter Seventeen

I prithee send me back my heart,

Since I cannot have thine;

For if from yours you will not part,

Why then shoulds’t thou have mine?

—Sir John Suckling

Even before she was awake, Mia groaned with discomfort. Then she opened her eyes and cried out in despair when she saw just how bad her poison ivy was.

She threw aside the blanket she had slept under. It felt damp and clammy.

She sat up and gasped. By the moonlight that came down from the smoke hole above, she saw just how bad the poison ivy on her legs was. They were swollen to twice their normal size, and the itching sores were seeping fluid, which had gotten the blanket wet.

“Oh, what am I to do?” she cried softly.

She knew that if the poison ivy wasn’t medicated soon, and in the right way, she might even lose her legs. A friend of her father had gotten poison ivy and lost an arm because of it, mainly because he had not taken it seriously enough to go to a doctor when he should have.

But Mia had no idea where the nearest town might be or if it even had a doctor who could help her.

The itching and hurting was almost driving her wild, yet she knew that scratching the rash would only make it worse. Mia lay back down and sobbed so hard, her body shook.

When Wolf Hawk spoke her name outside the closed entrance flap, her eyes widened.

She hadn’t seen him since she had asked him to leave her tepee.

“Come in,” she said weakly.

She wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks with the palm of a hand.

She gazed again at her seeping legs, which she just could not cover again with a blanket. It would cause her even more pain if the blanket were to make contact with her sores.

She then looked up at Wolf Hawk as he came into the tepee with a tray of food for her dinner.