It is the most cared-for I have felt since I got out of the cell.
I hate that it works.
I hate that part of being furious in this room is also being held by them, and I do not know how to make those two things separate, and I sit down against the wall under the towel rack because my legs do not want to hold me anymore.
The pack stays at their points around me. Nobody approaches. Nobody manages. They wait.
I lean my head back against the wall and breathe.
The shape under my skin is quiet now. Whatever it is, it is not going to give me an answer in a bathroom. It is going to show me on its own schedule, and the only choice I have is whether I treat it as enemy or as mine.
I do not have to know yet.
And then — from the back bedroom at the far end of the hall, through the wall of the room where a man has been mostly quiet —
A growl.
Low. Long. Fen.
Under my skin, the shape pulses.
Hard. Once. Then again. Then a third time, faster than my heartbeat, faster than anything in me is doing on its own. It is reaching. The whole oval has gone warm under my palm and the warmth is aimed — back, and to the left, toward the bedroom door, toward him.
The growl breaks off. Fen has dragged himself back under control.
The shape is still pulsing. It does not stop when he stops. It keeps reaching for a long moment after the cabin has gone quiet, and then, slowly, it eases. The warmth banks. The pulse settles.
I look down. I do not lift my hand.
Thaw watches me read it.
"Jen," he says, careful.
I press my palm flat over the shape.
The shape reacts to him. I don’t know why.
Chapter thirteen
Jen
Thaw cannot sit down.
He has been at the kitchen window six times in the last hour. Walking past. Glancing. Walking past. I see patterning under his skin moving, his hand braced on the sill, his gold eyes tracking the place where the trees meet the clearing.
Crull is on the kitchen floor against the wall. His hands flex once against his thighs every time the wind moves a pine branch.
Harek is in the middle of the room, weight forward, the way a body waits when it is waiting to go. His purr under his ribs has gone low and continuous. The shimmer at his shoulders comes and goes.
The room is too small for them.
I do not need anyone to tell me this. I can feel it through the bonds — three threads pulling at the same restless tension, threebodies pressing on the inside of skin that has been in walls for too long.
Thaw turns from the window.
"Daron." He does not raise his voice. The forming thread carries it. "We need to run."
Daron is on the porch. He answers through the open door. "Sure, I haven’t see any movement. They haven’t found us.”
