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When the forest thickens, the speed I maintained becomes disrespectful. I slow; each step carries me farther from the parts of my territory that know my daily passage. The air cools until spring feels like a rumor told far away. Moss climbs the stones in thick, dark layers. Mushrooms glow faintly under fallen logs, pale as buried moons.

The bond stretches behind me, and it hurts. Every stride makes the distance between us a living thing. I feel Lucas sleeping still, unaware for now, his warm center dimmed by dreams. I do not close the bond. I would never shut him out fully. I only hold my side quiet so my fear does not crawl into his rest.

When the first old marker appears, I stop.

Three trees grown from one root, their trunks twisted around a stone split clean down the middle. No storm or human tool made that split. The earth opened it when my kind was still new enough to listen better.

I lower my head.

Aestrata.

Her name does not need sound. Sound is too thin for her.

The deepwood breathes, but nothing answers yet, so I continue.

The path is no path, but my body knows where to place itself. I pass under branches heavy with lichen, through a hollow where the air tastes of iron and rain though the sky is clear, over a stream so cold even my bones notice it. With every step, I feel my brother’s memory waking behind my ribs. Not his face alone, but the feeling of him beside me in the first days of making, the same earth-call split into two bodies.

He laughed once when a human screamed. I remember looking at him and not understanding why the sound had pleased him so much. I understand too well now that pleasure can be dangerous.

Deep in the oldest fold of the forest, a circle stands where no tree grows. Roots ring it instead, rising from the earth and sinking back down like the backs of sleeping beasts. At the center sits a stone blacker than night, cracked through with veins of white quartz. Rainwater gathers in the cracks even in dry weather. Moss does not touch it. Animals do not cross the ring.

I step into the circle and lower myself to all fours, then lower still. Antlers to earth. Skull to stone. Claws buried in soil.

I have not come here in many human lifetimes. The silence presses down until even my thoughts become small.

Aestrata, I send into the roots beneath me. Earth Mother. Maker. I need to know what I am becoming.

I close my eyes and push the truth down into the dark.

I wanted to hurt what hurt him. I wanted fear from a human who stood too near my mate. I wanted it before need, before balance, before law.

My claws sink farther into the soil. Tell me, Mother, I beg without sound, am I guarding my mate… Or am I turning into him?

The deep earth wakes beneath my hands.

33

Lucas

It starts feeling wrong on the first morning and becomes unbearable by the third.

By the second week, I’m standing in the middle of my own kitchen with cold coffee in my hand. The note he left me is still folded in my wallet like some kind of talisman, and I genuinely can’t tell if I’m losing my mind or if I already did and this is just what the aftermath looks like.

He said he’ll come back in a few days. A few days is not a fucking fortnight.

I’ve read his note so many times that the paper is soft at the creases. I read the crooked letters until his voice forms behind them even without the bond answering me.

I do not leave you. Not angry. Never angry with you. I must ask Mother if this is guarding or becoming wrong. Do not chase into deepwood. I promise. I come back, Little Ember.

The grammar is wrong, but the promise is clear. That makes it worse, because if the promise is clear and he still isn’t here, then either something happened to him or he chose to stay away longer than he knew I could survive.

Both options make me feel insane.

The forest won’t help me, either, and that hurts in a way I didn’t know it could. This place has always spoken to me, not in magic or voices, but in the clean, grounded language of land. Tracks. Scent. Wind. Water. The logic of living things. Now I move through it like someone who used to know the language and suddenly can’t read. Every trail I walk feels like it’s keeping a secret.

It hides Onyx’s den from me.

After work, before dark, I follow the paths I know lead nearest his den. I stand in the little hollow where I first learned the shape of the nest in the dark and find… nothing. Not just no Onyx, but no den.