Page 58 of The Syndicater (Dark Verse 6)

She looked at him hopefully, waiting for a response, and he cleared his throat, his heart racing. Something akin to panic shook his bones at the idea that she might hate him if she found out the truth.

"We met at a party," he told her their story's bare bones. It was the truth but too simplified. "Kept meeting after that. One thing led to another."

"That's nice," she rested her head on his shoulder for a second, as a gesture, as she said it. "I'm happy for you, to see her with you. She's nice."

"She's perfect," he said before he could stop himself, and his sister smiled at him.

"You love her."

He looked out at the lake, not correcting her. Love wasn't the word for what he felt for Morana. It was too simple, too basic, like the answer he had just given. His emotions when it came to her were complex, they always had been, and too intense, which they always had been too. To someone on the outside, it could look like love, but it was so much more nuanced, so much more intense, so much more. Saying that he loved her was as basic as saying that he was living because his heart beat in his chest. Living was so much more than that, life was so much more than just that, and it was something he had learned just by being with her. Waking with her every morning, sleeping with her every night, being with her every day.

It had taken almost losing her to a fucking bullet for him to understand the difference so completely. Without her, he would be a meatsuit with a beating organ.

"How did you know me?" he asked her, the question another in a line of too many that he needed her to answer.

"I saw your photos and some articles. It had your name." Her answer mirrored his, basic, simplistic. There was more to it but he didn't press her like she didn't press him, both of them too new at navigating this.

"And how did you find out? That I am your brother?"

She hesitated. "A dying man told me."

His gaze sharpened on her at her words. "Who?"

She looked straight ahead, her jaw tight. "A monster," she whispered, her voice trembling.

The word felt like a dagger to his heart. Someone had hurt her. Someone had hurt her deeply enough for that edge of pain and vengeance to come forward. His blood simmered with the need to hunt, to find who it had been and may them pay. He rubbed her shoulder, his jaw tight, and focused on what she'd said. Adyingman. Good thing the asshole was already dead or Tristan would have made him feel what real pain was.

"When did you find out?" He moved on, changing the topic from whoever the monster had been.

"Two days ago."

Right when the Shadow Man had sent Morana the message. Could it have been because he found out somehow that Luna had learned the truth, and he'd wanted to control the narrative and the situation so they would owe him rather than her finding them on her own? To have control over them? Could the Shadow Man have been the dying man? He fucking hoped so. He couldn't stand the thought of the bastard, especially with how he interacted withMorana like it was his right. Tristan wished he knew his face so he could at least have the satisfactionof mentally beating it to a pulp. Moranawasright. Hewasa fuckingcavemanwhere she was concerned.

"Do we have any family left?" Her question fell between them, silencing his thoughts of murder and bringing back his earlier panic.

He grit his teeth. "No."

Just one word, with so much history she had no idea about, no context for. She gave a nod as if she understood that it was a touchy subject and let it go for now. For now, because it was their first time talking to each other. What would happen when they were comfortable, after weeks or months or years, when she asked him where their parents were? Or worse, if someone else told her and she found out what he'd done through them? He watched her, trying to take a measure of her and gauge if it would break their bond, nascent as it was. Because he hadn't been the only one emotional in the last few hours, she had been too. She had clung to him and gripped his hand so tight he was surprised his bones weren't crushed. He wouldn't have cared if they did. For the joy, the relief, the emotion of holding her hand for the first time when he thought he never would, he would have crushed every bone in his body if that was what she'd needed.

His little Luna, all grown up.

Fuck, he had to wrap his head around that and stop seeing the baby his parents had come home with, put into his arms, a baby who had scrunched her face and cried so loudly it had made his ears hurt. Yet, he'd loved her with all the love his little body could have felt, right from the moment he had felt her weight in his arms, feeling like the biggest brother who would protect her at all costs. And yet, he had spent more than two decades failing.

"You were born as Luna," he told her, memories washing over him. "Is that the name you have?"

She shook her head. "No." For some reason, she didn't share the new name with him. "I want to be Luna for a bit, see if I feel like her, if she's who I can be."

Tristan got it. It was a conflict Morana was going through as well, not wanting to know her birth name and not wanting to feel an imposter in hers. "This is your trial period then."

"Something like that."

"And if you decide you're not Luna? Will you go back to your other name?"

She stayed silent for a moment, contemplative. "I don't know."

He gave her shoulder another squeeze. "There's no rush."

It was the most he'd talked in a conversation in a long time. Tristan didn't like talking and didn't talk much, but he sensed she was like him in that regard. If they both stayed silent and didn't make the effort, they would rarely ever get any words out.

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