Page 28
Another nod. His head tilts afterward, hair sliding over one shoulder, and that gesture carries enough of the creature from the woods that my skin prickles. Different shape, same presence, and same attention.
“Can you talk?”
His mouth parts slightly, and I focus there before I can stop myself. His lips are shaped like a man’s, but his canines are a little too long when I catch a glimpse of them. He moves his jaw once, then his brows draw together with an expression that looks almost frustrated.
A pressure touches the inside of my skull. It’s not rough or painful, but more like fingers pressing against the surface of water. I stiffen, but I don’t pull away.
No mouth-speech, I hear in my mind.
It’s not exactly like hearing a voice. It’s more like the shape of meaning dropping fully formed into my head, wrapped in the texture of him. Rough. Deep. Not human in the way it moves. The words are mine, English and clear, but the cadence beneath them is older, stranger, built out of instinct and image and scent instead of grammar.
I know human tongue from listening. This shape has not learned to make it.
I stare at him, openly gaping. “So, the mind thing is real.” He nods once. “And you’ve been doin’ that in my dreams?”
Another nod, but a sensation—our bond?—dips through the space between us before he answers more fully. Dreams are safer. Less fear. You ran and knew I would not take you unless you turned.
My face heats so fast I’m grateful that this is a dream and the lighting is weird. “Yeah, well, the dreams got a little more… complicated than runnin’.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then lower for half a second before returning to my eyes. Through the bond, I feel something I’m not ready for: satisfaction, hunger, curiosity, and a possessive warmth that makes my knees almost forget their job.
I point at him, because absolutely not. “Don’t look at me like that.”
His head tilts again, and it’s as endearing as a puppy. Like what?
“Like you know exactly what I’m talkin’ about,” I grumble, and the words come out more breathless than annoyed, which is humiliating as hell.
He doesn’t smile, but something around his eyes changes. It’s subtle, and because the face is human now, I can read it better than I could through the skull. Amusement, or whatever the forest-creature version of amusement is.
I clear my throat and drag us back to safer ground before my dream decides we should continue where we left off last time. “Did you stay away because I ran?”
The amusement vanishes when he nods again. The bond—yes, I’m calling it that now—tightens and for one second, I feel the shape of his hurt. Not dramatic or human in the way I understand hurt. But real; deep enough that my chest aches in answer.
He stood back because I ran. He took the bundles so I wouldn’t be reminded of what scared me. He gave me space, and somehow that feels so much worse than if he had kept leaving things.
“I didn’t mean…” I stop and swallow hard. “I didn’t mean for you to think I rejected you. I was shocked, and you were… still are a lot to process.”
His gaze searches my face. I know. There’s no blame in his words, and that makes it harder.
I look away first, staring past him at the trees because staring at him keeps doing things to my insides that I am not equipped to handle.
“Those bundles… were from you, yeah?” I ask, and he nods again. “And the second one was an apology for scarin’ me with your light?”
Another nod.
I huff and scrub a hand through my hair. “I knew it. I mean, I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew it.”
Fuck me, what are words?
His attention drops to my hand when I lower it. The focus is so intense it makes me aware of my own fingers. The scar near my thumb from a pocketknife accident when I was fifteen, the dirt under one nail even in a dream.
“The missing people,” I say before I lose my nerve and his gaze snaps to mine again. “Hikers, Ava, the previous ranger—all of them. Was that you?”
No.
It hits hard enough that I believe him before I can argue with myself. The word is too clean and absolute, with no defensiveness or fear of being caught.
I breathe out slowly. “You didn’t take any of them?”
