“Must be nice,” I say at one point, cutting into his memory. “To be able to walk anywhere and be seen as baseline normal.”
He blinks. “What?”
His confusion knocks against the raw spot inside me, making it sting.
“I mean,” I say, trying and failing to keep the sharpness out of my tone, “you seem very comfortable with me like this.”
He looks at me, eyes flicking over my face, down my shoulders, back up again. “Well… yes,” he says, a little baffled. “Because you’re… you.”
“Is that why you’re more relaxed?” I ask. “Answering my questions so easily, because it’s easier to look at this than my true form?”
The words land heavier than I intend. His expression shifts from confusion to hurt, edged with alarm.
“What?” he says again, but different this time. “No. Boone, that’s not—I didn’t?—”
The relaxed air between us tightens, like the forest before a storm. His fork clinks quietly as he sets it down. I stare at my plate, suddenly furious with myself for saying anything, for caring, for letting this human under my skin so far that his opinion of me matters this much.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ELIAS
For a second,I genuinely think my heart stops.
I stare at Boone, fork still in my hand, the words hanging in the air between us like smoke. His shoulders are rigid, his jaw tight, every line of his body pulled inward as if he’s braced for a blow.
It takes me all of three seconds to understand what he’s really saying.
He thinks I only like him like this. In a human shape. With human shoulders and human hands and a human face and everything nicely organized into a category my brain can file without exploding.
He thinks that when I look at him in his cryptid form, I see a monster I’m tolerating because it saved my life, while this body sitting across from me—in a towel, with bare forearms and a strong throat and the kind of chest that makes my brain go briefly offline—is the “real” object of attraction.
The realization hits like a punch. A sharp flare of indignation. Then guilt. Then a heavy, aching sadness.
I put the fork down carefully, because if I don’t focus on the simple act of setting it straight beside my plate, my emotions are going to spill out in every direction.
“Wow,” I say, and my voice comes out hoarse. “Okay. That is… a lot to unpack.”
He looks away, gaze fixing somewhere over my shoulder. “Forget I said anything.”
“I am very much not going to forget you said that,” I reply. “Boone, look at me.”
He hesitates, then slowly, reluctantly, turns his head. His eyes—still warm—slide to mine and then flick away again like the contact burns.
I swallow hard.
“I get why you would think that,” I say, because I do. “I do. I’m human. You’ve dealt with humans for a long time. I’m guessing most of them have not reacted well to seeing you at your full, eight-foot glory.”
His mouth tightens.
“But I need you to hear something clearly,” I continue. “I’m not ‘comfortable’ with your human form because it’s easier for me. I’m comfortable with it because it’s you. And I’m comfortable with your other form for the same reason.”
He snorts, low and disbelieving.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “I wasn’t afraid of you in the forest,” I remind him. “Do you remember that? Because I do. I remember standing there looking at you—really looking at you—and feeling… calm. Curious. Drawn in. My brain was screaming something about ‘this is impossible,’ absolutely, but the part of me that makes survival decisions didn’t flinch.”
“You were concussed,” he says quietly.
“Not the time on the ridge,” I counter. “Not the moment we made eye contact between those two cedars. My head was fine that day. And yes, a rational part of my brain was waving red flags and filing emergency incident reports, but the rest of me felt…” I search for the word. “Safe.”
