"Finn," I say.
"I'm fine."
"You're crying."
"I'm not crying. My eyes are doing a thing." He pulls me into a hug. His arms go tight around me and he holds on for a while and when he pulls back his glasses are genuinely crooked and his cheeks are wet. He doesn't bother denying it a second time.
Rhys hasn't moved from the armchair.
I cross to him.
He looks up at me. His eyes drop to the mark. Then back to my face. His expression does the thing it does when he's feeling too much to move through quickly. That stillness. The containment of a man who has spent years learning to hold big things without letting them break him.
I sit on the arm of his chair and tip my head so he can see the mark properly.
He looks at it for a long time.
Then he leans forward and presses his lips to my temple. Just once. Barely there.
His purr starts. Broken and real and entirely his.
I rest my hand on the back of his neck and we stay like that while the room buzzes around us.
"Okay," Malcolm says, clapping his hands together. "When do we get to mark her?"
"Malcolm," Alex says.
"I'm asking a practical question. There's a sequence here. A timeline. I want to know the timeline."
"The timeline is: not tonight."
"Tomorrow?"
"She was just claimed four hours ago. Let her recover."
"I feel fine," I say.
"You're not helping," Alex says.
"I'm just saying. I feel fine."
Malcolm points at me. "She feels fine."
Alex pinches the bridge of his nose. "We have the rest of our lives. It doesn't have to happen this week."
"It could happen this week though," Malcolm says.
Finn raises his hand. "I'd also like to register my interest."
"Finn."
"I'm just putting it on record. Formally. For the record."
Rhys says nothing. But when I glance at him his eyes are on my neck and his expression says everything his mouth doesn't.
Alex looks at the ceiling. "I am going to manage this pack into the ground."
"You love us," Malcolm says.
