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“Yeah,” I say. “That’s it. Goodbye, Hannah.”

Her mouth trembles. For a second, I think she might argue. Then she steps past me carefully, not touching me. I move aside only enough to let her down the porch steps. She walks to her car, shoulders tight and head held high. I watch because not watching would feel cowardly. She starts the engine, backs out too fast, then disappears down the narrow road in a cloud of dust and old history.

For one second, all I hear is my own breathing.

Then Onyx comes out of the trees fast enough that I barely track the shift from shadow to body. One moment there is a skull-faced Cervari at the edge of the clearing, and the next he is crossing the open space in human form, the shift folding over him mid-stride, antlers drawing in, skull melting back, slate skin giving way to pale skin marked with black bark lines.

He doesn’t look calm. He doesn’t look careful. His hair is loose around his face, his blue eyes too bright, his mouth set in a line that belongs to a creature barely holding the door shut on something ancient.

“Onyx,” I start.

He reaches me, hands framing my face with trembling care, and then his mouth is on mine.

There is nothing tentative in it.

The kiss hits like a storm crossing the ridge faster than the radio predicted, all pressure and heat and inevitability. He kisses me hard enough that my back meets the porch post, though one of his hands slides behind my head before I can hit wood. Even wild, even jealous, even burning with whatever he held back while Hannah stood near my door, he protects first.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

I grab his hair with both hands and kiss him back so hard my teeth catch his lip. He makes a rough sound into my mouth, not speech, not quite a growl, and the bond answers for him with a possessive roar that makes my knees feel unreliable.

Two months of restraint snap tight between us. Two months of being touched softly, kissed reverently, wanted carefully. All of it is here now, burning under his skin and mine.

He pulls back, breathing hard through his nose. His hands stay on my face like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he lets go.

Mine, he sends again, but this time it isn’t only jealousy.

It’s terror too. It’s grief remembered. Hurt remembered. The scent of me from months ago, broken and humiliated and trying to pretend I had come home because it was sensible, because the job was good, because the cabin needed a ranger, because heartbreak can be turned into a career move if you’re stubborn enough.

Onyx had found me then. He had scented the wound before he knew the story. Now the person tied to that wound had stood on my porch and asked to come inside.

His hands tremble harder, so I cover one with mine.

“Yeah,” I breathe against his mouth, voice wrecked and rough with the twang that comes out when I stop polishing myself smooth. “Yeah, Wildheart. I’m yours.”

He kisses me again, deeper, rougher for half a second before he catches himself and shudders with the effort of holding back. His forehead drops to mine, his breath harsh against my lips even though he doesn’t need air the way I do. His hands slide from my face to my shoulders, then to my back, gathering me in until there’s no space left between us.

She stood at your den, he sends, and the jealousy in it is almost petulant beneath the danger. She looked at my mark. She smelled of old claim and regret.

“She doesn’t have a claim,” I say, still breathless.

I know.

“You sure? Because you’re vibratin’.”

I dislike her, he practically growls.

A shaky, helpless laugh breaks out of me after everything. “Yeah, I picked up on that.”

She made your scent hurt.

That wipes the humor off my face.

Onyx feels it and softens immediately, one hand rising to my shoulder, thumb brushing below the mark without touching it directly. His eyes stay locked on mine, bright and furious and worried all at once.

“She used to,” I say quietly. “Not tonight. Not the same way.”

He searches me through the bond, careful despite the storm in him. I let him. Not all the way into my mind, but enough to feel the truth. Hannah’s presence bruised an old scar. It didn’t reopen the wound. Not like before. Not enough to make me forget who I am now or who waits for me at the edge of the trees.