Page 48
I go to work. I check trails, argue with Parker about random shit, and listen to Tom grumble about budget cuts with the same passion most people reserve for family betrayal.
I eat lunch at my desk while pretending I’m not checking the clock. I answer momma’s texts and ignore my ex’s calls. I do all the normal things a man with a badge and a schedule is supposed to do.
Then the sun lowers, and my whole body turns toward the forest.
It should scare me how quickly that becomes routine. It should bother me that after only a handful of evenings, I know exactly where to find him without a map or radio call.
Onyx never waits in the same place twice, but the forest seems to know I’m looking for him now. Yes, I know exactly how that sounds to a rational mind, but I’m mated to a forest cryptid, so rationality fucked off a long time ago.
The paths toward him feel less random now. A broken fern points me deeper. The smell of Labrador tea drifts through the shade when I need to turn. Sometimes, I catch a glimpse of blue between the trees before he steps out in human form.
Shirtless, barefoot, hair falling in thick, loose waves over his shoulders. He always looks as if he’s never once thought that walking around half-naked in spring weather might distract me.
He knows now because I made the mistake of telling him.
The first time I did, his gaze dropped to my mouth, and the bond warmed with enough smug satisfaction that I nearly tripped over a root.
“You are becomin’ a goddamn menace,” I told him, pointing at him as we walked along the old creek path.
Onyx tilted his head, bright eyes cutting toward me beneath a fall of black hair. Through the bond, his answer came smoother than it had only days before. The shape of it still wasn’t quite human, but it got closer each time he borrowed words from me and gave them back with teeth.
A menace is a thing that troubles. I trouble you well.
I laughed so hard I had to stop walking.
That’s the part no one warned me about. I mean, to be fair, no one warned me that the local legend who followed me through dreams and nearly gave me a heart attack with his real face would end up having the driest sense of humor I’ve ever dealt with.
He doesn’t always mean to be funny, which makes it worse. Sometimes he says things with the flat seriousness of a creature explaining weather patterns, and I lose my mind in the middle of the trail while he watches me with growing, pleased confusion.
Parker notices something different about me by the third day.
“You’ve been weirdly happy,” he remarks at the station, leaning against the counter with an apple in one hand and a suspicious look on his face. “Not normal happy. Secret happy.”
I roll my eyes. “There are categories?”
“There are always categories,” Parker says, taking a loud bite. “This one says you’re either gettin’ laid, committin’ tax fraud, or finally bondin’ with the raccoons at Pine Hollow.”
I press my pen harder to the paper than I need to. “Those are my only options?”
“For you? Yeah. You’re not emotionally complex enough for more.”
The laugh comes out before I can stop it, and it’s the wrong laugh, too—warm and caught off guard. Parker’s eyes narrow immediately. I keep my head down and finish the sentence I was writing, even though I have no idea if it makes sense.
“Holy shit,” Parker says slowly. “It’s sex.”
“It’s not sex,” I say too fast.
His grin turns unbearable. “Oh, so it’s almost sex.”
I shove the report into a folder and stand. “I have a trail inspection.”
“You have emotional avoidance,” Parker calls after me.
He isn’t wrong, which is exactly why I leave. But the thing is, nothing has happened between Onyx and me. Not really.
Onyx has touched my face, my throat, my shoulder, and the back of my hand. I’ve touched the bark-dark markings along his ribs, his jaw, the edge of his skull in true form, and the soft-looking black hair that isn’t soft so much as thick and cool and alive under my fingers.
We’ve stood too close in clearings while spring dark folded around us and the bond filled with heat so heavy it felt like trying to breathe through a closed fist.
