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The name he gave me had weight; his love carried more. My brother was not there when I eventually escaped, which was worse than if he had been waiting. I crawled with half my strength gone and blood in my eyes, tearing myself loose from roots that kept pieces of my skin and fur. I ran through the deepwood and out of it, following the bond not as a path but as a beacon.

By the time I reached Lucas’s clearing, I could barely hold shape, but I saw him. The dream begins to thin there, the memory becoming too close to waking to hold its own shape much longer.

I feel the couch under my body before I fully leave the old root-dark. I smell Lucas’s den-that-is-not-a-den over the prison stink. Labrador tea rises stronger. The bond, now no longer muffled by deepwood, opens in one raw flare that is half relief and half pain.

Before it all dissolves, one last image remains. My brother in the trees beyond the prison mouth after I escaped, too far to catch, one antler broken and jagged.

Then darkness folds.

I turn in the dream, antlers lowered, rage clean now, bright as lightning over black trees.

No. Lucas is not bait. Not prize, proof, or meat for old jealousy. He is my mate because he chose me. If my brother comes wearing my light, my scent, my shape, or my name, I will teach the forest the sound a Varkhyn makes when balance finally closes its teeth.

Above me, in the waking world, Lucas says my name. This time, I answer through the bond.

Weak. Broken. Alive.

Little Ember.

36

Lucas

For three days, I’ve kept Onyx alive in my cabin and still have no idea what I’m doing.

That’s not me being dramatic, either. I know first aid. I know how to stop bleeding, how to wrap a sprain or set a splint, how to recognize shock in a hiker who swears he’s fine while his lips are blue and his ankle points the wrong way. I know when to call for a rescue team, when to keep someone warm, when to make them drink, when to tell them to stop arguing because the mountain doesn’t care about their ego.

I am useful in a crisis when the crisis is human shaped. Onyx is not human shaped, even when he looks close enough to fool someone in low light.

I get him onto the bed the first night through a combination of panic, swearing, leverage, and the kind of strength people get when the alternative is letting someone they love bleed all over the floor.

Love. I don’t let myself say it out loud while I’m half carrying, half dragging him down the hallway, but it’s there, beating incessantly under my ribs.

By the time I get him stretched out on top of the blankets, my shirt is soaked with rain and his blood, my hands are shaking, and the whole room smells so strongly of Labrador tea that I nearly break down before I even find clean towels.

I strip off what I can without hurting him worse. His pants are torn. His skin is marked with cuts I don’t understand, long red-brown lines that look more like roots burned into him than claws. The worst wound is at his shoulder, deep and ugly, with dark bruising spreading beneath the skin. I clean it with warm water because I don’t know what else to do.

I don’t use antiseptic at first because I have no idea whether human chemicals will help him or poison him or offend some ancient forest law and make my night worse. I talk to him while I work because the silence feels like it’s trying to swallow me.

“You’re a real pain in my ass, Wildheart,” I tell him, pressing a towel to his shoulder while his head lolls against the pillow. “You know that? Two months of nothin’, then you show up bleedin’ all over my rug like this is a normal way to reconnect. There are healthier communication styles.”

No answer—not out loud, or in my head.

The bond flickers sometimes, weak and feverish, like a lamp with a bad wire. It’s better than the cold. God, anything is better than the cold, but it scares me in a whole new way.

I get flashes that aren’t words. Pain. Dark roots. Blue light. My name, broken and dragged through his throat. Once, the shape of my own porch from his point of view, and then the feeling of rage so old it makes my teeth ache.

He stays in his human form because I think his body is too weak to hold anything else. That’s my best guess, anyway. His antlers don’t break free again, and the skull doesn’t return, but the truth of him keeps showing through in broken little ways.

His nails go dark and sharp when pain takes him too deep. The bark-like markings along his ribs rise under my hands, then smooth out again. I don’t sleep much, either. By morning, I’m running on coffee, fear, and resentment.

That’s when the forest starts helping. Yeah, I know how that darn well sounds, but I’m not sure what else to call it.

The first time it happens, I’m on the porch with blood under my nails and a mug of still-steaming coffee I haven’t drunk from yet, staring out at the tree line. The air is wet and cool. Birds are too quiet. I’ve got half a mind to start yelling again when a scent cuts through the Labrador tea clinging to the cabin.

Yarrow.

I know yarrow. Any ranger worth his boots knows yarrow. Except I don’t remember any growing this close to the cabin. A narrow path between ferns seems to open where there shouldn’t be one, just beyond the woodpile. Not dramatic. Not glowing. Just visible in a way it wasn’t a second before. I stare at it for so long my coffee goes cold.