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Human warmth surrounds me. Human arms, mostly. But the forest is still in him, still under every breath, and now I can feel it better. He is not less Onyx like this. He is compressed Onyx. Doorway-friendly Onyx. Onyx folded into a shape that can fit beside me in bed and kiss me without a skull getting in the way, though I have made my feelings about the skull pretty clear.
For a long time, we just hold each other.
There is no hurry, which is strange, considering death and rebirth and terror and all the things waiting outside this den. But the stillness is not empty. It is full to the point of overflowing. His hand rests between my shoulder blades. Mine lies over his heart. The bond curls between us, changed and alive, gold threaded with green-white, root and ember, his pulse and mine finding each other in a rhythm that is almost frightening in its rightness.
I press my ear to his chest, and his breath catches.
His arms tighten with restraint, not possession. He’s still learning that, and I feel him learning it even now. Holding, not trapping. Guarding, not caging. Keeping close without stealing air.
“I felt you die,” he says, and the words are low. “I do not know how to stop seeing it.”
I lift my head, even though the movement pulls pain through my side, and meet his eyes. They are bright blue in human form, too bright, the lantern’s flame looking out of a man’s face. I touch his cheek with fingers that still look like mine except for the faint new lines under the skin near my wrist, pale and branching, almost invisible unless the dawn catches them.
“Then don’t stop yet,” I say.
His brows pull together. “Lucas—”
“I’m not saying live there forever,” I tell him, because he needs the whole thought or he’ll turn it into another weapon against himself. “But don’t punish yourself because it’s still there. It happened, and you saw it as it happened. Maybe we let it be awful for a while instead of pretendin’ love can tidy it up by breakfast.”
He closes his eyes, and his face turns into my palm. “I’m very tired of awful,” he says.
That almost breaks me because it’s so simple and honest. Not ancient, not guardian, not balance with teeth. Just him; just my Onyx, exhausted.
“I know,” I whisper. “Me too.”
He opens his eyes again. “You came back.”
“Yeah.”
“You chose.”
“Yeah.”
“You will stay?”
I give him a look. “You askin’, or is this one of those statements where you pretend you’re not terrified?”
His mouth shifts. “Both.”
God, I love him.
The thought moves through me cleanly this time. No deathbed edge or panic, or goddess standing in front of me offering peace. Just truth in a den full of cedar and dawn and the man-shaped forest holding me like I am both miracle and problem, which, to be fair, might be accurate.
“I’ll stay,” I say. “Not because I’m trapped here, or because Aestrata rewired my life and handed me a dramatic new job title. I’ll stay because I chose you. I will always choose you, Onyx.”
His breath shudders.
“And because this is home,” I add softly, looking around the den. The walls, the shelves of herbs, the old drawings, the furs, the nest, the place where I first woke after the bond sealed and thought I’d stumbled into the private heart of a creature no one had ever really known. “Our den, right?”
“Our den,” he says.
His hand moves up my back, slow and careful, and I feel every inch of it differently now. My skin seems to wake ahead of his touch with a deep awareness that makes my breath catch. The bond answers, low and golden green, and Onyx goes still when my scent changes.
Of course he notices. He always notices.
My face warms before he says a damn thing, which is annoying because he hasn’t even had time to be smug.
“Little Ember,” he murmurs, and the name is rougher when spoken, less smooth than through the bond, but it lands even harder.
