CHAPTER ONE || DANIEL #3
For one thing, I was officially pack. That was an acceptance I had never expected, no matter how many times I’d helped with my magic.
And the bleeds—what the pack called the interdimensional rifts between our world and the Otherworld—had been quiet for almost two months.
Which meant no new monsters had come through since the Algea, back in late May.
The pack commune, a dozen log cabins on a ridge overlooking a hundred-foot drop to a narrow field containing a fire pit and a gravel parking lot on one end, surrounded by forest on all sides, seemed more settled than I’d ever seen it.
Reed and Harris were finding their rhythm as leaders, and the difference it made for the pack was night and day.
With Harris backing him up and chilling him out, Reed had started learning how to ask the rest of us for input and he now did it early and often.
And with Harris’s investigative skills—he’d been a homicide detective for the LAPD before becoming a wolf—we were now way better equipped for whatever came next.
And the very best part was that Hunter and Lee didn’t seem to openly hate me as much as they once had. After two years of hostile stares, clipped conversations, and avoiding me whenever possible, something had shifted on the night of my initiation.
Hunter—who barely seemed capable of looking at me without flinching or glaring—had tipped my chin up with his fingertips and told me, in front of the whole pack, that he saw me as kin. And Lee had done the exact same thing. It was the line from the initiation ritual, but still.
They could’ve said no and they’d chosen not to.
Lee had also whispered something to me that I still couldn’t stop replaying in my mind: “I want to forgive you, but I’m not sure it’ll change anything.”
It beat “I’ll hate you forever,” but what, exactly, did his words even mean?
Was he saying that he wanted to forgive me but couldn’t bring himself to do it?
Or that forgiveness itself wasn’t enough to fix what I’d broken?
I’d spent several sleepless nights trying to untangle his words. But it was probably a moot point. Because forgiveness really wasn’t going to change anything, was it?
My cabin was the smallest on the commune.
It was tucked at the far edge of the row of log structures, half-hidden by a towering Douglas fir.
It was smaller than my old room, but infinitely preferable to living with my family.
Even if the pack eventually kicked me out, I was never going back there again.
Things were looking up, I reminded myself, repeating it over and over again in my head. Even if I didn’t deserve any of it. Even if I destroyed everything I touched.
I kicked off my boots and dropped my messenger bag on the kitchen table.
Then I crossed the main room in five strides—it was that small—and pulled a worn leather journal out of the bottom drawer of my desk, tucked under the sleeping loft.
It wasn’t the research notebook I used for pack business, but the private leather-bound book that no one else knew about.
I flipped it open to the page I’d been working on. The reversal spell.
I’d been working on it, on and off, for almost two years. The theory was sound—or at least I thought it was.
I was certain that Lee and Hunter could be made into one person again and all the damage I’d ever caused from the worst mistake of my life could be repaired.
And then maybe—maybe—Hunter Lee Jameson could have the life he was supposed to have.
A normal life. A human life. Because Hunter and Lee had been turned into wolves. Hunter Lee Jameson hadn’t been.
Maybe he could return to the life I’d stolen from him.
I pressed my pen to the page and started writing.
* * *
That night, the dream came on suddenly, the way it always did. One moment I was lying in bed, trying to convince myself it was safe to fall asleep, the cabin dark and silent around me. The next moment, I was in the clearing.
It was the same place, every night: a wide circle of soft grass ringed by ancient pines, lit by a moon that was always full, no matter what phase it was in the waking world. The air smelled like cedar and wild sage. And at the center of it stood Lee and Hunter.
They were close together, almost touching, their dark hair silver-edged in the moonlight. Even in the dream, I could feel the pull between the three of us. The mate bond.
It was way harder to deny the truth in the dream.
Lee and Hunter were my fated mates. Both of them.
I’d known that, on some level, from the very beginning. The night I’d carried their broken bodies to Crescent Springs, when the pack’s magic had poured into them and they’d woken back up as wolves.
After all, the mate dreams had started that very night and they hadn’t stopped since.
This was my nightly torture, and I deserved every second of it.
Hunter turned to look at me. His green eyes were sharp and wary, the way they always were when he was near me—even here, in the soft-edged reality of the dream. He crossed his arms over his broad chest.
“You again,” he said flatly.
Lee, who stood beside him, watched me in silence. His expression gave nothing away. I almost would’ve preferred the open dislike.
“Yeah,” I said softly. “Me again.”
Hunter’s jaw tightened. He looked away, shaking his head slightly and scowling. “Lovely.”
The stab in my chest was so familiar I barely even noticed it anymore. This was how the dreams always went. The three of us, drawn to the same place by a bond none of us had ever asked for, and the twins wanting nothing to do with me.
Nightly rejection.
It had gotten slightly less hostile since I’d pulled Hunter out of the way of the Algea. But it didn’t mean they liked me. Or that they wanted me here.
“Don’t be a dick, Hunter,” Lee said softly. “You know he didn’t ask for this.”
Lee’s gaze settled on me with an intensity that made me feel like my insides were on the outside, plainly visible for the world to see.
Hunter scowled, shooting him a betrayed look. “There’s probably something better to do than stand around with you two. Have at it.” His lips curled with disdain. “Let me know when the wedding is.”
With that, he stormed off into the trees.
Have at what? Wedding? What the hell did that mean?
Lee watched his brother go, a troubled expression on his face. “Don’t worry about him,” he said softly. “It’s a strange situation, is all. It’s not like any of us have an instruction manual.”
“Right,” I said dully.
It wasn’t adequate, but nothing I did where they were concerned ever was.
And honestly, I was caught off guard that Lee was even talking to me in the dream at all.
He usually didn’t. Neither of them did. Even Hunter acknowledging me—filled as it was with hostility and pain—was a change for the better.
I didn’t do what I wanted to, which was to cross the clearing and close the distance between us. To tell him that I was sorry—that I’d spend the rest of my life being sorry—and that I was going to fix it.
Instead, I settled down to the ground, bringing my knees to my chest and wrapping both arms around them, the way I usually did when I’d decided to wait the dream out.
Here, in this place that wasn’t really a place, I didn’t have the heart to feed myself the mealy-mouthed lie that things were looking up, after all.
That everything would be A-okay, that I’d make it all into sugar, spice, and rainbows and somehow wipe away all the damage I’d caused to the only person I’d ever loved.
Lee sat down cross-legged a few feet from me but didn’t speak. I could feel his eyes on me for a long time, but I didn’t have the courage to look up and meet his gaze.
Then, without warning, the dream broke all at once and I was wide awake in my cabin again, the sheets tangled around my legs. The silence pressed in from all sides and I was utterly alone.
Which was exactly what I deserved.