#vedi

You had been following the rot.

Not with fear or revulsion, but reverence. Rot meant movement, transformation, meant a quiet, thriving ecosystem hidden beneath the surface, feeding on what the world no longer wanted and spinning it into something new. It was life at its most essential, its most unsentimental.

The Eastern Carpathians weren’t your first choice of research site—too isolated, too tangled with old stories—but when the grant arrived, modest and obscure and delightfully unmonitored, you accepted it without hesitation. Studying fungal communication in an alpine old-growth forest wasn’t just a project, it was the culmination of years of quiet obsession, your dream thesis clothed in moss and shadow.

You hadn’t seen another person in three days as you delved into the dappled light of the forest. Not since the last village, where a woman with gnarled hands and eyes like river stones pressed a charm into your hand and muttered a single word, the kind that clings to your spine long after it’s spoken:

“Vedi.”

You’d thanked her, tucked the crude amulet of bone and twine into your coat pocket, and tried not to notice how she refused to meet your gaze.

That morning, with fog curled low around your boots and your GPS flickering between constellations, you finally stop. A fallen birch half-consumed by decay, its pale body draped in a vibrant swell of Armillaria mellea—honey fungus—blooming across the bark in wet golden clusters. You knelt beside it, breath clouding in the cold, brushing away leaf litter with gloved hands, your camera already raised.

The mycelial threads were thick, root-like and knotted, a living web pulsing beneath the soil—tangled, intricate, almost electric.

That was when you saw it.

Tucked beneath a bracken veil at the base of a trunk, just a few feet off the path, something strange was blooming.

A single stalk, pale violet and luminescent. Not glowing exactly, but humming, vividly out of place against the forest’s earth tones. Its petals curled outward like flame, its stem pulsing faintly in a rhythm too deliberate to be wind.

You rose, heart pacing faster than your thoughts. Your pack shifted against your shoulder as you stepped off the trail, drawn forward before you had time to name the impulse.

The moment your boot touched the undergrowth, the forest shifted.

Birdsong cut out in a single, silencing sweep. The wind—what little there had been—stopped mid-sigh.

You didn’t notice right away. You were too busy trying to name it. A new variant, a misclassified parasite, maybe even an undocumented mycoheterotroph, one that had hidden itself here among the roots and fog. A secret the forest had kept long before humans knew how to look.

You reached out, fingers trembling slightly, and touched the edge.

It was warm.

And the earth beneath you exhaled. no, shuddered, once, as though something massive had stirred just below the surface.

You ran then, though you told yourself you didn’t. It was only a few paces back toward the path, just far enough to feign control.

But the trail no longer looked the same. It bent too sharply. The trees leaned at odd angles, their branches lowering not like limbs but like arms reaching out to bar your way.

You made camp in a clearing that looked less menacing than the rest, just beyond the false safety of the old trail. Told yourself it was nothing.

But the forest disagreed. It didn’t keep you awake with sound—there was none. Not a whisper of wind, no insect drone, no shifting branches. Just silence so absolute it felt pressurized.

It was the feeling that unsettled you.

As though something unseen was breathing just behind you, exhaling warm and steady across the nape of your neck.

As though hands—light and clever—were brushing up from beneath your tent, tracing the arches of your feet through the floor.

You stayed upright. Kept the zipper closed. Lit your headlamp and scribbled into your notebook by its faint yellow glow—spore clusters, fungal spread, evidence of animal life. Anything that might anchor you to the ordinary.

But just after three a.m., something passed nearby. A shape, so large it swallowed the moonlight in its wake.

You went still. Every muscle in your body tightening, every breath held.

It wasn’t a bear. It wasn’t a person. It was larger, broader. Moving with the slow, deliberate grace of a tree falling after a lifetime of groaning under its own weight.

You unzipped the flap, just enough to peer outside. There was nothing, except… 

Blooming next to your boots just outside the tent, the same, ethereal mystery that pulled you off the path in the first place. The soft fruiting body of some mysterious fungi was not there last night. 

You broke camp in the half-light of dawn, refusing to think too hard about how it got there.

Still, with hands only slightly shaking, you wrapped it in a specimen cloth and placed it into a jar. Because this was what you did. You were a biologist. You documented the strange. You moved forward.

But the path you’d come in on was gone—not reclaimed, not hidden—gone, as though it had never existed at all. The canopy thickened above you, layer by layer, until sunlight became something theoretical.

Your GPS wouldn’t boot. Your compass needle spun lazily in place, no longer interested in finding north. But you didn’t stop. Not because you knew where to go—only because stopping felt worse.

The terrain sloped downward, wet and slippery, roots tangled and ancient trying to trip you at every step.

And then your foot broke through what you thought was moss—but it wasn’t. It was empty space.

You fell, tumbling through damp leaves and the splintered bones of trees, grabbing at anything you could reach, until the ground surged up to meet you with brutal finality. Breath fled your lungs as pain bloomed in your hip, white-hot and immediate as you struggled in your now mud-slicked coat, fresh blood coating your newly abraded palms.

This whole time you had been trying to convince yourself you were dreaming, or hit your head trying to reach a specimen. But dreams don't come with the stinging of torn up palms.

When you finally pushed yourself upright, wavering, breath shallow and sharp, you realized the ravine you’d landed in wasn’t natural.

Its walls were too smooth. Its moss unfed by sunlight but almost… glowing.

And you weren’t alone.

Not anymore.

He was there.

Simply there—like he had always been.

Enormous. Barefoot. Solid as a hillside, his body shaped by the same forces that formed the mountains. His skin looked like the rock strewn bottom of a creek, antlers draped with a moss so soft it looks like velvet.

His hair fell in long, wild curls, something like a crown made of lichen circling his head while trousers of impossibly soft linen clung to the thickness of his thighs.

His eyes are the first thing you understand.

They aren’t human.

Golden-green, luminous in the dim like foxfire flickering beneath a wet log—steady, wide, and ancient. When his gaze locks with yours, something inside you contracts, something too deep for breath or muscle to reach. It feels like a string pulled taut beneath your ribs, like recognition without a name.

He tilts his head slightly, and you forget how to breathe.

He doesn’t speak at first. Just studies you, intent and unreadable, like someone trying to remember how language fits inside a mouth.

And then, at last, in a voice like roots splitting stone—low and resonant, as though the ground itself had formed the words—

“You took it.”

The sound moves through you—not merely heard, but felt. It vibrates along your bones and curls around your arches, grounding you in a way that doesn’t feel entirely safe.

Your reply comes out half-formed, mouth moving faster than your thoughts. “I—I thought it was a mutation. A fungal variant—”

His expression shifts, not with anger but with gravity, like cloud cover thickening. 

“It was a gift.”

You don’t realize you’ve retreated until your back bumps wet stone, pulse kicking hard beneath your skin, a wild thing trying to flee.

But he doesn’t move closer, doesn’t need to. He takes up the space between you with sheer presence alone, the air narrowing until there’s nothing left but him and the thrum of your own body trying to make sense of this.

Then, slowly, his gaze dips, catching on your bleeding palms. Without a word, he approaches. And then, gently, he kneels. Not like a supplicant. Not like a man. Like something elemental returning to where it belongs.

His hands—broad, callused, warm with some quiet heat of the earth—wrap gently around your wrists.

Some still functioning corner of you demands that you pull away, scream. But, you don’t.

He lifts your hands, studies the blood, and lowers his mouth to the wounds.

His lips barely touch, just the softest brush of breath, but your skin lights up like fire caught the edges of your nerves. You inhale sharply, the sound torn from you before you can think.

“It may keep hurting for a moment. As your body adjusts.”

“W-what does that mean?”

He releases you and rises in one smooth, effortless motion. “It means it’s in you now.” And then he turns, vanishing into the green without haste, without warning.

But something in the slow certainty of his pace tells you he expects to be followed.

The ravine isn’t steep, but your body protests with every step, right leg wobbling on the incline, and when you grasp the overhanging roots to pull yourself forward, a deep, twisting ache blooms across your hip, sharp and unrelenting. You grit your teeth against the sound it threatens to pull from you. You will not limp—not here, not now, not like prey under the gaze of something that feels older than the sky.

Not when his shoulders eclipse the path ahead, each slow stride of his revealing thick, powerful legs that move like the forest bends for him. Not when your thoughts have turned traitorous, clinging to the sight of how his thighs shift with every measured step.

Your palms feel as though they are tingling, but not in a way that makes sense. The bleeding has stopped and the soft pink of new skin is starting to form over the deep scrapes. But you can’t stop to think. Not now.

The path stretches on, only a few hundred feet, but every footfall feels like another test. The air changes—softer, heavier somehow—like the forest is holding its breath. Light filters through the canopy in fractured gold, and the earth beneath your boots turns springy and damp, as though anticipating rain.

He stops, head tilting as though listening to something in the distance. “You’re still hurt.”

“No,” you deflect quickly, shifting your weight as if that might sell the lie. “I’m fine. Just bruised. I fell weird, but I’m good.”

He turns slowly, and the look he gives you is not unkind—but it is old. Older than names, older than any language you’ve studied. It’s the kind of stillness that has watched civilizations rise and decay.

“Lie again,” he rumbles, voice low but not sharp, “and the forest will tighten.”

Your heart skips a beat. “Tighten?”

“It doesn’t like lies,” he says, gaze narrowing. “Even small ones.”

“So… it punishes them?”

“No. But it remembers them. So do I.”

Somewhere above, a breeze stirs the branches—brief, passing. But beneath your boots, the roots shift ever so slightly, like something waking.

Your pride flares, and your hip burns in sympathy. “Okay, cryptic,” you mutter. “Fine. I’m sore. It’s not a big deal.”

He watches you for a long moment, unreadable again. And then, without a word, he lowers into a crouch—graceful, effortless, too patient to be human. This time, he doesn’t reach out, simply waits.

Softer now, almost gentle, “Show me.”

You hesitate.

He says nothing more, and the silence stretches long enough to become unbearable.

Finally, you exhale. With fingers stiff from chill and strain, you shift your jacket aside, unclip your pack’s waistband. Carefully, you slide your hand beneath the hem of your pants to where the heat flares sharpest. Your fingers brush the edge of a bruise—deep, spreading, vicious in its anger—and even that light pressure sends a bolt of pain through your side.

You flinch despite yourself.

“You fell where the roots are thickest,” he murmurs, voice low. “They tried to catch you.”

You exhale, wry. “Yeah, well. I’m not exactly light.”

His tone sharpens—not loud, just enough to cut through your reflexive humor. “Don’t. Don’t insult what the forest already cherishes.”

You look up.

He’s still crouched before you, the green-gold light casting soft shadows across his face. Slowly, deliberately, he lifts his hand—palm open, still, waiting. “May I?”

The breath you draw shakes a little, but you nod.

His fingers brush your side, and the contact resonates—low and subtle, like a tuning fork struck against your bones. Not trembling. Not hesitant. Just... attuned.

When his palm cups your hip, you gasp—less from pain than from the way sensation rushes up to meet him.

Heat, pressure, the electric bloom of contact. A soundless hum vibrates through your nerves like sunlight reaching down into roots.

“The bruise is deep,” he murmurs, “but not torn. You shouldn’t walk far.”

“I can’t just stay here,” you whisper. “My research… my tent, my equipment—”

“You’re not going back.”

You blink at him. “What do you mean I’m not going back?”

His thumb moves gently, reverently, across the curve of your hip.

“You stepped off the path. Something in you woke the forest.” His eyes rise to meet yours. “And it chose you.”

Your mouth goes dry. “Chose me for what?”

His gaze flickers—lands on your lips.

“To belong.”

He helps you walk. Because you refused to let him carry you.

One strong arm wraps beneath yours—not to lift or force, but to steady. To anchor. Like a root rising beneath softened earth to carry something newly sprouted.

The forest shifts as you move. At first, you think it’s your own overwhelmed mind—the lingering throb in your hip, the soft ache between your thighs. But no. The trees themselves are leaning. Branches parting. The earth reshaping to make way.

Not just for him.

For you.

He moves with an easy, grounded stride, and the ground seems to rise to meet your steps. The deeper you go, the more the light softens—turning from bright day to liquid gold, filtered through an endless canopy. Mist drapes low across the ground, curling around your ankles like breath sliding between parted lips. There is no path here, no visible trail, yet your feet find every place they’re meant to be. It’s as if the forest remembers you already.

“So, ah… w–where are we going?” Your palms tingle again, that strange electric warmth spreading down into your fingers. It’s like you’ve grown a second heartbeat—slower, stronger, thrumming in your blood.

He doesn’t answer right away. “You could call it the heart of the forest,” he says at last, voice low as mossed stone. “Although that’s not quite right.”

You nod as though that definitely makes sense. “Okay… and what are… you?”

Another pause. “I am of the Vedi. Though there are few of us now.”

“Oh!” You fumble into your pocket, fingers brushing the small charm the old woman pressed into your hand back in the last village. “A woman gave me this. All she said was ‘Vedi.’ That’s you!”

He glances at the little bound bone in your palm, one brow lifting. A smile—faint, almost wistful—touches his mouth. “An old custom. When there were more of us, some would get… restless. People still had magic then. They’d imbue charms like that with a ward, sending them with travellers for protection.”

You turn the little bone between your fingers. “Why are there… less of you?” you ask softly.

He is quiet for a time. You hear only the creak of the trees, the soft sigh of moss beneath your boots.

“We were hunted,” he says finally. “By steel and greed. By those who feared what they could not own. And… by time. Magic thins when it’s not tended. It slips away.”

“That’s… sad,” you murmur.

“It is the way of things.” His gaze slips to you, steady and warm. “But some magic knows when it’s found again.”

You look down at your tingling palms, at the small charm clenched between them. “And you think I’ve found it?”

His mouth curves into something not quite a smile. “I think it’s found you.”

The air between you changes then—thicker, charged, almost expectant. You feel the weight of his gaze, the steady thrum of that second heartbeat answering in your chest.

The trees begin to part—not abruptly, but gently, like a mouth opening in slow revelation.

You step into a clearing ringed with oaks so ancient, so wide, that it would take three people linking arms to encircle just one. The hollow is domed with moss, glowing faintly in the dim. Beneath your feet, mycelial threads pulse slow and pale, as if breathing with you.

At the center lies a fallen log, wrapped in blooming things—fungus and flower both. It isn’t dead. Just resting. Dreaming. You can feel the life in it.

Every inch of the space is alive—lush with lichen, bruised-purple fungi, stems like pale fingers pushing up from the loam. The scent hangs heavy with pheromones not your own, and yet your lungs tighten like they know them. Like they’ve always known them.

He stops at the threshold.

“This is where they speak,” he says softly.

You glance toward him. “Who?”

“The ones beneath. The network. The green. The old gods. The new saplings. They all speak. The world has forgotten how to listen but you… you seek it.”

You want to argue—some flicker of scientific instinct rises—but then the ground murmurs beneath you, subtle and sure. A thrum that doesn’t wait for permission to be believed.

He steps behind you, and before his hand meets you, you feel him—heat radiating, presence curling close like steam from deep earth.

His palm finds your uninjured hip, resting there. Solid. Steady.

“You study them,” he says. “The connection. The communication.”

You nod, slowly. “We think they send signals. Through root systems—like electrical pulses. They share resources. Warn each other. A kind of… colony intelligence.”

“It’s only the surface,” he murmurs. “You read it in charts. In static. But not like this.”

The other hand rises, warm and certain, to your shoulder. He turns you toward him with quiet patience, until you’re face to face, the forest cradling you both. He leans down, pressing his brow to yours, his breath warm against your mouth.

“You feel it now,” he murmurs. “In your palms. In your blood. That second heartbeat? That is the network beneath us. The mycelium is already threading through you. Rooting into you.”

Your breath catches, your pulse—both pulses—hammering in tandem.

He smiles, slow and knowing. “It’s claiming you as its own. Changing you. You are no longer just passing through this forest. You belong to it now.”

The words rooting into you echo like a drop in a still pool, rippling through every rational part of your brain.

“No,” you whisper—too quickly. “No, that’s not how it works. Fungal hyphae can’t just—colonization doesn’t happen—there’s a symbiosis, yes, but host cells—”

The forest hums under your feet, both heartbeats thrumming in your ears. You’re talking faster now, chasing the safety of what you know.

“It’s chemical signalling. Phytohormones. Exchange of—of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus—there’s no direct—”

But the words die in your mouth because the pulse in your palms is spreading up your forearms. Not heat. Not cold. Something else. Like a living thread stitching itself through your veins, weaving you into something wider than yourself.

Your knees feel unsteady.

“You’re—this—” You laugh, short and sharp, the sound breaking. “I’m hallucinating. My brain’s oxygen-deprived from… from—”

He tilts his head, studying you like you’re a curious seedling struggling through soil. “From me?”

You want to argue. You need to. But you can’t think past the heavy press of his presence, the steady anchor of his hand on your hip, the impossible pulse syncing with your own. You feel… connected. Not metaphorically. Not romantically. Biologically.

And that should terrify you.

Instead, your throat works around a dry swallow and you manage: “That’s not possible.”

His smile deepens, and you hate that it’s not unkind. “Then perhaps your science is too small for this forest.”

Your thoughts fracture.

It’s like tripping on a loose stair—you’re in motion and then suddenly weightless, nothing under your feet.

You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t even know here. You don’t know him. You don’t even—

Oh gods.

You don’t even know his name.

The realization hits like a slap. All the tingling in your palms, the warm pulse in your blood, the way the air bends toward him—it’s all been him. And you followed. You walked straight off the trail with a creature because… what? Because your chest felt light when he smiled? Because he’s got the kind of thighs you want to sink your teeth into?

You should back up. You should say no, say stop, say—

Your hip throbs. His palm steadies it. The forest hum rises in your bones. You can’t remember what stop is supposed to feel like.

You look up at him, breathless, voice sharper than you mean it to be. “I don’t even know your name.”

He blinks slowly, like a stag scenting the air. And then his mouth curves—not into that soft, coaxing smile he’s given you before, but into something older.

“You would not have heard it before,” he says. “It belongs to no tongue you’ve spoken. But if you want—” His hand slides to the back of your neck, firm, warm. “—the people of this land had a name for me, long ago.”

The pulse in your palms kicks harder. Your whole body leans toward him without permission.

“Tell me,” you whisper, and you hate the way it comes out needy.

He bends until his lips are at your ear, his voice dropping to something deep enough to live under the forest floor.

“Thalen.”

The name rushes in your chest when he says it—slides down your spine like roots seeking earth. You swear you can feel it in the ground, in the air, in the pulse threading into your blood.

“Thalen,” you murmur. The name feels like soft sunlight in your mouth.

He hums, eyes nearly twinkling as he hears it. “It has been a very long time since someone has said that name. I did not realize I had missed it.”

Something about the closeness, the earnest light in his eyes, has that particular heat pooling low in your stomach, and, embarrassingly, across your cheeks.

His hand trails from your hip to your wrist, warm fingers brushing the center of your palm. You realize the tingling there is no longer a faint hum—it’s an active, living thread, weaving upward.

“It is already happening,” he says softly.

You blink. “What is?”

“The forest. The network. Me.” His thumb drags slowly over your pulse point, like he’s feeling the rhythm match his own. “The mycelium is inside you now—slipping into the smallest parts of you. It will not hurt. It will simply… change.”

You swallow hard. “Change how?”

His smile is almost gentle, but there’s a weight to it that makes your stomach flip. “You will learn to hear as I do. To feel as I do. To belong as I do.” His gaze drops, and so does his voice, low and steady. “It will make you mine. And me… yours.”

Your breath catches, a thousand protests clawing to the surface—but they have nowhere to land. You already know he’s telling the truth, because you can feel it. The pulse in your palms spreading through your chest, down your spine, blooming warm and heavy between your hips.

“There will be no denying what grows in you now,” he murmurs. “The forest will make you what you were meant to be. You will fit me as if carved for my hands… because you will be.”

You should feel cornered. You should feel afraid. Instead, your thighs press together against the rush of heat that floods you.

And Thalen smiles—slow, knowing—because he can feel that too.

His hand lingers, thumb brushing the center of your palm in slow, grounding circles while that strange inner thrum spreads. You swear you can feel it winding along your veins, like living filaments mapping the inside of you.

He watches you quietly, the corners of his mouth curved as though he’s reading every shift in your breath. “It will not happen all at once,” he murmurs. “The forest prefers patience. It threads itself through you slowly, so when you belong, you truly belong.”

You nod—more as a reflex than because you understand—and then take a cautious step deeper into the clearing.

The air here is thick with the feeling of life, a heady mix of damp earth and something sweetly spiced. Your eyes catch on the moss-glow underfoot, that soft pulse like breathing. When you crouch to touch it, your fingers sink into it like down, and the hum in your palms leaps.

The warmth climbs your wrists.

Then your elbows.

You exhale sharply, trying to shake it off, but it lingers.

“It’s beautiful,” you murmur, straightening again. Your voice feels too soft in the air here. “Like it’s… alive.”

“It is,” he says simply, coming to stand behind you again. “And it likes you.”

You glance over your shoulder at him, cheeks warming in a way that feels… uncomfortably pleasant. Like catching the eye of someone across a crowded room and holding it a fraction too long.

You turn away quickly, drawn toward the fallen log at the center of the clearing. Flowers bloom pale and delicate along its length, woven with clusters of deep-violet fungi. Your fingertips brush the velvety caps—and your pulse surges.

Your knees wobble, a confused, breathless laugh tripping out ouf your mouth. "Okay… that’s weird.”

“Not weird,” he corrects softly. “Recognition.”

The heat is in your chest now. Your throat. Your belly. It’s not sharp or sudden—just… insistent. You shift your stance, pressing your thighs together, but it follows you like a shadow. Every step you take, every breath you draw in this place seems to feed it.

You kneel by a patch of luminous lichen, tracing its intricate patterns—and feel the hum coil low in your stomach. Your lips part before you realize you’re holding your breath.

“The threads are weaving faster now,” he says, voice dipping low enough that you feel it in your spine. “They’ve tasted you. They know you will not fight them. You will find yourself… softer. That is how the forest works.”

You look up at him, unsure whether you want to step back or forward. The pulse thrumming beneath your skin—both of them now—say forward.

In vain, you try to keep moving, to distract yourself with the pale curl of a fungus stem or the fine lace of moss veining a root — but it’s no use. The heat is everywhere now, low and thick, threading itself through muscle and marrow until even your breath feels weighted.

Your cheeks burn, palms flexing uselessly at your sides. You hate how easily your body is giving you away — the restless shift of your hips, the way your tongue keeps darting to wet your lips.

Thalen watches you quietly from where he stands, his head tilting just enough for one antlered shadow to sweep across the moss. He doesn’t smirk, doesn’t gloat, simply knows.

When you turn away, hoping to gather yourself, you hear him move. That slow, deliberate step on moss. Then another. Then his heat is at your back again, steady as stone.

“Little bloom,” he murmurs. “You’re burning.”

“I—” The word splinters. “It’s… I don’t know what’s—”

“You know.”

The forest hum deepens under your feet, in your blood. You swallow hard, but it does nothing to ease the dry ache in your throat.

His hand — that broad, grounding weight — finds your hip again, guiding you back against him. “Come.” It’s not a command, not exactly. It’s the same tone one might use to coax a skittish animal to step closer.

He lowers himself to sit against the massive root of one of the elder oaks, legs parting just enough to make space for you. His palm slides from your hip to the small of your back, gentle but certain, and then he’s drawing you into his lap like he’s been waiting for you to fit there forever.

Your breath hitches when you settle, thighs straddling his. The hum in your blood sharpens. The threads inside you seem to lean toward him, weaving faster now, as if proximity feeds them.

Thalen exhales slowly, chest rising beneath your hands. “Better,” he rumbles, and the word is so tender it makes your throat tighten.

His hands are large enough to cradle your hips entirely, but he doesn’t rush. Just lets them rest there, thumbs stroking tiny arcs. You realize his touch is moving with the rhythm of the pulse — your pulse — the forest’s pulse.

“It’s all right,” he murmurs, leaning in so his forehead brushes yours. “Let it happen. Let me happen.”

Your eyes flutter shut, embarrassed at the sound you make when his hand slides up your spine, palm warm even through your shirt. Every point of contact burns hotter, the threads singing in your veins.

The forest seems closer now, as if the entire clearing has bent toward this moment — every leaf listening, every root aware.

His palms settle low on your back, holding you as if you might drift away on the hum in your veins. Thumbs stroke lazy arcs over your hips, pressing just enough to feel the shape of you, to remind you that you’re here, with him.

“You’re warm,” he murmurs. “Everywhere.”

“I—” The sound catches on your breath as his hands glide under the hem of your shirt. His palms are hot and broad, mapping your skin slowly, reverently. When he reaches the small of your back, his fingers curl in, pulling you closer against him until your thighs are flush with his.

The heat between your legs spikes and you shift instinctively, trying to ease it, but the motion only draws a low sound from him — approval edged in hunger.

“That’s it,” he breathes. “Don’t hide from me. Let me feel what the forest has woken in you.”

He leans in, nose brushing along the curve of your jaw, down toward your throat. His breath is warm and damp, and when he inhales, it’s deep enough to make you shiver. “You smell different now,” he says quietly. “Sweeter. The forest is in your blood… they’re making you for me.”

Your hands clutch at his shoulders, at the thick curve of muscle beneath them. “You keep saying that—”

“Because it is truth.” His mouth grazes your pulse point, slow and soft, before he sinks his teeth just enough to make you gasp. He soothes the spot with his tongue, lips brushing your skin as he continues, “You will move like me. Breathe like me. Take the forest into your body until it cannot be told from you.”

The words coil through you, dizzying. His hands travel higher under your shirt, over your ribs, the calluses catching lightly against your skin. Every touch is synced to the rhythm thrumming inside you, like he’s coaxing the network along.

When his thumbs skim the underswell of your breasts, your breath stutters — and he smiles, slow and knowing. “There you are,” he murmurs, like you’ve finally arrived.

You’re so aware of him — his solidity beneath you, the heat radiating from his body, the way the forest hum vibrates through his chest into yours. The threads feel like they’re finishing something — weaving tight, closing a circuit. You’re not sure where the magic ends and the want begins.

Thalen tilts his head back just enough to meet your eyes. “You feel it now,” he says, voice low and certain. “There’s no part of you I do not touch. Not anymore.”

And you know — with a flush that sinks deep into your bones — that he’s right.

His gaze holds you steady — calm, unshakable — while your breath comes faster. One hand stays braced warm at your lower back, keeping you pressed against him, while the other rises to cup your jaw. His thumb brushes over your lips, slow, deliberate.

“Let me in,” he murmurs. It’s not a question.

Before you can answer, his mouth finds yours.

It’s not a bruising kiss. Not yet. It’s deep, unhurried — a claim that’s been waiting since the first moment you stepped from the path. His lips are warm and sure, moving with the same rhythm as the pulse weaving through you. You can feel the magic crest with every pass of his mouth, each slide of breath between you.

Your hands, without permission, slide into the thick hair at the nape of his neck. He hums at the touch, pulling you closer still. The shift makes your hips grind against the hard line of him, and the sound that rumbles in his chest is pure approval.

“That’s it,” he breathes against your mouth. “Let the earth move you.”

The mycelial pulse is a drumbeat in your blood now, urging you to move — forward, down, against him. His hands guide your hips, slow and steady, until you’re rolling them in a rhythm that makes heat lick up your spine. Every press drags a whimper from your throat, every pull earns a low growl from him that vibrates straight through your core.

He breaks the kiss only to press his lips to your throat, your jaw, the hollow below your ear. “You feel it, little bloom. The forest wants this as much as I do.” His teeth catch on your skin — a slow, possessive scrape. “It’s making you mine. Perfect for me.”

You gasp when one broad palm slides up under your shirt again, fingers splaying wide over your ribs as if to feel the rush of heat inside you. His other hand stays firm on your hip, guiding you to move the way he wants — the way that wrings little shivers from your body.

“Thalen—” His name spills from you like a confession, and his answering sound is so deep and pleased it makes your knees weaken even where you sit astride him.

“That’s right,” he says softly. “Say it again.”

“Thalen…”

The pulse answers. The forest answers. And under his touch, you realize there is no longer any separation — not between your body and the magic, not between your want and his.

Thalen’s hands slow on your hips, steadying your restless movements. His mouth lingers at your jaw, then trails lower until his lips are at your ear.

“Little bloom,” he murmurs, the words brushing hot against your skin, “you’ll have to let me ready you. I will not hurt you.”

Your cheeks burn hotter. You know what he means, and the knowledge sends a dizzy rush straight through your belly. “I—”

“Hush.” He kisses the corner of your mouth, soft as moss. “Let me take care of you.”

One broad hand slides down from your ribs, over the flat of your stomach, his touch unhurried and unbearably sure. He watches your face the entire time, studying every flicker of breath as his palm cups the heat between your thighs through your jeans.

Even that simple contact makes your hips twitch forward. He hums low, pleased. “Already warm,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “The forest worked quickly in you.”

He shifts you just enough that his hand can slip beneath the denim, then lower still, fingers finding you easily, and the first touch makes your head tip back.

“There. That’s better.”

His middle finger drags slowly through your slick, teasing the sensitive bundle of nerves at the top before circling lower. He’s careful, deliberate, letting you feel the breadth of him even here.

“Relax for me,” he murmurs.

He slides one thick finger inside you, the stretch immediate and dizzying. The forest hums beneath you, in you, syncing perfectly with the steady curl of his finger.

“That’s it,” he coaxes, pressing a slow kiss to your temple. “Feel how you take me in. You’ll take more soon.”

Another finger joins the first, and your thighs tense instinctively — but his free hand is there, rubbing soothing arcs into your hip, grounding you. “Easy,” he whispers. “I’ll make you ready. You’ll bloom for me.”

The pace is unhurried, almost meditative. Every press, every curl feels like he’s mapping you from the inside, memorizing how you yield to him. And the mycelial threads seem to pulse in time with him, weaving deeper, rooting you down into the moment.

When his thumb finds your clit again — slow, firm, perfect — a broken sound catches in your throat. He smiles against your cheek, nipping lightly. “Yes… let me open you.”

Thalen keeps that steady rhythm, two thick fingers curling just right inside you while his thumb moves in lazy, coaxing circles over your clit. Every pass drags a little more sound from you — soft gasps, quiet whimpers you can’t bite back.

“Good,” he murmurs, voice warm and low. “Looser now. Softer for me.”

Your hips start chasing him without thought, rolling against his hand, needing more pressure, more depth. The mycelial hum in your veins has thickened into something molten, pooling heavy between your thighs until every movement feels like it feeds the heat.

He slides a third finger into you, and your breath catches around the stretch, nails digging into his shoulders. He groans softly at the feel, his thumb never leaving its steady, maddening rhythm.

“Ah… gods, you take me so well.” His tone is reverent, almost awed. “And this is only my hand.”

You whimper, embarrassed by how wet you are for him, how easily you’re giving in. But he just presses a kiss to your jaw, voice low against your skin. “No shame. The forest wants this. I want this.”

His fingers work deeper, curling until you see sparks behind your eyelids. The pressure builds and builds, heat coiling tight in your belly. You can’t stop the needy little plea that slips free.

“Thalen… please.”

That smile curves against your cheek, slow and satisfied. “Please what, little bloom?”

You swallow, hips stuttering against his hand. “Please… I want you.”

“Mmm. You’ll have me.” He withdraws his fingers slowly, dragging them over every sensitive inch until you shiver. “But you are very small,” he murmurs, his hand cupping you possessively. “And I am… not.”

You can feel him now, hard and heavy against your thigh even through his clothing. The thought of him inside you makes your breath stutter.

He shifts you in his lap, steady and sure, until you’re straddling him fully again. One big hand cups the back of your neck, the other guiding your hips. “Breathe for me,” he says, eyes locked to yours.

You feel him align with you, the thick head of him nudging against your slick entrance. Even that first press steals your breath.

“Ah—”

“Shhh.” His forehead rests against yours, grounding you in his heat. “Slow. We’ll go slow.”

And then he begins to push inside.

The stretch is devastating. Your walls strain around him, the sheer width of him forcing you open inch by inch. Your nails dig into his shoulders, a choked sound catching in your throat.

“That’s it,” he breathes, voice roughening. “Take me in. You were made for this. For me.”

The forest hums louder, in your bones, in your blood, until you can’t tell if it’s magic or lust making you dizzy. Every inch he sinks into you feels like it’s locking something into place, completing some ancient pattern.

The moment Thalen is fully seated inside you, something shifts.

It’s not just the stretch — though your body feels impossibly full, stretched around him to your limit. It’s deeper than that, a resonance you can feel through your bones.

The tingling that’s been crawling through your veins since you entered the clearing… stops.

Not because it’s gone — but because it’s finished.

In its place is a low, steady hum. Not in your ears, but inside you. Everywhere. A second life layered over your own, pulsing with the same deep rhythm as the forest under your knees… and the man inside you.

You suck in a shaking breath, your hands clutching his shoulders like you might fall without him. “I—”

His gaze holds yours, warm and sure. “Yes. You feel it.”

It’s not a question.

Your walls flutter around him, body adjusting, clutching greedily at the thick weight of him. The hum in your blood seems to sharpen there, the pulse syncing perfectly with the deep throb of his cock inside you.

Your mouth works soundlessly before you manage, “It’s like—everything’s… in place. Like I’m—”

“Complete,” he says, the word a warm exhale between your lips. “You are part of the network now. You are mine now. There is no going back.”

And gods help you, the truth of it makes you clench around him so hard he groans, his grip on your hip tightening.

“You feel it,” he says again, voice low and reverent. “The forest, the roots, the mycelium — and me — all one system. You and I… bound.” His hand cups your jaw, thumb brushing over your cheekbone. “I fill you in every way there is.”

You realize you’re not trembling from the stretch anymore — you’re trembling from want. From the unbearable knowledge that you were built for this, for him, for this union of body and magic and breath.

Thalen leans in, his mouth brushing your ear, his words sinking like roots into soft soil. “Now… let me show you what we are.”

When he finally moves, it’s just a slow, rolling shift of his hips — pulling out only a fraction before sinking back in, deeper than you thought possible.

The hum changes.

It’s not just in your body anymore. It’s around you. Under you. In the moss beneath your knees, in the breath of the trees overhead, in the slow pulse of the web just under the soil. Every time he rocks into you, it feels like the forest exhales.

Your breath comes out shaky. “Gods—”

“No gods here,” Thalen murmurs, his voice almost a purr. “Only us.”

His hands cradle you — one braced firm at your lower back to keep you pressed to him, the other splayed over your hip to guide the rhythm. It’s slow, deliberate, each thrust a claiming all its own.

The movement isn’t frantic. It’s inevitable. Like tides. Like roots pushing through stone.

And you can feel it — not just the physical slide of him, but the way the hum in your new system spikes with every deep stroke. The network is responding, welcoming. Each pulse of pleasure radiates outward through the threads inside you until it comes back doubled, tripled, impossibly magnified.

Your nails bite into his shoulders, a helpless moan slipping free. “It’s—oh fuck, it’s everywhere—”

“I told you.” His mouth brushes your ear, warm and steady. “You are part of the forest now. Every root feels what I give you. Every leaf sings it back to me.”

He rocks deeper, grinding at the bottom of the thrust, and you swear the moss under your knees blooms warmer. The world narrows to his steady breath in your hair, the slow drag of his cock inside you, the way each motion sends that humming pleasure echoing through the entire network.

Your hips start moving with him, not consciously, just following the pull. He hums in approval, tightening his grip on your hip so you can’t shy away from the depth.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, voice deepening with heat. “Take all of me. Let the forest keep us joined.”

And gods help you, you want it. You want to stay locked to him like this forever, the hum never ending, the network pulsing with every slow, perfect thrust.

The rhythm shifts.

Not a warning. Not a gradual build. Just one thrust that lands harder, deeper, and the hum in your body spikes.

You gasp against his shoulder, clutching at him as if that will keep you anchored — but he’s the one anchoring you.

The next thrust comes faster. And the next. Still slow enough to make you feel every drag and push of him, but with a force that makes your breath catch and your thighs tremble.

The hum in your blood is no longer a steady undercurrent — it’s a surge, sweeping you along. You can feel the network answering him: roots tightening in the soil, the moss blooming under your knees, the air thickening with the scent of green and want.

Thalen groans low in his chest, the sound vibrating through you. “Yes… let it carry you.” His forehead presses to yours, breath warm on your lips as his hips snap forward again. “The forest knows you now. It wants you to give me everything.”

You can’t stop the sounds spilling, soft and needy with every deep, perfect thrust. Your hips find his rhythm without thought, rolling to meet him, the impact reverberating up through your spine.

He shifts slightly, the angle changing, and the next thrust knocks a startled moan out of you — sharp and high. His eyes flare, hungry. “There,” he growls softly. “That’s where you hold me the tightest.”

The pace builds again, still not frantic, but inevitable, like he’s driving stakes into the earth. Every deep push sends the hum cresting higher, the network singing louder inside you. Your vision blurs around the edges, breathless from the force and the connection and the unbearable fullness.

His grip tightens, pulling you down to meet him harder. “You feel that? The forest pushing it back to you?”

You nod — or think you do — but your head is already tipping back, a cry breaking loose as another thrust lands, grinding deep enough to make your toes curl.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, and now there’s a sharp edge of hunger in his steady tone. “Let me take you. Let us take you.”

The hum is climbing, climbing, the pressure coiling tight in your belly until you’re right at the edge — and he knows. You can feel it in the way he holds you closer, the way his hips drive into you like he’s sealing the connection forever.

The pace is relentless now — not frantic, but unstoppable. Every deep thrust finds that place inside you, each one hitting harder, tighter, the hum in your veins climbing until it’s not a hum at all but a song.

You can’t breathe for how good it feels. Thighs are trembling around his hips, nails digging into his shoulders. Every time he sinks into you, the network answers — moss warming, roots flexing, the air around you thick with the green-sweet heat of him.

Thalen’s mouth is at your ear, voice deep and steady even as his hips drive you higher. “You’re right there, little bloom. I can feel you. Don’t hold it back. Give it to me. Give it to us.”

The next thrust knocks the air from your lungs. The one after it shatters the rest of your composure.

It’s not just your body tightening, clenching hard around the thick heat of him — it’s everything. The hum bursts into a roar in your blood, in the soil, in the trees. You swear you can feel every leaf overhead shiver, every root below pulse in time with the spasms racking your body.

Thalen groans low, his arms locking you to him as your orgasm crashes and crashes and crashes, waves breaking over each other without pause. “That’s it,” he growls softly. “Yes… yes, bloom for me. Let the forest feel you.”

You can’t stop — the pleasure is everywhere, looping back into you from the earth. Every time your body clamps around him, it’s pushed outward through the mycelium and sent rushing back stronger. Your vision whites out, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes from the sheer force of it.

“Breathe,” Thalen murmurs against your temple, his voice the only thing tethering you to yourself. “Ride it. I have you.”

He keeps moving through it — deep, slow thrusts that push you into another crest before the first one’s even finished. His thumb finds your clit again and you scream, your whole body locking tight as another wave rips through you, pulling the heavy, hot fill of him so deep it feels as though you will choke on it.

“Good girl,” he whispers, reverent and rough at once. “So perfect like this. Made for this. Made for me.”

You don’t know how long it lasts — seconds, minutes, an eternity — but when the tremors finally start to ease, he’s still holding you, still inside you, still steady as the oak at his back. The hum is calmer now, but it’s there, deep and permanent in your blood.

And you know — with every part of you — you’ll never be without it again.