by T. S. Joyce
“Weston,” she whispered. “This is the way it’s supposed to be. I can do this.” Two tears dislodged and streamed down her cheeks, but Avery looked different now. Her eyes were harder, more determined, and her breathing had steadied out. “You make me stronger. Wait for me.”
There was echoing power in those last three words, and Weston was catapulted backward so fast, his hands and feet flew out in front of him. He held onto the sight of Avery as long as he could.
“I love you, Ave,” he rushed out, because she should know. Whatever was happening, or if he was dead, she should hear it from him one last time.
As he slammed back into the chair in the questioning room, her whispered words echoed around the room, filling his head. “I love you, too. Wait for me. Wait, wait, Weston. Wait for me.”
Adrenaline and shock did something awful to his body, or maybe it was the power of that vision, but he was drenched in sweat and shaking uncontrollably. Weston dry heaved and closed his eyes tight against the blinding light from the fluorescent bulbs above.
The door to the interrogation room swung open, and in walked one of the cops who had taken Avery away from him. His nametag read Hammond, and after him filed a shorter man in a gray suit.
“This is Detective Sutton,” Hammond said as he took a seat next to the man in the suit. “He’s been the one working on the missing persons case for Avery Foley and her family.”
Weston clenched his hands together in an effort to slow the shaking in his body. He was still reeling from the vision. “Missing person’s report…” Weston shook his head hard, trying to rattle free some clear thoughts. “Avery isn’t missing. She’s where she wants to be. Or was, until you took her away in a fucking cop car like some criminal.”
“Avery isn’t under any suspicion,” Detective Sutton said blandly, slapping a thick, beige folder onto the metal table. “You are.” His hard, green eyes sliced right through Weston. “You were read your rights, yes?”
Weston nodded. What he needed to do was lawyer up and demand they bring in Harper before he said more, but then he would run the risk of them going tight-lipped about why he was here, and he needed to know what he was really doing strapped to a table in the Bryson City police station. “I’m being charged with kidnapping, but that’s not what happened.” Voice steady, he told them how Avery came to interview for him and work for him. Told them how he fell for her, and she fell for him. He kept his emotions to a minimum, kept the story simple, just stuck to the facts, and the more he spoke, the more Detective Sutton lost his air of pompousness. A little frown crept into his poker face, and his eyes narrowed.
“Do you feel like you love her?” Detective Sutton asked.
Weston leaned back in his chair and considered his answer. Something had made the detective see him as an obsessive stalker, and this question was a shiny lure into a deep trap.
“Do you feel like she is yours?” the detective pressed on.
Weston should call for a lawyer now. He should wait for Harper before he said more, but the thought of Avery sitting in the interrogation room next door, getting grilled, made him want to end this as fast as possible.
“I want her to be a strong woman and find herself. I want her to be happy. I want her to choose her own path, connect with people, and know how special she is. So yeah. I love her. I love her so much, but if she ever wanted out of a relationship with me, that would have to be okay, because more than I want to be happy, I want her to be happy.”
Hammond looked utterly confused now. He sighed heavily, then murmured, “I’m gonna show him the video.”
“No, you won’t,” Sutton said.
“I am! This is my precinct, and he lives in Nantahala under my jurisdiction. And to be completely honest, none of this makes a lick of sense to me. The Bloodrunners have been good members of this community since the day they moved here. One of them owns the coffee shop in town, this one just opened a tourist business, the alpha has opened a law shop right on Main Street, Aaron Keller is a respected firefighter in town. And besides all that, I rode in the car with Avery Foley, and she seemed scared shitless…” He leveled the detective with a significant look. “But not from him. She spent the whole damn ride falling apart to be in the same care as Weston Novak.”
“She was falling apart?” Weston asked. “Is she okay?”
“She’s being transported to Asheville on a twenty-four-hour psych hold,” Hammond said.
“What? No, she’s been abused by her people. She can’t be strapped down or put in solitary. They can’t put her in a white room.” Weston stood and yanked on the chains.
“Sit back down!” Sutton yelled.
“Fuck,” Weston muttered, panicked. He wanted to Change, but escaping this room as a raven would be impossible unless he could somehow break through the two-way mirror.
The door swung wide, and Harper strode in, dressed in a black power suit and looking like she was about to bring hell to earth. She jammed a nail at Weston and ground out, “Sit. Now.”
Power rippled from her voice, buckling Weston’s legs under him. With a pained grunt, he slammed down into the metal chair so hard the legs screeched backward by a few inches. Wincing, Weston tilted his head away from the Bloodrunner Dragon and exposed his neck to her. Goddamn, she didn’t use her alpha powers often, but when she did, it sucked balls.
“Officer Hammond,” Harper greeted.
“Bloodrunner Dragon,” he murmured, eyes wide.
“I told you to please call me Harper.” She shoved her hand out for a shake to the detective. “Harper Keller. Who are you?”
“Uuuh, Detective Sutton.” The man shook her hand in a rush, then jerked away as though he’d been burned. Dragons. That was a power move if Weston had ever seen one but, fuck it all, he couldn’t find it in himself to be amused. Not when he was getting a crick in his neck from her alpha dragon shit.
Harper sat down, crossed her legs primly, and set her briefcase down on the floor beside her chair with a click against the tile floors.
“A kidnapping charge? We all know that’s bullshit, so what are we really doing here?”
“They took Avery to a psych ward in Asheville,” Weston gritted out.
The fire in Harper’s bi-colored eyes nearly buckled Weston. “Fffuuck, Harper, let me up.”
After she inhaled deeply, then blew it out slowly, leveling her intent gaze back on the officers, the heaviness lifted from the air.
Weston sat up straight and sucked oxygen.
Officer Hammond hit a couple buttons on his phone and shoved it across the silver table to rest in front of Weston and Harper.
A video opened on Avery’s dad’s face. He was in a car and looked worried and disheveled. “That monster has my daughter. He took her from me and from our people. From her fiancé, and I’ll stop at nothing to make sure she comes home safe again. I’ve promised my wife I will save our baby girl. I won’t fail my family.”
The humans in the room couldn’t hear the utter bullshit lie in Mr. Foley’s voice, but Harper shot Weston a disgusted look. She hadn’t missed it either. Fuckin’ manipulative ravens.
The scene cut to Big Flight’s shop, to Avery, who was huddled against the back corner. The camera was shaking, but no one could mistake the terror in her eyes. Her long hair had fallen forward, covering her cheeks, and she was hunched badly, as though she would be attacked at any moment.
“We’re here to bring you home,” Benjamin said.
Weston’s face was contorted with hate and rage, and his fists were clenched. “She is home,” he gritted out. “Who are you?”
“I’m Avery’s fiancé.”
The scene was edited and jumped straight into Weston slamming Caden against the wall again and again and Ryder threatening the others with the machete. More editing, Weston dropped Caden and said, “You’ll have to pry her from my cold, lifeless talons.”
“Look at her, she’s terrified!” Caden choked out from the floor.
“Are you engaged,” M
r. Foley yelled.
The scenes were jerky, lurching from one to the next where they’d cut out dialogue.
“No.” Weston blinked slowly and stood to his full height, looked directly at the camera and said, “But she’s mine. I’m not letting her go. Come here again, and I’ll rip your intestines through your mouths and watch you choke on your own entrails.” And there was no denying from the look on his face, Weston had meant it—every word.
“Come on, honey,” Mr. Foley said in a shaky voice, waving Avery to him. “You don’t have to stay here with this bad man.”
Avery stood in the corner, shaking, panting, tears in her eyes as she glanced at Weston and then at the camera. A single tear streaked down her cheek, and then the video faded to black.
“Wow.” Weston wanted to hurl the phone at the wall and destroy that fucking lie, but he couldn’t. He clapped slowly and leaned back in his seat. “That was a great fucking show, but that wasn’t how it happened. And please tell me you can decipher a heavily edited video from the original.”
“Of course, we can,” Hammond said. “But this on top of a longstanding missing person’s report from across state lines, calls from everyone in the entire raven community, and we have to follow this up. Caden Edwards has threatened to put this in front of every media outlet he can reach. Do you know what a field day the public would have with that? Two rival groups of shifters warring over a woman. This isn’t the only copy of this video, and the public won’t give a single shit about whether it’s been edited or not. You look guilty as hell in this. You look like a monster. You look abusive, and Avery looks like your terrified victim. And even if you’re proven innocent, the word ‘kidnapping’ will be synonymous with the Bloodrunner Crew forever. I don’t want that. I respect you for pushing the vamps out of our area. The wolves, too, and yes we know about that. Crime rate around here is pretty damn close to zilch, and this is going to bring our town an avalanche of attention we don’t want. So please illuminate us, Mr. Novak. What the hell is actually going on?”
Weston looked at Harper, and she nodded once.
So he did illuminate them. He told them about being pen pals with Avery, about how she was treated in Raven’s Hollow. About how all the women were treated there. He told them how Avery fled an engagement to Benjamin, and the role he’d played in bullying her when she was younger. He told them every dirty secret about Raven’s Hollow that Avery had shared with him because they’d pushed him to this—airing out every scrap of dirty laundry. They weren’t his people, they weren’t Avery’s people, and now they were going to drag the Bloodrunners through the mud? For control of a woman. Fuck. That.
Detective Sutton scribbled away on his notepad as Weston spewed every sordid detail about what really went on behind the closed doors in the raven community. He told them of how much stronger Avery had grown, and how she’d made friends in the Bloodrunners, began to laugh and smile, and stand up straight again. He shook like a fucking leaf when he told them that part because he knew she was sitting in some cold psych ward room right now probably losing all the progress she’d made in Harper’s Mountains.
“If you want to help Avery, let her come back to me. Let me care for her the way she deserves.”
Harper spoke up somberly. “Let us all take care of her the way she deserves. She might be registered to Raven’s Hollow now, but she’s part of my crew. She’s my friend. She deserves to be happy where she chooses, not manipulated by the people she left behind.”
“If you want to help,” Weston said, glare on Detective Sutton, “go look in that room under the council house and see for yourself how they break their people.”
Detective Sutton huffed a humorless sound and set his pen on top of his notes, shook his head. A band of sweat beaded on his upper lip. “Tried that. Reached hard and missed. I’ve been on the outside for years, waiting for something, anything, that would get me an in on Raven’s Hollow. I can’t get a warrant without them doing something blatantly wrong, and Caden Edwards runs a tight ship.”
“If you know something is wrong there, why did you come so hard at me?” Weston asked. “At Avery? She’s a victim, being treated like a criminal.”
“Just because I have instincts about something doesn’t mean I can ignore my job, Mr. Novak.” Detective Sutton relaxed back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head. He lifted eyes to the video camera in the back of the room, the back to Weston. “Do you have any proof of The Box.”
His lips had barely moved, and his words were nothing more than the barest whisper, but Weston had caught it with his heightened senses.
He leaned forward and dipped his chin so the camera wouldn’t catch the shape of his lips as he whispered, “Avery is your proof. She remembers everything. She could testify against them.”
Officer Hammond stood and leaned over the table between Weston and the line of sight of the camera. “Her testimony won’t stand up in court. First thing the ravens will do is have her deemed an unreliable, unstable witness. She broke down in the car, Weston. Just…” He shook his head. “Rambling, repeating stories about you and Ryder when you were kids. She couldn’t answer a single question we asked her. She’s not fit to bring them down alone.”
“You’re wrong,” Harper said. “She’s tougher than you think she is. You just dumped her in a terrifying scenario.”
“Court will be terrifying for her,” Sutton whispered. “She could hurt a case against them so much more than help. But if we had proof along with her testimony. Concrete. Proof. We could get Raven’s Hollow busted up and those women out of there. We could put away the people who hurt Avery. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
Weston swallowed hard and nodded. “You can’t get the evidence. You’ve already tried and failed.”
Sutton dipped his chin once.
“You need evidence to fall into your lap. Real, undeniable proof of abuse.”
Another nod, and now Weston’s vision made sense.
He’d thought his death must be imminent since that was the only way he would let Avery end up in The Box again. He’d been wrong. He was the one who would send her in there.
To save her from looking over her shoulder all her life. To save the Bloodrunner’s name. To save himself from that video going straight to national news. To save the women of Raven’s Hollow from further tyranny.
Weston couldn’t save Avery. That wasn’t his destiny.
The vision wouldn’t have happened if there was another way.
Avery was going to have to save herself and everyone else instead.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Avery had been wearing the same clothes in the vision that she’d been wearing tonight when the police had taken her away. What did that mean? It meant she wouldn’t come home before she ended up in The Box.
Shit, think. Weston had never used a vision like this. He was more of the fight-it-and-try-to-change-fate kind of guy. That wouldn’t work here and now, though. This one needed to happen.
What if something happened to her after the dream? It had cut off, and he didn’t know the outcome, so what if he let her go in and something awful happened to her? Did he trust the Fates?
Fuck if he knew, but he couldn’t change the future. If he did fuck with destiny, it would just happen anyway, but worse.
Rubbing his wrists where the handcuffs had cut into him, he followed Harper out of the precinct. Times like these made him wish raven shifter healing was as good as the bear shifters. The rawness on his wrists was bothering him, taking up space in his head that should belong only to Avery right now.
Even though the police believed Weston, she’d panicked in the car and then in the precinct interrogation room. They’d transferred her to a hospital where she wouldn’t get out early on good behavior. No matter how much he raged, she was on a twenty-four-hour hold, which meant they had one day to figure out how to get her straight from the psych ward to Raven’s Hollow. One day where every second would feel like an hour to Avery. She wa
s probably so scared right now.
Twenty-four hours, but it wasn’t enough time, and way too much all at once.
“Who are we fucking up tonight?” Wyatt asked, hellfire in his eyes. He was standing around the back of his truck with the other Bloodrunners under the single streetlight of the precinct parking lot. The whole crew was here for him.
Aaron ran his hand through his blond hair and looked like a demon in the harsh light. “Look, Harper is out on this one, but she isn’t the only dragon we know. I can call Rowan.”
“Aaron, you know she won’t come out of Damon’s Mountains,” Harper said low. “She won’t leave the Gray Backs.”
Aaron crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, Dark Kane then.”
Wyatt made a ticking sound behind his teeth. “Kane won’t help us.”
“Why not?” Aaron asked, his voice cracking across the parking lot. “Because he’s a Blackwing? Fuck that. He knows us. He knows we’d help him if he needed it. And you know he’s hiding a titan inside of him. We’ll bring war to the ravens for what they’ve done to Avery, and show every other crew in the world to keep their fucking treachery to themselves. Aren’t you tired of this?” Aaron looked from face to face, his lips pulled back, teeth bared, eyes blazing green-gold, looking like a battle-ready Viking warrior. “Aren’t you tired of people coming for us? Vamps, wolves, ravens. We’ve handled everything quietly, but maybe we were wrong. Maybe we should’ve made a statement. Maybe we should’ve erected a giant fucking sign written in their blood that tells the world, ‘Don’t fuck with the Bloodrunners.’” He stank of fur and dominance, and he was ready. Aaron was poised for vengeance like a fiery arrow drawn back on a bow string, aimed for the heart of Raven’s Hollow. But hunting the ravens wouldn’t work for this one.
Weston rested his arms on the bed of the truck. “We aren’t going to war, as much as I want to. Harper is out of commission and you called Kane Dark Kane for a reason, Aaron. He’s a Blackwing and could burn the whole damn world if we let his dragon taste blood. I was there when he went after Ryder’s dad. He was going to rip him limb from limb in a bar full of humans, and his eyes were completely empty. He’s too big a risk, and not a weapon we want to use, trust me. This one’s on us, and the ravens have numbers. Not to mention the people who live in Raven’s Hollow aren’t all bad. Brainwashed, sure, but they’re sheltered and convinced they’re right. They have a corrupt few in power, and that creates the worst situation, not only for their people, but for ours. Ryder?” he asked the somber redhead leaning quietly against the side of Wyatt’s truck. “I need our old spy kit. I need one of the cameras out of it. The smallest one.”