CHAPTER SEVEN || DANIEL
Hunter looked at me again. He’d been doing it all morning, casting me quick, furtive glances from behind the text he was supposedly reading, his green eyes flicking to me and then away again before I could catch him.
Except I kept catching him anyway, because my awareness of Hunter had been dialed up to an almost painful sensitivity ever since the dream.
My phone chimed. It was a text from Lacey. Do we need to bury any Hunter-shaped bodies?
I snorted, causing Hunter to look over and glower at me. He eyed my phone. “Something funny?”
“Definitely,” I said, leaving it at that. It was none of his business anymore who I texted with. He’d made that perfectly clear.
I replied to Lacey with, not yet, but I’ll keep you posted.
My phone chimed again. Three texts, rapid-fire.
Bummer.
Followed by, I’ve got a shovel with his name on it.
And then, he better behave himself or I’ll make him regret being born a man.
I replied to that with a thumbs-up emoji and a heart because what else did you say to your best friend threatening to do serious bodily harm to an ex-boyfriend you don’t actually hate?
I tried to focus on the journal in front of me.
It was the personal diary of a witch from the nineteen-twenties—how the pack had gotten ahold of it was anyone’s guess—and it contained detailed accounts of coven binding rituals, written in both cramped handwriting and Theban, a magical alphabet I had to painstakingly decode by writing it out and translating the letters into English on a separate notepad.
If I’d stayed with my family, I probably would’ve had the alphabet memorized by now.
Both of my siblings could read Theban on sight.
Though I’d never said goodbye to any of them or explained what was happening, the Henbanes had never come looking for me.
They definitely would’ve been able to find me if they’d wanted to.
But it wasn’t a big surprise they hadn’t come for me.
After all, I was the youngest of three, and both my older brother, Micah, and my sister, Rowan, were way more magically talented than I was.
And if my family cared about one thing, it was power.
I’d always been the black sheep. Far less interested in magical attainment than the rest of them, something they’d never been able to understand.
They’d probably written me off the second they realized I’d left them.
Hunter snuck another look at me. I caught it in my peripheral vision.
I practically had to shake myself. Focus, Daniel!
But the words I was reading kept swimming in front of me, blurring together.
The problem was, I was way too aware of Hunter’s presence.
Every time he shifted on the couch. The reassuring sound of his breathing.
The faint scent of him like fresh-cut grass, always reminding me of spring, my favorite season.
It was wildly different from Lee’s scent—dragon’s blood incense and old books—even though the twins were quite literally identical.
Giving up on the journal I’d been reading on my lap, I dropped my pen onto the notebook on my desk and stretched. And yes, I glanced over at Hunter.
He was looking at me again. And this time, I didn’t look away fast enough. Our eyes locked.
For a long moment, neither of us moved. The only sounds were our breathing and Hunter’s heartbeat, which my newly enhanced senses oh-so-helpfully zeroed in on. It became more rapid as we looked at each other.
Then he said, “I’ve been making your life miserable for two years.”
I blinked, certain I must’ve misheard him.
“Huh?”
Apparently, if there’s one thing I wasn’t, it’s smooth. But in my defense… What?
“Two years,” Hunter repeated. His voice was flat, matter-of-fact, but his eyes were anything but. “Lee and I treated you like shit. We froze you out. We’ve barely spoken to you. We made it clear you weren’t welcome.”
I opened my mouth to say it was fine, but Hunter cut me off with, “It’s true and you know it.”
“You guys both accepted me at the initiation ritual,” I said, carefully sidestepping the fact that, yes, he was stating an obvious truth.
“You’ve been with the pack for as long as we have. You’ve easily done as much or more than Lee and I have to help out,” Hunter said. “And you weren’t going anywhere, even if we’d refused you.”
“Well, I guess I’m glad that’s settled.”
“Huh.” At the sarcasm in my voice, Hunter’s lips curved slightly into what might’ve passed for a smile. His green eyes bored into mine. “We’ve been making you miserable, haven’t we?”
“It’s fine.”
“Why can’t you just say it?”
“Because maybe not everything needs to be a fight. And I get it. I get all of it. I wouldn’t want to be around me either, if I were in your shoes.”
“The Daniel I remember wasn’t such a doormat.”
I ground my teeth, glaring at him. What the hell was he even doing? And why was he doing it?
He followed that up with, “You have a hard time with speaking the truth, don’t you?”
That pissed me off. If he only knew—if he had any clue whatsoever—the disastrous lengths I’d gone to in order to not be a liar.
“Fine!” I shot to my feet, the journal I’d been reading on my lap tumbling to the floor.
“Yes, Hunter, I’ve obviously been walking on eggshells around you two since we got here!
And yeah, it’s been fucking awful!” My voice rose.
“Is that what you want to hear? Is that what will make you happy? You already know this! Or are you getting off on hearing me say it?”
Hunter’s eyebrows shot up and he smiled, a real smile this time, his gaze never leaving mine. “There he is. I was worried that maybe he was gone for good.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. Some of the anger slumped out of me, leaving me exhausted and unhappy.
“The guy I fell for wouldn’t have put up with our bullshit. He was kind, but he knew what he was worth. He didn’t always bend over backward to make other people happy.”
“Yeah, well, that Daniel hadn’t ruined anyone’s life yet, had he?”
I abruptly wished the ground would open up and swallow me whole. Because that, in a nutshell, was it, right?
Hunter and Lee weren’t the only ones who had lost everything that night.
I had, too. I had lost the love of my life, my home, my concept of who I was and what I was capable of, and even my family—most of them were awful, but I’d been close with my sister, Rowan. She hadn’t tried to contact me either.
And I’d replaced my entire life with this: with the pack. And with Lee and Hunter, who hated me. And with the knowledge that I destroyed everything I touched.
Hunter’s expression tightened at my words. And something like regret flashed in his eyes.
“If we can agree that Lee and I have been making you miserable, why’d you pull me out of the way of the Algea?
Why not save yourself the trouble?” He paused.
“I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, but I’m the one who’s been keeping Lee from talking to you.
If it were up to him, we’d at least be friendly with you.
” He tilted his head to the side as he studied me with a frown, as if trying to puzzle me out. “So, then, why?”
That had been more than a month ago. I stared at him, searching his face for the catch—because there had to be one.
Otherwise, what the hell did he think he was doing?
But there was nothing in front of me except Hunter, looking at me with his guard down, possibly for the very first time since the split.
In the waking world, at least. Which meant he was actually asking me.
“You could have died,” Hunter continued, his jaw going tighter, as if that possibility were in any way upsetting for him.
“Lee and I are stronger and faster than you are. You’d just finished casting a pretty major spell and you were half-drained.
The Algea was about to break free, and you saw how fast it could move.
” He paused. “Why did you do it? Why risk your life for someone who’d spent years treating you like shit? ”
“Why is this what you’re asking? You and Lee hate me, not the other way around.”
“Daniel, don’t do that. I’m really asking. I’ve been wondering for a month.”
A month was a laughably short amount of time to lack closure when you stacked it against the two years I’d been grappling with. But Hunter didn’t deserve my silence the way I did his.
And watching him, seeing that he was being genuine, heat crept into my cheeks. My throat tightened. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to deflect, to make a joke, to change the subject before this conversation went somewhere I couldn’t come back from.
Hell, maybe Hunter was right. Maybe I did have a problem with being brave enough to speak the truth.
I couldn’t stand looking into his eyes anymore—I still loved him and this was completely unbearable. I tried to drop my gaze.
“Don’t.” Emotion entered Hunter’s voice, turning it ragged, causing me to freeze. “Don’t look away from me, Daniel. Please.”
I forced myself to meet his eyes. They were blazing, even if the rest of his face was unreadable.
“Fuck you, Hunter,” I whispered, my defenses cracking and letting my feelings ooze out into a puddle in front of me, exposed and raw for him to see. “You already know why I saved you.”
Hunter dragged in a deep breath, but he didn’t say anything to contradict me.
“You’ve always known why.” Now that I’d started, I found that I couldn’t make myself stop.
“It’s the same reason I stayed here after I asked Jeremy to turn you and Lee.
You think I didn’t have any other options?
It doesn’t matter what he said. I could’ve gone anywhere!
He couldn’t have stopped me. But I stayed here and I did it for you!
You and Lee both. It’s why I’m never leaving!
” Each word was coming harder and faster than the last, as if the dam of my emotions had burst, flooding me completely in an uncontrollable wave.
“And it’s why I put myself in danger with the Algea, too!
It’s why I’d do it again, in a heartbeat.
Because I would never turn my back on you! Never!”
Hunter visibly flinched at that, but his expression didn’t change.
My hands tightened into fists at my sides and I was breathing harder now. “And you’re an idiot if you need me to spell any of that out for you!”
My eyes had started burning at some point in the process of tearing my heart out of my chest and throwing it at his face. And when I blinked, hot tears burned tracks down my cheeks, but it was way too late and there was nowhere left to run.
“You already know all of that, though. You do.” Furious with myself, I wiped the tears away with the back of my hand. I finished with, “It’s either that you talked yourself into some bullshit or you just get off on being cruel. Which is it, Hunter?”
Hunter’s jaw worked as he stared at me in shocked silence.
The emotion on his face wasn’t anger, for once, but way deeper and far more frightening than that, as if my words had cracked him open, too, and I was seeing him all the way down to the bedrock.
His green eyes became glassier than they ought to have been and his lips parted slightly.
The thunk-thunk-thunk of his heart in his chest told me that his pulse had quickened even further than before.
He didn’t seem able to look away from me.
“Daniel—”
My phone rang, the sound shattering the moment. We both flinched.
I fumbled for the phone on the desk, my hands feeling wooden and clumsy, suddenly aware of my own heart beating rapidly in my chest.
I looked down at the screen. Reed.
Ignoring a call from your alpha wasn’t really an option, even when every fiber of your being was screaming at you to throw the phone as far as you could into the forest.
“Daniel,” Reed said, when I answered. His voice was uncharacteristically tight with anxiety. “I need you at the Crescent Moon. Come immediately. There’s been an attack.”