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It vanishes into the dark with a faint crack of stone against wood, and the sound tears a sob out of me so violently I have to grab the porch railing. I fold over it, shaking, breath punching in and out of my chest while the mark at my throat burns like it knows I’ve done something I can’t take back.

“Fuck you,” I choke out, though I don’t know if I mean Onyx, the forest, myself, or whatever goddess thought this was mercy. “Fuck you for makin’ me love you like this.”

The words hang there, and no answer comes.

I stand on my porch until the sobs run out, until anger leaves me hollow and cold, until the night feels too big around the little square of light from my door. Then I go inside alone and lock the door behind me, even though the lock has never mattered less.

In bed, I keep one hand over the mark on my shoulder and stare at the ceiling until dawn.

The empty place in my chest stays empty.

And somewhere outside, the forest keeps what it knows.

34

Lucas

Two months after Onyx leaves, I stop looking like someone waiting and start looking like someone who should know better.

There’s a difference. Waiting has a little hope in it, even when it’s ugly. Waiting keeps one ear turned toward the woods. Waiting checks the porch before coffee and after work, keeps the radio charged during hikes that aren’t really hikes, touches the mark at my shoulder like maybe the right pressure will make the bond answer. Waiting gets angry. Waiting yells. Waiting throws a stone into the trees and sobs so hard the porch railing leaves grooves in both palms.

Knowing better is quieter.

It gets up. It showers. It puts on the uniform. It signs whatever Sarah slides across the counter and lets Parker run his mouth about his busted sink, his mother’s new boyfriend, the raccoon that keeps haunting Pine Hollow like an unpaid intern with a vendetta. It checks trails without loving them. It eats because bodies become everybody else’s problem when they aren’t nourished. It sleeps badly and wakes worse. It learns how to walk through the forest without letting the forest feel like home.

That’s the part I hate most. Before Onyx, the woods were the one thing I understood. Even after Hannah, after the city, after coming home with my pride dragging behind me like tin cans tied to a bumper, the forest had taken me back. It had smelled like damp earth, pine, cedar, river water, and something older than hurt. I used to step under the trees and feel my ribs loosen. Now every trail is a locked door.

The forest hides him so completely it starts feeling personal. The den is gone. The cedar hollow bends wrong. The creek crossing I know by heart seems to move under moonlight. No Labrador tea. No glimmer through the bond. No dry little comment in my skull when I trip, curse, or call a squirrel a tiny criminal in his honor and immediately hate myself for it.

It hurts in a way I can’t describe to anyone. It doesn’t ache like heartbreak did with Hannah. That was hot and humiliating, and mostly lived in my pride once the worst of the betrayal passed. This feels like I’ve got an organ that used to work and now doesn’t, and every day I still wake up expecting my body not to notice the difference.

It notices, alright.

The lantern still appears sometimes.

The first few times, I talked to it—of course I did. I demanded things. Swore at it. Asked questions I already knew wouldn’t get answered. Once I stood on the edge of the north ridge at dusk and shouted, “If you’re here, then be here,” so loud I sent a whole flock of birds up from the lower branches. The lantern swayed once and disappeared.

After that, something in me shut down. Now, when I see it, I ignore it.

Or I try to.

I keep walking. I keep my eyes on the trail. I breathe through the way the bond sometimes gives the faintest phantom throb in the same moment—not warmth, not real connection, just memory twisted into reflex. I don’t talk to it anymore. I don’t yell. I don’t ask what I did wrong, because I already did that until my throat went raw, and all it got me was silence.

If Onyx wants to stand in the trees and watch me from a distance like some kind of ghost story he’s no longer willing to star in, then fine. Let him. I’m done performing the wounded half of a conversation by myself.

Tonight the hike runs later than it should because a storm three days ago finally dropped a half-rotted birch across the east trail, and I end up staying past sunset to flag the blockage properly for morning crews.

By the time I head back toward my cabin, the woods are all dark silver and soft shadow, the moon just beginning to climb enough to wash the tops of the trees. It isn’t a bad night, if I let myself be honest about it. Cool enough to breathe easily, dry underfoot. The kind of night where once, not that long ago, I would’ve taken the long way home just to have more of it.

Now, I’m tired and want my couch, and maybe a beer I know I won’t finish.

My flashlight is off because I don’t need it on this stretch. I know the trail too well. My boots find the roots and dips automatically. The bond sits where it always sits now, cold and dead and useless.

Then it flares.

It hits so hard I stumble, one boot sliding in wet leaves. My hand flies to the mark at my shoulder as pain and heat and recognition tear through the frozen place in my chest. For one second, I can’t breathe. The world whites out at the edges, and then everything rushes back at once: Labrador tea, cedar, stone, blood.

Blood.