Page 86 of Binding His Fated Mates

Lacey nodded once, but her face was troubled. She’d gone much paler than before. Was she ready to turn on me as well?

Then Lee, walking stiffly, followed Hunter out the door without another word.

I watched them go, rooted to the spot and powerless to stop it.

Everyone in the room was still staring at me. Reed. Harris. Emma. Sarah. Oliver.

Everyone in the pack.

Even Rowan, her dark eyes filled with regret, was looking at me. But she probably only seemed regretful because of what Micah had just done. She was still on their side. She was still a Henbane. She was still planning on forcing me to leave here against my will, just like the rest of them. Except, unlike my brother, she just didn’t want to be cruel about it.

“I have to get out of here,” I choked out, my eyes swimming with tears, in danger of breaking down completely in front of all of them.

Then, not trusting myself to stay there a moment longer, I fled.

* * *

I didn’t really remember walking to my cabin. Everything came in bits and pieces, like the world around me had shattered into fragments. The crunch of the dirt beneath my feet. The swaying of the trees surrounding the commune. The chill breeze on my face, despite it being summer. The cabins all around, like strangers penning me in: darkened, watchful, and silent.

I must’ve walked to my own cabin, because I was there. I must’ve opened the door, too, because I found myself standing in the middle of the bare, impersonal room that I’d spent two years in. The desk with its ransacked drawers. The narrow loft bed I hadn’t slept in since everything changed between Hunter, Lee, and me. The bare walls that held nothing of me. It wasn’t really my space. It never had been.

Lacey’s voice came from outside the door. “C’mon, Daniel. Let me in.”

I realized I’d—on autopilot—thrown a barrier spell over the door.

“Go away.” My words sounded like they came from somewhere far away, as if they didn’t belong to me at all. “I need to be alone.”

A pause. Then Rowan’s voice through the door, quieter but still urgent. “Daniel, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know he was going to do any of that—”

“Please go away,” I ground out, collapsing onto the floor with my back to the wall. My tears finally spilled over. “I don’t want you here!”

There was silence from the other side of the door. Then, a moment later, I heard two pairs of footsteps retreating. But I wasn’t fooled. Lacey, at least, probably wouldn’t go far. And neither would Rowan. She was supposed to help the family take me away from the life I’d built here, with or without my consent.

But did I even have anything here anymore?

It sank in, suddenly, that Lee and Hunter were both gone.

After all, nothing Micah had told them had been a lie.

The cold weight of emotion I’d felt from Lee, the decision he’d made to leave with his twin. And worse yet, the sharp sting of betrayal I’d felt from Hunter, the numb, wrecked expression on his face—

How were they ever going to be able to forgive me?

And, now that the pack knew everything, now that Hunter and Lee had both turned against me, my family was coming at sundown to take me home.

I tried to think clearly. I tried to reason through it the way Lee would, methodically. One problem at a time. But my thoughts kept scattering with my grief, refusing to assemble themselves into anything coherent.

Hunter’s face. That terrible stillness. You promised.

What was there for him to think about? I’d promised no more secrets. And then I’d kept the biggest secret of all—a spell that could unmake them both—because I was too afraid of the answer to even ask the question, even though I knew it was wrong.

My family was right about me.

I was the weak one, the cowardly one. My father had said I was a child who couldn’t be trusted with discretion, and he was right, wasn’t he? Micah had called me pathetic so many times, and he was right, too. Even my own mother’s contempt was justified, because just look at what I’d done. I’d caused damage, over and over again, to the people I claimed to love.

They were right about me. All of them.

The geas had stopped me from telling Hunter Lee Jameson the truth about being a warlock. But nobody had forced me to stay silent about the reversal spell. And I’d had a hundred chances to tell them. Even before they’d both forgiven me, I could’ve still told them.