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“Yeah?” he whispers.

Yes. Mate sees. Mate stays.

Lucas’s hand tightens against me, and his smile comes slowly, crooked and tired and beautiful enough to silence the old dark for one breath longer.

“Well,” he murmurs, voice rough with morning, “I did say I had weird taste now.”

I let amusement curl through the bond. Good taste.

He laughs, and I keep that too.

29

Lucas

Apparently, this is my life now—sitting half-naked on top of an ancient forest guardian in his den while he compliments my taste like he isn’t the terrifying thing every local kid was warned about around campfires.

The sound that leaves me is softer than I expected, less defensive than it would have been a week ago. Maybe that should scare me more. Maybe I should still be clinging to normal with both hands, trying to shove all of this into some category that makes sense under fluorescent lights, paperwork, and Parker’s loud opinions.

But Onyx is beneath me, solid and warm and real, and I’m tired of acting like that doesn’t answer more questions than it creates.

His skull rests lightly against my palm, the old bone cool compared to the slate skin beneath my other hand. I trace my thumb over one weathered ridge and feel the bond go quiet in that particular way I’ve started to recognize.

As if every part of him has turned toward the place where I’m touching him. That attention makes the nervousness in my chest shift into something steadier. It doesn’t ask for permission from the version of me who thought his life was supposed to go one straight way until marriage, kids, a house, and a ring polished all the rough edges off his wants.

Turns out, my wants had teeth hiding under them.

Or antlers, apparently.

I lean forward before I can talk myself out of it. Onyx goes still when my mouth touches the ridge of his chest, and pleasure moves through him in a deep, startled pulse, big enough that I feel it echo back into my own body. I press another kiss against him, lower this time, where the markings rise under my lips.

I drag my lips carefully along one line, then pause and breathe him in. Cedar. Stone. Labrador tea. The deep wild scent that belongs only to him, thick around me and already under my skin.

His hand flexes at my hip, and I lift my head enough to look at him. His pale eyes burn through the skull sockets, brighter than before, fixed on me with a kind of stunned hunger that makes my pulse kick hard.

“What?” I ask, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. “You can dish it out but can’t take it?”

The bond gives me his confusion first, then the meaning clicks into place, gleaned from my own mind, and heat floods through him again.

Mate mouth on first body, he sends the words rougher than usual despite not being spoken aloud. Difficult.

“Difficult how?”

His claws curl carefully into the moss instead of my skin. You make me forget stillness.

That should not undo me the way it does.

I want that. I want the beast who can tear through bark and bone to forget himself under my hands. I want him shaken. I want him looking at me like my mouth is a danger he didn’t know how to guard against.

“Maybe I like that,” I say.

Onyx’s eyes flare.

I swallow, but I don’t backtrack. My heart is pounding, and the old habits are there, waiting to pull me into apology.

Sorry, too much. Sorry, didn’t mean it. Sorry, forgot I’m supposed to be confused and ashamed and stumbling behind my own body.

But I’m not sorry. Not about this.