The cold patch on Mona's back never finished fading and by morning she'd grown into it.
Soren woke before the others and found her sitting on the floor of the dorm with her knees pulled up and her lenses pushed onto the top of her head, looking at her own hands like she'd been handed someone else's.
She had held a humanoid form only once before on the day she bonded. That shift had been fragile and exhausting. The sunlight was too bright and required lenses for eyes never meant for the surface.
This wasn't that.
This time the form was steady. The gap Soren usually felt in his Pack Sense was gone. She felt like a complete person rather than a hole in the world.
"You are staying up," he said.
She looked at him.
"The form. You are holding it now. You could not do that before."
◆◆◆◆
Mona's beast.
He recalled the details of her file.
The mole was the only bond that cost him nothing. She was bonded through a harmless circuit and served as the clumsy core of the pack.
