He stops.
He looks at the pack around me.
He says it very quietly.
"Queen."
The word lands in the fire ring like a coin on tile.
"No."
It comes out of me before I have decided to say it. Flat. Reflexive. The same gear as thedownI used on Fen, but pointed inward this time — a refusal of a category, athat is not a word that goes on me.My body does not want it.Queenis a word from books. Not for an animal control officer from Vancouver, Washington who got grabbed off a gravel road in February and bonded to monsters.
Reyes does not contradict me. He does not need to.
The pack does it for him.
Crull is the first. His hand is on my shoulder. The rumble in his chest has gone to the register I have only heard once before — the one he used when he carried Fen through the corridor.The I have him register.He is using it on me. On the air around me. On the word.
"Mine," Crull says. "Queen."
Harek behind me.
"Yours," he says. Whole sentence. Steady.
Dean. The forming thread pulls taut.
"Yours."
Daron, from the edge of the fire ring. Ice-blue eyes.
"Took you long enough."
Fen.
Fen's shoulder against my calf goes hot. His face turns up toward mine. The black-and-red-and-gold eyes find me. The man behind the black is all the way there.
"Mine," he says.
I look at all of them.
I look at Thaw last.
Thaw's gold eyes are wet at the rims. He nods. Just once.
TheNoI said is still on the ground between me and the doctor. Nobody overrides it. The pack has not contradicted me — they have named me, one at a time, in the language they have, and the language has decided the word fits whether I am ready for it or not.
I am not ready for it.
I take it anyway.
"Yours," I say to Fen. Quiet.
The pack is around me, every one of them, the first time since the cabin I have had all six in one place at one time.
I turn to Thaw.
"What do we do with him?"
