He does not stand the way he stood before he knelt.
I cannot say what is different about it. It is not slower. It is not less. He is on his feet and he is steady. But there is a settled quality in the way his shoulders come up that was not there when he came through the doorway.
I take his hand.
His fingers close around mine. Not the desperate clutch from the campground. He is holding my hand on purpose, and he is keeping it. We cross the cold-storage room together and we exit through the door the pack came in by, and the pack folds around us as we go.
Site Theresa is on fire when we come out the loading bay door, and the orange of it is on the trees, and the trucks are running.
I get into the truck.
Chapter twenty-six
Jen
We make it out of the site in seventeen minutes total. Three minutes faster than the math said we had.
The trucks roll north on the logging road, lights off, engines low, the orange of Site Theresa shrinking in the rearview until the trees swallow it. Dean is at the wheel of the work truck. Thaw in the passenger seat. Harek, Fen and I in the back. Crull is in the prisoner truck with Daron at the wheel and the two retrieval agents in the cargo box on the wrong side of the mesh, where they will ride out the trip back to the canyon and have whatever conversation Crull decides to have with them about who they thought they were retrieving.
The pack is silent for the first twenty minutes.
I look at my hands in the dashboard light.
The claws are smaller.
The horns have not retracted.
I reach up.
Thaw has turned half in the passenger seat. His gold eyes are on me. The bond is wide open and what it is carrying is — careful. Not afraid.
"Jen."
"Yes."
"How are you?"
"I'm okay. The patch is quiet. The claws are back. The horns are still on. I don't know how to put the voice away yet but I'm not going to use it on you so it doesn't matter."
His mouth twitches a fraction. "Thank you."
"How are you?"
He thinks about it.
"I am — proud," he says, slowly. "I am proud and I am terrified and the two are not at war. The proud is for what you did. The terrified is because I have known your body for weeks and I do not know your body anymore."
"You will. We will figure it out."
"Yes."
Fen is at my left. His hand has not left mine since the cold-storage room. The not-yet-thread is full. He has not spoken since he knelt. He has been present — his hand on mine, his weight against my shoulder, his eyes awake — but he has not opened his mouth, and I have not pushed him to.
I lean forward in the back seat.
"Dean."
"Yeah."
