"Dean. Tell her."
Dean clears his throat. "It's true."
I laugh. It comes out of me before I realize it. A short laugh, surprised. My heart feels full. My pack is in this kitchen. I have a pack.
I am sitting at a kitchen table with five monsters who would put themselves between me and any door that opened wrong, and one of them just made me coffee, and the other two are giving each other shit about chewing, and I am a part of it.
The fear is still there. The Syndicate is still out there. But for the first time in awhile, it isn't the biggest thing in the room.
I reach back and put my hand over Harek's on the back of the chair. He turns his palm and laces his fingers through mine.
Daron is now telling a story about a job in Portland that involves a goat. Dean is correcting him. Crull is shaking his head. Harek is following the back-and-forth with his eyes. I drink the coffee. The heat goes down my throat and lands warm in my belly.
Then Thaw clears his throat. The room comes down one notch.
"All right," he says.
That is all.All right.And the pack is on the same page in the same moment. Daron's story stops. Dean sits forward. Harek's hand tightens once on mine and stays.
Thaw looks around the table.
"We're not staying here."
No argument. Just fact. Dean nods.
"We've got probably forty-eight hours."
"Why?" I ask.
"The Syndicate had you for weeks," Dean says. "They knew you were valuable or they wouldn’t have taken you. They did not know you were a pack anchor until you walked out a hole in their wall with four hybrids behind you."
"So I'm the one they want."
"Yes."
"More than Thaw?"
"More than any of us."
The room goes still.
"How long before they find this place?"
Dean glances at Daron. Daron answers.
"The cabin sits six miles up a track that doesn't show on satellite. They'll sweep the forest service roads first. They'll waste time in the wrong valleys. We get about forty-eight hours before their search grid comes out this far."
"And then?"
"Then we move."
"Where?"
Daron leans back in his chair. "Deeper."
The grin is gone now. "There is another place. We built it."
Silence settles over the table.
