Page 27 of Binding His Fated Mates

I whirled, stepping in front of Daniel instinctively.

It was Robert Callahan, one of our regulars at the Crescent Moon bar the pack owned and operated in town.

Except he looked more panicked than I’d ever seen him: wild-eyed, gray-faced, and drenched in sweat. He was wearing his red and black flannel shirt, faded blue jeans, and tan work boots, the same clothes I’d seen him in dozens of times before. But they were disheveled, as if he’d been running. The flannel had been buttoned incorrectly. The shoelaces were untied.

He stumbled toward us, his hands outstretched, his mouth working and his eyes filled with terror.

“Why can’t I remember?” he gasped. His eyes darted around, not focusing on us, without even a flicker of recognition. As if he couldn’t really see us. Or maybe it was just that he was beyond caring. “I can’t remember anything! Why can’t I—”

Then he collapsed to the ground. And the dream shattered.

* * *

I bolted upright on the floor, my heart hammering, gasping.

Hunter was already awake and sitting up on the couch, breathing hard too. His green eyes were wide as they met mine. Above us, the sudden creak of the loft floorboards and the change to the warlock’s breathing told me Daniel had jolted awake too.

For a long moment, none of us spoke.

“What the hell was that?” Hunter said at last.

“I don’t know.” My voice sounded strange to my own ears. Too uneasy and ragged. “That’s never happened before, right? No one else has ever been in the dreams. Just the three of us.”

Hunter frowned at that, shooting an uneasy look up at the loft. I wasn’t sure if he was upset that I was openly referencing the dreams in Daniel’s presence—if so, that was too damn bad—or if he thought that maybe the warlock had something to do with it.

Daniel scrambled down the ladder to join us.

“You guys—” He broke off, swallowing, his gaze darting from me to Hunter and then back again. “You guys had the same dream, right?”

Hunter sighed heavily. “Yeah. We did.”

Almost in unison, Daniel and I both shot him startled looks.

I’d expected him to—what? Gaslight Daniel? Pretend it hadn’t happened? Openly lie to him?

Freezing him out was one thing. Refusing to talk about the dreams at all or acknowledge them in his presence wasn’t great. But it wasn’t the same thing at all as intentionally messing with his sense of reality. That was something else altogether. And apparently, Hunter wasn’t willing to do it.

I realized, with a stab of guilt, that I had underestimated him. He was angry and sometimes an asshole, but he wasn’t that cruel.

“That was Robert,” Daniel said, recovering first. From the wide-eyed way he was staring at the both of us, he seemed shaken by Hunter’s admission. Or maybe it was simply from the dream itself. Either way, he didn’t press it. “He’s in the bar practically every day.”

I nodded, relieved. This was good. Focusing on the specifics of the dream was way better than ruminating on the fact that maybe Hunter was capable of a lot more depth than I’d ever given him credit for.

Why Robert, of all people? Usually, he didn’t say much, but he came in every afternoon like clockwork. He ordered a beer, sat out on the back porch, overlooking the deep forested valley below. He occasionally came inside to order a second beer and then watched other folks from town play pool, but sometimes he just left. As far as I was aware, very few people in the town knew that much about him, despite the fact that he’d lived in Crescent Springs for years.

“Right,” Hunter said roughly. “It was definitely Robert. But why the hell was he in our dream?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. As far as I knew, they were a space built from the bond between the three of us, inaccessible to anyone else. Another person—and much less a mundane human—appearing in that space shouldn’t have been possible.

“Maybe we should tell Reed?” Daniel said doubtfully. “And Harris. Both of them.”

“No!” Hunter said vehemently, a wall slamming down over his expression.

Daniel’s eyes widened slightly, as if startled by Hunter’s sudden burst of emotion, but he fell silent and didn’t argue.

I understood Hunter’s reaction immediately, though. If we told Harris and Reed about the shared dream, we’d be essentially talking about the fact that Daniel was our fated mate. It wasn’t something either of us were ready for anyone else to know.

Though it was early, none of us went back to sleep. Instead, Daniel made us a light breakfast. Coffee and toast. “Sorry,” he said, setting the plate down on the counter next to a small plate with half a stick of butter on it. “It’s all I have in the cabin right now. Maybe we ought to grab food in town, when everything opens?”