Layla spent a restless night watching over Henry. She dozed off at times and stirred every once in a while to check on his bandages-and to check that he didn't stop breathing through the night. When the sun rose, she was both exhausted and relieved.
Henry hadn't woken during the night. With the amount of wolfsbane she had put on his wounds, that was to be expected.
He stirred once the sun rose. Layla quickly got him a drink of water, helping him to sit up and drink it. Henry finished the entire glass. Layla went to get another, and he finished that one too.
She got a third ready for him, but he only sipped from it, leaning back against the sofa. Layla gave him a chance to wake up properly before she spoke.
"I really thought that you weren't going to make it through the night," Layla told him. "Your wounds were pretty bad."
For a moment, Henry didn't answer. Layla saw that it was a struggle for him just to breathe.
"Thank you," he said eventually. "Thank you for taking care of me."
Layla knew that she shouldn't press, but she couldn't help asking.
"What happened to you?" she asked. "What did that to you? I almost thought the wolfsbane wouldn't work. I nearly had to use silver."
Henry was quiet for so long that Layla felt sure he wasn't going to tell her anything.
"Listen," Henry said eventually after he must have decided that he had been dodging her questions enough, "I don't want to talk about what happened."
Layla thought about leaving. She had thought about it all night, well, in the periods where she had been awake anyway. Henry was nearly ripped apart, and he wouldn't tell her how or why that had happened. That was perfectly fine. It was his choice to share. But now she had no idea how much danger she was in or not.
She thought she had to consider whether leaving was the right choice for her.
She took one look at Henry and knew that she wouldn't leave him, not just yet. She was woried about his wounds, and he had saved her from those men. She knew that she couldn't just leave him alone to care for himself. She worried about what would happen to him.
Besides, where would she even go? She didn't exactly have a plan, and she had seen what happened when she just walked around aimlessly.
In the end, Layla knew that she had to stay. Even if there was danger to being here, being around Henry, it was better than her taking her chances outside of the apartment. After all, it wasn't like he'd been attacked there.
Layla decided that she would wait before asking him about it again. She didn't want him to think that she had just let it go, but she also didn't want to push him while he was still in the state that he was in.
"Well, alright," Layla said eventually. "But you need to get into a shower, and you need to clean yourself before any infections settle in."
Thankfully, Henry didn't fight her too much on that. Layla helped Henry into the shower, knowing that being clean would help him in ways that no medicine would. He managed the shower on his own. Once he was out, Layla quickly redressed his wounds and helped him into fresh clothing. She then helped him back to the clean couch.
He looked worlds better, but she knew that he was far from out of the woods just yet.
Layla glanced at the stove. She knew how to cook, and she knew that they would both need food soon. They hadn't even had breakfast. Guessing that he would much prefer her using his equipment and ingredients over having them both starve, she headed to the kitchen.
She found some onions and chopped them up, putting them on to fry in a cast iron pan with oil. She then chopped up about four tomatoes and cleaned a chicken that she found in the fridge. She assumed that he'd been planning on using it that day.
She added garlic and ginger into the pot with the onions and let it braise for a bit longer. She then added in the cleaned chicken, turning it often so nothing burnt. She added the chopped tomatoes along with some salt, pepper, herbs, and spices that she found in the cupboard. She let everything cook while she searched for some rice.
She wasn't about to make bread right now, so she guessed that rice would be a good second.
She put it on the stove while checking the chicken stew every once in a while. While the rice and chicken were cooking, she cut up potatoes, carrots, and an assortment of vegetables, and put them on to steam.
It was already late in the morning. By the time everything would be finished, she guessed that it would be lunch already. She hoped it would be enough to last them for supper too.
When everything was done, she plated everything and took it to him in the living room, finding him sitting upright on the couch.
"You didn't have to do that," Henry tried to tell her as she passed him a plate.
"Don't be ridiculous," Layla rebuffed hinm. "What? Were you going to cook yourself something on the stove?"
"Maybe," Henry retorted quickly. "I could have made myself a sandwich, you know."
She knew that it was true, but she also knew that he wouldn't have gotten nearly what he needed from a sandwich to survive. She should probably see if he had steak in his freezer. More likely than not, that was what he would need to survive.
"Yeah right," Layla said, rolling her eyes at him. "Will you please just eat the food I made? And there's a whole pot, so don't be shy about asking for more."
Henry looked thoughtful for a moment. He then simply nodded his head and started eating the food. He finished his plate quickly and had two more servings before telling her that he was done.
Layla took their empty plates back to the kitchen and cleaned everything. She rooted through the freezer and found it stocked through with meat of every kind. She took out two venison steaks. After considering it a moment, she took out another two and let them thaw. She would cook them for
supper later. She went back to the living room to check on Henry and found him resting with his head against the back of the sofa. There wasn't much else to do except wait for his body to heal itself.
She sat down on the sofa opposite him and settled herself in just in case he needed anything from her. They were quiet for a while. Layla, who was curled under one of the blankets, couldn't help noticing how intimate this all was. It was like they were more than just strangers that had met only a few days ago, sitting together quietly in the living room.
"You're stronger than you seem," Henry said after a while.
Layla turned to him to find him staring at her.
"You didn't look so strong when I brought you back here that first night," Henry told her. "You were shaking and completely unconscious. But here you are, healing my wounds with wolfsbane and cooking on barely any sleep. I underestimated you a little," he admitted.
"That was wrong of me."
Layla considered him before answering. She had underestimated him a little too. He had easily let her take charge of the situation. Granted, he had fought her a little, but he had backed off once she made a few choice points.
Most wolves in his place would have kept snarling about it until she backed off, and she would have left them to starve themselves in their stubbornness. But not him. He had allowed her to take care of him. It was something she definitely wasn't used to.
"Don't worry about it," Layla told him, curling further under the blanket she had wrapped around herself. "Most wolves do that at first. I am what I am. It comes with the territory."
She was an Omega. She was used to wolves assuming she was weaker. She might have been smaller, but she used every bit of that to her advantage. She wouldn't allow anything to dull her strength.
"You should rest," Layla told him. "Your body needs to heal."
It wasn't recovering the way a wolf's body normally would, and that worried Layla more than she was letting on. What exactly had happened that he ended up like this? And what exactly was she getting herself involved in by staying by his side?
She couldn't think of that now. All she needed to focus on was helping him get better.