Novak Raven (Harper's Mountains Book 4) (9 page)

He had missed her, too? Avery’s stomach erupted in a fluttering sensation like she’d never felt before, like the tips of her wings were beating against her, tickling her until warmth pooled low in her belly and spread outward.

“Really?” she whispered. She couldn’t believe a big, strong, immoveable man like Weston had given her a single thought after they’d met in Saratoga. She’d assumed she wasn’t pretty enough, or he didn’t like her personality outside of the letters, but now she understood why he’d cut his heart away from her. But still…he’d missed her?

“You’re surprised?”

“You just have so many friends.”

Weston angled his chin in denial and leveled her with a look. “I have a lot of acquaintances, but few friends. I don’t give my trust easily. The friends I let in mean everything to me. You meant a lot to me. I got to know you over those years, looked forward to getting each letter. In a way, we grew up together. You were someone outside of Damon’s Mountains I could tell anything to. I got your last letter, and it was so fucking hard not to write you back. I debated for a full year, but the thought of the council reading my words put me off. I missed your letters. I missed hearing about your life. I missed checking the mail and finding an envelope in there with your return address. Of course, I missed you, Avery.” Weston gave her one last soft peck on the lips, his short beard rasping against her chin. “Wait there, and I’ll get your door.”

“Okay,” she whispered, stunned.

Weston got out and jogged around the back of his truck, then yanked open the door. The rain was still pouring down, but he was smiling and, for a moment, she sat frozen, trapped in the easiness of the curve of his lips. One side of his mouth lifted higher than the other. Selfishly, she hoped she was the only one in the world who had noticed that.

Weston reached over her lap and unclicked her seatbelt, then held his hand out to help her down out of his monster truck. Avery swallowed hard. When she slipped her palm into his, electricity zinged from his touch through her body and landed in her chest. She jerked away at the shock, and when she dragged her attention back to Weston’s face, his smile had dipped slightly, and under the bill of his hat, confusion furrowed his dark brows. He squeezed his fist a couple times and ducked his gaze, stepped back to give her room to get out on her own.

“Run on inside, and I’ll bring in your stuff.”

The inside he spoke of was a cabin on the edge of the trees, lit from the inside out with the soft glow of lights. A porch sat invitingly off the front, and the rustic windows were bracketed by dark-colored shutters. Where the warmth had consumed her a moment ago, now chills blasted across her skin for reasons she couldn’t fathom.

This was the raven haven Weston had found for her. This cabin would be her safety. It would mean warmth and a comfortable bed. She wanted to cry, but refused to let loose any tears right now in front of Weston. She would do that later when she was alone in the dark.

Avery climbed out of the truck, splashed unfortunately into a mud puddle, and moved to pass Weston. But she stopped suddenly and, as a silent thank you, wrapped her arms around his waist as tight as she could. She pressed her lips against the left side of his chest, right over his heart, and then like a coward, ran to the porch before he could respond.

When she dared a glance behind her, he was standing in the rain, in the soft glow from the cabin windows, his green eyes nearly glowing with intensity as he watched her. A slow smile transformed his face in the moment before he gave his attention to shutting the passenger door, and oh, what that man did to her insides. Over the past week, she’d wanted desperately to be the one who drew a smile from the Novak Raven, and now he was giving them to her freely.

That man required the people he cared about to prove themselves before he would trust them, and little by little, he was softening to her. Without words, he was complimenting her. He was telling her she was worthy of trust, and for some reason, her heart felt like it was raw and open. As though tonight she was going through a metamorphosis. She wasn’t as scared or intimidated by him. She wasn’t as intimidated by anything. Here she stood, in the middle of the Bloodrunner Dragon’s territory, and instead of being terrified like she would’ve been a week ago, she was okay. She was happy even, and now her eyes were really burning. Happy? Was that what this warm feeling in her chest was?

She couldn’t do this—couldn’t dwell on these thoughts too long or she would fall apart, and she didn’t want Weston to see that side of her. She wanted him to like her. She wanted him to keep her.

Avery kicked off her muddy shoes and pulled Weston’s flannel shirt tighter around her soaking dress, then rested her hand on the doorknob of the cabin. The metal house numbers glinted in the porchlight. Sure, the numbers were crooked, and barely hanging on, but this cabin’s address was 1010. In one of his letters, Weston had mentioned an old magic singlewide trailer in Damon’s Mountains where he’d grown up. He’d called the trailer 1010. Gooseflesh raised all over her arms. Shaking her head at the strange coincidence, Avery shoved open the door and stepped her bare feet onto the uneven wooden floorboards inside. The living room led straight into an open kitchen, and a woman with black hair cascading down her back stood at the stove.

“Oh!” Avery exclaimed. “I’m sorry!” Wrong house.

She went to close the door, but the woman turned. It was Lexi, Ryder’s mate, who she’d met at the bar.

“Come on in,” Lexi said. “Weston called and asked if I had any leftovers for you to eat, but that didn’t seem big enough for your first meal in ten-ten. I’m pan searing steaks, and I have asparagus cooking, too. Are you okay?”

Avery pushed off the wall where she’d pressed her back and nodded. “I’m okay, just…embarrassed. Did Weston tell you why I need leftovers?”

“A little.” Her bright green eyes softened. “There’s no shame in needing help, though.”

Weston strode through the front door, his boots echoing loudly on the floors. “Hey Lexi. Smells good in here.”

“It smells really good!” Avery exclaimed, remembering her manners. “Thanks so much for doing this for me.”

Lexi giggled and turned back to the steaks, flipped a pair of them in the pan, and explained, “I’m a personal chef for a cabin rental company near here. This is no problem and is the fastest meal to make. Plus, I’ll be up late waiting on my mate to come home.”

“Where is Ryder?” Weston asked, his tone troubled.

Lexi’s shoulders lifted with a deep inhale. “I don’t know. He left earlier with a couple cans of white spray paint, so I’m waiting on a call either from him or the police.”

“Shit,” Weston muttered. “You want me to go find him?”

“No,” Lexi murmured. “I think he needs to work some stuff out on his own right now.”

Weston scrubbed his hand down his face and nodded at the back of Lexi’s head, as if she could see him. He bumped Avery on the shoulder and said low, “I’ll put your things in the bedroom. You can get into dry clothes if you want before dinner.”

Avery looked down at her dress, dripping on the wood floors. She would probably make perfect footprint puddles when she walked. She nodded jerkily and followed him into a bedroom with a bathroom door on the opposite wall. The queen-sized bed looked warm and inviting, and the lamp on the bedside table had been turned on. It smelled like cleaner in here, and she hoped Lexi hadn’t gone through too much trouble. Anything was better than the back seat of her car.

Her stomach gurgled again, reinvigorated by the scent of seasoned meat and vegetables. Heat flashed up her neck and landed in her cheeks as she covered her stomach with her forearms in a pathetic attempt to make it stop growling.

“It’s okay,” Weston whispered, setting her bags on the antique white bench at the foot of the bed. He approached her slowly, his boots scuffing the floors where her mortified gaze stayed. Gently, he hooked a finger under her chin and lifted until she met his eyes. And then, with determination written all over his face, he promised, “I’ll never let you get hungry like this again.”

When her eyes filled from that beautiful oath, she wanted to hide from him. She wanted to look away, to bury her face against his chest until she gained control of herself again, but he wasn’t having it. His finger stayed under her chin, and when the first tear fell, he cocked his head sharply, like her raven people did when they were confused. Weston brushed a knuckle across her cheek and wiped away the moisture.

A soft, accidental sob broke through, and she leaned into him, pulled his palm against her cheek, and nuzzled it. He rocked them back and forth as she broke down as quietly as she could, his hand still cupped against one cheek, his heart pounding against the other. He smelled so good and felt so warm, so strong, so immoveable and invincible, and she believed him. He wouldn’t let her go hungry again. Even if they were just friends, Weston took care of his people, and he’d just declared she was now under his outstretched wing.

“I’ll never, ever do anything to betray you,” she forced past her tight throat. Because he should know where her loyalty lay, and it had always been with him. Always.

“Truth,” he murmured, a smile in his voice. “Come on, Ave. Get dressed, and then we’ll eat until we pop.”

“We?”

He eased away and nodded. “Unless you want me to leave.”

“No!” she said too fast and too loud. Avery cleared her throat and lowered her voice. “I mean, that’s all right. I would like you to stay.”

Weston chuckled a deep, reverberating sound that vibrated over her skin and made her feel like the whiskey had. And then he left her alone to dress and wonder how the hell she’d gotten so lucky.

Weston shot her yet another secret smile, and for the hundredth time tonight, Avery’s cheeks lit on fire. She rinsed the soap suds off the plate and handed it to him to dry. “You know, male ravens at the Hollow don’t do dishes.”

“Well, male ravens of the Gray Backs did lots of dishes. Ma would’ve kicked my ass if I foisted the chore off onto my sisters.”

“I like your mom.”

Weston snorted. “You would.”

“No really,” Avery murmured, scrubbing another dish. “She was my hero growing up.”

“My mom?” Weston gave her a baffled look and turned to put the dry plate into a cabinet.

“Yeah. She was a badass. She escaped our people and married Beaston despite what it did to her family’s rank. She was female, but she’d taken her life into her own hands and shot two middle fingers at the council and lived her life the way she wanted to. My mom had this picture of her and Aviana taken right before your mom left our people. I kept it in a box under my bed with my favorite trinkets. I brought it with me to Saratoga with plans on asking your mom to sign it for me, but she was angry with me when we arrived. I didn’t know why at the time, but it makes sense now. She thought I was hurting her boy.”

“I’ll explain it to her,” Weston murmured. “She’ll understand.” He let the silence linger for a bit while he dried a plate and a pot. “The box of trinkets you had under your bed. Did you bring it with you? I didn’t see it in your things.”

“Swear not to make fun of me.”

“I swear.”

“I brought it, but I dumped all my trinkets.”

His eyebrows jacked up high, a look of shock on his face. Slowly he took his baseball cap off and put it on backward. “I have trinkets, too, that I find as a raven. Did you do the same?”

“Yes,” she said on a breath. “They were like my little treasures. Shiny baubles that had caught my eye. I would bring them back after a Change and add them to my collection. I had quite the hoard when I got rid of them.”

“Why the hell would you get rid of them? Doesn’t that go against your instincts? My raven wouldn’t let me get rid of a single one of mine.”

“I got rid of them the day I left the Hollow to come here. I didn’t really want to drag all of the things that tethered me to that place. Those were my past.”

“But you brought the box.”

“Mmm hmm,” she said with a nod.

Weston put up another dish and turned to her, locked his arm against the counter. “Ave, what’s in the box?”

She smiled down at the sudsy water she was swishing around as she washed the silverware. “You know.”

“I have an idea, but I want you to tell me.”

“I didn’t want to drag my history with Raven’s Hollow here, so I dumped the trinkets and filled the box with your letters, and with the ones I never sent you.”

“Because you thought we would talk about them when you got here?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I never intended on talking to you. I came here because the council leaves me alone if they think I’m near you. If they think I’m under the protection of your crew. I brought them just for me.”

“Why?” His eyes were so raw, so earnest. “Tell me what they mean to you.”

“Those old letters you sent me are more important than my trinkets ever were. I didn’t feel so alone when I read them.” She dared a look up at him. “They were my happiness. I brought them because I knew it would be hard out here in the real world. Because I knew I would be all alone, and it didn’t feel as scary if I had a piece of you with me. The letters made me braver.” She shrugged one shoulder up to her ear. “
You
made me braver.”

“Will you ever let me read the letters you never sent me?”

“No,” she said in an immediate response. “Those I wrote knowing you wouldn’t read them. They were my safe place.”

Weston’s eyes hardened in the instant before he turned away. The muscles of his back flexed when he gripped the edge of the counter. He shook his head. “I should’ve been your safe place. Not your fault. Mine.”

Avery slipped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek along his spine. “We’re okay now.”

“Are you?” he asked in a hard voice. “My mom said your people punished you for your raven being too dominant.”

Avery flinched in shock and froze against him. “It wasn’t punishment.”

“What was it then?”

“It was rehabilitation.” That’s what the council had called it.

“Bullshit.”

When Weston went rigid under her, she held on tighter, clenched his shirt in her hands. “It wasn’t so bad.”

“Would it have been easier if I was still sending you letters?”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t because powerful waves of dominance wafted from Weston, pulsing through her body until her lungs didn’t want to draw in air. She was standing too damn close to him right now, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out how to convince her arms to release him.

“Tell me what happened. What did rehabilitation include.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Why not?” He sounded pissed now, but he had no right to pry this from her.

“Because you’re taking away my happy moment!” Avery pushed off him and retreated to the bedroom. His loud boots echoed behind her, but when she went to slam the door, he caught it, and the look on his face broke her heart. He looked ill and angry, but not with her. With himself. “Please.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head over and over. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t! Tonight had been perfect, and now he was scratching at shit that needed to be left alone.

“Please, Ave. Tell me why a dominant raven acts as timid as a mouse. Tell me why you always look at the ground and why you hunch your shoulders like you’re trying to be smaller. Like you’re trying to be invisible. Tell me why you always say sorry for every little thing.”

She wished she could Change and fly away from him as fast as she could. She wished she could catch the air currents under her wings and avoid admitting how weak she really was. If he saw her—really saw her—he would leave, and she didn’t want to go back to being alone. But he wasn’t letting her out of this. He wasn’t backing down.

Resentful at being pushed, she gritted out, “Because I’m broken, Weston. Is that what you want to hear? I was born with a broken shifter, and my people are ashamed of me. Ashamed that I exist. Do you know what rank is based on in Raven’s Hollow? The best ravens are the ones who conform to the idea of what the perfect raven shifter is—easy going, submissive, non-combative, doesn’t question anything. But I wasn’t like that. I didn’t Change until I was five. Strike one. And then I was a natural leader. I wanted to organize games at school, I wanted to run for class politics with the human kids. Strike two. I questioned every. Single. Thing. And when I Changed, the other ravens my age cowered away from me because their instincts told them I was a monster. I was bigger, more dominant, and I didn’t believe in all the goddamned rules. Strike three. By middle school, I was being bullied. Not by the human kids, but by the raven kids, but I didn’t take it lying down like a good submissive female was supposed to. I pushed back. And when it got bad enough, and my raven was crawling out of my skin to stand up for myself, I beat the shit out of this little snot boy who wouldn’t stop calling me The Great Mistake, like his parents did. I just…lost my mind and beat him until his face was bloody. Until he stopped moving. Until the teachers pulled me off his limp body. The council called for an official shunning by noon the next day.”

“A shunning?”

“Yeah. A community-wide shunning. People talked about me as I passed, but not
to
me. My parents could talk to me to raise me, but no extras were allowed. Affection was a ‘hell no,’ and my parents didn’t fight the order at all because they were good little ravens, too. I learned real quick to submit and pretend my raven didn’t want to attack everyone around me for what they were doing. And the more I pretended to be submissive, the smaller my raven became. The sadder she was. I looked at the ground, ducked my gaze and spoke softly, and apologized for everything until the shunning was lifted. And it took two fucking years, Weston. Two years desperate to be seen. To fit in. I hated myself, hated my raven. I just wanted to be like everyone else, so I became like everyone else.” Her face crumpled, but she blinked hard, refusing to cry again. “The shunning was lifted, but I would forget myself sometimes, and my dad would bring me to the council for every little thing I did wrong, and they would put me in The Box.”

Weston was leaning heavily against the wall, legs locked, shaking his head in disgust. He asked in a hoarse voice, “What’s The Box?”

“It was a tiny white room under the Council House with a bucket to piss in and nothing else. And I would go crazy in there, stuck in my own fucking mind, unable to see sunlight, feeling like I’d been buried alive, praying to God someone remembered to let me out. I memorized your letters. I would recite them when I thought I would go mad, just so I wouldn’t feel alone.”

“Fuck, Ave,” he uttered in a heart-wrenching tone. His eyes were black now and as deep as wells. He’d locked his giant hands on his knees like he would retch right here on the bedroom floor.

“So you see, Weston, I hunch my shoulders, say sorry, and look at the ground because I’ve been trained to crave invisibility. Invisibility hurts less.” She approached him slowly, and he straightened his spine, allowing her to place herself between his legs. She rested her palms against his stony chest, and in a ragged whisper she said, “Now don’t make me talk about this stuff anymore. It doesn’t make me feel better to say it out loud. It makes me feel weak all over again.”

Weston nodded, eyes locked on hers. “Okay, Ave. I won’t ask anymore.”

She smiled sadly and left him there. Remembering made her raven want to rip out of her body. It had always been like that. The pain of the Change was her animal’s punishment for what she’d done to her feathered side. This wasn’t like earlier in the woods when she hadn’t been able to shift. Right now, power was pulsing against her middle, making her want to double over with the bone-deep ache of resisting the Change until she made it outside the cabin.

The Great Mistake. Weak, weak, weak.
Avery gritted her teeth and pulled her T-shirt over her head, left it in a pile on the porch as she strode for the yard. Her bra was next, but fuck her pants. They would slide off during the Change.

“Ave,” Weston said from behind her.

She turned just in time for his lips to collide against hers. This kiss was urgent and desperate, unlike their others. It was numbing. It was sucking darkness away from her and filling her with something else. Something better.

He bit her lip, drawing a moan from her, then Weston disengaged and rested his forehead against hers. His eyes were tightly closed, his breath shaking hard. “You don’t have to be invisible here.” And then he eased back by inches, just far enough to pull off his shirt.

Without another word, he jerked his chin toward the woods. His eyes were dark as night, probably the same color as hers, and damn it felt good not to hide from him. He wanted to Change with her. She had kept her Changes private, because she hated the way other ravens cowered away from her, but Weston was strong, dominant, and he didn’t care that she was powerful, too.

When Avery’s lip trembled, she bit it hard. There was no room for falling apart again in the night shadows of Harper’s Mountains. She turned and bolted for the tree line, closed her eyes, stretched her arms out, and then gave her body to the raven.

As she soared up and up, she could hear him, the Novak Raven, beating his powerful wings behind her, and then eventually beside her.

Her raven was huge, but Weston’s was even bigger.

If she could smile in this form, she would.

Their monsters matched.

Rain-dampened black feathers covered his body, and his dark eye was on her as they coasted above the canopy. Always on her.

Lightning flashed behind him, and he opened his glossy beak and let off an echoing, “Caw!” as the thunder boomed.

She answered because it felt right to use her voice around him. Only him. Below them, Harper’s Mountains were illuminated by the storm, and she was taken with this moment. She was here, in the lair of the dragon, with the man she never thought she would talk to again. And he was pushing Avery to own her shit, own her past, unlike the men of The Hollow.

She’d been wrong to question whether the council had anything to do with her feelings for Weston Novak. She wasn’t nothing. The council was. This deep, warm emotion pooling in her chest had nothing to do with their manipulation. It was her choosing to love the man, as she’d loved the boy. She’d told Weston his letters had been her happiness, but that wasn’t the whole truth.

Weston was her happiness.

In a way, he always had been.