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I sob again, bending over him like I can cage his soul inside my ribs if I hold close enough. “No. You call me that and stay. That is rule.”
His fingers stroke weakly against my wrist. “Since when do you make me follow rules?”
“Since now.”
He breathes carefully, shallow and wet. His gaze moves over me, unfocused but tender, and it looks too much like goodbye. I make a low sound and press my hand over the wound at his side as if pressure can hold back fate.
“Don’t,” I say. “Do not l-look like leaving.”
His eyes soften. “I love you,” he says.
My heart is close to shattering. He has said it through the bond in a hundred ways. I have felt it in his hands, in his anger, in the way he refused the lantern. It was in the way he healed me, in the way he dragged me into his cabin and forgave nothing cheaply but stayed anyway.
But this is the first time he gives it to me with his human mouth while death waits close enough to eavesdrop. I shake my head because I cannot hold it. “Do not say it like leaving.”
“I love you,” he says again, a little stronger, stubborn even at the edge. “And I hate that you’re makin’ me say it while I look like roadkill.”
A sobbing laugh tears out of me. “Beautiful.”
“Liar.”
“Mate.”
His smile trembles. “Yeah.”
“Mine,” I say, but it is not a claim now. It is a plea. It is the cleaned truth Aestrata carved into me. Shelter. Recognition. Chosen closeness. The word breaks around him. “Mine. Stay.”
Lucas looks past me at the roots, the stone, the hollow no human has seen, and something thoughtful moves through the pain on his face. Even now. Even now, his mind reaches for meaning because Lucas has always loved the world by noticing it properly.
“I love you like I love the forest,” he whispers, each one dragged from some deep place in him. “Not easy. Not safe in the way people mean safe. It’s bigger than me… and older than me, and it doesn’t explain itself just because I’m scared. But it’s home anyway. Even when… it’s dark. Even when it takes me apart. I still know the difference between being lost in it and belongin’ to it.”
I cannot breathe.
He turns his eyes back to me, and they are fading.
“You’re like that,” he murmurs. “You scare me sometimes. You make me mad as hell. You leave muddy footprints everywhere and bully my fridge.”
“Lucas,” I beg. The words are too much and not enough, because they sound like a man arranging his love neatly before he leaves it behind.
“But you’re home,” he says. “You’re home in the only way that ever made sense after everythin’ else went wrong.”
I use the last of my strength to shift into the man form so I can hold him properly. I press my mouth to his forehead, again and again, not knowing where to put all the grief tearing through me. “Stay in home with me. P-please. Please, Little Ember. Keep eyes open. Do not go where I cannot follow. Please do not leave me.”
His hand slips from my wrist to my chest, palm flattening weakly over the place where my heart pounds too hard. “Find me again,” he whispers.
“I found you. You are here. Stay here.”
“Onyx.”
“No—!”
His eyes close.
“Open,” I plead, voice shredding. “Open eyes. Lucas. Open.”
They open halfway, only because he loves me enough to try.
I pour myself through the bond. Every memory. First scent on the trail. Copper hair in evening light. His hand on my skull. His laugh when I called the pillow immoral. His fury on the porch. His mouth saying Wildheart. His body warm in my den. His mark beneath my teeth. His stubborn, beautiful refusal to follow a false light.
