Chapter 9
Chapter nine
Jen
The kitchen floor is cold under us and Harek is still inside me. Then his arms tighten and his mouth finds my hair.
"They're coming," he says.
He hears them before I do. The bedroom door opens down the hall.
Crull first. His amber eyes find us on the floor. He registers the scene — me on Harek's lap, the brand on my neck, the brand on Harek's — and he nods once, slow.
Then Thaw. He stops in the doorway and his gold eyes go over me once, then over Harek, and something warm passes across his face.
Thaw says, "We need to talk."
Harek slides my sweatshirt over my head, then his hands find my hips. He lifts me off him slowly — the slide of him leaving me is too much for one second — and then he sets me on my feet. He pulls his pants on and stands behind me with one arm around my waist. He does not let go.
I am not going to be without him touching me for a while.
Dean and Daron come in the front door with a rush of cold air. Rifles slung across their backs, the matched pair. They have been outside all night. Dean crosses to the table and takes a chair across from Thaw. Daron stays standing near the door.
Harek lowers himself against the wall behind my chair without a sound. He has not put on a shirt. The brand at the side of his throat is bright pink against deep olive skin, the matched twin of the one at mine. He puts his back to the wall and sits with his hand resting on the back of my chair.
Crull takes the wall behind me beside Harek. Harek gets up and goes to the coffee maker. He pours a mug. He brings it to me. He sets it down at my elbow.
"Drink," he says, then, "It is hot."
The kitchen goes still.
Daron barks a laugh from the back door. "Look at that. A whole sentence."
Harek does not look at him. "Two."
Dean nearly chokes on his coffee.
"Two," Daron says. "Brother is counting."
"He has always counted," Crull says behind me, low. The first he has said all morning.
"He has not always corrected me out loud."
Harek smiles. Small. Crooked. The first one I have seen.
"Less broken now," he says. To me.
The kitchen goes quiet a different way. Daron's grin softens. His eyes get bright. He looks out the back door at the trees for a second and when he turns back the grin is still there. Dean has put his coffee down. He is looking at his brother.
Across from me, Thaw is smiling.
"The bond gives it back. Slowly," Harek says, while everyone is still watching.
"He always took everything slow," Daron says. "Did you ever see him eat. He chews thirty times."
"Not true."
"Dean. Tell her."
Dean clears his throat. "It's true."
I laugh. It comes out of me before I realize it. A short laugh, surprised. My heart feels full. My pack is in this kitchen. I have a pack.
I am sitting at a kitchen table with five monsters who would put themselves between me and any door that opened wrong, and one of them just made me coffee, and the other two are giving each other shit about chewing, and I am a part of it.
The fear is still there. The Syndicate is still out there. But for the first time in awhile, it isn't the biggest thing in the room.
I reach back and put my hand over Harek's on the back of the chair. He turns his palm and laces his fingers through mine.
Daron is now telling a story about a job in Portland that involves a goat. Dean is correcting him. Crull is shaking his head. Harek is following the back-and-forth with his eyes. I drink the coffee. The heat goes down my throat and lands warm in my belly.
Then Thaw clears his throat. The room comes down one notch.
"All right," he says.
That is all. All right. And the pack is on the same page in the same moment. Daron's story stops. Dean sits forward. Harek's hand tightens once on mine and stays.
Thaw looks around the table.
"We're not staying here."
No argument. Just fact. Dean nods.
"We've got probably forty-eight hours."
"Why?" I ask.
"The Syndicate had you for weeks," Dean says. "They knew you were valuable or they wouldn’t have taken you. They did not know you were a pack anchor until you walked out a hole in their wall with four hybrids behind you."
"So I'm the one they want."
"Yes."
"More than Thaw?"
"More than any of us."
The room goes still.
"How long before they find this place?"
Dean glances at Daron. Daron answers.
"The cabin sits six miles up a track that doesn't show on satellite. They'll sweep the forest service roads first. They'll waste time in the wrong valleys. We get about forty-eight hours before their search grid comes out this far."
"And then?"
"Then we move."
"Where?"
Daron leans back in his chair. "Deeper."
The grin is gone now. "There is another place. We built it."
Silence settles over the table.
"We planned for three, now we're seven," Daron says.
He rubs a hand over his jaw. "We'll need more food. More everything. The road in is worse."
"How long is the move?"
"Day's drive. Less if we push."
Down the hallway, something hits wood. Not the pacing-thud. Harder. A body weight against a wall. A wall-thump. The whole pack hears it. We all turn at the same moment, like one body. Thaw's gold eyes go to the hallway.
"He's coming up," I say.
"He's been at it awhile," Dean says.
A second thud. Harder. The plates on the kitchen shelf rattle.
Thaw is on his feet. "Jen. Stay in the kitchen."
"I should —"
"Jen." His voice is the alpha note. I sit back down. "Stay. Nobody approaches the door. Crull in the hallway as backup. Harek, stay with her. Dean — front door. Daron — back window in case he goes through that."
The pack splits in one motion.
Crull goes down the hallway behind Thaw. Daron is out the back door. Dean is at the front door. Harek slides off his wall and steps between me and the hallway — not blocking my sightline, just there, close, his shoulder a foot from mine.
Down the hall, Thaw's voice through the door. Low.
"Fen. Brother. You're not in the cell Fen."
The pacing stops.
For one second the cabin is silent.
Then a long sustained crack — wood splintering — and a heavy slamming impact that shakes the kitchen floor under my chair, and a loud roar makes my ears ring.
He has broken something.
The hollow opens. Not a flutter. A pull. For one second the static breaks and I feel into him — climbing toward me through the chaos, the want and the man fighting himself.
My chest aches.
Harek's arm comes around my shoulders and pulls me into him. He has felt the ache come through the new bond and he is holding me because if he were not there I would already be walking down that hallway.
Down the hall, through the door, Thaw says, very quiet, "That's right, brother. That's right. You hold it. We've got the rest."
The static closes back over. Fen has gone under again.
In the kitchen, my coffee is still steaming.
"Two days," Dean says quietly from the front door. "Then we move."
Thaw comes back down the hallway and stops in the kitchen doorway. His gold eyes find mine.
"Not yet, Jen. I know you want to. Not until we know what he does to himself trying not to hurt you."
"Okay," I say.
I want to walk down the hallway anyway.
I do not.