Page 21 of Monster Queen Rising

I get in first. Madison is awake, sitting up against the door. She watches Fen fold himself into the cab behind me.

"Madison. This is Fen."

He settles as far away as he can in the truck on purpose. His hands go flat on his thighs. He keeps his eyes on her face.

"Hi," Madison says.

"...Hello." Rough.

She studies him.

"You're Fen."

He doesn't answer in words. He doesn't look away either.

"You're the father."

Fen blinks slowly. "Yes."

"Did you know they were going to make a baby?"

His jaw clenches. "No."

I don't fill in the rest. The years in the cell, what it did to him — Madison can have that later, if she wants it.

"What's she going to be?" Madison asks. "What's she going to look like? What's she going to need?"

"We don't know," I say. "But we’ll be here to help you."

Fen lets me talk. Then it happens.

His nostrils move — small, the kind of thing I'd miss on anyone else. He's scenting the cab. Scenting her. And it hits him, because the smell isn’t just Madison. Isn't a stranger. It's me and him. His head turns toward her stomach.

Not the careful not-looking he's been doing since he got in. The thread between us pulls tight.

Madison watches his face change.

"Mine," he says.

It's forced up out of him. He didn't reach for it.

Madison’s hand moves to her stomach.

"I didn't have a choice either," she says. She holds his eyes, and something passes between two people who got used the same way.

"What do you want?" she asks him. "Tell me."

"Live." A breath. "You. Live."

"And?"

He can't get the rest into words. He turns to me, and the thread carries what his mouth won't.

"He wants you both to live," I say, for him.

Madison's eyes go wet. She doesn't cry. She shuts them a second.

"I think that's more than the doctors ever wanted for me. I was just the incubator to them." She opens her eyes. "Thank you. Thank you for caring what happens to me. Thank you for being so careful and not crowding me."