Page 47
Yes.
He glances sideways at me. “That should bother me more than it does.”
Should? I ask, because the word carries obligation and judgment in his kind.
He makes a small sound through his nose. “Most people wouldn’t love the idea of bein’ under surveillance by a seven-foot forest cryptid.”
Most people are not mate.
He laughs under his breath and grows quieter. I let the silence sit. The forest speaks enough for both of us.
By the time his clearing opens through the trees, I am already resentful of his den.
There it sits, square and pale and harmless, waiting to take him from me for a handful of human hours. Rationally, I know he must sleep there. I know his body needs walls, a bed, and the small rituals of his kind. Instinct does not care. Instinct sees a den that is not mine swallowing my mate at the end of every night and thinks unreasonable thoughts.
He must feel the flare of that through the bond and slows on the path, turning to look at me with one brow slightly raised. “Was that jealousy?”
I am too truthful to deny what is plain. Yes.
He blinks, then laughs softly. “Of my own house?”
It takes you. Annoying den.
“Onyx, it’s a cabin. It’s not competing with you.”
It wins every night.
That makes him laugh harder, enough to bend a little at the waist and press a hand to his stomach. I watch him in helpless fascination, the sound itself almost as pleasing as the warmth it sends through the bond. My sarcasm is learning quickly, but his laughter is the better reward.
When he straightens, still smiling, he takes the last few steps into the clearing and climbs the porch. I stop where the grass gives way to the packed dirt I stood on before, that same invisible line settling around my feet like old law. I could probably step farther and nothing in the world would stop me except choice. Choice is enough.
He notices where I stop, and his gaze flicks to the porch, then to me, understanding moving through him. “You really won’t come in.”
Not without asking.
His expression shifts to touched and slightly overwhelmed all at once. He turns on the top step, one hand on the railing, and looks back at me in the moonlight. His human house is behind him, the forest before him, and me at the edge where both worlds meet.
“Goodnight, Onyx,” he says.
My name in his mouth still feels new. Goodnight, Little Ember.
He shakes his head, smiling despite himself, and opens the door. Warm lamplight spills briefly onto the porch boards and brushes the grass between us. For a heartbeat, I see him in that domestic glow: my wild little ranger with his tired eyes and rumpled flannel, and the scent of forest still clinging to him.
Mine, the bond says again, but this time gentler, less demand than recognition.
Before he steps inside fully, he looks back one more time. “I’ll come tomorrow.”
I nod once. The answer is unnecessary; the bond already brightened when the promise formed in him. Still, I give him one.
I know.
That makes him smile in that private way I am beginning to think belongs only to me. Then he disappears into the cabin, and the door closes.
17
Lucas
The next few days turn my life into something that would sound unhinged if I tried to explain it out loud, so I don’t.
