Page 36 of Monster Queen Rising

"I know."

"No, let me — I've beencomposingthis, Jen, in my head, for weeks, and now I've got nothing, I've got —" he laughs into my hair, wrecked with it. "One setting. I told you. Turns out this is it."

I find his hand and lace my fingers into his.

He goes quiet, which for Daron is the loudest thing he does.

When I turn to look at him his eyes are wet at the rims, the way they were at the barn.

"That was a long time coming," he says, and I feel how much he means every word of it.

I press my palm flat over his.

"You're mine. The bond, the whole thing. I'm one of yours."

I hold my hand there.

He gathers me in and tucks his face into my hair and holds on, and the pack-bond hums low. He talks a while — quiet now, into my hair, about nothing, about everything, because the day Daron runs out of things to say out loud hasn't come — and I let it wash over me until it slows, and thins, and stops, and he's under.

I stay awake a little longer with him wrapped around me. I don't tease him about falling asleep first.

The radio cracks at six. Daron's up and across the room and back in ninety seconds, jeans and bare feet, and hands it over.

"Go ahead."

"You good?"

"We're good. Both of us."

The line goes quiet.

I set the radio on the dresser. Outside the window the lot is gray with early light. South of us, in Colorado, Elma is asleep in a spare room in a house nobody's looking at, learning how to live knowing the Syndicate is out there.

North, the next name is sleeping somewhere, not knowing yet that a van is already deciding when to park outside her building.

Chapter thirteen

Fen

Cold porch.

Coffee. Crull made it. Bitter. I drink it.

The mark sat warm all night. Steady now. Jen with Daron, east, the thread holding across the miles.

Crull is beside me. He poured the cup before I came out. He has not looked at me.

The sun is coming up. Pink at the trees.

He clears his throat.

"Daron switches out today. Dean goes."

"Yes."

He drinks. He does not push.

After a while.