Page 31

I like that, so I nod.

“Were there more of you?” he asks, and I nod again. “What happened to them?”

Time happened. Fire happened. Iron, hunger, human roads shrinking dark places, winters too hard and summers too dry… I trail off, struggling to explain. Some went quiet the way old things do. They are gone.

His mouth softens at the corners, and I recognize it as grief. Grief for beings he has never met. He is made this way, I think. Quick to hurt for others, even when he should be keeping himself safe. It explains why he still smells faintly of his old pain.

“How long have you been alone?” he asks.

Too long, I think, but I let the bond do what my mouth cannot. I send him not a number, because numbers that large lose meaning in a human mind. I send him a feeling; snow after snow, leaves falling and growing back. Rivers changing course, dens rotting and being rebuilt. The long ache of silence.

His breath catches. “Oh.”

Yes.

He looks down for a moment, then back up at me. “And the dreams? That was you?”

This one I can answer better because it is recent and wrapped up in the bond.

Sleep is the easiest place to touch without breaking. Wanted soft before hard. Wanted your body to know me before your eyes feared me.

Redness floods his face and throat in a swift rush. It comes with embarrassment, yes, but also that lower, sweeter thing I have come to know well from the edges of his dreaming. Want—he remembers what happened in those dreams.

Good. I pressed pleasure there on purpose, built nests of safety under his skin so when he met me waking he wouldn’t be too afraid. This shape is human enough for him to look at me without the bright snap of shock. That is why I forced myself into it after so many years.

But it has limits I had forgotten. Bone folded inward, antlers buried beneath skull, skin smoothed over markings that should be bark dark and thick. Teeth made smaller, though not small enough. Hands shortened. Claws pressed back until my fingers feel dull and strange. This body aches from every place it has been made less.

He shifts his weight and drags one hand through his red hair. The motion sends the copper strands into worse disarray, and I want to put them back only so I can feel them between my fingers. But I keep my hands at my sides because he watches my hands with the careful attention of prey and ranger both, and I have already learned that wanting is not permission.

“That explains…” He stops, hand slipping to the back of his neck, and his scent spikes hotter. “Actually, no, we’re not unpackin’ that right now.”

I do not know what he means by unpacking, but I feel that there is too much inside him for him to understand. I accept that.

“Why me?”

Simple question. Hard answer.

Because the first time your scent touched the ridge, my bones woke up and knew you.

Because the forest bends toward you.

Because your feet land where they should, and you listen when the dark speaks.

Because when your heart broke, you still came back to this place instead of hardening away from it.

Because the bond chose, and the bond has roots deeper than either of us.

I could say all of that through the mind-link, but it would drown him. Too much feeling, too much certainty pressed at once into a human skull still trying to accept that antlers became a man. So I choose the smallest true piece.

You are mate.

I watch as his body stills, and the whole clearing seems to hold its breath.

“You keep sayin’ that. Do you mean in the fate way? The… soulmate way? Or do you just mean…” he gestures between us helplessly. “Chosen?”

I tilt my head, considering. The distinction matters to him. Their kind likes neat edges on things that bleed into each other.

All, I send. Earth Mother chose you for me. I could have hunted, could have taken, but did not. I waited, watched, called. Wanted you to turn toward me with your own feet.