Chapter 10 Hunter and Tara

The Weight of Truth

Tara pov

The apartment above Murphy's Garage felt impossibly small with Hunter Blackwood sitting in it. He perched on the edge of our worn couch like a man ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble, his large frame somehow managing to look both imposing and vulnerable in the cramped space that had become my sanctuary.

I sat across from him in the single armchair, my father standing behind me like a sentinel, his hand resting protectively on my shoulder. The silence stretched between us, heavy with four months of unspoken words and carefully buried pain.

Hunter's gray eyes moved around the modest living room, taking in the details of our new life. The small television balanced on a stack of milk crates. The thrift store coffee table covered with library books and my father's automotive magazines. The framed photo of my mother—the only personal item we had managed to take when we fled Silverstone.

"You've built a good life here," he said finally, his voice carefully neutral.

"We've built a *safe* life here," dad corrected, his tone sharp with warning. "Away from pack politics and people who think they can toy with others' emotions."

Hunter flinched but didn't look away from my face. "I know you have no reason to listen to me. I know I have no right to be here, to disrupt the peace you've found. But I need you to understand why I did what I did."

"I understand perfectly," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "I wasn't good enough for you. My bloodline wasn't strong enough, my status wasn't high enough. You made that very clear in front of the entire pack."

"No." Hunter leaned forward, his hands clasped tightly in his lap. "That's what I said, but it wasn't the truth. It was never the truth."

"Then what was?" The question escaped me before I could stop it, revealing the wound that four months of healing hadn't fully closed.

Hunter was quiet for a long moment, his gaze distant as he seemed to wrestle with words that clearly didn't want to come. When he finally spoke, his voice was raw with emotion.

"The truth is that you terrified me."

I blinked, certain I had misheard. "I terrified you?"

"Not you specifically. What you represented. What being with you would mean." Hunter ran his hands through his hair, the gesture betraying his nervousness. "Do you know what it's like to be raised from birth knowing that every decision you make will affect hundreds of people? To be told from the time you can walk that your personal desires come second to pack needs?"

"I was raised in the same pack," I said quietly. "I understand duty."

"But you weren't raised to be Alpha. You weren't groomed from childhood to see love as a weakness, emotion as a liability." Hunter's voice grew stronger, more urgent. "My father spent eighteen years teaching me that a good leader sacrifices personal happiness for the greater good. That the worst thing an Alpha can do is let his heart rule his head."

James made a sound of disgust. "So you chose to break her heart instead of standing up to your father's prehistoric ideas about leadership."

"I chose wrong," Hunter admitted, his gaze never leaving my face. "But in that moment, with the pack watching, with my father's expectations weighing on me, with the knowledge that the Crescent Moon Pack was offering a political alliance that could secure our territory for generations..." He shook his head. "I panicked. I fell back on everything I'd been taught, and I used those lessons to justify the cruelest thing I've ever done."

I felt the blood draining from my face as the implications of his words sank in. "You're saying you rejected me because you were afraid of loving me too much?"

"I'm saying I rejected you because loving you felt like the most dangerous thing I could do." Hunter's voice cracked on the words. "Because when I scented you that night, when the mate bond snapped into place, I felt something I'd never experienced before. Something that made me want to throw away everything I'd been taught, everything I thought I believed about duty and responsibility."

The room fell deadly silent except for the distant sounds of evening traffic outside. I stared at Hunter, my mind reeling as I tried to process what he was telling me.

"You loved me," I said slowly, the words feeling foreign on her tongue.

"I've loved you since we were fifteen years old," Hunter confessed, his composure finally cracking completely. "Since the day you stood up to Marcus Cole when he was bullying that omega pup. Do you remember? You were half his size, but you got between them anyway, told him that real strength meant protecting those weaker than yourself."

My hand flew to my throat, my breathing becoming shallow. I remembered that day—remembered the way Hunter had watched me from across the training yard, something unreadable in his expression.

"I fell in love with your courage that day," Hunter continued, his voice barely above a whisper. "And I spent the next three years trying to convince myself it was just admiration, just respect for a packmate. Because loving you felt like betraying everything I'd been raised to believe about what an Alpha should want."

"Stop," I whispered, my face had to be completely pale now.

"I can't stop. Not now." Hunter slid off the couch onto his knees, his eyes bright with unshed tears. "I need you to know that every word I spoke that night was a lie. You weren't insufficient—you were perfect. You weren't unworthy—I was unworthy of you. You weren't weak—I was the weak one, too cowardly to choose love over expectation."

"Stop," I said again, louder this time, my hands shaking.

"I know it doesn't change anything," Hunter pressed on desperately. "I know saying I'm sorry can't undo the damage I did. But I need you to know that rejecting you wasn't about your worth—it was about my fear. Fear of being vulnerable, fear of putting my heart before my duty, fear of loving someone so much that losing them would destroy me."

"And instead you destroyed her," dad growled, his protective instincts flaring at the sight of my distress.

"Yes," Hunter said simply, not trying to defend or justify. "I destroyed the most precious thing in my life because I was too much of a coward to fight for it."

I stood abruptly, my chair scraping against the floor. I moved to the window, pressing my palms against the cool glass as I struggled to breathe. Behind me, I could hear Hunter and my father in tense conversation, but their words seemed to come from very far away.

*He loved me. All this time, he loved me.*

The revelation should have brought relief, should have answered the questions that had tortured me for months. Instead, it made everything worse. If he had loved me, if my instincts about the connection between us had been right, then his rejection was even more senseless than I had thought.

"Why are you telling me this now?" I asked without turning around, my voice hollow. "What's the point of this confession?"

"Because I couldn't live with you thinking the lie was true," Hunter said. "Because you deserve to know that the Moon Goddess wasn't wrong when she chose us for each other. I was wrong when I chose fear over faith."

"So this is about easing your guilt."

"This is about making sure you know your worth," Hunter corrected. "Even if you never forgive me, even if you never want to see me again, I need you to know that you were never the problem. I was."

Hunter pov

She turned slowly, and I felt my heart break all over again at the devastation in her green eyes. Her face was ashen, her hands trembling as she wrapped her arms around herself.

"Do you have any idea what these four months have been like?" she asked, her voice barely audible. "Do you understand what it's like to rebuild your entire sense of self after the person who was supposed to love you unconditionally tells the world you're not good enough?"

"Tara—"

"I believed you," she continued, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. "I believed every word you said that night. I spent months thinking there was something fundamentally wrong with me, something that made me unlovable even to my own mate."

I rose to my feet, taking a step toward her before James's warning growl stopped me. "I'm sorry. God, Tara, I'm so sorry. I would take it all back if I could. I would give anything to undo that night."

"But you can't," she said simply. "You can't take back the words you spoke or the way you looked at me when you said them. You can't undo the public humiliation or the months of self-doubt that followed."

"I know."

"Then what do you want from me?" The question came out as a broken whisper. "What could you possibly want from me now?"

My composure finally shattered completely, and I dropped to my knees again, my hands pressed to the floor in a gesture of complete submission.

"Forgiveness," I said, my voice raw with desperation. "I know I don't deserve it. I know I have no right to ask for it. But I'm begging you, Tara. Please. Forgive me. Let me try to earn back even a fraction of what I threw away."

The silence that followed was deafening. Tara stared down at me the future Alpha of the Silverstone Pack, reduced to begging on her apartment floor, and felt nothing but a vast, echoing emptiness where her heart used to be. I destroyed her.

"Get out," she whispered.

"Tara, please—"

"Get out!" The words exploded from her with a force that shook the windows. "Get out of my home, get out of my town, get out of my life!"

I remained on my knees, staring up at her with the expression of a man watching my world end. "I love you," I said simply.

"You destroyed me," she replied, her voice dead and final. "Love doesn't destroy. Whatever you felt for me, it wasn't love."

And with those words, she turned her back on me and walked into her bedroom, closing the door with a quiet click that sounded like the end of everything.

Fuck!!!