Andrew glances up from Aiden’s face, just for a second. Kade’s mouth pulls at one corner and she keeps her eyes on the road.
“Wait.” I turn in my seat. “If Zaki is the natural successor, then why do you keep calling me your queen? Why did she bow to me?”
“Because you are the first mate of the clan,” Kade says, cutting in before Kojo can open his mouth. She doesn’t look away from the road. “Which by default makes you their leader. The Bouda go by the laws of their hierarchy and they don’t sway from it.” She changes lanes with the same casual aggression she applies to everything. “You are, in fact, the new queen of their clan.”
I huff and face front.
I think about Zaki walking toward twelve armed men without hurrying. Her body moving through that fight like she’d already seen the end of it before it started. The look she’d given Kojo across that parking lot, saying everything she needed to in the time it took to tilt her chin.
“Do you want to go find her?” I ask.
Kojo looks out the window, at the dark and the snow and the road disappearing into white, and when he looks back his face has shifted just enough that I catch it.
“No,” he says. “I will not leave your side.”
I face forward and sit with the fact that I’m relieved, and I don’t examine why.
The truck goes quiet for a stretch. Just the engine and the wind buffeting the cab and the soft sound of Andrew murmuring something against the top of Aiden’s head, and then Kojo breaks the silence. “You are jealous for nothing, majesty,” and I open my mouth and he keeps going.
“You own me,” he says, even and unhurried. “You own my Bouda. We are loyal to you, always.”
I close my mouth and face the windshield. My cheeks are warm and I am grateful for the dark cab and the blowing snow and the fact that Kade is watching the road. I don’t know the firstthing about being a queen. I don’t know what to do with a man who says you own me like it’s already settled, just a fact he’s lived with long enough that it stopped needing explanation.
“Give Wintermoon a chance, Kendra,” Kade says. “I know this is moving fast, and I understand the apprehension. But I can’t in good conscience let you wander the streets alone after tonight. Kojo threw a car at a human. He’s made noise with the radicals, and being fated to a supernatural male already makes you a target with them, regardless of anything else you’ve done.” She says it plain, no softening and no edge. “And if you get hurt, Kojo will do everything in his power to defend you. Even if it ends him.”
I watch the road and the snow and the faint ghost of lane markers buried under the accumulation, and I say I know, because it is the only honest thing I have and it’s enough for right now.
Kade glances in the rearview mirror, takes in the backseat with one long look, exhales through her nose, and just pushes the gas harder.
“We’re going to have to stop for fuel,” she says. “All this snow is putting extra drag on the engine and I’d rather not coast into Wintermoon on fumes.”
“Good,” I say, “because I have to pee.”
“At least we agree on something.”
Andrew’s voice changes behind me before I can say anything else. All the quiet murmuring drops away, his whole posture shifting upright in the mirror.
“He’s coming back, he’s finally snapping out of it,” Andrew says.
I look back. Aiden’s fingers are moving now, his feet shifting, his face working past the rigid blankness Zaki’s cackle locked it into. He makes a sound, low and uncomfortable, and then startstaking inventory of where all his limbs went. His elbow catches the door. His knee comes up.
“Let me find a gas station before someone gets kicked in the face,” Kade mutters, and she’s already moving right, scanning the exits as they appear through the snow.
A truck stop sign appears in the street light ahead. She takes the exit quickly, the tires grinding through deep accumulation on the ramp, and pulls into the lot and parks at the nearest pump. She cuts the engine, and we are not even halfway to Wintermoon.
I’m still unbuckling my seatbelt when my door swings open from the outside. I squeal. Kojo is already there, filling the entire doorframe, and I genuinely have no idea how a man that size moves that quickly. He reaches in without asking and closes his grip around my hips, and he lifts me out of the cab and sets me down on the salted pavement in front of him. The cold hits me immediately, sharp and direct. His heat hits right after it, displacing the night air like nothing human-made ever quite manages.
I tilt my chin up. He rolls his shoulders once, slow, and the ridge along his back shifts through his shirt with the movement, the fur rippling and settling.
“I’m sorry, Kojo,” I say, because I’ve been carrying it and I want it out. “I can’t be your queen. I don’t know how to be that.”
He looks at me for a long moment and I brace myself for the law of the Bouda again, the explanation I’ve heard in variations since I woke up in that motel room, but instead he reaches out and rests his fingers against my cheek. Carefully, barely touching.
“I am sorry, Kendra.”
I gasp, not sure why I’m so surprised that he’s using my name.
“I do not want to force the position upon you. But you are my mate, and among my people, that law cannot be unmade. You are my leader, and my queen.” His palm is still at my cheek. “I will build you a home in Wintermoon and I will explain the lore of my people to you, every part of it, until you understand. I will not demand your compliance. I will earn your understanding.”
