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“Nothing silly about that,” I said. “Coven dynamics are important. Did you meet Nico when he and Jax first dated?”
Hudson shook his head. “And they didn’t exactly date. According to Nico, at least, it was more of just a… casual fling.”
I rolled my eyes. “He would say that. I know it meant more than that to Jax.”
“Me too. He spoke so highly of Nico when they met… about how they had a lot in common. They both were training to work primarily for regs — rich, asshole regs, specifically. They had similar feelings on the topic, but Nico was unflappable, level-headed. Jax admired that about him. And out of everyone he’d ever dated, Nico didn’t care one whit about Jax’s scar.”
“I… wondered about it, but I didn’t want to bring up any traumatic memories. If it’s a sore subject for him…”
“I’m sure he would tell you if you asked,” Hudson said. “It happened when we were kids. We keep no secrets from you, Mel.”
“Would it bother him if you told me?”
“Not at all.” Yet Hudson hesitated.
I ran my hand over his shoulder, down his elbow, to his forearm. He captured my hand and squeezed it as if needing the reassurance.
“We were in our teens, but still too young to be allowed to learn our magic,” Hudson began.
In most places, regs required underage witches to attend reg school. Only when we turned eighteen and graduated were we allowed to start learning how to use our magic… preferably in a way that benefited the regs. Such as demon hunting, teleportation services, and bodyguarding.
“Jax and I were playing in the woods together… We’d gone on a family camping trip, you see. Somewhere out in the forests in California…” He waved it off. “You wouldn’t know of it. The point was, we always looked forward to these camping trips, because our coven-parents would secretly teach us a little about our magic, bit by bit each year.”
I grinned. “I remember my mother doing similarly for me.”
“Everyone knows those laws are idiotic.”
“So, you were playing in the woods…”
“Our coven-parents told us to stay together. I should have listened. I wandered off from Jax, and Jax got hurt.” His eyes were distant, remembering that day so long ago. “When I heard the branch snap… He cried out, and I came rushing back. When I saw him… I almost died of fear. His face was completely covered in blood.”
“Head wounds always bleed like a son of a—”
“I didn’t know that back then, and I was terrified. I remember thinking at the time that if I only knew how to use my magic, I could’ve helped him.” He chuckled. “What good would a fire and air elementalist have been in that situation?”
“You blamed yourself.”
“Of course I blame myself. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been there, looking out for him.”
“What happened, exactly?” He’d glossed over how Jax had truly come by the scar.
“He’d climbed up a tree, trying to get a vantage point to see me or surprise me, maybe. But the branch his weight rested on snapped, and he fell through a bunch of other branches on the way down.”
Scary for both boys, then. But that didn’t explain one thing…
“Why didn’t your coven-parents take him to a healer? Surely they could have gotten rid of that scar for him.”
“They wanted to, but Jax told them no. He said it would help everyone at school tell us apart.” He gave me a lopsided frown. “Honestly, even though we’re twins, I was always the more outgoing one. And as a kid, having a scar like that made him feel cool and different from me. And he was right… everyone could always tell us apart after that. I was the bossy big-mouth, and Jax was the cool, mysterious one with a scar.”
I laughed, trying to imagine what young Hudson and young Jax must’ve been like in school. Somehow it didn’t surprise me that Hudson was the bossy bigmouth in school — I imagined a lot of that came from being overprotective of his brother.
And then he felt like he’d failed him when Jax needed him most.
The pieces clicked into place. When Hudson and I had fallen in love at the Demon Hunter Academy, he’d talked about his brother often enough, but I’d never met him. To me, Jax had always been an abstract figure — someone I knew existed, but distant, unreal.
Then Hudson had mysteriously disappeared, and now I knew why — his guilt had driven him to save his brother, just like he’d failed to do all those years before. He still held that guilt that he should’ve been there for Jax as kids.
“You know Jax doesn’t hold it against you, right?” I’d never talked about any of this with Jax, but I knew he would’ve agreed with me.
