By the time Riordan, Mark and Daniel rolled back to the pack house, the sun was starting to set. Riordan couldn’t say he’d accomplished much that day, except that he’d really needed a quiet day like this. He’d been pushing himself in crisis mode for too long. His body and mind needed rest. Ignoring that need would leave long term negative coping mechanisms lingering in his brain.

He’d already texted Norris a couple times with updates throughout the day, which meant Riordan didn’t feel obligated to check in with anyone in the pack house. Instead, he parked his borrowed vehicle and returned the keys to their proper location, quietly escorting Mark as he did the same. The apprentice clearly noticed what Riordan was doing but didn’t comment on it, offering Riordan a small smile at the continued company.

They swung by the kitchen on the way out. No one was present when they first entered, which Riordan took as permission to raid the fridge. Norris kept ready meals set aside in clearly marked containers to keep people fed without having anyone eat his pre-prepped ingredients for the main meals. Riordan insisted Mark take one as well, giving him a stern look until Mark sat down and began to sheepishly eat.

Riordan joined him at the table. He avoided the main dining room during the main meals because he made the regular pack members uncomfortable, but he wasn’t banned from being there or anything. He waved a fork at Mark, talking in between eating.

“You need to make sure to take care of yourself,” Riordan lectured the kid, “Your brain is messed up right now and will be sending out incorrect signals or miss sending out regular signals. You likely won’t feel hungry on schedule, especially if you are running particularly vigilant and hunger is suppressed. The same goes with things like sleep and water. That means you’ll have to do those tasks manually until your body recovers.”

Mark absorbed that information with his quiet intense attention, brown eyes intent on Riordan. “How long will it take for me to recover?”

Riordan grimaced. “That’s hard to say. I wish someone had been able to make you feel safe immediately after the event. That would have gone a long way to keeping the trauma reaction more manageable. As it is, you’ve imprinted the trauma. You don’t feel safe anymore, do you?”

“No.”

The quiet sorrow in that single word broke Riordan’s heart. He’d been through more traumatic experiences that he cared to contemplate by this point in his life, but for Mark, this was the first experience on this level, one that completely shook his sense of security and mortality.

“The honest answer,” Riordan said with a sigh, treating Mark as the adult he was, however young, “is that you will never be the same as you were before ever again. What you need now is a new sense of normal, one adapted to your new understanding of the world and its threats. You have to find a way to both know, viscerally and beyond a shadow of a doubt, that such horrors happen in the world and yet be able to feel safe despite that.”

“That seems unlikely,” Mark said dryly.

Riordan shrugged, pushing his food around his plate as he contemplated what advice he could give that would actually help. “There are different ways to go about it. The fastest but crudest is to hire a mental mage and have them just excise the traumatic imprint from you. I don’t recommend that. It always has side effects. Mostly you need to figure out what safety looks like to you and make it happen. Maybe that’s becoming personally stronger. Maybe that’s helping secure the pack lands or prepping for future emergencies. Maybe it’s having strong allies. Or maybe it’s just managing to reach a point of inner peace with your own mortality. Chances are you’ll always have some symptoms, usually triggering when you are outside your new safe space.”

“Do you have trauma?” Mark asked.

“From what I just went through or in general?” Riordan replied.

“Either. Both. I don’t know.”

Riordan took a moment to give that question some serious thought. Daniel sat at the edge of the table, listening just as intently to the answers and advice Riordan was giving. Riordan just wished he had better pearls of wisdom, as opposed to whatever shreds he’d earned from his own fucked up life.

“Both, honestly,” Riordan finally said, his voice softening, “I have a lot of things bottled up, shoved down to be thought about later, when it’s safe. At some point, I’m going to probably fall apart completely when that debt of emotion comes due. I don’t feel safe enough to be that vulnerable yet, but I’m trying to tackle pieces when I can in order to make it less of a mess later.”

“As for my older trauma,” he continued, his hand unconsciously moving to rub the spot on his forehead where his exile mark used to sit, “I’ve had twenty years to process most of it, even if I’ve realized that there were some parts of it that I’ve really been avoiding rather than dealing with. Time does lessen the impact, especially if nothing else of the same sort happens again. Still, I’ve got a lot of grieving for loss of self identity to do, both from older changes I ignored and from all this recent shit.”

Mark considered Riordan’s words just as solemnly before nodding. “Thank you for sharing that with me. I have a lot to think about.”

“Gods, you and me both,” Riordan said with a sigh.

He picked up his dishes and took them back to the connected kitchen space. He rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher, preferring not to risk annoying Norris, given the man was keeper of delicious food around here. Mark joined him a minute later, cleaning up his own dishes. Riordan was heartened to see that he’d eaten everything.

“What now?” Mark asked.

“Now, I am going to go back to that tiny cabin and get some rest. Or failing that, do some of that meditating I meant to do earlier today.”

Marks smiled. “Meditating is helpful. It helps… Mmm… how to put it. Order the mind? That’s not quite right. It’s not as rigid as that. Perhaps readjust might be better, sort of like stretching helping with sore muscles. It might not fix an issue, but it can temporarily relieve pain.”

Riordan made a face. “Yeah, I get it. It’s wonderful. I know a couple different types for different purposes, but I can’t say it’s my favorite activity.”

Mark considered that, tapping a finger against one heavily freckled cheek. “I imagine that has something to do with all those bits of your mind that you have bottled up or avoided, per your self analysis.”

That was painfully on the nose. Riordan did not like being seen like that, even if it was mostly his fault for being honest with Mark. And Mark deserved it. But it still made his skin crawl after so many years of denial.

“Something like that. I’ll have to work on getting over it,” Riordan admitted, “Just like you need to work on feeling safe.”

It was Mark’s turn to look uncomfortable but determined. “Ugh,” he said dramatically, “Healthy decisions. Whatever shall we do with ourselves.”

“Sleep and try again tomorrow,” Riordan declared, slapping Mark on the shoulder before stepping towards the door leading out of the pack house. “You going to be okay tonight? Do you have somewhere you feel safe sleeping?”

Mark nodded. “I’m staying in the pack house for now. With Vera, Norris, and Frankie close by, it’s easier to sleep. Not easy yet, but easier. I guess that’s part of the ‘strong allies’ option you mentioned.”

“It is,” Riordan affirmed, “Which makes it a good first step. I’m glad they are taking care of you. Not that I expected differently. That trio is capable and experienced.”

“Comes with being an old shifter,” Mark commented, even as he veered off towards a door leading deeper into the pack house, “You either die or get good.”

If that wasn’t an apt summary of shifter culture and lifestyle, Riordan didn’t know what was. He shook his head and walked out into the growing twilight.

There were several clusters of cabins. Riordan had worked on clearing some of the rotting ones that used to be the guest rooms for the pack before the main house had been expanded, but the ones that still existed were further from the center of the pack area. The pack’s cover was a Christian camp and they did occasionally rent these cabins out for events, which meant they had to be self-contained and distanced from pack activities for safety reasons.

The walk was negligible to a shifter, since their passive magic helped with endurance and physical fitness. Honestly, Riordan couldn’t remember seeing a shifter who suffered from chronic physical issues. His people either didn’t inherit or healed from a ton of issues. He’d never even seen a shifter need glasses.

That wasn’t to say that all shifters were idealized. They still had normal variance in physical appearance aside from all being naturally inclined towards being healthy. Riordan knew he’d lost muscle mass despite his natural boosts during his long years of drifting, but he wasn’t as malnourished and fucked up as a normal human would have been after living rough for so long.

The property was heavily wooded near the cabins, the trees casting true darkness in the twilight. Riordan growled. He wasn’t used to darkness being an issue. Normally he’d just partially shift his eyes to draw on his badger’s improved night vision. Except with his fucked up magic, he still couldn’t do even something as basic as that anymore.

His passive effects still improved his senses compared to an average human, reducing Riordan’s stumbling and swearing to a minimum, but it still meant that Riordan didn’t spot the person leaning against the wall of his cabin until he was close.

The presence of an unknown person in the dark made Riordan freeze, a hissing rattle rumbling out of his chest in threat. He hated being surprised. Who the hell was out here without a light?

Pale hands were raised in the air and the man spoke, “Whoa, sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you, Riordan. Please don’t eat me.”

The voice was familiar, especially combined with the bleached white skin and dark clothing. Quinn. He must have been using magic for dark sight again. Riordan forced himself to relax.

“Why are you here, Quinn?” Riordan asked, his own voice still growly.

“I wanted to check on you,” Quinn said, stepping away from the cabin and into the slightly brighter area of the surrounding clearing, “It’s been a rough couple days and I haven’t gotten a real chance to talk to you since you woke up after everything.”

“There are reasons for that. I’m surprised that your department let you come talk to me like this on your own.”

Quinn looked uneasy, glancing out into the deeper shadows around them, and Riordan rolled his eyes. “Ah, of course. You aren’t really alone, are you. Is it just Adam lurking out there or is this a full ambush?”