CHAPTER TEN || LEE #3
And then Hunter and I, confused and panicked, had learned that Daniel had begged Jeremy to force the bite onto us to save our lives from the spell he had cast. And everything that we’d learned about Daniel after that point—all the secrets he’d been keeping from us, the foolishness of what he’d done to cause this, the awful price we’d paid for his betrayal—it had broken us.
It had made Hunter and me despise him. We’d assumed the very worst of him. Because how could we trust him? We’d refused to even look at him for months after our transformation.
And when he had tried to talk to us, we’d walked away from him. Eventually he’d stopped trying to explain. And we’d clung tight to our anger and pain.
But we’d been dead wrong about everything.
And, for the very first time, I let myself really wonder: what had Daniel gone through that night? And every day after? The thought of it made my insides knot up with guilt and shame.
We’d been so convinced that, if Daniel had been able to keep something so massive a secret, we couldn’t trust anything out of his mouth. But that had been utter foolishness, hadn’t it? After all, we’d know, through the bond, if he was lying to us.
I knew now. And I was sure Hunter did, too. Daniel was being completely honest in his every word. I could feel it in my bones.
“I’m so sorry,” Daniel said, and the words came out choked and wet, his eyes spilling over.
“I never wanted any of this to happen. I destroyed everything. And I’m just—I’m so sorry.
” He pressed his hands against his eyes and turned away from us.
“Goddess, I can’t believe I’m crying. What’s wrong with me? ”
That was two years of guilt spilling down his cheeks.
Two years of silence and self-recrimination and living in his barren little cabin, punishing himself every single day for a catastrophe that had started with love and his desire to finally be honest with us, to fight back against what his family had done to him.
Those tears were our fault.
Hunter and I looked at each other at the same moment and something passed between us.
What I saw in his face was the exact same stunned, crumbling realization I felt. And the same guilt, too—sharp and immediate.
Hunter moved first, crossing the small distance between them without warning, causing Daniel to flinch back from him.
“Hunter—”
“No, look at me. Daniel, please.”
Daniel’s expression crumpled all over again and a fresh round of tears spilled down his cheeks. “Hunter, I’m so sorry.”
My twin pulled him into a rough embrace.
“We didn’t know,” Hunter said thickly, his expression miserable as he locked eyes with me over Daniel’s shoulder. “We didn’t know any of it, Daniel. We just assumed you didn’t trust us. We were so stupid. I was so goddamn stupid.”
Daniel said something unintelligible, his words muffled against Hunter’s chest. It might’ve been “you weren’t stupid,” but that didn’t matter.
Then, more loudly, Daniel said, “Please forgive me.”
Belatedly, I rose to my feet and crossed the distance as well. Though I felt hesitant. As if I didn’t quite belong in their embrace.
Yet again, I was reminded that my other half was the one who acted. The one who actually embodied himself—his emotions and his desires—regardless of the consequences. The one who was more Hunter Lee Jameson than I.
The one anyone would choose. He was the real one. The one who wasn’t half a person.
Hunter pulled back just enough to look at Daniel’s face—tear-streaked, red-eyed, terrified to hope—and said fiercely, “I forgive you. Okay? I forgive you. It’s done. That part is done, okay?”
Daniel’s eyes shut and he cried a bit longer on Hunter’s chest. Then he took a deep breath and stepped back far enough to meet my gaze. The look on his face—agonized and desperate—forced me into action.
“I forgive you,” I said, when I could finally manage words. They came out sounding all wrong, hoarse and jagged, as if I hadn’t spoken in a thousand years. “Of course I do. There’s barely anything to forgive.”
The foulness I’d been carrying in my chest for two years—the tangled knot of my grief, my anger, and my betrayal, a crushing weight so familiar that I’d stopped even noticing it—finally, quietly, slid free.
And then I finally put my arms around them both, pulling them tight against me. The closeness, after two years apart, was everything my body and soul had been craving.
And for a moment, I did feel real, my racing mind going quiet at last.
I felt… complete.
Hunter’s breathing hitched and so did mine.
We all stayed like that, clutching at each other, for a very long time. Long enough that Daniel’s tears ran out and his breathing steadied against Hunter’s chest. Long enough that my arms ached from holding them both so tightly, but I didn’t care.
When we finally separated, Daniel wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand and let out a shaky laugh. “Well. That was—a lot.”
“Yeah,” Hunter said, his voice rough. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, it was.”
We were in uncharted territory now, the three of us, and I was pretty sure that none of us quite knew what to do next.
Because everything—absolutely everything—had just changed.