Page 67
Onyx nods and watches me with bright, steady eyes. His gaze drops to my body before snapping back to my face, and the bond gives me one hot flash of want so immediate that my breath catches. He tries to pull it back, and that makes me smile.
“Don’t start actin’ all polite now,” I tell him, taking one berry from the leaves. “Little late for that.”
The corner of his mouth almost moves. Mate beautiful in den.
My face heats, but I don’t look away this time. “Yeah?”
His answer rolls through the bond, certain and reverent. Blessed.
That word does it. It settles in my chest and stays there.
I eat the berry because I need something to do with my mouth before I say something too big for morning. It’s sweet and cold and perfect. Onyx watches as if my liking it matters more than the sun coming up, and maybe to him it does.
I woke up alone and felt hollow.
Now he’s here with fruit, water, impossible eyes, and a den full of proof that he has been alive and lonely and watching the world long before I ever found my way back to Sweet Rivers.
I reach for his hand, and he hands me the water first. Our fingers brush in the exchange, and even that small contact carries a pulse of heat that feels entirely different now. The need is still there, but it no longer feels like it’s consuming me from the inside. It feels like something we can hold without it ripping through either of us.
I take a long drink, realizing only then how thirsty I am. The water is cool and clean, with a faint taste of stone. I hand the skin back and take the fruit next, eyeing the pawpaw with narrowed suspicion.
“You raided my cabin, didn’t you?”
You were asleep. Some fruits were available. He doesn’t even try to deny it.
“That is not permission.”
No. But it is useful.
I shake my head, smiling into the bite of fruit because arguing feels pointless when he’s watching me eat with an expression that’s part satisfaction, part care.
“You left me alone.” The words come out quieter than I meant them to.
He nods, but looks regretful. I did not want to wake you. You needed sleep after the bond-sickness.
“I know.” I rub my thumb over the waterskin. “I just… woke up, and you were gone.”
The bond hums with understanding then, the emotional equivalent of a hand smoothing down something ruffled. Not an apology exactly, because he doesn’t think he did wrong. More of a settling around the small hurt I didn’t mean to reveal.
Next time, he says, I’ll leave scent stronger. Or wake you and ask.
That quiet old care is back again, the one that keeps blindsiding me. Next time, not if. He says it like it’s already part of us.
“Okay,” I say softly.
He watches me eat another berry, then another, his gaze following the movement of my mouth for half a second too long before he looks back up at my eyes. That small falter sends another warm pulse through the bond, want stirring again on both sides, content to wait because now it knows it can.
I settle onto the edge of the nest, blanket around my hips and the leaf pouch in my lap. Onyx stays where he is for another moment, just looking at me in the den light like he still can’t quite believe I’m really here.
Neither can I, honestly.
In the quiet morning of his den, with Onyx in his human form holding out breakfast like this is the most natural thing in the world, I realize I don’t mind that reality at all.
24
Lucas
The moment I finish the last berry, Onyx’s restraint unspools.
