Hagen’s P.O.V

It’s dark and quiet when we enter the packlands, but I know the moment we cross over the barrier’s threshold that he’s not here.

I don’t have to look. I don’t have to check our bond, I just know. He’s not here.

Zyair whimpers tearfully as fear turns our blood cold, because if Nikola wasn’t here, in the place he also called home, then where was he?

Josey keeps driving, her hand on mine while my head dips to rest against the window. It’s cold and hard, and as rain batters against it, my tears join the assault. From there, it’s all a welcomed blur— us arriving home with Dad and Pops waiting for us; I think they look worried as they try to speak to me—

“Hagen. Hagen?”

“Hagen, wait—”

“He’s not… Josey, what happened?”

“He said he fucked up, that he said some really bad things. Nik left. He’s… I don’t even know.”

My dads follow me, trying to get me to respond to them, but I was long past words. Besides, I didn’t deserve their comfort.

With Wreck in hand, I shoulder past them and make my way through the house that’s familiar, except for how quiet and horribly empty it is. Their eyes stick to me and weigh heavily as I climb up the stairs, but it’s a dull ache that I can ignore with all the rest pummelling me.

I don’t go to the bedroom I’d shared my whole life with Josey, the one that was technically mine. I pass that oasis straight by and go to the one she used as a closet instead. It doesn’t open with a push. It takes enough force that I have to set Wreck down before I can shove it just wide enough for me to slide through.

Inside, the room is littered with dark silhouettes of clothing racks, stuffed bags and random things I don’t have the energy to wonder about. I only wanted one thing in here…

Trudging through it all is like manoeuvring through the stacks of books in Peter’s room, but I get through eventually. I make it to the back corner of the room where the first closet waited, the only one Josey was supposed to have. It’s built into the wall and barricaded by more of her things.

I’m not strong enough to move it all— my body is too heavy, too tired, and I don’t think my heart has ever struggled this much to continue each beat, but I make myself do it. I clear it all away until finally, I can open the closet doors and peer inside.

There, it’s more of the same, but more organised. It’s our baby clothes, the toys we loved as kids, the books we used in school, all in boxes and at the back of it all.

My lips part to make room for my shaky inhale as my eyes land on black and white cotton. At some point, I was sure I’d run out of tears, but they flow freely as I carefully retrieve the plushie I’d hidden away here years ago.

I said I’d get rid of it. I said I’d give it back to him. In the end, I hadn’t been able to do any of that.

I couldn’t let it go, and as I pull it from the plastic surrounding it and dust it as best as I can, the memories I had tried for so long to deny fill my mind with a vengeance. I don’t bother fighting them; I’d stopped after the first few weeks when I realised it was better to enjoy the nicer memories before they were gone.

So, as I slip down to the floor until I’m hidden away in some dark corner of this forgotten room, I hold Nikola’s penguin plushie close and enjoy the memories that accompany them—

The ones of the day I’d given it to him, how he’d declared it was the best birthday gift of that day, and then of when he’d given it to me, how he’d comforted me so readily, and how that night, I’d only slept because having this close was almost like having my friend close.

I enjoy those memories while I can in the dark, knowing that tomorrow, it’d all be far worse.

————————

I don’t stay on the floor forever— my family doesn’t let me.

They drag me up, they clean me up and keep me moving, even when I’m not really present for any of it. I hear Dad tell me how he understands, how he’d been through this too, and hear Pops tell me about fighting for the bond, about doing more.

I should be doing more. I knew that.

It was funny. They didn’t know what happened, but this time, everyone seemed to know it was my fault. But I’d come to see lately that while you could blame one of us for all that happened, it wasn’t ever just on one of us.

Since we were kids, we’d been snowballing. One of us did something and then the other reacted. We’d been scrambling for ways to fix it all, when I didn’t really think youcouldfix all that had happened to us— all we’d done to each other.

With all that happened, I could look at what Nikola had done to me through a different lens, through his lens, but that didn’t wash away all the pain I’d gone through. Just like how I knew if Nikola looked through mine, it wouldn’t take away how I’d ultimately broken us in the end.

The fact was, we’d been trying to fix things forever, and as far as we’d gotten, we’d only ended up taking double the steps back.

Anyway, I clung to the penguin plushie while everyone tried to take care of me, and I wondered if in Nikola’s home, they were doing the same.

Aunty Kat’s magic felt weaker over the pack since I’d returned, and I couldn’t help but think maybe she wasn’t here either. I hoped not. I hoped she and Uncle Apollos were with Nikola wherever he was, because the last thing he deserved was to be alone.

A knock on the door comes before I watch it push open with a creak. Dad’s head peeks in, his blue eyes bright and his hair pulled back. There’s still the frown that had been on his face since he’d laid eyes on me, and it’s not a question of how he feels about all this.

“Hey, Hagen,” he greets as he walks in, not waiting for permission. He knew by now that he could keep asking and I wouldn’t say a word.

Silently, he comes over and sits at the edge of the bed. He lifts a hand but when I wince back, he drops it, not touching me.

I didn’t know that would be a part of it, but it was getting harder to accept physical affections from other people. I didn’t want anyone touching me, even if it was for a hug or to help. It felt like a physical ache, almost like a burn, and I didn’t understand why at first until I remembered how scents travelled.

Nikola’s scent had long since drifted from me and every possession of mine that I’d try to cling to, and with its loss, I didn’t want anything else. It was as if my body was rejecting the mere suggestion.

Nikola was all I wanted.

“I can’t help you if I don’t know what went wrong, Hagen,” Dad says, voice hard but wavering with his concern. “If you tell me… I can try to fix it, or help you. I’m on your side, remember?”

I almost want to laugh. Of course, Dad just meant it with the best of intentions. Ever since that day in the shower, he’d been unwaveringly on my side because he felt guilty for taking so long to get there. I’d loved the change in him for so long and had been beyond grateful for it, but I didn’t deserve it now.

If he knew what I’d done, what I’d said about my mate— to my mate— I didn’t think that support would remain so steady.

“Hagen?” He tries, nudging me through the bond.

It goes unanswered like his questions, like his desire to help. When it’s clear that I’m not going to answer, that I just can’t, he sighs and turns, staring ahead at the wall like I’d been doing for Goddess knows how long.

And we just stay here, like this, for long enough that I almost forget there’s someone else in the room with me until he speaks.

“When your father and I became mates, I acted foolishly and childishly, and he left me.” My eyes shift for the first time, focusing on the side of my father’s face that contorts with pain as he takes a steadying breath. “He just disappeared, and I didn’t know what to do. I felt so… broken… without him. I looked for him but he was gone and I realised, for how well I knew all the ways to piss him off, I knew so little abouthim.”

Zyair whines as fresh pain wheels in my gut. His words felt too real and too close to home to be his own. I knew Nikola. I knew so much about him, what he liked and despised, and yet, in the rare moments I allowed myself to think about where he could be, nothing came to mind.

Nikola knew me so well, and yet I… I failed to do the same for him.

“I understand if you’re afraid to look for him,” Dad continues grimly. “I know how the only thing more terrifying than finding him, is not finding him. So I understand if that’s why you’re not looking. But you’ll have to if you’re in the wrong like you told Josey. If you were in the wrong like me,” Dad looks at me then, his gaze imploring and full of warnings, “you’ll have to be the one who makes the first move. If you want to be with him, then he deserves that much.”

Dad looks away then, not waiting for a response as if he’s not expecting one or doesn’t want to force me to speak the fears we both knew were running rampant in my head.

He was right. Nikola did deserve that much, and so much more. After all I’d done, it was the least I could do and only the first step past the starting line, but itwasterrifying to look without knowing where to go.

But my body and heart ached to try, to get up and justtry—to do something other than lay here and hold onto a forgotten toy. But I’d always been a coward.

Bravery wasn’t my strong suit, it wasn’t even in my arsenal. It was easier to lay here and think of the worse, to stay drifting in the agony of my own doing than to do something, even when every passing second I endured it seemed to break me down, piece by piece, until my mind was a hazed, lost remnant of itself.

“I keep thinking of what else we should’ve done.”

I blink slowly, trying to wake my mind enough to listen to him. When I look up at my Dad, he’s no longer looking at me, but almost through me.

“We tried everything, you know? Your father, Kat, Apollos and I. We tried so many things. We tried keeping you close, keeping you apart—” I must react in some way because he pauses and nods. “You don’t remember?”

I shake my head, and he sighs. He sounds tired and he looks it a little as his shoulders slump. He looks away before he speaks, like he can’t bear to say the words but knows he should.

“You were maybe six, Nikola two, and we all could see that other than with Kat and Apollos, he responded best with you. Apollos was the first to think maybe there was a link between you, the rest of us doubted it, but then, what if he wasn’t wrong?” He sighs again, shaking his head. “They thought if that was the case, it’d be best to separate you guys while you were still young.”

My stomach sinks, tightening like my chest to even hear those words, almost as if right now, we weren’t separated and it wasn’t anyone else’s fault but mine.

“What happened?” I hear myself ask, but it sounds distant, almost like I’m doing it through the bond, and maybe I have.

“You hated it.”

I blink at him, sure that I hadn’t heard those words right, but Dad is still looking elsewhere, still thinking.

“They said Nikola wasn’t doing great with it, but he was adjusting, and Kat’s magic soothed him enough. But, you…?” He pauses to breathe. “There was no ‘soothing’ you.”

“I—” I close my eyes, trying to find memories that refuse to come. “I don’t understand.”

“First, we couldn’t keep you in the house, you just kept looking for them. We told you they’d be away for a while, but it was almost like you couldn’t accept that. I thought you’d memorise the lands with how hard you kept looking. Didn’t matter if you were tired or hungry, you had to be there when they got back. Then, when you realised that wouldn’t work, you just shut down.”

He looks at me then, and I can hear the words he doesn’t say. ‘Like you’ve shut down now’.

“You wouldn’t talk to anyone, not even Josey,” he continues. “You didn’t care about much of anything. The only time you’d really talk was to ask when Nikola would be back. At that point, we thought it wasn’t just a link. You were the one affected, so you guys must’ve been Crescent Mates, like Jayson and Levi.”

I couldn’t count the number of times I’d denied that was what we were— a pair of mates who could feel the bond between them, no matter the age. I felt nothing for Nikola through any ‘bond’ until I turned 18, never before.

“But you weren’t,” he dismisses with a lost sort of shrug. “We checked with the elders several times. You just weren’t. There was no early bond there, and if there was a link, Nikola was too young at that point to tell. So, why were you so affected— why did you miss him so much?”

I don’t remember it, any of this. I try to. I really do, but I just can’t.

I feel like I should. I feel like I would remember being in pain like this. Even if it was a speck of what I felt right now, it wasn’t the type of pain you could ever forget, and yet I had.

“Why?” I ask, my voice almost trembling. “Why was I…”

The look Dad gives me is a sad one, and so pitiful that I wish I’d never asked, but it’s too late to take it back.

“There was no reason, Hagen. You just missed him.”

————————

Zyair—I try. I tried every day, and every day he ignored me.Please, Zyair. I’m sorry.

Silence. My heart, weak as it is, squeezes tighter at the familiar rejection that only hurt more the more often I had to endure it.

Our bond? It was fine. It was untouched. It felt like it always was, except it couldn’t be when Zyair hadn’t spoken to me in the weeks since I’d made Nikola leave us.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please, just talk to me. If you talk to me, then maybe I can—

You can what? —he cuts in, tone cold, sharp and completely devoid of the vibrancy I’d always known him to have.If I talk to you and tell you how I feel, then you’ll have an excuse for finding him other than you want to?

I’m sitting up, but I feel like I’ve just been knocked down by his words.

No. No, that’s not it—

Hagen. If you want Nikola back, you have to do it. You —Zyair replies, his tone unforgiving in delivering his truth.Neo and I will be fine. We knew something like this would happen. We spoke about it. We’ll be fine, he said…his words falter and the cold breaks to reveal the pain beneath —We should be, but I didn’t… Goddess, Hagen, you told him he forced himself on you!

“I…” The words break to the surface, or they try to, but I only manage one word and nothing else because there are no words to excuse it, to explain it. There’s nothing to defend it.

Zyair huffs and fades away without another word, leaving me with the reminder of how we’d gotten into this mess. It’s hard losing his support, the one that was so unshakeable even while he waited so long and desperately for Neo, but I can’t blame him.

Zyair and Neo had been ready from day one. They’d never questioned the bond between them, or the past that Nik and I shared. They’d been game from the start. It was Nikola and I holding them back, but really, when you broke it down, it was just me.

————————

As the youngest of five, I’d seen a lot growing up, and I’d felt like a bystander for most of it, which I didn’t mind because that seemed safest.

When Levi told me about Jayson, I’d been scared and worried about what that’d mean for the family, but I knew it would all work out. It had to because… well, we were a family, and we loved each other above everything else. And then, it did work out.

And then when Damon left home, that had been hard. No, that’d been worse, because I was older, and I’d still just been a bystander. At least with Levi, he knew I was on his side. Damon had no one, and I’d just watched it all fall apart.

Pops stopped talking, stopped eating, then Dad got hurt, and Levi came home, but he was never really home. He was always out, searching for Damon, and I’d started doing that too at the beginning. We scouted in the day and the night— me, him and Jayson— and then I’d started getting tired.

It was hard— keeping up with the searching, trying to get Josey to do something other than hate everything and being there for Peter, who wouldn’t really speak to anyone. It was all so much, and the pack felt so empty and hopeless because Damon was gone, and even if people were terrified of him, if he wasn’t going to be our next alpha, then who would be?

I’d been so tired and scared, and then….

“They say you’re not eating.”

Distracted as I was by my family’s demise, I’d almost forgotten about Nikola, until he’d shown up in my doorway. His grey eyes had been unreadable as they darted over me, and then they’d become hard with annoyance.

“What are you doing here?”I’d asked without the usual venom because, like I said, I was so tired.

“Mekhi told me he was coming to check on Peter. I thought I’d come check on you.”

I’d laughed a little.“I didn’t know you and Mekhi were friends.”

Nikola’s nose had wrinkled as he stood still, arms folded.“We’re not. I did not know you and Damon were so close.”I’d frowned and he explained,“I did not expect you to be so distraught about his absence.”

“We weren’t,”I’d admitted, because while I’d loved my older brother, it was Peter and Levi who saw him, not me.“But he’s still my brother.”

I remember noting the way Nikola had seemed confused about that— how I could miss Damon so much just because he was my brother— and it was almost funny because then I’d be reminded with a glaring obviousness that he was an only child and would never get it.

“What do you want to eat? I’ll get it for you.”

I hadn’t been eating much at that point, it was true. I wasn’t like our old man who just couldn’t seem to stomach food or muster the energy to eat. I just felt so lonely every time I made it downstairs for a meal and no one else was there.

At Nikola’s request, my stomach had rumbled a little and my heart lurched in my chest, not for the food, but for something else I was equally as starved for— enough that I couldn’t stop myself from asking—

“Would you eat with me?”

Nikola’s eyes had widened and for the first time, his indifference had wavered. Beneath it all, I saw the longing, the hope, and it was brief, but I saw it, and with how estranged my family was, I’d been so desperate for company, even if it was coming from Nikola.

“You’ll eat if I do?”He’d asked it so curiously as if he couldn’t believe that his presence was a condition.

I should’ve focused then on him, on how his eyes kept flickering over me, not with annoyance, but concern. How he’d never stepped over the threshold to my room, just stood on the edge of it, just like he had the first night of our date. How his heart had been harder and faster than mine, and how his magic had wrapped all around me the moment my eyes met his.

I should’ve focused on those things, on him. If I had, maybe I would’ve seen all the ways he’d been hurting too.

“Yes,”I’d answered.

“I will,”he’d replied, and then added,“I’ll eat with you every day. I’ll be here, every day.”

Nikola had kept his promise. Every day when Mekhi checked on Peter, he checked on me. At first, he’d make me come into the hallway, or downstairs, and I’d thought that was him trying to get me out of my room. It was him trying to keep himself out.

Then, on the days that he came when I couldn’t hold my tears in, he’d hold me, hug me, comfort me, because that’s what Nikola did for me.

All my life, all my fucking life, he was there, waiting, and I’d… I’d spat in his face for it and dragged him along until he was too battered to continue.

And now, I kept lying here as if he’d walk through the door and fix it all, but how could he fix it this time when I’d broken him?

——————————

“Ten minutes,” Josey’s voice snaps from the other side of our shut bedroom door. “I’m serious guys, that’s all I can buy. Maybe fifteen before Dad figures out what’s happening.”

“Yeah, yeah. Go, we’ve got this.”

At first, I thought I was dreaming, because why else would Damon be outside my bedroom when I’d been home for days now, and I still hadn’t seen him? I was angry about that. I didn’t really want to see anyone, but I’d just assumed that given how close he and Nikola had become over the years, he wouldn’t want to see me.

The door cracks open and shuts almost as quickly as two heavy sets of footsteps come scrambling in, and then the light is on and it’s blinding even through the sheet tugged over my head.

“Goddess, he smells,” Damon grumbles before an ‘ow’ follows as someone hits him. I assume it’s Will because they travelled as a pair and nothing else, but then, that wasn’t Will’s scent. No, that was—

I’m about to pull the sheet down to make sure, but Levi beats me to it. He yanks it down almost violently and then, there my big brothers are, standing over me with deep frowns that are laced with disappointment.

I blink up at them and rub at my eyes when they’re still there after that, but their figures remain present.

Damon stands with his blonde hair tied back except where a few stubborn strands bracket his face. His dark blue eyes are hard and determined, and while his arms are folded over his chest, Levi’s rest on his hips while his black eyes rake over my face before he sighs.

“You’re really just going to lay here forever, Hagen?”

I’m not used to this tone from Levi, so it paralyses me. Levi was the measured one, the diplomat— the good cop who came after the bad cop. Only now as I look between my brothers, I realise that there wasn’t any good cop here.

“Dad says you need time,” he shares, his frown deepening a little as he speaks. “You’re facing a bunch of new realisations and you’ve got to work through it and your own shit before you can think of trying with Nikola again, and you know what? He’s right. Only you had five years to do that, and you didn’t.”

“I—”

“You didn’t,” Damon snaps, cutting me off before I can say another word. My eyes shift to him and my heart drops at the sight of his anger. It was bad enough facing an angry Damon on any given day, but he wasn’t just my brother, he was my alpha and that anger aimed my way was gut-wrenching. “You spent the last five years trying to come to terms with what you always knew deep down, that your mate is a guy, andthinkingabout forgiving Nikola and giving him a chance when the time came.”

My teeth dig into my cheek as I look away.

I had, but at the time it’d felt like it was my right. Nikola was the one who wanted the bond, not me. He had to work for it. That had sounded fine to me a year ago, but now? After I’d seen the pain Nikola had been carrying all this time as well? Selfish didn’t even begin to cover it.

“For any normal couple, I’d say yeah, take some time apart and try again when you’ve really gotten your shit together,” Levi continues with a shrug. “But you guysaren’ta normal couple, and Goddess knows unless someone is pushing you every step of the way, you’ll drag your feet through the whole thing, Hagen.”

Their words are jagged, unfeeling and cruel, like he had been, and I was battered enough as it was.

I close my eyes, slumping in the bed. I didn’t want to hear this. It didn’t help shit for them to throw what I already knew in my face. Except they don’t let me hide. Levi grabs my shirt by the collar and hauls me up, making my eyes widen as I face his glaring red ones.

“What happened to you, Hagen?” He snaps with a growl. “What happened to the kid who vowed that he’d fight both Damon and our old man all on his own if they tried to come between Jayson and me?! You were ready to fight everyone for us, and now you won’t do the same for your own bond?”

My teeth grate together as I try to shove his hands away, “That was different.”

“How?” Damon asks from where he remains stationed at Levi’s side. “Nobody wanted Jayson and Levi together. Levi was scared of what everyone would think. You’re scared, too. People will have so much shit to say about you guys, right?”

“I don’t care about that anymore,” I snap back. He raises a challenging brow and my fists clench, aching to punch him in his stupid face. “I don’t!”

“Then, what’s the holdup?” Levi asks, dragging my attention back in on him. “You want Nikola. Go get him.”

“It’s not that simple,” I growl, trying to avoid his eyes but the red of his irises was glaring and demanded attention.

“Why not?!” He snaps, almost shaking me with his frustration.

“He hates me!” I shout back, my voice breaking as the words scrape out. “He hates me! I made… I-I made him hate me, so I can’t just ‘go get him’. We’re… he’s done with me.” My chest heaves as fresh tears well in my eyes, “…he hates me.”

I didn’t think it could get worse, but it does. This pain I was barely existing with— this pain that feels like hands have found our bond and my heart and are tearing them apart— gets so much worse after saying it out loud, after trying to live with it in my head.

Tears stream down my face, and soon my muffled whimpers become sobs, horrible, aching sobs that make me shake in Levi’s grip. I can barely see him, but the blurred version of him is still frowning at me.

Then Damon laughs. A small choked sound like he was trying to hold it in but couldn’t.

I look up at him as Levi does, and he raises a hand, “I’m sorry. Actually, no. I’m not.”

“Damon,” Levi warns, sounding like the Levi I knew for the first time.

“No, seriously, it’s funny because how is no one else seeing this?” He asks, shaking his head as he chuckles again. “Hagen, I love you and it sucks seeing you like this, but we’ve only got a little time left before our dads pull up and say we’re bullying you, so I’m not going to deal with your waterworks defence mechanism.”

Sitting down on the edge of my bed, Damon pats my leg, making me jerk with the force of it. “So, Nikola just realised that he hates you. Honestly, I’m surprised it took this long.”

“Damon,” I urge, begging him to stop, but he doesn’t.

“How long have you hated him?” He counters with wide, unflinching eyes. “You hated Nikola for like, most of your life, right? I’ve heard you say it, Goddess knows he has too, and sure, maybe you don’t hate him so much now, but know what I think? I think you guys will always hate each other, and that’s why your bond is so fucked up. You guyshateeach other, but you love each other too.”

I shake my head hard, “I don’t. I don’t hate him.”

“Hagen, come on,” Damon groans, throwing his head back like he’s exhausted. “You hate Nikola. You hate how controlling he is, you hate how obsessive he can be, you absolutely hate all the shit he did to you as a kid and I don’t think you’ll ever forgive him for it. But it works, and it only works because you love him. You love how controlling he is, you love how obsessive he is with you, and only you, and you fucking love that no matter what, he’s always there.”

I close my eyes again as Zyair howls longingly, wanting to disappear at the reminder that this time, he wasn’t.

“Hagen,” Levi whispers as his hand settles on my shoulder instead. “I know it’s hard, but listen to what Damon’s saying, he knows how Nikola thinks.”

“If he ‘knows how he thinks’, then he’dknowthat when Nikola’s done, he’s done,” I bite out venomously.

“Yeah, but you and Nikola will never be done with each other,” he says, dismissing my statement as if it’s nothing. “Hagen, you guys don’t have a normal bond. You don’t even have a healthy bond. The rest of us have our mates and there’s love and that’s it. We spend our lives seeing how far the perimeters of that love goes. You and Nikola, you’ve got that and the other side of the fence. You’ve got hatred, and I know that sounds bad, but it doesn’t have to be. Think of how intense your bond is, think of how everyone always says how different it is. The rest of us scent our mates and we’re happy. You guys scent each other and you might as well be on drugs.”

“What are you saying?!” I shout as I look at him, exasperated beyond belief and unwilling to give into the little bit of hope that was trying to follow Damon’s words and claw its way to the surface.

“I’m saying, you guys need to stop trying to pretend to be normal,” Damon deadpans. “You’re not. You’re fucked beyond measure, so stop trying to be normal. The apologising isn’t working, the talking isn’t working, so stop trying and start leaning into what the bond is telling you to do. Even if it looks crazy to the rest of us, just—” Damon shakes his head as a small smile tugs on his lips. “Just be with your mate and fuck everything else.”

“Be with him,” I mumble back, and now I’m the one that’s frowning.

He makes it sound so easy, so simple. Like I just had to find Nikola and be with him, but then again when I thought back to when Nikola and I were the happiest, it was when we weren’t thinking.

Like the first time he’d asked me to scent him, and we’d gotten so lost in it that before I knew it, I was scenting him and I felt like I was flying. We’d stopped because he’d been scared of going too far with me, because he was always thinking of me.

After our first kiss. We’d been so into it. Looking back, I’d felt alive when he’d told me I was good, I just wanted to give him anything he asked in that moment, even if I’d cum in my pants because of it, but then I’d started actually thinking about what I was doing and I’d sent us both into a panic attack.

On one of our dates at the bowling alley, I thought the world could end right there and I’d be happy for it after he’d bent down and tied my laces like it was nothing, like he yearned to wait on me and just wanted me to let him in.

Goddess, even at the very end, before he’d had me tied to the bed when I’d just brought him breakfast because I wanted to, and just stared at him and touched him and… it’d felt… perfect.

It had all felt perfect— right. When we were together and we let ourselves be, even if that meant we ended up fighting each other until one gave in because as it turned out, we loved to drive each other crazy.

Those moments when we weren’t thinking about the past, the future, about taking it slow…

Those moments were perfect, and the common denominator? We were just being us.

“I don’t know where he is,” I admit, sitting up a little straighter as my heart begins to pound hard for the first time in forever, eagerly searching its other half. “I-I don’t know where to start. What I’d say to him?”

Both Levi and Damon are smiling now as they stand, giving me room so I can get up too because fuck— I couldn’t keep laying here, waiting for someone else to clean up my mess.

I’d fucked it up— I’d fucked us up, and now, I had to fix it.

“You’ll figure that out,” Levi promises. “First things first, maybe a showe—”

“Find him,” I say, nodding as I head out the door. “I have to find Nikola.”

———————————

FINALLYYYY!!!!!!! I WAS GETTING SICK AND TIRED OF HIM SITTING AND DOING NOTHING! LIKE I KNOW YOU’RE IN PAIN, BUT MY GUY, STAND UP!!!!!! STAND UP!

Thoughts?????

Thoughts on the plushie return? Thoughts on the conversation with Jewels??? Thoughts on the reality check from Levi and Damon???

Going into this, I knew that I didn’t really want anyone to be on Hagen’s side. Of course, they’re his family and because they don’t have the full story, they won’t give him a serious tongue-lashing at this stage, but I wanted the closest thing to it.

I also really wanted Damon to be the one to give Hagen a wake-up call, but then I remembered how involved Hagen was in Rogue with Levi, and I was like, LEVI!!!

All in all, I fucking love this chapter and the progression from when Nik left to here that Hagen has had in coming to terms with his errors and stuff. And I think you guys would be plenty happy to know that the next chapter will be from Nikola’s POV

As always, if you enjoyed this chapter, be sure to like and comment please!!!!!

Over on Patreon, we’ve got an AM chapter coming out later this week and I’m still building the website! I’m at the stage of uploading all the chapters!

Until next time,
Byeeeeeeeeee Humansssssssssss