Page 49 of Binding His Fated Mates

“You’re saying we just have to wait it out?” Hunter asked.

“Exactly,” Daniel said, his voice rising with excitement. “My magic bleeding into the pack bonds will stabilize. And everyone’s abilities will probably either settle into something controllable or else fade entirely, like they did for the coven back then.” He paused. “Probably that. This is all temporary.” He added, “Reed will be happy. We should tell him and Harris as soon as possible.”

“Hunter’s shields and my visions… those are temporary, too?”

Daniel’s expression became more careful and he shrugged. “It’s hard to know for sure. The bond between us is a little different than with the rest of the pack. I don’t know what will happen. The three of us are a little more closely bound than everyone else.”

He didn’t say mate bond, but I was pretty sure we all heard it.

Hunter was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Good.”

Daniel looked at him, his eyebrows climbing into his hairline. “Good?”

“Lee’s premonitions have saved your life twice now. And the shield or whatever was useful back at the bar. I wouldn’t mind keeping it.” Then he turned sheepish. “It’s kind of fun.”

A flash of unguarded warmth shot across Daniel’s face, causing Hunter and me to glance at each other.

When Hunter looked back at Daniel with a soft smile on his lips, I watched the way my other half gazed at Daniel, with that unbridled joy and love in his expression that he was no longer bothering to hide.

In that moment, a realization crashed through me. Things might not be so easy, after all. Because Hunter and I were both in love with Daniel Henbane. I felt a sudden chill as I wondered, for the very first time, which one of us our mate would eventually choose.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN || DANIEL

After my research breakthrough, I excused myself to go take a shower—I ought to have done it right after breakfast, but I’d been too eager to lose myself in my work. I’d planned on heading back to my own cabin, but the twins insisted I had everything I needed to shower here. They didn’t seem to want to let me out of their sight. Their cabin was larger than mine and their bathroom was, too, so I wasn’t exactly complaining.

I stood under the spray of hot water for a long time, with my eyes closed, trying to make my brain catch up with everything that had happened.

I’d been expecting them to condemn me for not being powerful enough to stand up to my family. Or for being foolish in thinking that anything justified casting a spell that my own family—who had loose ethics by anyone’s standards—had forbidden as being too dangerous. Instead, Lee and Hunter had both forgiven me.

It was everything I’d wanted for two years. Everything I’d told myself I didn’t deserve.

I was rinsing my hair when my senses sharpened suddenly. Through the bathroom door and across the cabin, I could hear Lee and Hunter as clearly as if they were speaking in the room with me.

“—we can’t both be his mate,” Hunter was saying. His voice was low and tense, but I still heard him just fine. “That’s not how it works! One wolf, one mate. That’s the rule.”

“We’re not exactly a normal case,” Lee replied, his tone more strained than usual. “We used to be one person! That means technically both of us—”

“So, what, then? We just trade him back and forth? Is that what you’re suggesting? He’s a person, Lee, not a timeshare!”

“No, of course not. But one of us has to be—”

“Which one?” Hunter’s voice sharpened. “Because I’m not stepping aside, Lee! I can’t. I’ve spent two years trying not to want him. I’m done pretending.”

“I’m not stepping aside either.” Lee didn’t yell but he definitely sounded less composed than I’d ever heard him before. “I love him, Hunter. I’ve loved him since before I even understood what that meant. Don’t ask me to give that up.”

“Then where the fuck does that leave us?” Hunter demanded.

“Daniel will decide,” Lee replied, after a long moment of silence. “We’ve done enough damage to him. It needs to be his choice. Not ours. Always, from here on out.”

“And may the best wolf win,” Hunter said flatly.

An ominous silence fell between them after that.

I turned off the shower and stood in the tub, water cooling on my skin, my heart slamming against my ribs, my brain struggling to keep up.

Could Hunter and Lee still feel so strongly about me? This was all happening at breakneck speed, and I hadn’t even considered the possibility that I might come between them. But Hunter and Lee were arguing about which one of them got to be with me.

As if the solution could only be one or the other. As if the three of us together—the way we’d slept last night, the way the mate bond was always a steady thrumming presence between all of us equally, the way every dream for two years had contained all of us—meant nothing.