Page 163
No rush, he sends.
“I know.”
You may stop.
“I know.”
You may wait another year.
I laugh, but it comes out shaky. “Trying to talk me out of it now?”
No. His amusement brushes me gently. Trying to give a door many hinges.
“That is a terrible metaphor.”
Which you understood.
“Unfortunately.”
His skull tilts, and the moon catches along the weathered bone. Little Ember ready?
My hands shake. I let them. I’ve spent a year pretending I’m not scared of this body under my skin, and I’m tired of making fear sit pretty for appearances. The ache is already there, rolling through my spine, my wrists, the mark at my throat. Not pain, but invitation. The forest waits around us, holding itself quiet, and somewhere deeper than thought, Aestrata is present without standing over me.
“My choosing,” I whisper.
Onyx lowers his head farther until his skull touches my forehead. Yours.
I close my eyes.
The shift begins like moonlight under my skin. My freckles warm first—every one of them. Across my face, shoulders, arms, chest. The heat spreads until they darken from copper to ember-rust, bright and strange, not erased by what I’m becoming but claimed by it.
My hair pulls, and I suck in a sharp breath as it lengthens around my face, copper-red curls spilling down beneath a pressure building over my skull. My jaw aches. My teeth sharpen. My spine bends, stretches, remembers a shape I’ve never worn and somehow have always carried.
The antlers come with pressure so intense I nearly swear, except the sound that leaves me is not human enough for words.
Onyx’s concern flares, but I push back through the bond, clumsy but clear. I’m okay.
Then the skull settles over my face.
I expect terror. I expect to feel buried. Instead, the night opens.
The skull is bleached bone with a warm orange tint, like old ivory left under autumn sun. It fits me—it fits as it grew from every human thing Aestrata refused to take away. My eyes see through the sockets, sharper than any headlamp; they see every leaf vein and moth wing clear in the moonlight. My hair hangs longer beneath it, wild copper under pale bone.
Fur grows along my legs, thick and orange, deep as fox fur in shadow. My hands lengthen into claws. My legs change with a strange, staggering bend, and for one horrible second, I almost panic because gravity itself feels rewritten.
Onyx doesn’t catch me, but he stays close and lets me find my feet. I love him so fiercely for that, it nearly topples me anyway.
When the shift settles, the forest exhales, and I stand there in my other body, trembling and alive. I’m not Onyx’s mirror. I only have a few pale growth-ring marks, faint across my chest and arms, nothing like the ancient dark patterns on him. My freckles are still there, darker now, ember-scattered across changed skin. My skull is my own, my fur is orange, and my body feels wrong and wonderful—too big, too sharp, too aware, and somehow more mine than fear ever let me imagine.
Holy shit, I send.
Onyx’s awe pours through the bond so hard my new knees almost give. Beautiful, he sends. My ember. My mate. Beautiful.
I wish I could kiss him.
The longing hits me hard, sad, and sweet because this skull has no human mouth for that. Onyx feels it and steps closer, slow enough that every movement asks. I meet him halfway. Our skulls touch, bone against living bone, and the contact travels through me like lightning finding root.
Not a kiss, but somehow just as intimate. His skull slides along mine in a careful caress, antlers angling around mine, his breath moving over the orange-tinted bone of my face. I lean into him with my whole strange body, rubbing my skull against his like a contented cat.
