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No.
The word hits the bond before I intended it to. Lucas’s eyes flick to me, but he keeps his voice calm for Tom. “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll radio once I’m at the gate.”
No, I send again, harder than before.
Lucas’s jaw tightens. “Yep. I’ll be careful.”
He ends the call and sets the phone down slowly. The cabin goes quiet except for rain ticking at the windows. “Try that again,” he says.
The warning in his voice should stop me. It does not. North Ridge is marked.
His expression sharpens, and he frowns. “Marked how?”
Brother-sign. Not safe.
“Onyx, half this forest isn’t safe.”
This is not half forest. This is where he wants you to go.
Lucas drags a hand through his hair, copper strands sticking up in every direction. He is tired, and I know that. I can smell it on him. Rain, work, irritation, and the lingering ache of old abandonment. “We don’t know that.”
I know his markers.
“Yeah, and I trust that, but I also have a job.”
Job can wait.
His laugh is short and humorless. “No, it can’t. That’s not how emergency calls work. You know how important my job is. People depend on me.”
Another ranger can go. Not always you.
“The other ranger is forty minutes out, and if there are people up there, forty minutes matters.”
I stifle a growl because I know this is important to him, but I cannot help the dread I am feeling. Your job takes you into his reach. You are not going.
His eyes narrow, and the bond sparks with irritation so quick and hot it stings. “I’m sorry, was there a meetin’ where you became my boss?”
I look at the small kitchen, the table, the door, the rain-dark window. His den is too small for the amount of danger outside it. His body is too soft for my brother’s claws. His human life has too many openings, too many calls, too many duties that tell him to walk into places where wrong light waits.
I am trying to keep you alive, Lucas.
His mouth tightens. “I know.”
Then listen to me.
The moment I send it, the bond stiffens, and Lucas goes very still. He’s not afraid; he’s angry. Real anger, no humor softening its edges. He looks at me like I have stepped somewhere I promised not to put my foot. “You don’t get to tell me to listen like I’m a dog refusing a command.”
Shame moves under my ribs, but fear snarls over it. You are not a dog. You are my mate.
“And I’m a ranger.” His hand cuts toward the badge hanging on the back of a chair, the uniform shirt half-dried from earlier. “I was a ranger before you found me, Onyx. I was a person before the bond, before your mark, before the forest wrapped my life in antlers and ancient family drama. I can’t stop doin’ my job because your brother is sendin’ creepy tree mail.”
Creepy tree mail is a threat.
“It’s all a damn threat now!” he snaps, pulling at his hair. “Every trail, every call, every shadow, every damn phone buzz. You scent my truck. You circle my cabin. You follow my routes—”
He uses my scent, I say, finally, because fear breaks the secret open badly instead of cleanly. He leaves marks where you walk. He wants you to trust what smells like me.
Lucas drops his hand, and for a moment, I think the truth will bring him to me. I think he will understand that the shape of my fear is not madness, not an insult to his competence, not distrust of his strength. It is knowledge. It is every old law in me screaming that my brother has already touched the outer edge of our life and found amusement there.
