"That patch is the reason I am here. Every single thing that has happened to me in the last few weeks happened because of a red spot on my chest that nobody could explain and nobody told me what it was and nobody — including me — knew enough to be afraid of it. And now it has moved. And nobody knows what that means either."
I take a step back.
It is involuntary. My body did it. I am suddenly standing with my back to the towel rack and the cabin bathroom feels very small.
"No."
The pack does not move.
"No. You all stand here and you saywe will keep an eye on itlike that is the same as good news. Like the keeping-an-eye is going to do anything. The last time something on my bodychanged without me knowing what it was, I ended up in a cell. So forgive me ifwe will watch itis not landing as the reassurance you want it to be."
My eyes are hot. I have not cried since the night Thaw held me through it in the cell. I am not crying now. What is climbing up the back of my throat is the next thing past crying, the thing that wants to break a piece of furniture, and there is a man down the hall who has been doing exactly that and now I understand him in a way I did not an hour ago.
"Jen," Thaw says.
"No. Don't. Do not — handle me. Do not Jen me. My body has been a thing other people read for weeks. Strapped to tables. Swabbed. Sampled. Bred."
My back is against the towel rack. Crull's amber eyes have gone careful. Harek is still in his crouch and has not stood up because standing up would crowd me and he is Harek, he is the steady one, he knows.
Thaw does not move closer either.
"What is the question," he says.
I look at him.
"Did I agree to this? Did anyone ask the part of me that lives in my own body whether she wanted to have something on her chest that would not go away. Or did the Syndicate get to make that decision for me too, the same way they got to make every other decision for me since they took me."
The silence in the bathroom is total.
Dean is in the hallway watching me. Daron is behind him with his hand on the strap of the rifle at his shoulder, not in threat, in the unconscious motion of a body that wants to do something and has nowhere to point itself.
Thaw lowers himself.
He does not approach. He drops slowly into a crouch against the opposite wall of the bathroom from Harek, so that we arethree bodies at three points of a triangle on the floor, eye-level, none of us towering. The alpha making himself small. The thread at my sternum opens, and what comes through it is not soothing.
What comes through isI heard you.
"You are right to be angry," he says. "You are right at every part of it. We should have asked first."
"Asked what."
"Asked you what you wanted us to do about it. Before we put hands on you to read it."
The anger does not drain. It does not soften. But something in my chest moves a degree.
"I do not know what I want you to do about it." My voice is shaking now. The composure has cracked the rest of the way. "But I know I did not consent to it being something I have to learn to live with on top of everything else."
"No," Thaw says. "You didn't."
He looks at the floor.
"And I do not have a fix for that. There is nothing I can do that makes this not have happened to your body. I can promise we will figure out what it is alongside you. I can promise no hand goes on it again unless you ask. I can promise the men in this room will hear no from you on the smallest thing without a fight. But I cannot give you back the part where you did not get to choose what was already in you."
I close my eyes.
The brand at my wrist is hot. The brand at my throat is hot. The bond at my sternum is open and full. It is grief. He is grieving with me. The pack is grieving with me. They are not telling me to be calm. They are sitting on the floor of a bathroom letting me be furious in their bonded chest.
When I open my eyes, Crull has come down to a crouch in the doorway. Dean is leaning against the hallway wall with the folderagainst his thigh. Daron has gone down to one knee. Every male in the cabin is below my eye line now, the body language of an entire pack making itself smaller because I am angry and they are not going to make me wrong for it.
