Page 20 of Binding His Fated Mates

Daniel’s cabin smelled like him. Lemon verbena, old paper, and something underneath that was just Daniel—warm and clean and bright in a way that hit me right in the gut the moment I crossed the threshold, reminding me of all the years we’d had together, gone for good.

The cabin was tiny, with a sleeping loft accessible by a wooden ladder, a spotless kitchenette with a tiny table, a dumpy couch that dwarfed the room, a bathroom barely big enough to turn around in, a bookcase next to the door that had been crammed to the brim with a motley assortment of books, and a desk that was buried under a mountain of journals, loose pages, and tomes in various sizes. Apart from a solitary armchair in the corner, heaped with books and piles of clothes, that was it. No artwork. No photographs. Nothing that was truly his.

This cramped and cluttered shoebox was where Daniel spent his nights, his mornings, and almost every hour in between. And now Lee and I were going to be here too, apparently, all because I had opened my stupid mouth.

What the hell had I been thinking?

Dumb question. I’d been thinking about the fork buried two inches deep in solid wood. And Lee in Harris and Reed’s cabin, saying it was going to kill him in such a shell-shocked way that I couldn’t help but believe him. And most especially, I’d been thinking about the way Daniel’s face had gone white as bone and his hands hadn’t stopped shaking, to the point where he’d needed to basically sit on them so we couldn’t see how freaked he was. But I had and I couldn’t unsee it.

If something happened to Daniel and I wasn’t there to stop it, I’d never forgive myself.

So, here I was, standing in the doorway with my arms crossed over my chest, surveying the chaos that was Daniel’s living space. Something about the bareness of the walls got under my skin. It looked… temporary. Like someone living out of a motel room. As if he was expecting to leave at any moment.

“You live like this?” I said.

Daniel, who had stepped past us and was already at his desk pulling journals from a drawer, flushed red to the tips of his ears. “It’s organized. There’s a system.”

“What system? It looks like chaos.”

“The system is that I know where everything is.” Daniel pushed a lock of dark hair out of his eyes and gestured at the couch. “You can sit there. Or, um, wherever, I guess. There’s not a lot of room. Sorry.”

Lee stepped past me and busied himself by examining the bookshelf with interest, tilting his head to read the spines. “You still have a ton of books. That hasn’t changed.”

“Uh, yeah.” Daniel gave a little half-shrug. “I keep buying them, whenever I go into town. I’m probably keeping the bookstore afloat single-handedly.”

Lee chuckled. “That tracks.”

He seemed perfectly at ease, which made one of us. My twin had relaxed completely the moment it had become clear that we weren’t going to be leaving Daniel’s side anytime soon. I tried not to think too much about what that meant.

Still eyeing Lee, I plopped down onto the couch. It was old, sagging in the middle, and barely long enough for three. The cushions smelled faintly—and maddeningly—of verbena. Just like everything else in the cabin. I would have bet money that Daniel had fallen asleep here more than once, too tired to climb the ladder to his loft.

Lee plucked a book off Daniel’s bookshelf and began flipping through it, still standing. I didn’t miss the way he kept glancing over at the warlock, as if to reassure himself that Daniel was still there and still whole.

Lacey arrived twenty minutes later with two cardboard boxes full of journals and reference materials from the pack’s collection. She set them on the kitchen table with a thud.

“Emma says these are all of the books we have that might be relevant.” She looked at the three of us, packed into Daniel’s tiny cabin, as far away from each other as we could get, and her lips pursed into a thin line. “Let us know if you find anything.” Then, to Daniel, she said, “Call me any time. I don’t care how late it is. If they step even a toe out of line—”

Lee shot me a warning glare before I could open my mouth and make things worse. I scowled back at him and made a gesture as if zipping my lips shut.

“Thanks,” Daniel said, ignoring us. “I will. But it’s going to be okay.”

“I don’t like this.” Lacey cast a wary look at Lee and me, her icy blue eyes filled with unease. “This was a bad idea.”

“Daniel will be safe with us,” I assured her.

“Physically, maybe.” Lacey gave me a dark look. Then she turned back to Daniel. “I’m only three cabins down. I’m serious, if you need anything, you call me. Got it?”

Daniel nodded back at her, chewing on his lower lip. “Got it.”

Reluctantly, casting hard looks that were filled with the promise of murder at me and Lee, she left. And it was just the three of us again. The silence in the cabin was thunderous and crackling, a live wire none of us seemed willing to touch.

Daniel handled the awkwardness by immediately burying himself in work so thoroughly that he seemed to forget anyone else existed. Within an hour, he had his desk covered in open journals, occasionally scrawling things into his notebook, his brows furrowed adorably.

Or, it would have been adorable if anyone else had been watching him. It definitely wasn’t adorable in the least to me.

Absolutely not.

Daniel muttered to himself while he worked, too—half sentences murmured under his breath, the occasional quiet “no, that’s not right”—and he chewed on his pen cap when he was lost in thought. A habit he’d had growing up, too.