Page 36

Those blue eyes pin me where I stand, and the heat that moves through me at the sight of him is immediate and humiliatingly familiar.

“Okay,” I say before I can stop myself. “That is… not helpin’.”

One of his brows lifts. It’s a tiny movement, but on his face it reads almost comically human.

You came, he says over the mind-link, his voice settling into my head with that same rough texture as before, all gravel and warmth and certainty.

“I did,” I say, and my own voice sounds thin compared to the quiet around us. I swallow and force myself the rest of the way into the little clearing. “You…” I wave a hand at him uselessly. “You look like this here, too?”

The corner of his mouth shifts. Not a full smile, just enough to change the severe line of it. Easier in my trees, the voice in my head replies. Dream takes more. Here I hold shape with the forest around me.

I glance past him at the trees, the moss, the stone, as if the environment itself might explain that sentence. “So, the forest helps? Holding this form is easier awake than in the dream?”

He nods once, then adds, Here is ground. Dream is water.

“That actually makes sense,” I say, even though it absolutely shouldn’t. “In a weird, cryptid-logic way.”

His head tilts slightly. Cryptid?

I almost smile at the way the word comes through the bond with curiosity wrapped around it. “Monsters, legends, creatures. Stuff that might be real but no one can prove. I guess you qualify.”

Onyx considers that—oh, my god, why is confusion on his face so cute?—then he sends, Humans name what they fear so fear has walls.

“Yeah. We do that a lot.”

He moves his mouth then, not speaking, just parting his lips slightly. I see the small hitch in his jaw, the effort of him trying to speak, and the frustration that crosses his face and comes through the bond. Then his throat works around a sound that never forms.

“You don’t have to do that,” I say before he can strain himself more. “The mind-link thing is fine.”

His eyes lock onto mine, and he sighs. Never needed to learn mouth-speech or tongue-shapes. Cannot move mouth right, he says, and for the first time I catch something close to frustration in the thought. Learned words. Did not learn lips. Human speech wants small muscles I never used.

The explanation is so blunt and intimate that it helps loosen some of my nervousness. “That’s okay. You don’t have to speak aloud for me.”

I feel warmth through the bond. Not like the flood from the dream when I named him, but a smaller pulse of pleasure that spreads through my chest before I realize it isn’t mine. I take a breath, and his gaze sharpens as if he felt me feeling it.

“Still gettin’ used to that,” I admit, and take him in again, more openly this time.

I’m suddenly aware of how much this must cost him. Not just the shape itself, but the effort of making himself comprehensible to me at all. He could’ve stayed in antlers and lantern light and let me do the translating. Instead, he stands here in a body built to hurt me in a completely different way, forcing meaning through a link because his mouth won’t cooperate.

“You don’t have to—” I start, but he’s already moving.

He closes the distance between us slowly, giving me every chance to step back. I don’t. The air around him is warmer than the rest of the clearing. I can feel it before he even reaches me; that strange, banked heat that seems to live under his skin. His scent thickens, too. Labrador tea, yes, but also something darker and richer—warm resin and stone and clean sweat.

I remember this morning in the shower, and I pray to whatever is listening that the bond is one-way right now. Then I remember it absolutely isn’t and almost die on the spot.

Onyx lifts one hand, and I track it like prey tracks a hawk’s shadow—long fingers, dark nails. He pauses a breath from my face, giving me one last chance to object.

“Go ahead,” I say, and the words come out more of a whisper.

His palm settles against my cheek, and every nerve in my body lights up.

There’s no other way to put it. The contact is so startlingly warm that I suck in a breath. Not fever hot or unnatural, just incredibly warm. As if he’s been standing in sunlight all day and carried it with him into dusk.

His palm is rougher than a human hand even through my beard—not abrasive, but textured in a way that makes me think of smooth bark and river stone. He brushes his thumb below my eye with such concentrated wonder that my breath catches.

Small sun-marks, he sends through the bond with fascination in his tone. Many. Beautiful.

My face burns. “They’re called freckles.”