Novak Raven (Harper's Mountains Book 4) (19 page)

“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,” Mr. 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.

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 was 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.”

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.