Page 67 of Monster Queen Rising

"Daughter," he says.

Not loud. Just his own voice, the way a man says it the first time.

Madison's watching them, her face wet, and she's smiling.

Fen can't reach for me while holding the baby. He looks at me instead.

Our gaze locks. Our bond is full.

"Gabrielle," Madison says from the bed, watching the three of us. Tired all the way through. "We'll call her Gabi."

The mark on my sternum is hot.

Gabi sleeps in his arms.

Chapter twenty-four

Jen

The house sleeps around Gabi's hours now.

By midnight it's down — Madison and the baby in the back bedroom, Janet and Mara's doors are shut, the pack settled into the new shape of a place with an infant in it. Nine days and the whole house has rearranged itself around a person who weighs seven pounds.

I don't go to my room.

Crull's in the kitchen. Of course he is. Dough under a cloth for the morning, the oven long cold, and him at the table in the dark doing nothing at all. His amber eyes find me in the doorway before I've made a sound.

"You should sleep," he says.

"So should you."

"I don't sleep much."

"No. You never have." I come in and sit in the chair beside him. Not across. "Up before anyone. Down last. You sat on that porch with Fen for a whole night once and never asked him why he was out there."

He doesn't answer.

"You got shot nine days ago and now you're up at one in the morning making bread rise."

"The bread doesn't rise itself."

"Crull."

The house ticks. Upstairs something small shifts and settles.

I say the thing I've been carrying since the white room.

"I need you."

His eyes meet mine. He's still. Something moves in his face and is gone before I catch it.

I stand and step between his knees.

In the chair he's nearly my height. I put my hands on his face — the heavy jaw, the rough of it, the ivory at his lower lip where the tusks come up past it — and I kiss him.

He holds still under it. Of course he does. That's what he is. The one who doesn't move first. Who waits to be told where the weight goes and doesn't take one inch past it.

I kiss him until he can't stay still anymore.