Aurora’s face remains stone, but her eyes never leave mine.
“Your father was brilliant. Strategic. Connected. Everything we wanted in our ranks.” I swallow hard. “And he’d passed every test—pain tolerance, loyalty verification, psychological breaking points. The Hunt was supposed to be the final challenge.”
I drop her hand and stand slowly, shoulder throbbing. “Normally, we release multiple candidates into a controlled area. They’d compete against each other while we hunted them. The strongest candidates would win positions.”
“Jax was threatened by my father,” she says, voice flat.
I nod. “Your father was exceptional. Jax saw him as a threat to his leadership. They’d clashed during earlier phases—your father questioned Jax’s methods, his extremes.” I pause. “Jax made the decision to personally hunt your father that night and ensure he died.”
I remember the moonlight on the cliffs, the distant sound of waves.
“We were all out participating that night. Jax was nowhere to be seen and he’d disabled his tracker, going off grid. By the time we realized something was wrong...”
The memory sears through me—running through the woods, the shouting, arriving by Jax’s side just after he pushed her father off.
“We were too late when we got to the cliff edge. I was too far away when Jax lunged forward.” My voice breaks. “One push. That’s all it took.”
Aurora’s eyes fill with tears.
“We couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t reverse it. Jax became our leader that night, and he made it clear—anyone who spoke about what really happened would join your father at the bottom of those rocks.”
I look directly into her eyes. “I was a coward. I told myself it wasn’t my responsibility. I buried it so deep I could almost forget—until I saw you standing in that same spot.”
I take a breath, steeling myself for what comes next. The complete truth. No more secrets between us.
“After your father died, Jax rewrote the narrative. Suicide was cleaner. No questions, no investigation. He had a team plant the evidence—the depression diagnosis, financial troubles that didn’t exist. I watched them fabricate the story of a man who chose to leave his family.”
Aurora’s tears fall silently now, her body rigid with grief.
“Every year on the anniversary, Jax would toast to your father. Called it anecessary sacrificefor the organization to become what it was meant to be. The Hunt then became a frequent fight to the death.”
I run my hand through my hair. “When I saw you on that cliff, it was like seeing a ghost. I think it’s why I went to check on you, I couldn’t bear seeing you fall to your death the same way as him.”
“And when our eyes met that day on the cliff,” I continue, voice dropping lower, “I felt something I’d never experienced before. A connection that went beyond physical attraction. Beyond logic. Something that hit me in places I didn’t know existed.”
I see the conflict in Aurora’s eyes—wanting to hate me, yet unable to deny what had sparked between us. “How about the man you pushed off the cliff yourself?” she demands.
I freeze, my heart stopping for a fraction too long. “He was a traitor in our ranks.”
She glares at me. “And that makes it okay?”
I clench my jaw. “No. I don’t pretend to be a good man, Aurora. I think you knew that from the moment we met. I have blood on my hands. I’ve killed, and I’ll kill again. That will never change, but I don’t think that’s really what you are upset about.”
Her expression remains unchanged. “No, it’s not.”
“It’s a weird twist of fate that put us both on that cliff edge that night.” I laugh without humor, the sound hollow in my chest. “The universe has a sick sense of humor. For years, I avoided emotional attachments, relationships, and anything that might make me vulnerable. Then I see you—this beautiful, fierce woman standing where your father died—and something in me just... broke open.”
My hands clench at my sides. “So, I arranged an engagement with the wrong sister, never once thinking the woman I couldn’t get out of my head could be the daughter of the man I watched Jax push off that cliff twelve years ago.”
Aurora’s face darkens with pain, her body going rigid. The cruel irony hangs between us like a physical thing.
“When I learned who you really were, I ignored it, carried on pursuing what I wanted. The right thing to do would have been to walk away. I should have ended things with Olivia immediately and disappeared from your life.” I grind my jaw,the muscles in my face tightening. “But I couldn’t. The thought of not having you was worse than anything I could imagine. So I pursued you, while I kept the truth about your father to myself.”
Aurora nods slowly, her shoulders losing some of their rigid tension. The fury in her eyes has dimmed to something quieter but no less painful—a deep, aching wound that I inflicted through my silence.
“I understand why you hate me,” I say, keeping my distance despite every instinct to reach for her. “I hate myself for it too.”
She wraps her arms around herself, a protective gesture that breaks something inside me.
