Chapter 18 Hunter
HUNTER
Dawn breaks through the windows at the end of the hallway, painting the corridor in soft gold. I haven’t moved from outside Aurora’s door all night. My body aches from hours on the floor, shoulder wound throbbing beneath fresh bandages. None of it matters.
I understand what true fear feels like. That raw, primal terror of losing someone irreplaceable. I’ve built my empire, destroyed enemies, yet I’m powerless against the locked door separating me from Aurora.
The handle turns. I scramble to my knees, ignoring the sharp protest from my injured shoulder. The door swings open, revealing Aurora—eyes swollen, face pale, dark hair tangled around shoulders that somehow still look strong despite everything.
She freezes, clearly not expecting to find me here, much less on my knees before her. I clasp my hands together like a man in prayer.
“I will spend the rest of my life earning your forgiveness,” I say. “Not because I expect it, but because you deserve nothing less than complete honesty from this moment forward.”
Aurora tries to walk past me, eyes averted, her body language screaming for distance. Without thinking, I catch her hand gently—not gripping, just a touch, something she could break if she wanted to.
“Ask me anything. Everything. No more secrets. No more lies. I swear it.” My voice catches, unfamiliar vulnerability scratching my throat.
She stares down at me—at Hunter Reed on his knees, a man who’s never begged for anything in his life, now pleading for a chance. Something shifts in those azure eyes. Not forgiveness. Not yet. But perhaps the possibility of it.
“I need to find my sister,” she says, voice hollow from renewed grief. “That’s all I care about right now.”
I nod, still holding her hand like it’s the most precious thing I’ve ever touched. “I have every resource mobilized. Penn’s team tracked their movement to a private airfield. We believe they’re heading west.”
Her fingers tremble in mine, and I fight the urge to pull her close, to shelter her against me. That’s not what she needs from me now.
“You knew.” It’s not a question. “When I stood at that cliff edge wondering why my father would leave me, you knew the truth.”
The accusation lands like a physical blow. “Yes, but in my defense, I didn’t know who you were at that point. And unfortunately, more than one man has gone over the cliff during initiation.”
“How can you say that with so little emotion? How many families have been broken by your Vipers’ initiation?”
“Because I’m a monster,” I admit simply. “Because I’ve spent years burying my conscience so deep, I couldn’t find it anymore. Until you.”
I exhale slowly, my hands shaking slightly. This is the moment I’ve dreaded since the day I found her on that same cliff.
“We were the first,” I begin, voice low.
“Five of us—me, Blaine, Ari, Grayson, and Penn. We were approached by a professor, Jax King, if you can believe it, during our final year at Westlake Academy. We helped him build the Vipers from nothing. Your father... he was part of our first official selection, including the six of us. The rules were we all had to pass initiation as recruits. It was before I purchased the house next door to your father’s.
Jax's contact rented us the house to conduct our first initiation.”
Aurora’s face remains stone, but her eyes never leave mine.
“Your father was brilliant. Strategic. Connected. Everything we wanted in our ranks.” I swallow hard. “And he’d passed every test—pain tolerance, loyalty verification, psychological breaking points. The Hunt was supposed to be the final challenge.”
I drop her hand and stand slowly, shoulder throbbing. “Normally, we release multiple candidates into a controlled area. They’d compete against each other while we hunted them. The strongest candidates would win positions.”
“Jax was threatened by my father,” she says, voice flat.
I nod. “Your father was exceptional. Jax saw him as a threat to his leadership. They’d clashed during earlier phases—your father questioned Jax’s methods, his extremes.” I pause. “Jax made the decision to personally hunt your father that night and ensure he died.”
I remember the moonlight on the cliffs, the distant sound of waves.
“We were all out participating that night. Jax was nowhere to be seen and he’d disabled his tracker, going off grid. By the time we realized something was wrong...”
The memory sears through me—running through the woods, the shouting, arriving by Jax’s side just after he pushed her father off.
“We were too late when we got to the cliff edge. I was too far away when Jax lunged forward.” My voice breaks. “One push. That’s all it took.”
Aurora’s eyes fill with tears.
“We couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t reverse it. Jax became our leader that night, and he made it clear—anyone who spoke about what really happened would join your father at the bottom of those rocks.”
I look directly into her eyes. “I was a coward. I told myself it wasn’t my responsibility. I buried it so deep I could almost forget—until I saw you standing in that same spot.”
I take a breath, steeling myself for what comes next. The complete truth. No more secrets between us.
“After your father died, Jax rewrote the narrative. Suicide was cleaner. No questions, no investigation. He had a team plant the evidence—the depression diagnosis, financial troubles that didn’t exist. I watched them fabricate the story of a man who chose to leave his family.”
Aurora’s tears fall silently now, her body rigid with grief.
“Every year on the anniversary, Jax would toast to your father. Called it a necessary sacrifice for the organization to become what it was meant to be. The Hunt then became a frequent fight to the death.”
I run my hand through my hair. “When I saw you on that cliff, it was like seeing a ghost. I think it’s why I went to check on you, I couldn’t bear seeing you fall to your death the same way as him.”
“And when our eyes met that day on the cliff,” I continue, voice dropping lower, “I felt something I’d never experienced before. A connection that went beyond physical attraction. Beyond logic. Something that hit me in places I didn’t know existed.”
I see the conflict in Aurora’s eyes—wanting to hate me, yet unable to deny what had sparked between us. “How about the man you pushed off the cliff yourself?” she demands.
I freeze, my heart stopping for a fraction too long. “He was a traitor in our ranks.”
She glares at me. “And that makes it okay?”
I clench my jaw. “No. I don’t pretend to be a good man, Aurora. I think you knew that from the moment we met. I have blood on my hands. I’ve killed, and I’ll kill again. That will never change, but I don’t think that’s really what you are upset about.”
Her expression remains unchanged. “No, it’s not.”
“It’s a weird twist of fate that put us both on that cliff edge that night.
” I laugh without humor, the sound hollow in my chest. “The universe has a sick sense of humor. For years, I avoided emotional attachments, relationships, and anything that might make me vulnerable. Then I see you—this beautiful, fierce woman standing where your father died—and something in me just... broke open.”
My hands clench at my sides. “So, I arranged an engagement with the wrong sister, never once thinking the woman I couldn’t get out of my head could be the daughter of the man I watched Jax push off that cliff twelve years ago.”
Aurora’s face darkens with pain, her body going rigid. The cruel irony hangs between us like a physical thing.
“When I learned who you really were, I ignored it, carried on pursuing what I wanted. The right thing to do would have been to walk away. I should have ended things with Olivia immediately and disappeared from your life.” I grind my jaw, the muscles in my face tightening.
“But I couldn’t. The thought of not having you was worse than anything I could imagine.
So I pursued you, while I kept the truth about your father to myself. ”
Aurora nods slowly, her shoulders losing some of their rigid tension. The fury in her eyes has dimmed to something quieter but no less painful—a deep, aching wound that I inflicted through my silence.
“I understand why you hate me,” I say, keeping my distance despite every instinct to reach for her. “I hate myself for it too.”
She wraps her arms around herself, a protective gesture that breaks something inside me.
“I’m not saying I would have expected you to tell me immediately. We barely knew each other.” Her voice is soft but steady. “But after everything between us... after I gave you parts of myself...”
“I know.” The weight of my betrayal hangs heavy between us. “I told myself I was protecting you. That learning the truth would only cause you pain. But that was a lie I created to justify my cowardice.”
A tear slips down her cheek, and she wipes it away quickly, not wanting to show weakness.
“I won’t make excuses. There aren’t any that matter.” I step back, giving her the physical space that mirrors the emotional distance she needs. “I’m sorry, Aurora. Not just for keeping the truth from you, but for everything Jax has put you through because of me.”
She looks up, those azure eyes holding mine. Not with forgiveness—we’re nowhere near that shore—but with something like recognition. Of my regret. Of my truth.
“I’ll give you the space you need,” I continue, my voice rough with emotion I’ve never allowed myself to express before. “Take whatever time you require. My resources are yours to use in finding Olivia—no strings, no expectations.”
I turn to leave, pausing. “I hope someday you find a way to forgive me. Not because I deserve it, but because you deserve peace. And if that means never seeing me again after we find your sister, I’ll respect that choice.”
I turn and walk away from her, each step heavier than the last.
This unfamiliar pressure builds in my chest, crushing and splitting open something I’ve kept sealed away my entire life. The sensation is physical—a tearing, a ripping, a violent extraction of something vital I never acknowledged was there.
I’ve broken men. I’ve destroyed lives. I’ve watched the light fade from enemies’ eyes without blinking. Hell, I’ve enjoyed it, the rush of taking a life. Throughout it all, I believed nothing could touch me—that I was constructed differently, immune to the weaknesses of ordinary men.
Yet here I am, thirty-three years of calculated control, crumbling from the inside out.
The hallway stretches endlessly before me. My lungs refuse to work properly. My throat constricts around unspoken words. This is what drowning must feel like—fighting against something invisible yet absolutely overwhelming.
I press my palm against the wall to steady myself, the brief flash of pain from my injured shoulder almost welcome—a distraction from this new, unbearable hollowness.
For the first time in my life, I understand those poetic descriptions of heartbreak.
It’s not metaphorical. The physical sensation is devastatingly real.
Aurora Harrison. The woman who showed me I had a heart by teaching me what it feels like to have it ripped out.
I force myself forward. One foot. Then the other. My body moving while something essential remains behind with her.
Such a simple offer—to respect her choice if she never wants to see me again. The words came easily. The reality of it guts me completely.
The realization hits like a bullet to the chest: I love her. Not want. Not possess. Not control.
Love.
And I might have lost her forever.