Page 15
Not fully yet, I know this. Human ways are twisted, and I know enough to understand that not destroying an offering does not always mean acceptance of it. Still, he knew enough to leave it whole. He gave the bundle respect, even if he did not understand what kind of respect he was offering.
Now he sits beneath moonlight, far from his den, and the lantern hangs from my antler with its flame covered until only a muted glow spills through the trees.
His eyes fix on the glow, and his body goes very, very still.
The night gives me everything his body tries to hide. His pulse changed first, quickening at his throat, and his grip tightened on the metal cup in his hand. The bitter smell of coffee lifts faintly from it, but beneath it, I catch the brief chemical spike his body dumps into his blood.
The first thin edge of fear.
It reaches me like pain, and I lower my lantern an inch without meaning to.
I do not like his fear. I do not want him to feel it when he looks at me. Fear belongs to those I hunt, not to the one Aestrata has meant for me.
He is not terrified, but he is unsettled, and that unsettled scent prickles the very part of me that has been alone for too long. If I allowed it, the moon would show him everything the stories taught him to fear.
I refuse, and the bond roars in my bones anyway, furious with my patience, urging me to claim, to mark, to drag him somewhere no one else walks.
But the thought of his fear sharpening into terror turns my stomach.
“You’re losin’ it, Lucas,” he mutters after I dim the lantern completely. “You’re fine. It’s… just a light, that’s all.”
He sets the cup down slowly beside him, but he does not reach for the knife I know he has, though his attention flicks there for one breath.
Ranger. Land-knowing human. Smart enough to measure distance, light, sound, and escape. Trained by years of walking places that do not care whether a man makes it home or not.
It pleases me, because a mate who doesn’t belong to the forest would always be half elsewhere, and I don’t share.
I let my scent move toward him to show him I mean no harm—to appease him and calm him. Labrador tea slips across the distance between us and reaches him where he sits.
His reaction is immediate: he draws in one unsteady breath, then another, before his face changes.
Recognition enters him with a force he cannot dismiss. I see the dreams behind his eyes, the bundle on his porch, the missing humans whose names stain papers on the table of his den.
My mate’s mind is gathering pieces that do not belong together, and begins forcing them into a shape that doesn’t fit.
Fear grows in his scent, not yet large enough to make him break and flee. But enough that shame—unfamiliar and ugly—moves through me.
I have frightened him.
The knowledge sits wrong in my body. I have frightened many humans before. Most were trespassers who entered deep territory with weapons, traps, poison, or careless fire. Their fear meant they would leave. I have worn fear from humans the way stone wears rain—it never mattered.
His fear does.
The bond pulls tight between us, and in that pulling, I sense only confusion, and the stubborn refusal to run too soon.
He is brave, this little ember of mine, and that makes me want to fold myself around him even more.
But possession is not the same as protection, and I’ve watched humans long enough to know they fear cages even when the bars are meant to keep them safe.
He stands from the fallen log, leaving the cup where it rests. “Parker,” he says into the small device at his shoulder, though he has not yet pressed it. “Okay, no. Nope. I am not callin’ this in and soundin’ even crazier than I feel right now. Jesus, Dawson.”
He speaks to himself when he is uncertain; I have learned this. It is one of his habits that I have collected with the rest. When grief tightens, he mutters. When anger rises, his words turn sharper. When he is alone and afraid, he pushes humor into the dark as if the dark might take offense and back away.
I almost touch the bond then; not with words, only meaning.
Safe.
Mine.
