Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CALDER
Milo Hart was going to poison himself if I did not start paying closer attention.
I watched him from where I stood a few steps behind, arms folded, as he crouched in the low brush with far too much confidence for someone who had only been in my forest for about a month.
His fingers were stained from the berries he had been picking, and he turned one over now like he had discovered something worth celebrating.
He lifted it toward his mouth.
“Do not eat that.”
He froze.
Slowly—very slowly—he turned his head and looked at me over his shoulder.
“You could have said that before I almost died.”
“You are not dead,” I said, stepping forward.
“Yet,” he replied, dropping the berry back into the bush with exaggerated care. “Let’s not rule anything out. I feel like I’ve come close at least three times since I got here.”
“That is because you do not listen.”
“That is because you explain things after the life-threatening part,” he shot back, standing aside so I could see what he had been reaching for. “There’s a difference.”
He had learned the forest differently than most things that entered it.
Where others moved with fear or instinct, Milo moved with curiosity, testing, adjusting, and then trying again.
It had been several days since the last time I had needed to correct him with urgency, and that alone marked a change I had not anticipated when he first arrived.
I noticed that now, not in the distant way I once registered time through seasons or light, but in something more precise, measured in days and repetition.
I crouched beside him, catching his wrist gently before he could reach for the wrong cluster again.
“These,” I instructed, pointing toward the darker berries hidden beneath the leaves, “are safe.”
“And the others?”
“They will quickly make you regret your decisions.”
Milo barked out a short laugh. “You’re very comforting, you know that?”
I glanced toward him, trying to understand the tone behind the statement. “I have seen humans eat them before. The results were unpleasant.”
That immediately broke whatever composure Milo had been attempting to maintain.
“Oh my God,” he muttered, laughing harder now. “The fact that you’ve witnessed this before makes it so much worse.”
I picked one of the berries carefully from the branch and held it toward him.
Milo looked at the fruit for a second, then at me.
Instead of taking it with his hand, he leaned forward and caught it gently between his lips.
The brush of his mouth against my fingers lasted less than a second, yet sent a jolt of power through my entire body.
Milo straightened again, chewing slowly while I remained very still beside him. “Okay,” he murmured after a moment. “Worth trusting you for.”
“You should not say that so easily.”
“Too late,” he replied, reaching toward the bush again—this time selecting the correct berries without hesitation. “I’m already alone in the woods with you. I feel like at this point I’ve committed to the experience.”
I watched him carefully while he continued to eat. “You continue making choices that concern me.”
That earned me a grin. “Yeah, but you keep catching me before I die, so I think we’re doing great.”
“You have poor judgment.”
“I have excellent instincts,” he corrected. “They just don’t always align with basic survival.”
“That is not something to be proud of.”
He smiled, quick and easy, like he had not spent the last several days turning my world into something unfamiliar.
I had not expected the way he spoke, nor the way he moved through my territory as though he had been invited. Not the way he looked at me without hesitation, without fear, without the careful distance.
And certainly not this.
This… thing he had introduced me to.
I had understood mating before. Instinct existed for every living creature. I knew what it was meant to accomplish. I understood the physical impulse of it, but I had never desired it.
Not truly, and never with another creature. Not until Milo.
What existed between us was something entirely different.
Milo had called it something else, his voice rough and breathless the first time he said it, like the word itself amused him.
Fucking.
I had not understood why it needed a different name.
I did now.
The way he touched me without hesitation. The way he stayed close afterward as though distance no longer made sense between us. The way he looked at me like I was something wanted instead of something feared.
And perhaps most dangerously of all—I had started wanting those things too.
We had done it again that night, and repeatedly in the days following.
And earlier this morning, when the light had barely broken through the trees and he had laughed quietly against my mouth like there was something about all of this that delighted him.
I had not known I could want it again so soon.
Or that I would want more than that.
Milo glanced back again, catching me watching him. “You’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing?”
“Where you look at me like I’m either about to do something impressive or something incredibly stupid.”
I considered that briefly. “Both are equally probable.”
He laughed, the sound immediate and unrestrained, and it moved through me in a way that remained unfamiliar despite repeated exposure. It was not the first time I had caused that reaction, but it had not lost its impact.
Milo shuffled beside me, brushing his hands against his jeans. “So,” he said, glancing around the clearing, “what else out here is trying to kill me that I should know about?”
“Most things,” I said.
He scoffed. “Good. Love that for me.”
I reached out when he moved toward another plant, catching his wrist before he could touch it. “Ask first.”
He stilled, attention dropping briefly to where my hand circled his wrist. Then he looked back up at me. “Yeah,” he hushed. “Okay.”
I released him, but the absence of contact was immediate and noticeable in a way I did not like.
He had become… familiar.
Familiarity had once belonged only to the forest. To the paths I walked. To the streams. To the changing seasons. Now it belonged to Milo Hart. That, more than anything, was the problem.
There would not be many more days like this. For centuries I had believed permanence belonged only to the forest. Now I found myself wishing one impossible thing would remain anyway. The thought came without warning and stayed longer than I wanted it to.
Milo Hart would leave as he had always intended. This was not his place. And I—I should have made sure that Milo had left sooner. Instead, I had allowed time to pass, to stay and for myself to grow accustomed to something that was never meant to last.
Milo straightened, holding up another berry. “Is this one safe, or am I about to ruin my life again?”
“That one is safe.”
“See?” he said, popping it into his mouth. “Growth. Development. Character arc.”
I did not understand all of what he meant, but I understood that I did not want this to end.
Milo studied me, like he expected some kind of response I had not given. When it did not come, he shook his head lightly and smiled to himself as if he had already decided I was a lost cause.
“Okay…” He reached for another berry, this time with more care. “I’m learning. Slowly. Painfully. But learning.”
“You will live longer if you continue that pattern.”
“Encouraging,” he said. “Very inspiring. Ten out of ten wilderness guide.”
Without warning, the fur along my spine prickled. I turned slowly, scanning the edge of the clearing. Nothing stood out. Yet my instincts refused to settle.
It was not exactly a sound, but the absence of something that should have been there.
Milo kept talking, blissfully unaware. “You know, if I make it out of this alive, I’m going to start a whole series. Surviving Questionable Decisions. Episode One: trusting a giant forest creature with my diet.”
I half-listened, my attention pulling elsewhere.
The wind shifted and I stiffened. It was subtle, almost nonexistent—but the breeze carried something with it.
“Calder?”
I did not answer immediately. I drew in a slow breath instead, testing the air again.
Faint, almost too faint to name, but not part of what should have been here.
Milo straightened beside me. “Okay. There’s that look again.”
“What look?”
“The one where you stop pretending everything’s fine,” he said, more serious now. “What is it?”
“I am listening.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It is not meant to be.”
He huffed out a quiet breath, but he did not move away. If anything, he shuffled a little closer, like proximity would give him an advantage against danger.
It would not, but I did not tell him that.
I turned my head slightly, focusing deeper into the trees.
The forest did not answer me the way it should have.
Birdsong had thinned without my noticing when it happened because I was so focused on Milo. The small movements that usually filled the underbrush had stilled. Even the insects—constant and persistent—had quieted in a way that pressed against the air instead of blending into it.
He felt it now.
I knew by the way he stopped speaking and how his breathing altered slightly beside me.
“Calder,” he murmured. “What’s going on?”
Something else was inside the forest.
Not skirting the territory—inside.
I knew the movement patterns of everything that belonged here, could read the deer paths and translate the rhythm of birds in the canopy overhead.
This presence did not belong to any of them.
I heightened my focus, listening carefully.
The scent was unfamiliar now that it had crossed into my range. It was far older than human, and wrong in a way that unsettled the balance of the forest around it.
Beside me, Milo shifted closer until his shoulder brushed lightly against my side. “Is it that thing you mentioned before?” he asked, near silent.
“Yes.”
The answer seemed to settle heavily between us, his swallow near deafening. “Okay,” he said after a second, clearly trying to steady himself. “Okay. So what do we do?”