CHAPTER FOUR || DANIEL #2
“Okay,” I managed. My voice came out small around the hot lump in my throat and my eyes were stinging. “Thank you.”
Don’t cry, I admonished myself, sucking in a ragged breath. Absolutely not, Daniel.
“Obviously, we need you to research this,” Reed added. “You’ll work with Sarah and Emma. We’ll figure out why this is happening and how to control it.”
“We also need to figure out if it’s affecting anyone else in the pack,” Harris added.
“It is.” Hunter sat forward, his expression betraying nothing. “This morning. I was on a run and something startled me.”
“A deer,” Lee put in dryly, his lips twitching, as though he was fighting the urge to smile.
Hunter shot him a glare. “Yeah, a deer. Anyway, it spooked me and a—well, it looked like some kind of weird magical barrier or something—just appeared in front of me. It lasted a few seconds and then it dissolved.” His jaw worked and I caught him shooting me an unreadable sideways glance before he returned his attention to Harris and Reed.
“I didn’t do anything to make it happen.
It was instinctive. But I definitely did it. I felt it go out of me.”
I stared at him. Hunter was describing a basic shield spell, something I could do in my sleep, though it had taken time to master—and it was, in fact, a spell.
As in, it required the proper words, focused intention, and the magical power to actually make it happen.
Even though I knew that Oliver must’ve used my magic to unintentionally throw the fork across the room, what Hunter was describing still filled me with dismay.
Scratch that. This was completely impossible.
Wolves couldn’t do spells. Channeling my powers to throw an object was one thing—still bonkers, but at least slightly more plausible.
But Hunter somehow impulsively casting an actual spell without any words or intention behind it was another thing altogether. Because… how, exactly?
Reed and Harris obviously agreed with my silent assessment, because they exchanged a dark look.
“And Lee,” Harris said, shifting his gaze to the other twin. “You pushed Daniel to the floor before the fork was in motion. How did you know to do that?”
Lee was quiet for a long moment. His hands were pressed flat against his thighs, as if he was actively holding himself still.
“I saw the fork hit Daniel,” Lee said tonelessly, his expression neutral.
But his eyes were faraway and filled with something that looked an awful lot like horror.
“In my head, I mean. It was a split-second flash of what was about to happen. I saw the impact. I saw all the blood. It was going to kill him.”
Beside me on the couch, Hunter sucked in a sharp breath.
When I turned, startled, to look at him, his eyes cut to me at the same time.
They were sharp and intense, and for just an instant the anger, the walls, and the years of icy distance fell away and what was underneath was unguarded and raw.
Then it was gone. His jaw tightened and his gaze dropped to the floor.
I wasn’t sure what I’d just seen. But my heart was pounding.
“So we have telekinesis, some sort of magical shielding, and seeing the future,” Harris said, ticking them off on his fingers.
“All manifesting in wolves who have never exhibited any magical abilities before. All within the same twenty-four-hour window.” He looked at me.
“Is this going to affect the entire pack?”
“Probably,” I said, my mind already racing, though the vulnerability I’d just seen in Hunter’s eyes at hearing that I would have died was still burned into my brain.
I tried to shove it to the side and added, “The pack bonds connect everyone. It’s a type of magic, right?
And if my magic is flowing through it now too, every wolf in the pack could be affected. Probably is affected.”
“We’ll need to keep everyone separated for the time being,” Reed said. “Until we can understand what’s triggering this and how to establish control over it. It wasn’t his fault, but what Oliver did could have killed Daniel.”
“No. It would have,” Hunter said. Then he glanced at his twin. “You’re sure that’s what you saw?”
Lee nodded, his lips twisting into a grimace. Hunter’s expression darkened and he fell silent.
It sank in, for the first time, what Lee must’ve seen. My stomach clenched at the thought. If he still cared at all whether I lived or died, it made sense that he didn’t want to let me out of his sight.
I was also having a hard time making myself believe I’d really come that close to death.
“Alright,” Harris said. “So we need to understand the mechanism, get a sense of who’s doing what, and figure out how to control it before someone gets hurt. Or killed.”
“Daniel, you can work with Sarah,” Reed said. “And—”
“No.”
Everyone paused, turning to stare at Hunter. Reed’s eyebrows shot almost all the way up into his hairline. Harris frowned.
“We don’t know how any of this is affecting Sarah yet,” Hunter said firmly. “It’s not safe.”
“Go on,” Reed said, at last.
“Based on the magic we’ve already manifested, we know we’re not going to accidentally hurt anyone.
I’m conjuring magical barriers and he’s seeing the future.
Neither of which is dangerous.” Hunter paused, trading a glance with his twin, who was staring at him with naked disbelief on his face.
A sentiment I shared exactly. Then, apparently oblivious to the way we were all staring at him, he added, “We’ll be the ones to help Daniel with the research. He’ll be safest with us.”
Surprise jolted through me at his suggestion. Alarm was fast on its heels. What was happening right now? What the hell was he playing at?
But Reed nodded thoughtfully, considering it. “You’re right. We’ll bring whatever volumes we have on magic to Daniel’s cabin.” He paused, his gaze darting between the twins. “You two will stay with him, for the time being, and assist him with researching a way to reverse or control this.”
Harris added, “And I guess we’ll have Sarah pull everything we have on the pack bonds—the journals, the lore, anything like that. We should probably quarantine everyone, too. Everyone ought to stay in their cabins until we figure out how this is affecting folks.”
Alarm bells started going off in my head as I realized what was about to happen.
Because… what?
Apparently, Hunter, Lee, and I were going to be sharing a confined space for the foreseeable future. And it was Hunter’s idea? What the hell was happening?