Page 50 of Binding His Fated Mates

As if there was any way in hell to make a choice between Hunter—impulsive, passionate, and outspoken—and Lee, always measured, steady, and kind.

No. Absolutely not. I wasn’t choosing between them. And they couldn’t make me.

I dried off in record time and then pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants—Hunter’s again, because I hadn’t brought my own clothes—and steeled myself. About to make either the best or the stupidest decision of my life, I opened the bathroom door.

The twins were on the couch. Hunter was on one end, his arms crossed over his chest, his jaw set and his gaze dark. Lee sat at the other end, his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee, his expression troubled as he stared out the window, turned away from Hunter. But they both looked over when I stepped into the main room of the cabin.

“I’m not choosing between you,” I said flatly, without preamble. “So you guys can knock it off, right now. Both of you.”

Hunter’s eyebrows shot up. Lee’s fingers tightened on his mug, but his lips parted with surprise.

“Wait, how the hell—” Hunter began.

“I heard you. But that’s not important.” I crossed the cabin, my hair still damp, my skin not fully dry, and stood trembling in front of them. “What’s important is that you can’t ask me to choose. I won’t do that. That’s not how this works.”

Lee set his mug down on the coffee table. “Look, Daniel—”

“No! I love both of you.” The words were out before I could second-guess them, raw and completely irreversible. I met Hunter’s eyes, then Lee’s. “I’m in love with both of you.”

The twins exchanged a startled glance at that.

“Not one of you more than the other. Not one of you instead of the other. Both of you. Equally. Completely. I want us to have a future together. All of us.”

A chill danced up my spine as I realized that, sooner or later, if they agreed to the reversal spell, our shared future might be extremely temporary. I shoved that thought away with every bit of violence it deserved.

They both stared at me, flabbergasted.

“Don’t you get it? You’re both him! You’re different pieces of the person I’ll always love, no matter what. And I see him in both of you every single day! Which means I’ve already spent my whole life loving you—both of you—even before there were two of you.”

Hunter’s expression softened, his lips parting.

But Lee frowned, his eyebrows drawing together as he studied me. “That’s easy to say, but what does that mean in practice, Daniel? What, exactly, are you suggesting?”

“If there’s going to be anything between us, it’ll be all three of us. Together. A triad. Or a throuple. I haven’t decided on what to call us yet.” I paused. “It’s that or it’s nothing at all. We’ll go back to how things were before. Because I’m not hurting one of you—or myself—to make the other happy.”

Total silence followed in the wake of my speech.

Hunter and Lee sat with that for a long moment. Then they glanced at each other again, in unison. Then, a moment later, they both looked back at me.

“You’re serious,” Hunter stated.

“Dead serious.”

“All three of us,” Lee said carefully, as if testing the shape of it. “Together. At the same time. Romantically, sexually—” His breath caught on that word, his green eyes smoldering as they locked on mine. “You’re proposing a three-way relationship.”

“Yes.” I held my ground. “Since we’re talking about it now, the mate bond connects all three of us. Not me and Hunter or me and you—it’s all three of us, at the same time.”

Lee considered me, as if sizing me up. “The mate bond doesn’t seem to differentiate between Hunter and me, does it? It never has.”

It startled me how casually they were talking about the mate bond now. Again, I was struck by how much had changed between us in a single day. But all that really meant was that, buried under all the anger and pain, had been love all along.

Hunter tilted his head to the side, his eyes locked on mine. “This is really what you want?”

I thought back to last night. Hunter’s arm draped possessively over me. Lee’s face—the face I loved more than anything—soft with sleep. Their combined warmth around me, reassuring and perfect. The promise of a home I’d never really had, except with them.

“Yes,” I said firmly.

The twins traded another look. This one wasn’t surprised or hostile. Instead, it was questioning.