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I’ll make the empty weeks leave your body one thrust at a time.

He sets me down, then undoes my belt and unhooks the buckle with frightening efficiency for a creature with claws. Denim and my briefs are dragged down, and I kick off my boots along with them. He lifts me again, my cock hard and slick at the tip.

Onyx’s eyes flare behind the skull when he sees me like that—naked, legs around his furred hips, back against bark, already wet for him. It would embarrass me if I had enough shame left for it.

His grip tightens beneath me, lifting me higher against the tree until I’m angled the way he wants, thighs spread around his body, my weight entirely in his hands and against the bark.

Weeks without my hand and you are still ready so fast. My brave mate likes being held where he cannot pretend he is untouched by me.

His fingers find the slick first. The contact makes us both freeze, because so much of it coats me. He drags two fingers over me—claws sheathed—not entering, only spreading the slick, feeling how my changed body opens at the thought of him. My hips jerk against his hand.

Aestrata carved a path for my body, he sends, awe darkening into hunger. Made my mate wet for the taking. Made him able to call the beast and not bleed for it. My greedy little ember.

I bite back a sound and fail. His fingers press inside me with almost no resistance, slick easing the stretch immediately. I moan, low and helpless, head knocking back against the tree. He curls them, finding the place that makes my legs tighten around him, then taps it, making me shudder again.

I love him like this. God help me, I do. I love the roughness when I can feel the care beneath it. I love the way he orders me and still checks every shift of pain.

Still know you. Still remember where my mate breaks sweetly. I still remember how to make this body beg before my cock even touches it.

“More,” I get out.

The bond goes hot enough to make me dizzy. Tell me what more means.

The words are darker now. Dirtier. Not a tease, but a demand for truth. I swallow, eyes squeezed shut. My pride kicks once, weak as hell after two months of missing him. “You know what it means.”

Say it, or I keep you on my fingers until you spend from nothing.

A full-body shudder runs through me.

The worst part is, he would. And I would let him. I’d come with his fingers inside me and his hand around my cock and probably spend the rest of the day too dazed to look him in the eye. But that isn’t what I need most.

“I want your cock,” I say, voice rough and stripped bare. “Please, Onyx, I need your real one.”

His lantern ignites above me, blue light spilling over bark and leaves. His fingers withdraw, leaving me empty and clenching, and I gasp at the sudden loss.

The protected seam of him presses against me now, slick and hot where his body has opened. I feel the emergence more than see it, because there’s no space between us, only fur and heat and the heavy push of him sliding free from the hidden place at the front of his true form.

He pulls my ass cheeks apart and breaches me with a stretch so intense my mouth opens with a strangled sound. My hands clamp down on him, one in the hair at his neck, one around the edge of his skull, fingers digging uselessly against bone.

The slick works instantly, softening the edge before it can become an injury, but it doesn’t make him small. Nothing could make this feel small. He’s thick and ridged and impossible, forcing my body to open around the true shape I begged for, and the shock of it makes my eyes water.

Onyx does not stop. He slows, but he does not stop, because I asked him for his true form. His arm tightens under me, holding me up, taking my weight when my thighs start to tremble. He feeds himself into me inch by inch, steady and rough-edged, his own breathing gone ragged against my neck. The ridges drag through me, each one stretching, catching, and passing deeper, slick heat easing the way.

The tree presses into my back.

His body presses into my front.

There is nowhere to go.

I love that. I love that something bigger than me can pin me down and take what he wants.

Onyx surges deeper with a growl that breaks through the clearing. The stretch flashes bright, not pain exactly, but close enough to make my fingers tighten. He feels it immediately and shifts his angle, supporting me higher, easing the worst of the pressure while still driving forward.

With me, he commands. Breathe. Open. Take what you called home.

I do. I breathe into the grief of weeks without him, into the relief of his return, into the violent sweetness of being held up by the monster everyone warned me about and knowing no one has ever kept me safer.

When he seats himself fully. I choke on his name.