He does not wipe it away. He just touches it. Once. The pad of his thumb against the smear of his brother's blood on my mouth.
"Okay?" he says. Quiet.
"Yes."
I take his other wrist. I press my thumb against the inside of his wrist. I push warmth down the line.
Dean's breath catches once. Quiet. Controlled. But I feel it in the bond — the way his body is responding to me, the way he has been holding himself in check for weeks.
I want to bite him. The thought lands in my body. I want to put my teeth in his throat the way I put them in Daron's. I want both wolf twins marked. I want him.
Dean reads it through the forming thread. He tilts his head.
Slow. The wolf in him offering his throat, the choice fully made.
"Yes," he says. Before I have asked.
I rise up on my toes. His hand at my jaw guides me — gentle, sure — and I put my mouth against the side of his throat where his pulse is. The vein at his throat is a long clean line under the skin.
I bite.
His pulse jumps once against my tongue. His hand at my jaw tightens once and stays. Just the stillness of a man who has waited and is now allowed.
The bond seals.
I lift my mouth. My teeth marking the side of his throat. The matching mate-mark. The wolves are both marked now. Both of them mine.
Dean does not say my name, but I feel his pride with my mark.
The bond carries everything — what he feels, what he wants, what he is choosing not to take in this barn with the door open and a raid forty minutes out.
He breathes in. Slow. Through his teeth, the way a man breathes when he is forcing his own body to come down from something. His hand at my jaw has not moved, he brushes my cheek. Then his hand drops.
He kisses my forehead. I feel the weight of what he is not saying. I feel his pulse spiking now. He is not as controlled as his face says he is. His body has just told me the truth.
He stays there, breathing deeply, scenting me. Then he speaks. Low. Against my ear. Quiet.
"I have wanted you since the escape. I have watched you, guarded you, and hoped you could be mine."
He steps back. The control is back on his face. But his hand finds my hand for one beat — quick, sure — and then drops.
"Trucks," he says. To Daron. To himself.
He turns and walks out of the barn.
Daron is at my side again before Dean is through the door. His shoulder against mine. His hand at the small of my back. The two wolves' bonds humming together in my chest like the same note played twice.
"He's been holding that for a while," Daron says. Quiet. To me. To no one.
"Yes."
I walk back across the gravel to the cabin with my new bonds reorganizing in my chest with the addition of two more lines that did not exist as solid an hour ago. The five sealed threads. The not-yet-thread to Fen. The patch under my chest registering each new bond and mapping them.
The pack is going into a Syndicate building tonight as a full pack. That was the math the Syndicate wanted to keep us from. They did not get to.
Fen has not moved from the floor. His head is leaned against my leg. His eyes are on Thaw.
We hauled Reyes up to the kitchen again.
