by T. S. Joyce
“Yours don’t,” Aaron murmured. “Maybe Beaston’s are different.”
Harper was crying, and she wouldn’t meet his gaze. He was fucking this all up but, goddammit, he loved Harper. Loved her. She was one of the few he trusted, one of the few people in the world who was more important to Weston than air. He didn’t want her to die. He didn’t want to watch her wither away. “Fuck!” he yelled.
“Wes, I want a baby,” Harper said in a heartbroken voice. “I felt empty after I lost Janey, and I need this. I have a lot of grizzly shifter blood in me, some black bear, too. My grandfather did the math, and I’m at about a fifty-fifty percent chance of survival, even without your dad’s prediction.” She released the girls and rested her hand on her still-flat stomach. Tears fell down her cheeks, and Wyatt rubbed her back. “I’m going to do this. I’ll be strong enough. I know I will. We’ll have a baby in the crew, and I’ll be back to my fire-breathing badass self afterward, but right now, he needs me more. Do you understand?”
“He,” Weston said, his eyes burning.
“Beaston called me the vessel for the next male Bloodrunner Dragon. A fire-breather like me. A brawler like Wyatt. He’s seen it.” Harper’s voice tapered to nothing as two more tears streaked down her cheeks. “I already love him so much.”
Weston scrubbed his hand down his face and strode over to her, pulled her hard against him. A sob wrenched from Harper, and she clung to him tightly, clutching his T-shirt in her fists. Wes shook his head and pulled Wyatt to him, too, cupped his dumbass head, and held him for a moment before he shoved him away. Wyatt chuckled thickly and wiped his cheek on his shoulder, sniffed once, and got pulled into a back-cracking hug from Ryder.
Avery stood near him, smiling and clearly touched as the girls wrapped themselves around Wes and Harper. Whatever came next with the ravens, the Bloodrunners were down their biggest weapon. The second the world realized Harper couldn’t shift anymore to protect her child, enemies would come out of the woodwork. Vampires, wolves, ravens, unforeseen dangers. But that had to be okay. Weston would fight with his life to protect what they’d built here, to protect his alpha, to protect Avery, and the others in this crew would, too.
“Oh, Harper girl,” Weston murmured, rocking his alpha slowly. “You are going to do this. You’re so strong, of course you will. You’ll give our crew a better treasure than even the mountains. Rest now, Dragon. The Bloodrunners have you.”
****
“I don’t think they’ll attack,” Avery murmured.
“Hair band,” Harper said, holding out her hand. She was sitting in the rocking chair behind Avery who sat on the porch. She was French braiding Avery’s hair into two long pigtails.
She handed back the black hair deal she’d been fiddling with. “Ravens aren’t made for war. I really don’t think they’ll come here to fight.”
“Why don’t you think so?” Weston asked from where his head rested on her lap. Over and over, he was throwing a baseball up to the rafters of the porch of 1010 and catching it. The Bloodrunners were all spread out over the porch, recovering from the emotional charge of Harper and Wyatt’s big news.
“I don’t think they’ll physically wage war on us because they are scared of other shifters. Not just nervous, but terrified, of dragons and bears especially. I think that’s why they visited the shop instead of confronting me in Harper’s Mountains. Threatening three flight shifters I can see, but threatening the predator shifters in this crew?” Avery shook her head. “I think Benjamin was bluffing. I can’t see any of our people rallying to fight. They have no fight experience, and all the females have been trained to be scared. They aren’t equipped for battle, and almost all of them are submissive.”
“Almost all of them?” Alana asked from where she rested her back against the porch railing beside Aaron.
“Yeah, some of the males are dominant, but raven dominant…not fire-breathing dragon dominant. Caden is one of them.”
“Caden?” Weston asked, catching the ball and sitting up.
“Yeah, the guy you smashed against the wall.”
“Caden Edwards?”
Avery frowned, her head jerking back and forth with each braid Harper wove into her hair. “Yeah. Do you know him?”
Weston narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Yeah, he was engaged to my mom for a year before she ended it and chose my dad. We’ll just say he didn’t handle it graciously. She had her parents’ support, though, so it made it easier for her to leave Rapid City.”
Avery huffed a stunned breath. She’d had no idea Caden had been engaged to Aviana Novak. How the hell had that been hidden from the flock? “Yeah, he’s been an asshole for as long as I’ve known him. He was the council member who would put me in The Box when I needed ‘rehabilitation.’ Even if I struggled. I heard about the days the flock was located in Rapid City, but after Aviana left, the ravens all relocated to the Blue Ridge Mountains outside of Damascus. They named the community Raven’s Hollow, and the rules became really stringent. The council, led by Caden, sequestered us off from other shifters and most humans after your mom left. The council got scared all their strong-minded ravens would pack up like Aviana had done, and our shifter species would fall apart and slowly go extinct. They made the rule that women couldn’t get jobs anymore after what happened with your mom pairing up with a bear shifter. Aviana’s parents were already low ranking, but when Aviana picked your dad, they were put at the very bottom of our community and shunned. When I was ten, I remember they left in the night. I didn’t blame them. I wished they had taken me with them. The only interaction the ravens have with the outside world now, other than the internet, is the public school system, where we get to go to classes with human kids. Caden has been trying to get a school just for raven shifters approved, though.”
“What a boner biscuit,” Ryder muttered, drawing his legs up around where Lexi sat on the porch in front of him.
“Total boner biscuit,” Lexi agreed, chipping away at her half-gone nail polish.
It didn’t sit well with Avery that Caden had history with Weston’s mother. Not when there had obviously been some long-term plot to lure him back to Raven’s Hollow. She had the sick feeling they weren’t just drawing him there to put some new genetics into the community anymore. She would bet her first paycheck that Caden had been behind the plan to use Avery as bait in the first place. Who else in that community would have a reason to connect so directly with Weston and Aviana? No, she didn’t like this at all.
Maybe she should call her mom and see if she could get more information from her. She owed Avery.
Aaron jerked his attention to the front gate of the property and froze. Eerily, Alana and Wyatt did the same. Weston, Ryder, and Harper were next, and now Avery could hear it—the soft hum of an approaching vehicle. Dread filled her veins as she stood with the others, preparing to face whatever was coming.
Blue and red lights flashed through the trees.
“Sheeyit,” Ryder muttered. “What do we do?”
“Hold steady, crew,” Harper murmured. “We have no beef with the cops here, and we’ve done nothing wrong.”
But every instinct screamed for Avery to flee. Something was wrong, and she naturally feared law enforcement. Why? Because the ravens worked very hard to keep human law out of Raven’s Hollow, and it had been ingrained in her since birth to avoid flashing lights like the ones on the police cruiser bumping and bouncing through the gate of Harper’s Mountains.
Weston pulled her behind him protectively, his hand gripping her hip. She ran her hand up his back, to steady herself as much as him, and every muscle was hard as a rock, tensed and ready.
“Should I Change?” she asked, panicking as two uniformed police officers got out of the vehicle.
“No,” Harper said sternly. “It’ll only cause more trouble if one of us runs.”
A second police cruiser coasted through the gate, and now Avery couldn’t breathe. They were here for her. She knew they were.
“Evening,” one of them said. “We’ve had several calls about an Avery Foley being kept here.”
“She’s not being kept here. She lives here,” Weston said calmly.
“That’s not the story we’ve heard. There was a missing person’s report filled out five weeks ago in Damascus.”
“No, I’m not missing,” Avery said, stepping in front of Weston. “I’m here because I want to be.”
The officers shot each other matching frowns. “If that’s true, then we’ll sort through it, but we’re going to need you to come down to the station and answer some questions.”
“She can answer them here,” Harper said. “She already told you she’s here because she wants to be.”
“Bloodrunner Dragon,” the officer said.
“Harper, please.”
He inhaled deeply and rested his hands on his hips, right near his holstered weapon. “Harper. We don’t want any trouble, but we have an entire community convinced she’s been taken from them and brainwashed. The calls have been relentless, and then there is a video that has caused some concern. The detective handling her case is on his way from Damascus right now, and in order to clear all this up, we have to bring her in. We don’t want any trouble. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Weston Novak, we’ll need you to come in as well.”
“What the fuck? They aren’t going anywhere,” Ryder exclaimed, taking a step off the porch.
“Ryder, stand down.” The power in Harper’s voice brushed through Avery, rocking her on her feet.
Instinctively, she hunched her shoulders and ducked her gaze, but the quieter of the two officers was watching her with a concerned frown.
“Ms. Foley, it’s okay. We’re here to help you.”
“But I don’t want to leave. I have a house and I have people, and my hair isn’t done.” Avery showed them her half braid. Her cheeks flushed with heat, and she stared at the ground, fiddling with the ends of the braid. “I’m tired and I want to go to sleep in ten-ten, and I want to wake up and all this be over with.” Her voice crumpled to nothing, and then she began to cry.
Weston hugged her up tight, rubbed her back, and pressed his lips to the top of her head. “I can come with her?” he asked.
“Yeah,” the taller police officer said. “We need you both to come in.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“I know, darlin’,” Weston murmured against her ear. “But I’ll be right there. I won’t let anything happen to you. We’ll answer their questions, and then I’ll bring you right back home, okay?”
“Swear?”
He chuckled like she was cute. “I swear.” Easing back, he ticked his finger under her chin. “Come on, little phoenix. You’ve got this.”
She tried to smile, but her lip trembled instead.
“Okay?” Weston asked.
She nodded and let him lead her down the steps by the hand. The quiet police officer helped her into the back of the police car, and she slid all the way over to make room for Weston. But the officer shut the door before he got in.
“Wait,” she said, knocking on the window frantically. “There’s been a mistake!” Knock, knock, knock. “He’s supposed to be with me!”
But the police officers ignored her. They talked low to Weston, turned him around, handcuffed him. The Bloodrunners surged forward, angry, yelling, cursing. The quieter officer was reading him his rights, but she couldn’t understand why they were guiding Weston to the police cruiser behind hers.
“Weston!” she screamed, panicking. “Something’s wrong! I changed my mind. I changed my mind. I don’t want to do this. Weston!” Avery was sobbing by the time the officers settled into the front of the cruiser. Through the glass, she pleaded with them. “He’s mine. That man back there is mine, and you said we would go together. I don’t want to go if I can’t be with him. Please. Please put him beside me or let me out.”
The quieter police officer turned in his seat as they drove away. “I’m Officer Ryan and this is Officer Hammond. We aren’t here to hurt you. We’re here to help. Everything is going to be okay, I promise. We’ll have you back where you belong in no time.”
Tears blurring her vision, Avery pressed herself against the window and watched the Bloodrunners and 1010 disappear. A whimper crawled up the back of her throat.
“You don’t understand,” she said in a small, terrified voice. “I’ve never belonged anywhere but here.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Weston shook his leg in quick succession and clenched his hands tighter. Waiting to be questioned, he was handcuffed to a chain on the table. What was taking so fucking long? If they would just ask what they needed to, he could clear this all up and get Avery back to 1010. Kiss her, hold her, tell her everything was going to be okay. He’d seen her face through the window of that cop car. She’d been terrified.
“Fuck,” he gritted out. He cast another pissed-off glance over his shoulder at the two-way glass. There were people behind it watching him. He could feel them there, but all he could see from here was his angry face, shadowed by his baseball cap. His eyes were black as tar, but fuck it. They knew what he was. No point in hiding.
He could Change right now and escape the stupid fucking handcuffs, but what good would that do? It would just prolong this already spectacularly shitty night.
He had to get to Avery, make her feel safe again. She’d been holed up into herself, like a retracted turtle, ever since she’d seen the ravens at Big Flight. They were to blame for this. He didn’t know what was going on completely, but every instinct in his body screamed this was the doings of the council. Fuckin’ ravens. He wanted to pluck every feather from their bodies and light them on fire. Anger was his only companion right now. Weston’s body hummed with it until he was uncomfortable. Squeezing his eyes closed, he rubbed his eye sockets with the heels of his palms and tried to stave off an oncoming headache.
When he opened his eyes, though, he wasn’t in the interrogation room anymore. He was back in The Box. The single swinging lightbulb above swayed back and forth from the vent that blasted freezing cold air. Gooseflesh rippled across his body with the bone-deep chill. The claw marks were still in the wall, but there were more, and they were deeper. The red was gone, though. The room smelled of bleach. There was a single bucket in the corner, but other than that, there was nothing in the room.
Nothing but Avery.
She sat pressed into a corner, balled up, her knees to her chest. She looked older than the last time he’d seen her in here. She wasn’t emaciated or pale looking. Her hair looked clean and cascaded down her shoulders, but her face held the same horrified, hopeless expression, and her lips moved constantly as she whispered something too low for him to hear. Her glassy aquamarine eyes stared right through him.
Weston looked behind him to see where her gaze landed, but the two-way mirror had disappeared and nothing remained but a white wall. He wasn’t chained to the table anymore, but was standing. His palms were up, outstretched. They looked so solid in this vision.
Avery was panting too hard now, her words coming out jerkily. The hopelessness in her eyes tore at his chest. He couldn’t save her from her past. It was done. Over. He couldn’t even comfort her, but that knowledge didn’t stop his instinct to try.
Weston strode over to her, his boots loud against the dingy white tiles. Louder than in any of his other visions.
He could hear her now. “Me and Ryder bought a whole box of spy stuff and put the cameras all around Willa’s Wormshack. She’s a Gray Back like me, and really funny. You would like her. If she caught us, she would just laugh, so that’s why we picked her to spy on first, but all we got is three straight hours of video footage of her working with her worms. She sells them to bait shops and for people who make fancy gardens. She makes a stupid amount of money at it, but that’s not why she does it. She loves worms. Like…she LOVES worms. We did catch funny audio of her talking to them, though. She called them her babies, and named on
e of them Dingleberry. And I swear she thought of kissing one when he wiggled extra cute in her hand. Ryder and me were laughing so hard.” Avery’s voice hitched, and another tear streamed down her face. “The spy cameras are so small we’ll never get caught. Never get caught. Never. Never. So small we’ll never get caught.”
Avery clenched her fists to her chest behind her knees, and her shoulders shook hard. It wasn’t until she ducked her chin to her chest and fell apart that Weston noticed her clothes. Jeans, instead of the nightgown from his last vision. And two thin straps of a tank top curved over her shoulders. He knew what the logo on her shirt would say if he could pry her knees away from her torso. Horror dropped him to his knees right in front of her. On the tip of her shoulder was the circular scar he’d given her the night he’d claimed her.
This wasn’t a vision from the past.
This was her future.
“So small we’ll never get caught,” she repeated in an empty tone.
It wasn’t fair. Something bad must’ve happened to him if she was here in The Box because he would never let her come back here if he was still breathing. “Darlin’,” he whispered, his eyes burning from a fate he couldn’t save her from.
“I knew you would come,” she said so softly he almost missed it.
“What?”
Avery lifted her gaze and locked onto his, as if she could see him. Her eyes were rimmed with tears, and her bottom lip trembled hard.
“You said you would be here with me, and you are.” Slowly, she opened the palm of her hand, and in it sat one of the old cameras he and Ryder had bought all those years ago. It was the size of a quarter. “I’m stronger now.” But she didn’t look strong. Her whole body was shaking, and she looked scared.
Weston reached out and touched her hand—touched her. Shocked, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist. “Avery, I can save you. I can get you out of here. Look, I can touch you. Come on.” He pulled, but she shook her head hard and stayed where she was, her wrist slipping from his grip. When he looked down at his hand, the tile floors showed through his palm.