Page 62

His eyes find mine, glassy and wild, and I see the moment he believes me. His fingers slide up to my face, trembling against my jaw where the bone has not fully settled back into human lines. His thumb brushes the faint ridge near my cheekbone, and that touch almost ruins me worse than his body does.

“Onyx,” he breathes, voice frayed.

My name in his mouth pulls another shift out of me. Blue light flashes across the furs for a split second, cold and ancient, then vanishes when I bare my teeth and force myself back down. My shoulders shake with the effort. My thrusts stutter, then deepen, and Lucas arches beneath me with a raw sound that makes the entire den feel too small to hold us.

The bond bursts open so wide that I see flashes of him from inside himself—my eyes above him. He feels me seeing and gasps, not in panic, but in shock.

“Was that me?” he asks, voice wrecked.

Edges, I answer, though even that comes out rougher than before. The word scrapes through the bond, shaped for no human throat. Strong feeling spills.

His eyes search mine, and his face is so open that I lower my mouth to his forehead to keep myself from saying mine too hard through the bond. My lips touch him softly, but my breath leaves me in a growl I cannot fully smother. His hand tightens at my shoulder, and for a second my skin there roughens beneath his palm, gray and textured, the black bark markings spreading darker before they sink back into pale human flesh.

“I saw you,” he whispers. “For a second. I saw how you feel.”

And? I ask, because I need to know, though the answer might split me open.

His hands slide down my arms, squeezing once, grounding himself in the reality of me. His fingertips pass over my wrist right as it flickers wrong again, bones lengthening, nails sharpening, veins dark beneath the skin before I drag it back. He watches it happen. Watches me fight myself for him. His fear shifts into something heavier, something stunned and tender that makes my chest ache.

“You feel like you’re trying to hold a hurricane in your ribs,” he says.

I huff a breath against his skin, and this time the almost-laugh belongs to me. Accurate.

After that, the fear has less room. Not none; I do not pretend it leaves him fully. Humans are made of many rooms, and some keep shadows even when doors open. But Lucas moves with me, cautious at first, then with more trust, hips lifting in small, searching motions that turn my restraint into a living thing with claws sunk deep in my back.

He says my name again and again, and each time, another piece of my true form strains for him. My shoulders broaden for a breath, too heavy for the human body. A strip of coarse dark fur rises along the back of my neck, then disappears beneath sweat-damp hair. My teeth sharpen against his shoulder before I turn my face away, panting hard into the furs, furious with myself and drunk on him.

Lucas catches my jaw and brings my face back. It stops me more effectively than fear could.

“Stay with me,” he says, and his voice shakes, but his hand does not leave my face. “Not away from me—with me.”

I go still above him, buried deep, every instinct snarling under my skin. The bond opens around his words and gives me the truth beneath them. He is not asking me to be less or to hide the struggle. He wants the truth of me, even when it frightens him.

I press my forehead to his. I am trying not to scare you.

His laugh comes out rough and breathless. “You’re seven feet tall with a skull face and antlers sometimes. We’re kind of past that.”

The shock of amusement breaks through the pressure in my chest. I kiss him again, and this time when my mouth opens over his, my teeth are sharper for half a heartbeat. He feels it. His breath catches and his body tightens around mine with a fresh pulse of want so sudden that the den tilts inside my head.

My claws punch into the furs beside his head, my spine arches with the rise of coarse fur beneath skin. My jaw strains, half-human, half-wild, and the skull presses so close to the surface that my vision sharpens beyond the den, beyond the roots, to every living thing breathing in the dark outside. I freeze above him, horrified by the sudden strength in my own hands.

Lucas cups my face with both palms without hesitation. “You’re still here,” he says, turning my own fear back on me with wet eyes and a shaking mouth. “I’ve got you. Fuck, Onyx, I’ve got you.”

The words break the last lonely thing in me, and this time, the shift comes harder.

My jaw changes first; the shape of my mouth shifts to something less human against his shoulder, teeth lengthening, canines pressing carefully against his skin.

I do not bite yet. I dip my head, dragging my mouth along his cheek, and the old tongue rises without warning.

Veyr alun… Ehrna sathir.

Lucas goes still beneath me.

His hand slips from my jaw to my chest, palm flat over the place where my heart beats too hard for the body I wear. “What does that mean?” The question is quiet, almost afraid of the answer.

I look down at him and wish there were human words large enough to carry it without breaking under the weight. There are not; human language cuts meaning into pieces and makes things smaller so the mouth can survive them. So, I give him both the words and the wound beneath them.

Little flame, I tell him, smoothing my hand over his chest until my palm rests over his heart. I carry your ending.