Daron moves in. He does not touch me — there is no time and I am not his to settle yet, the thread is too new, but he takes the open side beside me, the one Crull's body does not cover and just like that I am boxed. Gray wall on one side. Blond wolf on the other.
"Jen." Crull's voice, above me, low. He has not turned around. Every part of him is still aimed at the corridor. "Eyes on me."
I put my eyes on him.
It is the right call. My body wants to track all of it — the twins, the downed guards, the flashing lights and my training wants the same, wants the full field, wants every exit. But there is too much input and the corridor is too loud and Crull knows it. Eyes on me is a smaller world.
I can hold a smaller world.
"Thaw," Crull says, toward the wall.
"Coming."
And then Thaw is there — out of his own cell, in the corridor, and I have never once seen him outside a set of bars.
He stands all the way up. Something in me goes still.
The man is enormous.
Not folded into a space too small for him. Not restrained.
Free.
The width of his shoulders fill the corridor. His presence hits me like a physical thing, and something low in my body pulls tight in response.
For the first time, I am looking at a Thaw that nothing is containing.
The patterning under his skin is moving. His eyes are gold. Not red. They sweep the corridor once, twins, downed guards, me, Crull, Daron at the gap, the north door, the dark beyond it — and lock.
He does not ask what happened. He does not ask how the twins got here, or where they have been for the two years he thought they were gone. His brothers are thirty feet away putting Syndicate guards into the floor and he registers it and files it and moves past it, because there is a corridor to get me out of and he is the one who is going to do it.
"Dean." Thaw's voice cuts the noise clean. "North door. Hold it."
Dean is already in the frame of the north door. Already a problem for anything that wants to come through. He does not answer. He does not need to.
"Daron. I want both ends sealed."
Daron's growl spikes. His eyes come off me — it costs him, I watch it cost him — and find Thaw's.
"She does not get touched," Daron says. It is not a question and it is not quite agreement. It is a term.
"She does not get touched," Thaw says. "By anything. That's the whole job. Go hold your end of it."
Daron goes.
The growl goes with him, but he goes.
Thaw crosses to me.
Thaw's hands land on my shoulders.
"Jen. Look at me." I do. His eyes are gold and certain and the bond at my sternum floods with him. "We are leaving. Now. You stay between me and Crull. You do not stop. You do not look at anything. If I go down, you go with Crull. If Crull goes down, you go with Dean. Tell me you understand."
"Between you and Crull. Don't stop. If you fall, Crull. If Crull falls, Dean."
The corner of his mouth lifts. "Good girl."
Then his head turns.
