“Mine. Don’t Touch.”

The fury at Craig is older than this day. “Faggot”, thrown at Simon, lands in three of Jacob’s locked drawers at once: the locker room, where he spat that word himself; someone else’s bruises on “his” ribs; yesterday’s “we’re friends”, said on his behalf. And at the bottom lies the unnamed “mine — don’t touch”, the same thing we glimpsed in chapter five over Craig’s bruise.

Publicly cutting down your own sidekick for a word you threw around for years is an earthquake for the pack: Priscilla goes cold, Craig folds. And the convenient explanation (“the director is watching”) pulls up right behind, like a lid — the same mechanism as when he agreed to come: the real thing stays below, unnamed.