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Set into the dark band is the pale river stone from my second offering, the one I placed on his porch when I had no voice for apology and no right to ask him to understand me. Time and polishing revealed its hidden fire. White and blue and green and a hint of orange like sunrise caught underwater.

“It was opal,” I say quietly. “Hidden under river skin. I kept it before I knew why. The onyx you gave me. The opal I gave you. Naming and apology. First bridge.”

Lucas looks at the ring, and the bond between us goes still in that trembling way it does when he feels too much and has not yet decided whether to make a joke, curse at me, or cry. I feel his family watching us, scents cloaked by the forest, and I lower myself to one knee.

The moss beneath me is soft because I asked the clearing to be gentle. The split rock rises behind Lucas, the place of our first waking closeness, and the moon hangs above him like a witness too large for any human church. I look up at him, at his tears, his ember marks, his trembling mouth, his life shining through everything death failed to keep.

“Lucas Dawson,” I say, and his name is sacred because he was the first one who taught my mouth to shape love instead of warning. “Little Ember. Ranger. Mate. My home and my chosen path.”

The bond opens enough that I feel his heart stumble, and I almost stop because part of me still believes tenderness can hurt him if it arrives too quickly. But Lucas does not look away. His tears spill, and he lets them. He stands in the clearing where we began and gives me the whole truth on his face.

“Will you take this ring and let humans see what the forest already knows? Will you marry me?”

He covers his mouth with one hand. For one terrible heartbeat, he does not answer. I know he will. I know through the bond there is no refusal in him. There is shock, love, grief, joy, and something bright enough to make the forest lean closer, but no refusal. Still, human rituals have silences inside them where fear can grow teeth, and mine grows too fast.

Then he drops to his knees in front of me. “Yes,” he says, but the word breaks.

The relief that hits me has no dignity. It goes through every bone, every root-thread, every old hollow place in me. I make a sound that is almost a sob and almost laughter, and Lucas laughs too, crying harder now.

“Yes, Wildheart,” he says again, clearer though still wrecked. “Of course, yes. God, yes.”

I take his left hand, and my fingers shake. He notices, and strokes his thumb across the back of my hand, steadying me in the ritual I learned for him. That is Lucas; that has always been Lucas. Dying, grieving, frightened, newly reborn, half-Cervari under the full moon, and still determined to comfort me if my hands tremble while giving him forever in a human shape.

I slide the ring onto his finger.

It fits because I measured while he slept, which he will call creepy when he can breathe properly. The onyx warms against his skin at once. The opal catches moonlight and throws it back in quiet fire. His mark hums through the bond, and the faint root-lines beneath his wrist answer. The sun marks across his face seem to darken for one soft pulse, ember-bright under his tears.

I bend and press my mouth to the ring on his hand, and he makes a sound that almost brings me apart.

Then he grabs my face and kisses me.

I catch him carefully, though nothing about the way he comes to me is fragile. We sink fully onto the moss, knees pressed together, hands tangled, mouths clumsy with tears. The kiss tastes of salt and moonlight and Lucas’s living breath. The bond opens warm and bright between us, gold and green-white and ember-orange, no cold places, no false lights, no silence.

I hold the back of his neck with one hand and his ringed hand with the other because I cannot choose which proof matters more. When we part, his forehead rests against mine.

“Crying means yes, too?” I ask, because some anxious piece of me still needs the words.

Lucas laughs wetly, wiping his cheek against my shoulder instead of his sleeve, overwhelmed and perhaps also because he knows I will like it. “Cryin’ very much means yes.”

“Good.”

“You were so nervous.”

“Yes.”

“That’s ridiculous, you know,” he says, voice wet and so full of joy. “You’re my mate, Onyx. You’re the forest. You’re home. You really thought I’d say no to a ring made out of our emotionally significant rocks?”

“Humans are mysterious.”

“You proposed to a man who argues with trail signs and still gets defensive when you insult his fridge.”

“The cold box deserves insult.”

“We’re not bringin’ the fridge into our engagement.”

Our engagement.

He says the words like they are ridiculous and holy at once.