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He dresses quickly, though not well, because he keeps watching me as if I might vanish between one blink and the next. I do not tease him for that. Not yet. Some fears deserve quiet until they loosen.
He grabs a jacket, boots, and his radio, because even heartbroken, furious, and half undone by ancient forest problems, Lucas remains a ranger down to the marrow.
I stand in the center of his room and endure the human shape a little longer, because watching him move through the morning is worth the pain. At the porch, he stops and looks toward the trees. For a moment, his scent changes. Old hurt. The memory of blue light, silence, a thrown stone, no answer.
I touch the back of his hand, letting the bond carry my apology before words can form.
He laces his fingers through mine and squeezes once. “Don’t start apologizin’ with your whole face, Wildheart. I haven’t had coffee, and I’ll cry ugly.”
The nickname moves through me like sunlight under bark.
Your ugly crying is brave.
“That is both sweet and deeply rude.”
Both can be true.
He huffs, but his hand stays in mine as we enter the trees.
The forest receives us differently now. It no longer hides the way it did when the Varkhyn watched. The path opens in small signs, not obvious to human eyes that do not know how to love the ground, but clear enough for Lucas. Ferns bent away from a narrow trail. A cedar bough lifting in the wind, though no wind touches the others. Labrador tea scent returning in faint threads ahead of us, mine and not mine, the forest offering it back like a peace token.
Lucas notices. His throat works once, but he says nothing.
When we reach the deeper stretch beyond his cabin clearing, I cannot hold the human body another moment. I step away from him into a patch of morning light. Lucas stops without being told, his gaze staying on me.
Watch? I ask, because I know he wants to and because asking matters.
His answer comes low. “Yeah. I wanna watch.”
The want in his scent thickens as I let the shape break open.
Relief hits first. Bone unfurling. Spine lengthening. The skull rising back over my face like armor returning to a warrior’s frame. Antlers push through with a deep ache that becomes pleasure when they clear the skin and take on their weight.
My shoulders broaden, slate returns, bark-dark markings lift, and claws sharpen while fur rises along my spine. The air widens, and the forest speaks in a hundred small voices my human ears cannot hold.
When I stand in my first body, I breathe properly for the first time since escaping the deepwood. Then I feel desire move through the bond so abruptly I turn my skull toward him.
He stands a few feet away, lips parted, eyes traveling over me with an open hunger that shocks me into stillness even now. Even after everything. Even after he touched my skull and called me beautiful, some old part of me expects fear and recoil when a human sees this body in daylight.
Lucas gives me none of that. He looks at me like I am wanted, and the force of it nearly bends my knees.
Little Ember sees the first body and thinks very loud, I send, because awe makes me tender and flirting gives me teeth enough to survive it.
His face flushes immediately. “I do not.”
The bond betrays him with another warm pulse of lust. I lower my head slightly, the lantern chain shifting against one antler, though the lantern remains dark. Liar.
He points at me, but it has no power when his face is that bright. “You just came back from bein’ kidnapped by your evil brother. Maybe don’t use your recovery mornin’ to bully me.”
Not bullying. Observing my mate wanting me.
His jaw tightens, and his face goes crimson at once.
There. There is the fluster I love. The heat up his neck, the tightening of his mouth, the little offended flash because he knows I have put him on the spot, and he hates how much it pleases him.
I send amusement through the bond slowly, letting him feel how beautiful he is when want and embarrassment fight under his skin. He looks away toward a tree, then back, and instead of retreating into embarrassment, he does something new.
He smiles.
