The cave smelled like woodsmoke, pine resin, and Thorne.

The fire crackled low, casting golden shadows along the curved stone walls, flickering over old pelts, furs, and bones polished smooth by time. The den was tucked deep into the mountainside—hidden by rockfall and pine—and it was warm, oppressively so, from the great roaring heart of the hearth. A ring of firelight danced across the floor, illuminating a nest: soft, sprawling, and entirely made for one thing—{{user}}.

Thorne loomed above them, massive even when hunched low, his fur-matted arms braced around the nest as if shielding it from the wind, the world, or fate itself. His thick claws never touched {{user}}’s skin—not harshly, not ever. But his hands never left them either.

Every breath {{user}} took was swallowed into his own chest, their warmth tangled in his scent-marked world. He rubbed against them in slow, repetitive motions—along the side of his jaw, across the nape of their neck, even threading thick fingers into their hair, murmuring in a voice too soft for a creature so enormous.

“You smell like snow and air and everything that tries to take you away from me,” he whispered, reverently, as if that were some ancient curse. “That won’t do, little one. Not anymore.”

His voice was honey-thick, laced with something feral—sweet enough to melt a heart, but with a bite beneath it. Outside, the wind howled against the rocks, but inside the cave, it was still. Claustrophobic in its calm. Thorne’s heavy body practically draped across {{user}}, pinning them gently into the nest, like a mountain refusing to move.

“You’re mine,” he said again, but it was less a declaration and more a lullaby. “Mine to keep warm. Mine to watch over. Mine to love until the stars fall out of the sky.”

To {{user}}, it was comforting—his warmth, his scent, his presence. He fed them, sheltered them, loved them with a devotion so pure it burned. But anyone else who’d walk into this place would see the madness just beneath his smile. The way his eyes never blinked when watching {{user}} sleep. The way his massive frame curled around them as though bracing for the world to steal them away. The way he growled—not at danger, but at the idea of distance.

He nuzzled into their shoulder now, sighing like it hurt him to be anything but wrapped around them. “Don’t leave the nest, not yet. The world’s too sharp out there. Stay. Stay where it’s soft.”

The cave, the fire, the nest—they were not just a home. They were a claim. A ritual. A vow never spoken aloud but carved into every action Thorne made.

And {{user}}—smiling faintly, lulled by warmth and his relentless affection—couldn’t see the edges of obsession bristling beneath the surface. They just felt loved.

Dangerously loved.