CHAPTER NINETEEN || DANIEL #3
I didn’t really remember walking to my cabin.
Everything came in bits and pieces, like the world around me had shattered into fragments.
The crunch of the dirt beneath my feet. The swaying of the trees surrounding the commune.
The chill breeze on my face, despite it being summer.
The cabins all around, like strangers penning me in: darkened, watchful, and silent.
I must’ve walked to my own cabin, because I was there.
I must’ve opened the door, too, because I found myself standing in the middle of the bare, impersonal room that I’d spent two years in.
The desk with its ransacked drawers. The narrow loft bed I hadn’t slept in since everything changed between Hunter, Lee, and me.
The bare walls that held nothing of me. It wasn’t really my space. It never had been.
Lacey’s voice came from outside the door. “C’mon, Daniel. Let me in.”
I realized I’d—on autopilot—thrown a barrier spell over the door.
“Go away.” My words sounded like they came from somewhere far away, as if they didn’t belong to me at all. “I need to be alone.”
A pause. Then Rowan’s voice through the door, quieter but still urgent. “Daniel, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know he was going to do any of that—”
“Please go away,” I ground out, collapsing onto the floor with my back to the wall. My tears finally spilled over. “I don’t want you here!”
There was silence from the other side of the door.
Then, a moment later, I heard two pairs of footsteps retreating.
But I wasn’t fooled. Lacey, at least, probably wouldn’t go far.
And neither would Rowan. She was supposed to help the family take me away from the life I’d built here, with or without my consent.
But did I even have anything here anymore?
It sank in, suddenly, that Lee and Hunter were both gone.
After all, nothing Micah had told them had been a lie.
The cold weight of emotion I’d felt from Lee, the decision he’d made to leave with his twin. And worse yet, the sharp sting of betrayal I’d felt from Hunter, the numb, wrecked expression on his face—
How were they ever going to be able to forgive me?
And, now that the pack knew everything, now that Hunter and Lee had both turned against me, my family was coming at sundown to take me home.
I tried to think clearly. I tried to reason through it the way Lee would, methodically. One problem at a time. But my thoughts kept scattering with my grief, refusing to assemble themselves into anything coherent.
Hunter’s face. That terrible stillness. You promised.
What was there for him to think about? I’d promised no more secrets. And then I’d kept the biggest secret of all—a spell that could unmake them both—because I was too afraid of the answer to even ask the question, even though I knew it was wrong.
My family was right about me.
I was the weak one, the cowardly one. My father had said I was a child who couldn’t be trusted with discretion, and he was right, wasn’t he?
Micah had called me pathetic so many times, and he was right, too.
Even my own mother’s contempt was justified, because just look at what I’d done.
I’d caused damage, over and over again, to the people I claimed to love.
They were right about me. All of them.
The geas had stopped me from telling Hunter Lee Jameson the truth about being a warlock. But nobody had forced me to stay silent about the reversal spell. And I’d had a hundred chances to tell them. Even before they’d both forgiven me, I could’ve still told them.
And every single time, I’d chosen to stay silent. I’d told myself it was to protect them—to protect the fragile, beautiful thing we’d built, until I could find the right time—but that was a lie, too.
I’d stayed silent to protect myself. Because as long as they didn’t know, I didn’t have to face the possibility of losing them. Because I had been selfish and afraid.
And now I’d lost them both anyway, hadn’t I?
I gathered myself off the ground and climbed up the ladder to my loft bed.
Then I lay down on the narrow bed and curled onto my side.
The mattress was thin and cold and nothing like the king-size bed in the twins’ cabin, where Hunter’s arm would be across my waist and Lee’s hand would be on my chest and I’d be warm and safe, held as though I was something precious and not… me.
That was all over now.
In a few hours, my family would come for me. And I would go with them, because what was left for me here?
I screwed my eyes shut, despair washing over me. My future was laid out in front of me like a prophecy. I’d go back to that cold house, the barely-there tolerance from my parents, and the sneering contempt from Micah. Back to being the perpetual disappointment.
Not even my relationship with Rowan—which might never recover from today—would be enough to offset any of it.
And then my family would expect me to help them do magic that was only ever about power and control and never about protecting innocent people from the things that slithered out of the dark.
Worse, it was to live without Hunter’s fierce protectiveness, Lee’s quiet depth, and the simple magic of their breathing synchronized with mine in the dark, the warmth of their bodies pressed into me, a promise of solace that had been a lie all along.
And I’d live without the pack, too. Without the commune and the forest and the bar and the mess hall and the feeling of belonging somewhere for the very first time in my life. Of being accepted and understood, not in spite of who I was, but because of it.
After all, how could the pack want anything to do with me, now that they knew what I had done? What sort of person I was? They’d probably help the Henbanes run me out of town.
I’d had everything. And then I’d destroyed it. The exact same way I always did.
My tears came then. They made no sound at all. And they soaked into the pillow and didn’t stop.