Page 74 of Hush

He turns on the bottom porch step to look back at me.

In daylight, his eyes show everything more clearly. The remains of sleep’s softness, the faint nervous energy of returning to his human routines after a night that changed us both. The little line between his brows that appears when he is already thinking too far ahead and trying to prepare for every possible feeling before it hits. I know that line. I would smooth it with my thumb if I could keep him here long enough.

I close the distance before I’ve decided to do it. Lucas makes a low sound against my lips when I kiss him, more breath than voice, and then everything in him opens. He leans up into me without hesitation, and when I deepen the kiss carefully, he answers with a hunger that goes straight through the bond like lightning.

When I pull back, it is only because, if I do not, I will walk him backward into the cabin and not come out until nightfall. His eyes are open but dazed, ember-marks standing out sharply against the flush in his face, and the look he gives me then makes something low and possessive curl hard through my chest.

Lucas blinks at me, lips parted, eyes darker than before. “Okay,” he says, voice rough. “That was…”

I lean in and press one more kiss to the corner of his mouth because I can now, because he allowed it, because restraint is easier when I know the path back. He exhales shakily.

Go work, Little Ember. Come back to me after.

He smiles at that, tired and private. Before he opens the door, he looks over his shoulder once, then disappears inside.

I stand there a moment longer with the taste of him still on my mouth, the bond glowing low and content in my chest, trying not to let the irritation return too quickly. It returns anyway.

The den-that-is-not-my-den has him again. The walls and roof and human things. I tell myself he chose to go in, that the cabin only holds him because he has tasks there, clothing there, the routines that let his kind move through their days without breaking. This helps very little.

The forest takes me back, regardless. I turn and slip into the trees because standing in his clearing glaring at his house solves nothing except perhaps making a bird nervous.

The day passes poorly, but not in any true practical sense. I patrol my borders, check the higher ridge where storm runoff loosened a stand of young birch. Later, I drive a fox from too near a campground and carry one wounded rabbit to a sheltered burrow where it might live or might not, but at least it dies under root if it must. I move. I breathe. I exist in the old ways.

And I pine.

There is no better word now that Lucas has taught me so many of his. Pine—to ache with a person-shaped absence while still knowing they exist somewhere beyond the next hill. To feel one’s own body continue with tasks while another part remains pacing at the edge of a bond, ears up, waiting for the moment distance closes again.

Humans need their space, Lucas said once when I pressed too close to his thoughts after a long day. I know this, and I respect it because I must. But knowing he needs space and feeling good about it are not the same.

Through the bond, I catch only small flashes from him as the day moves. Concentration. Mild irritation at paperwork. The quiet satisfaction of a trail properly cleared. Hunger around midday. A flicker of remembered heat every time his mind brushes back against the morning kiss. Each little piece feeds me and torments me in equal measure.

By evening, I am restless enough that sleep is impossible. After he sends that he’s too tired to come to the forest, I do not even try for my den. Instead, I roam.

Night fits me best when I cannot settle. I take my true form under the moon and move the old routes that stitch my forest together, lantern dark on my antler because I need no light for this.

Up the north ridge first, where the rocks still hold a little warmth from the day. Down through the cedar hollow where the air is always cooler. Across the narrow creek by the stepping stones Lucas uses in dry months and leaps in wet ones, because I know the exact shape of his stride now and cannot stop thinking about it.

The pining eases only a little with motion. It never leaves.

Then, near the deepest hour of night, it changes.

A sharp pulse through the bond—Lucas is awake, and he’s restless. Then a stronger emotion cuts through me hard enough that I stop mid-step on the slope.

Panic.

Fresh and immediate and threaded through his scent so sharply that it feels almost physical even at this distance. Every part of me goes still except the bond, which tightens toward him like a cord being yanked hard. I scent the air and sense Lucas clearly: sweat, need, and fear. He is out of his cabin—out in my forest—and moving quickly.

All the ease I had built around giving him space rips cleanly away. I run without thought or hesitation.

I launch down the slope and through the trees with all the speed this body was shaped for, branches whipping harmlessly off antler and shoulder, the ground flying under me in dark, sure strides. Lantern chain rattles once, then settles into the rhythm of my movement. Every breath I pull is his scent, every pound of my pulse answers his.

Why is he running through the forest alone at this hour?

The question snaps at me uselessly, because the answer matters less than getting to him. There can be explanations later. There can be teasing, even anger if I decide I am allowed it. Now, there is only the line of him pulling me onward, stronger, stronger, panicked enough that the scent cuts clear even over old moss and water.

The route he has taken startles me only when I recognize where it bends—toward my den. He knows the way toward my den even after not being lucid enough when I took him there last night.

My pace does not slow, but the shape of the panic in me changes around that knowledge. Lucas is not running blind from something. He is looking… for me.