Page 120 of Daisy
"We all are," he corrects. "All of us watching out for her."
"Yeah," I agree. "All of us. The world's most overprotective pack of…"
That's when the world explodes.
Holy shit.
The camera slips from my hands and hits the ground. I'm staggering backward. Can't breathe. Something just rips through my chest. Something that's been dormant for years.
Gunner.
"Hawk!" Dante's moving. Fast. Reaching for me. "What's happening? What's wrong?"
I can't speak. Can't breathe. Because I'm feeling everything Gunner's feeling.
Pure terror. Overwhelming panic. The kind of fear that makes your blood ice. Something's wrong. Something's horribly, desperately wrong.
And the guilt. Oh hell, the crushing weight of guilt and self-loathing. So intense I'm doubling over.
I press my hand to my chest. Rubbing at the ache there. It feels like my heart's being squeezed in a vise.
What did he do? What happened to her?
"Gunner," I gasp. Struggling to breathe through the emotional storm. "Something's wrong with Gunner. He's… hell, he's terrified. Panicking."
Dante goes rigid. "What's wrong with Gunner?"
Through the bond—this impossible, overwhelming connection I haven't felt in eight years—I'm feeling Gunner's emotional spiral. The devastation. Pure terror and self-loathing so intense it's crushing.
But I don't understand what happened. The emotions are too raw. Too chaotic. All I know is that Gunner is drowning in guilt about something.
I'm rubbing my chest harder. Trying to ease the physical ache of his emotions.
No, no, no.I try to send something back through the connection. Comfort. Reassurance. But it's like screaming into a hurricane.
"We have to get back there." I'm already moving, stumbling toward the road. "We have to… before something happens. Before…"
But I'm not just worried about emotional support. I'm terrified. What if someone attacked them? What if Gunner failed to protect her? What if she's bleeding? Broken? Traumatized? While we're out here setting up damn cameras two miles away?
"What the hell do you mean something's wrong?" Dante's voice is sharp with panic as he catches my arm. But he's moving just as fast as I am. "Is she hurt? Are they under attack?"
"I don't know!" The words tumble out as I start jogging toward the road. "Gunner and I have a pack bond. We formed it when we were seventeen. We shut it down a few years later because we both had messed up lives and the emotional bleed-through was making everything worse."
"A pack bond?" Dante's breathing hard as he falls into step beside me. "You never mentioned it. How do you know something's wrong? What are you feeling?"
"The intensity of whatever's happening must have blown through whatever walls we built." I can hear an engine behind us. The van. "He's falling apart, Dante. Pure terror and guilt. Something bad happened to her."
The van slows beside us. Cassian rolls down the window, looking confused.
"What are you two doing? Why are you running like…"
"Emergency at the cabin!" I shout, yanking open the door. "Daisy might be hurt! Drive!"
Dante and I dive into the back. Cassian's already flooring the accelerator before we even get the door closed.
"What kind of emergency?" August twists around in the passenger seat, his face going white. "What happened to Daisy?"
"I don't know!" I can barely get the words out through Gunner's emotional chaos. "Something happened with Gunnerand Daisy. There's this pack bond between us, and he's—hell, he's terrified. In complete meltdown."
