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His skull face was darker, bone stained in old red where rain never washed clean. Black antlers spread wide, cracked at the tips and wrapped with strips of things I refused to name. His fur hung thicker along his spine, matted in places. His eyes burned too bright, fever pale and joyous.

He had the shape of Cervari and the scent of ruin.

Brother, he said, and the word came out spoiled.

I did not answer with the same tenderness. I widened my stance and let more of my true form rise because the healed place inside me had no illusions. Aestrata may have cut out the rot in my possessiveness, but she had not made me gentle toward everything wearing antlers. You should have stayed gone.

His laughter cracked the forced silence around us. You found one.

Lucas flickered through the bond at the same instant, distant but alive, and my brother’s head tilted sharply as he tasted that too. There was no way to hide it. Not after the seal. Not after the bond brightened my scent through the whole range like a second moon.

The rage—that which Aestrata had just cleaned—stirred to life, and he scented it. I knew he did. His head tilted, delighted.

There he is, my brother sent. Not so healed. Not so holy. Still teeth under bark.

I should have retreated—not from fear but from wisdom. I was weakened from everything I had endured with the Earth Mother. Yet the moment he tasted Lucas’s name in the air, every lesson about restraint had to fight the ancient truth of protecting mate from threat.

You will not speak of him, I warned.

He stepped closer. I have already called to him, but he would not come deeper.

Pride and horror struck me at once. My mate, wounded and abandoned in all the ways I had promised never to repeat, had still trusted the wrongness in his skin more than grief. He had not followed, even after I left him cold. Even after I gave him silence instead of return. He had chosen not to be led by a light wearing my shape.

Lucas.

My brave, furious Little Ember.

The dream-self in the memory growled, and the real sleeping body somewhere in Lucas’s cabin must have moved too, because I feel his hand on my chest through distance, faint in my waking-not-waking.

He is not yours, I sent.

My brother smiled inside the skull. I felt it though no human face showed. No? He carries your mark and your scent. He called for you with tears in his throat. He belongs to what answers, and you left him hungry, brother. I only offered a light.

Then I understood the shape of his want. Not simple murder and not only cruelty.

Jealousy.

The bond had changed the forest. My finding Lucas had woken old rot and given it direction. My brother did not want Lucas as mate in the sacred sense because Varkhyn do not honor bonds. He wanted what had chosen me, if only to prove the choice could be spoiled. He wanted Lucas’s fear, yes, but more than that, he wanted my mate’s trust broken open in his teeth.

He is mine too, my brother sent.

The world went red.

I do not remember lunging, but I remember the impact. Antler against antler. The crack of bone. Claws in bark, then flesh, then stone. We hit the ground hard enough to split roots. I was weak from Aestrata’s circle; he was not. He fought like hunger given a body and laughed when my claws opened his side. He bit into my shoulder and drank blood as if blood were proof.

The trap closed while we fought.

Roots, not Aestrata’s roots, but dead ones twisted by him, soaked in old kill-scent and threaded with stolen lantern light. They rose from the ground behind me and locked around my antlers, my arms, and my throat. I tore three apart, but six more replaced them. The blue-white light of his lantern burned above us, and the flame made the world tilt.

He is already half feral for you, he sent, muzzle close to my broken skull. I could make the other half easy.

I tried to reach Lucas through the bond, but nothing passed. Deepwood swallowed the call, or my brother did. I do not know. That ignorance dragged across the next stretch of memory like claws through my own chest. Bound beneath roots that smelled of old humans and rotting worship, I felt days turn and could not count them.

Sometimes my brother left. Sometimes he returned carrying scents I did not want to know. Sometimes he spoke of Lucas seeing the lantern and refusing it, his voice growing uglier each time.

Your mate is stubborn, he told me once, crouched close enough that his breath crawled over my face. I like that. It will make the break sweeter.

Lucas threw the onyx stone into the forest, and that was the moment the roots weakened. I do not fully understand that part. The stone struck wood, and Lucas’s grief broke open around the words, “Fuck you for makin’ me love you like this,” and the bond flared so violently that my prison shuddered.