Novak Raven

by T. S. Joyce

  Ryder frowned and shoved off the truck. “How did you know I brought it with me?”

  “One, you’re a sentimental idiot, and two, I had a vision.”

  His ruddy brows arched high. “I sure as hell hope it was a good vision.”

  “Uuuh.” The memory of Avery chanting and crying shot across his mind, bringing on a sharp headache with it. “It wasn’t, actually. But it has to happen.”

  “Well, I know you have a plan,” Harper murmured. “Are you going to let us in on it?”

  “Yeah. Let’s load up, and I’ll tell you on the way.”

  “On the way where?” Lexi asked softly.

  “To Asheville. We’re gonna have to break into a psych ward.”

  ****

  Avery couldn’t breathe. The walls were creeping slowly toward her, sucking the oxygen out of the room as they approached. Soon, she would be crushed.

  “Avery, we can give you medicine to calm you down,” the nurse, Patty her nametag read, murmured from her chair in the corner.

  Avery paced the length of the wall again, clutching her gown right over her heart. “I’m gonna Change.”

  “You can’t do that in here. We already explained the rules. How did you like talking to Dr. Lancaster?”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t like it because I don’t want to talk about this stuff. I want to forget it. Talking doesn’t help, and you’re making me do things I don’t want to do. What have I done wrong? Why am I here? No one will explain to me. When can I leave?”

  Patty was scribbling notes onto a clipboard, and Avery had to try really hard not to Change and claw her eyes out in defense of whatever damning words Patty was writing about her. It wasn’t Patty’s fault she was here. It was Caden’s. It was Dad and Benjamin’s.

  She hated them.

  “Because of your erratic behavior and because of how you were acting during the interview—”

  “Interrogation,” she gritted out. “Those police officers grilled me like I’m some criminal.”

  “No, they needed to get down to the bottom of what’s happened to you and what that trauma has done. My job is to make sure you don’t hurt yourself and to give you a safe place while we figure out who to send you home with.”

  “I’m a grown woman!” Avery yelled. “I need color. Can you take me down the hall by the landscape paintings again? Or do you have a room with painted walls where we can leave the door open. Purple or blue or green or yellow. Please,” she begged. “I swear I’ll be good, but this room is too little, and the walls are white, and why do we have to close the door?”

  “For the other patients’ safety and yours. Breathe Avery, or I’ll have to bring someone in to administer something to keep you calm.”

  “Whoo,” she breathed out in a shaking voice, trying to steady herself as she paced down the wall again. The letter was clear in her imagination, ready for her to read, so she said a few lines just to feel like she could do this with Weston here. “My Da builds treehouses. He can do anything with wood. I want to be like him someday.”

  “What?” Patty asked, a slight frown marring her blond eyebrows. Her pen was poised right above the clipboard.

  “Nothing, nothing.” They would keep her here longer if she kept that up.

  “Your mother is here to see you. She just arrived with your dad and your fiancé, and she wants to reassure you that everything is okay. I can’t allow you to see her until you have calmed down, though.”

  “That’s a terrible bribe. I don’t want to see them. Don’t want to. Tell her to go fuck herself.”

  Patty reared back like she’d been slapped across the cheek. “Honey, what you’re going through is normal.”

  “I assure you it’s not.” More hand-wringing, and Avery paced back down the wall, careful not to touch the white paint with her elbow when she pivoted. She tried not to look at it, but the long, white wall was right there at the edge of her vision, haunting her, taunting her. “He’s the best man I know. People are scared of my da, but they don’t see him like I do.”

  “Why do you keep repeating lyrics? Is it a song?” Patty asked.

  Avery swallowed the comforting words, recited them silently, moving her lips just enough to connect with Weston’s letter. Weston’s eleven-year-old self was saving her now.

  She closed her eyes and imagined his face. The way his lips looked when he smiled, and how his eyes had sparked that striking green color over the bottle of his beer when she’d first seen him at Big Flight. The feel of his skin under her hands. His tattoos, a mash-up of flowing organic shapes and mechanical renderings etched into his skin, covering his chest and both arms. She had those memorized now, could recall them in perfect detail. The way his muscles moved when he reached for her, how hard and strong his body felt when he held her. The way he smelled, and the way his facial scruff scratched against her soft cheek. She remembered the sting of his claiming mark. She was his, and he was hers. She just needed to get back to him.

  “When can I go home?” she asked again.

  “You’ve been ordered here for a twenty-four-hour hold.”

  A whole day? She wanted to leave now! “H-how long have I been here?”

  “Six hours.”

  Avery turned and strode down the wall again, but all she wanted to do at that news was slide down the wall and fall to pieces. “Can we just open the door?”

  “No, that’s against the rules here.”

  “Please! I don’t like tight spaces and white rooms, and this room is only making everything harder for me.”

  A trill of hope blasted through her when Patty reached over and opened the door, but she held her clipboard up to stop Avery from rushing it. “Can we get her something to calm her down?” Patty asked to someone in the hallway.

  Shit.

  “No, no, no, I’ll be good, please. I’ll be good. You can change your mind. You can tell them I don’t need it. Please, please, Patty, please!”

  Patty closed the door again and crossed her legs. “Honey, I don’t know what to tell you. If you would just settle down, you could talk to your family.”

  Avery opened her mouth to argue, but Patty held up her finger and gave her a warning look. “Dr. Lancaster already explained this. I know he did, but sometimes victims like you can grow an unhealthy attachment to their kidnappers. You have become susceptible to what they’ve said about your family, but I’ve met your parents, Avery. They are worried sick about you. Your mom wouldn’t stop crying, and your dad looks gutted about what you’ve been through. Your next therapy session is an important one. Listen to Dr. Lancaster. Really absorb what he tells you. Share what you have actually been through, and he can help you. Or…he can order you to stay here for longer.” Patty stood and walked out, but before she shut the door behind her, she said, “Carl is going to come in here in a few minutes and give you something to make you more comfortable. Don’t throw a fit, don’t Change, don’t make him have to call a bunch of nurses in here to hold you down. Don’t make us use straps. I’m trying to help you with actual advice. That kind of behavior will get time added to your stay here. If you want to be rewarded, you have to mind the rules.” Patty sounded like a raven.

  As the door clicked closed behind the nurse, Avery let off a long, keening whimper and searched frantically through her memories for that letter that had been keeping her calm enough not to Change.

  Some son-of-a-goblin had designed this room with no windows and, other than the door, there was only a bed screwed to the floor, topped with a white, sterile mattress and no covers. At least it wasn’t frigid cold in here, and that helped to anchor her in the here-and-now. This wasn’t The Box, just something way too fucking close to it.

  Eighteen more hours in this hell, and then she could go home to 1010, to Weston, to the Bloodrunners—not with the ravens pretending they cared in some waiting room of the hospital. Just thinking of them this close to Harper’s Mountains angered her all over again. They were ruining everything.

  She
’d been happy. Why the hell couldn’t they just let her be happy? Parents should want that. Normal parents anyway. When she had babies with Weston, she was going to love them so much. She would breathe for their happiness, like her heart beat for Weston’s. She would be a good mother for his children because he deserved that, and so did they. A sob wrenched from her throat, and she gave herself to the fantasy just to escape the stupid room.

  Weston hadn’t mentioned wanting kids, but he would be a great daddy. He was so patient and funny with the kids that he took on ATV tours. He always had the best rapport with them. Maybe it was from being around Ryder all the time, who was basically a giant child, or perhaps it was natural for him to speak so well to kids. And he was so understanding with what she’d been through. She could just imagine him sitting next to her, one hand on her leg, one arm curved under their little sleeping baby. A boy. No…a girl, with rosy, plump little cheeks, who smiled in her sleep because Weston was talking to her in that rich, deep tone of his. And he would rock her back and forth, back and forth, tell her she was going to be a fearsome little raven someday, just like her momma. She liked that part a lot—Fantasy Weston thinking her strong. Avery was sitting on the edge of the mattress crying and weak, but in her imagination, Weston thought she was braver. And that made her feel braver. Avery wiped her damp cheeks and smiled at the next thought—the one of Weston holding a little, black, fluffy baby raven, newly Changed and peeping cutely from the bowl Weston made with his big hands.

  If he wanted kids someday, Avery swore to herself she was going to give him the best, happiest nest she could. Even if she had no tools, or any idea how to do that because she hadn’t grown up in a normal household, she was going to ask the other women in the Bloodrunners. She’d watched Harper, Alana, and Lexi draw infinite smiles from their mates. So, fuck her past. Avery had strong women to look up to now. She wiped her eyes again, drying her cheeks completely.

  Someday, she was going to be a strong woman, too. She was going to earn her place in the Bloodrunners, and she was going to be so fucking proud of the work she put in to get there.

  “Hey!” Someone yelled right outside of her room. “How did you get in here? Don’t take that! Stop!”

  The small window on Avery’s door shadowed with nurses running down the hall to the right. What the hell? She padded over to the door and stood on her tiptoes, craned her neck, and looked as far down the hallway as she could see. A flash of red hair bolted away from the nurses, and Ryder’s most psychotic laugh echoed through the thick door.

  Weston’s face appeared in front of her window, scaring her nearly to death. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the grand chase Ryder was leading the hospital staff on. Through the remaining sliver of window Avery could see out of, Ryder was flapping his arms and squawking like a total nutcase.

  “Move back quick,” Weston murmured over the jingle of keys.

  As she backed away, the lock clicked, and the door swung open. Weston rushed inside and closed the door behind him.

  Stunned, she stood there frozen while he checked the window down the hall both ways. But when he turned around, looking like a million bucks in his black T-shirt, backward hat, and big old muscles poking out everywhere, her body loosened right up.

  “Weston!” She launched herself at him and clung to him like a flying squirrel catching a tree trunk. God, the relief she felt when he crushed her to him was insane.

  “Ave, we don’t have much time.”

  “Are you breaking me out of here?” she asked, hope nearly choking her.

  He eased back and cupped her cheeks, but his eyes were hard and worried. That and they were black as night. Something was wrong. “This is where you have to make a choice. A detective has been working on getting a warrant to search Raven’s Hollow, but he has no evidence of anything illegal to get one. If I break you out of here, it’ll cause trouble, not only for you, but it’ll make us look guilty.”

  “Us. You mean the Bloodrunners? But you didn’t kidnap me!”

  “Ave, they sliced up a video of when they came in the shop yesterday. It looks bad. I look bad. You look like a victim, and the ravens have threatened to go to the media.”

  “No,” she whispered, horrified. “They can’t do that. This is all a lie. I want to be with you!”

  “Shhhh,” Weston said, stroking his thumb across her cheek. “And we will be together. No matter what, we will. But the ravens are after us, for revenge on my mom or on shifters outside of their community, or maybe on me, I don’t know. They will haunt us if we don’t put a stop to their manipulation.”

  “What can I do? Weston, should I leave? I can’t have the Bloodrunners under attack from the public. I can’t! I love them. I love you. Do I run? Hide? Maybe they’ll forget about me if I just disappear for a while.”

  Weston shook his head slowly, eyes locked on hers. “Avery, I don’t think you’re a runner, and I don’t think you’ll be happy with that decision.”

  “Then what? How do I protect you? How do I protect the Bloodrunners?”

  Weston swallowed hard, and his skin paled. Slowly, he eased something small and brown out of his pocket. “Remember the spy cameras I told you about in that letter? The ones Ryder and I used to spy on Willa’s Wormshack?”

  She took it gingerly between her finger and thumb. It was so much tinier than she’d imagined. “Yeah.”

  “Ave, the detective needs evidence. Concrete, undeniable evidence that you’ve been mistreated. Evidence that can get Caden and the rest of the council taken out of power so the ravens can recover and rebuild, if they want. Evidence that will take Caden and whatever game he’s playing out of our lives forever.”

  “Evidence of what?” Oh, she already knew the answer. The two words were already scratching against the back of her mind like nails on a chalkboard, but she needed to hear it. She needed to know exactly what Weston was asking her to do.

  “He needs evidence of The Box.”

  There was yelling outside, and a couple nurses rushed by again, so Weston pulled her to the side of the door so they couldn’t see him.

  The Box? She wanted to fall apart just thinking about going back there. She wanted to cry, hold onto her memorized letters, and curl up in a ball on the floor. Willingly go back into The Box?

  But the vision of her fantasy, of Weston telling their child someday that she would be a fierce lady raven like Avery, drifted across her mind. If this were Lexi, Harper, or Alana being called to help the crew, they would do it. Without a shadow of a doubt, Avery knew they would.

  And she wanted to be strong like that. She wanted to earn her place in the Bloodrunners at Weston’s side. She wanted to protect them. If the ravens stripped the crew down in the media and ruined their names, their good reputation, and Avery did nothing to stop it, she would never be able to forgive herself.

  This was her chance to be the heroine of her own story.

  This was a chance to feel like she matched Weston because, if she could do this, if she could pull this off and pluck Caden from power, she was rising up like a phoenix, just like Weston believed she could.

  She couldn’t depend on Weston to go into the heart of Raven’s Hollow and break into The Box. The council had put a lot of effort into luring him to The Hollow, and instinct said it was for dark reasons. She couldn’t lose Weston. Couldn’t risk him getting hurt, or worse. She didn’t want him inside the gates, gathering evidence that she could do on her own.

  She forced the words out. “I’ll do it.”

  More yelling. A nurse shouted from outside the room that she was going to check on patients. Their time was up. Avery closed her fist around the camera and nodded at Weston’s questioning glance. In a determined whisper, she said, “I can do this. Wait for me outside the gates of Raven’s Hollow. Don’t come in, no matter what. I can do it as long as I know you’re close, but if I think you’ll risk yourself or the crew, I’ll screw this up. Promise me you’ll wait.”

  The blood drained from Weston’s fac
e, and he stood straighter. “I promise I’ll wait. I know you can do this, Avery.” He gripped her shoulders tightly and leaned down to her eye level. “I can’t explain how right now, but I’ll be there with you.”

  And she understood. He would be there with her. He would be in her mind, in the letters he’d written as a boy. In the words she would recite when The Box swallowed her up. And she loved him even more for it.

  “Go now,” she murmured. “I’ll go home with my parents. I’ll get the evidence you need.”

  Weston straightened, lifted his chin, and smiled proudly at her. “Push the button on the back of the camera. The green light on the side will flash twice to tell you it’s working. It’ll store three hours of video and will pick up the audio. As soon as you have enough, get out of there. Come to the gate. Come to me, and I’ll take you home, and everything will be okay.”

  Everything will be okay. Oh, what a beautiful promise that was.

  Her voice would shake if she used it, and she wanted to be strong for Weston, so she nodded once.

  His lips crashed against hers, and he plunged his tongue past her lips. A soft whimper escaped her because she understood the desperation in this connection. If something went wrong… No, she couldn’t think like that. This wasn’t it. She didn’t go her whole life in darkness only to reach the light and then fall. Her time with Weston wasn’t done. Her time in Harper’s Mountains wasn’t done. She just needed to tie up the loose ends with the people who had hurt her. She had work to do. And when it was through, she would claw and fight to get back to her Weston, her mate, her life, her love.