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“I know.” His eyes come back to mine. “That made it worse.”

The bond carries what his body cannot. Images returning through him in softer flashes. My offerings. My den. My long winters. His own face seen through my first morning wonder. The black stone on the porch. My joy, so immense, over that simple apology that embarrassment warms him even here, even half-reborn in the old hollow.

“She showed me while you were holdin’ me,” he says, and I close my eyes. Lucas’s thumb strokes the bone beneath it. “I saw you breakin’ apart, Wildheart, and it nearly killed me again.”

“I offered everything I was.” The words scrape out. “She should have taken me.”

“No.” His voice gains a thread of strength there, stubborn enough that relief nearly drops me again. “No, she shouldn’t have. I yelled at her about that, actually. Might’ve called you a stubborn, self-sacrificin’ asshole with antlers.”

For one second, joy is too sharp to bear. Then I laugh, truly laugh, though it breaks apart at the edges. “To Aestrata? You yelled at the Earth Mother?”

“Yeah. In my defense, I was dead.”

I lower my head carefully until it rests against his temple, overcome with joy. The image of Lucas scolding the Earth Mother on my behalf settles into me beside all the sacred things I have ever known.

“She gave me a choice,” he says after a moment. “I could move on. Heaven, I guess. Peace. No pain. No more ropes or mines or evil Death-deer with boundary issues.”

A growl slips out of me before I can stop it. His mouth twitches. “Yeah, I wasn’t a fan either.”

“What choice?” I ask, because I know and do not know, because the change in him hums beneath my hand and the fear of it is not rejection but awe.

“To be with you and stay by your side,” he says, “as guardians.”

The word enters me like root through stone.

Guardians.

I stare at him, unable to hold the meaning. Lucas, who was human. Lucas, who loved coffee, bad jokes, ranger forms, and his ridiculous cold box. Lucas, who had already given so much to the forest by loving it honestly. Lucas, who died because my brother wanted to spoil what chose me. Lucas, now breathing in Aestrata’s hollow with rootfire under his skin.

“She said not immortal,” he continues, watching me carefully. “Years, though. A lot of them, maybe. Until both of us decide we’re fulfilled. Her wording, not mine. Very goddessy. But together… still me. Also… not only me, I guess.”

Fear moves through the bond then—his this time—small and deeply human beneath all the new power. Fear that he has lost something, and I will look at him and grieve the change more than I rejoice the life. Fear that I wanted Lucas as he was and may not know how to want what Aestrata returned.

I make a sound low in my chest and gather him closer, slow enough not to hurt him but firm enough that he cannot mistake it.

“Lucas Dawson,” I say, forcing every syllable clear because he deserves no broken half-speech now. “Ranger. Mate. Little Ember. Still stubborn. Still mouthy. Still badly dressed.”

A shaky laugh leaves him, and tears spill from the corners of his eyes. “You absolute menace.”

“Still mine by forest law and choice,” I continue, and my voice trembles there. “Still yours before mine. Still the one who stayed. Still the one who came back.”

His face crumples, and he turns it into the side of my neck, not caring that I am covered in blood. I hold him while he cries, and the bond fills with both of us—no longer collapsed, no longer cleanly what it was. There are roots in it now. Green-white light threaded through gold. The forest breathes along the edges, not intruding, not taking, but recognizing.

“What else did she say?” I ask after his sobs ease, because I can feel one more truth tucked inside him.

He pulls back just enough to look at me. “She told me your first-name. Well, I received part of it.”

My heart shudders on a beat because no human can hold that name, not fully. Lucas watches me with those tired green eyes, and something in them has changed, only a little. A faint depth in the pupil. A glimmer when the hollow light catches. Human still; Lucas still. But old root has touched him, and old root remembers what human minds forget.

“Vaeronyx.”

My own name strikes through me like lightning entering a tree and making it live instead of burn.

I bow over him before I can stop myself, forehead to his chest, shaking again. No one living has spoken that name to me since the Mother—no one could. My brother spat pieces of it once in mockery and broke them into ugliness.

Lucas says it with awe, with love, with a human mouth remade just enough by forest to carry the first edge of what I was before solitude, before stories, before Onyx.

“You’re cryin’ again,” Lucas whispers, though he sounds close to it himself.