After Cassie’s accident, I’d blamed them for not watching her.
For not protecting her.
I’d ignored the fact that it was Cassie who’d made the turn up Old Mountain Road on her way to Daisy’s. That it was Cassie who’d been nosing around in our parents’ death, asking questions that drew too much attention.
It had been easier to blame the Hawks. I’d never liked them anyway.
I didn’t know what Cassie and the Hawks had been doing at the paper mill, but judging from the fact that someone had thrown a fucking grenade at them, I could take a guess.
If I set aside my bias against the Hawks, the most logical guess was that Cassie had still been digging around in our parents’ death.
And she’d obviously found something because someone had tried to kill her — twice — to keep her from continuing to ask questions.
If all of that was true — and when things calmed down, you could bet your ass I was going to find out what the fuck was going on — the Hawks hadn’t risked Cassie’s life.
The reckless idiots had saved it.
Which meant I had to rethink my position on the Hawks.
I wasn’t under any illusion: I was a stubborn man.
But I wasn’t a stupid one, and only a stupid man would refuse to reevaluate his position in the face of new information.
Was I willing to entertain the possibility that the Hawks — the wild and reckless assholes who ran like maniacs through the Hunt — had experienced their own Hunt transformation? That they were capable of taking care of Cassie, of loving her, the way she deserved to be taken care of and loved?
The ground seemed to shift under my feet.
Because if I didn’t know the Hawks were capable of loving my sister — of really loving her — what else didn’t I know?
3
CASSIE
I wasglad Maeve was there. Bram hadn’t known what to do when he’d opened the door to find me sobbing, barely able to tell him what had happened at the paper mill.
But Maeve had taken over, ordering Poe to put on clothes, instructing Remy to call 911, and telling Bram to get the keys so we could go to the hospital where the paramedics would bring the Hawks.
Now she sat next to me in one of the plastic chairs in the hospital waiting room, her arm draped around my shoulder. My tears had subsided, leaving a hollow ache in my chest, a pit of fear swallowing me from the inside out.
I’d wanted to go back to the paper mill, to meet the paramedics there, to be there for the Hawks even though I couldn’t bear to think about whether they would be conscious or even alive.
Maeve was the one who’d convinced me the hospital was the better place to wait. The mill would be a crime scene, swarming with police and probably FBI. They wouldn’t let me inside, wouldn’t tell me anything. Worse, they might detainmeforquestioning, isolating me in an interview room where I wouldn’t be able to see the Hawks, to find out if they were okay.
And theyhadto be okay.
Anything else was unthinkable. But I could still hear the explosion that had rocked the elevator on my way to the first floor, could still see Hawk’s face — Jagger and Vigo standing behind him — when he’d shoved me into the elevator.
I love you.
I loved him too, and I never even got to say it — to Hawk or to any of them.
Now it might be too late, and I hated myself for all the time I’d wasted thinking about Bram, about how to tell my brother that I was in love with the three men who’d hunted me in the tunnels.
About how to tell him I wanted to stay with the Hawks even though my three months with them was over.
The explosion at the mill felt like a punishment. Like the universe had given me a gift and I’d stood there with it in my hands, wondering if I really wanted it.
I looked up at a flurry of activity at the end of a hall leading to a sliding glass door in the emergency room. Men and women in scrubs were lining up near the door, and I got to my feet, training my ears on their hurried conversation.
