Novak Raven (Harper's Mountains Book 4) (5 page)

Weston turned and addressed the Bloodrunners. “Avery is a raven shifter.”

The crew stilled, and none of them spoke a word. Avery couldn’t lift her gaze from the ground if she tried. Angry and tipsy as hell, Avery clutched her empty glass and said, “You’ve been really mean to me, and it’s really fucked up, Weston.”

“Is it? Is it as fucked up as what you did?”

She dared a look at him because he was wrong. Wrong in whatever he thought about her. “You hurt me so badly. So
badly
! You dropped me like I was nothing, you pompous asshole. You left me with no outlet, no friends, left me to compare everyone to you. You left me with an empty life and no explanation, and you think you have a right to treat me like this?” She shoved him as hard as she could in the shoulder. He didn’t budge, the monster. “Outing my animal is a fucked up move, Novak. You’re not the boy I knew.” Cheeks on fire, she looked around at the Bloodrunners. “It was nice to meet all of you,” she said quietly before she bolted for the exit.

There were too many people in here, and Ryder was yelling something behind her, but screw it. She was done with the games. Done hoping that Weston would magically think she was good enough to be nice to. In her escape, she bounced around like a pinball as she ran into a man with a biker vest and a lady in high heels.

She shouldn’t have come here to Bryson City. She shouldn’t have gone hunting for a life that could never be hers. Weston had embarrassed her. He’d shamed her in front of the Bloodrunners, and for what reason? She’d already been nervous coming in here tonight, and now this? For a minute—for one single, glorious minute—she’d almost felt normal. She’d almost felt accepted, and then Weston had taken that away. Again!

Twin tears stained her cheeks as she shoved open the door, but she angrily wiped the moisture away. That man didn’t deserve the emotion. He didn’t deserve her hurt.

“Avery!” Weston called, jogging across the concrete behind her.

“Fuck off.” Whoa, she couldn’t believe she’d just told the Novak Raven that. Whiskey was liquid courage.

“Avery, wait!” He grabbed her arm, but she yanked it out of his grip.

“Don’t touch me.” Stupid tears wouldn’t quit falling.

“What did you mean back there?” he asked as she fumbled for her keys. “What did you mean I left you with no outlet?”

“I mean you were awful when we met in Saratoga. You were rude to me. You would barely look at me, and stupid me, I’d been counting down the days until I got to meet you. I loved you! I know I was nothing to you, but for me, you meant everything. You were mine, and I was finally going to get to meet you and touch you. I was finally going to hear you say that everything would be okay instead of writing it in letters.” She let off a sob and yanked open the door to her Civic. “You treated me like I was invisible instead, just like everyone else in my life, and I went home feeling like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. I wrote you after and waited for a response, but you never gave one. And I get it. I wasn’t pretty enough, so your feelings changed when you saw me. I understand it, but it still doesn’t change how much it hurt.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” he barked, as she slammed the door beside her.

Weston reached for the handle, but she was faster. She locked it in a rush.

“I’m not taking your shit anymore, Weston. Maybe that was the girl I used to be, but I’m not her anymore.”

Avery pulled out of the parking spot and gassed it onto Main Street. When she dared one look in the rearview mirror, Weston was standing there with his hands out, his eyes wide and shocked as if he didn’t know what just happened.
Welcome to the fucking club, Novak.

Tears blurred her vision, and she squeezed her eyes to clear them as she gripped the steering wheel. She didn’t know what she would do, but she couldn’t stay here and keep her pride.

And right now, pride was all she had left.

What the fuck just happened?

Either Avery was very good at twisting things, or he’d been completely wrong about what had actually gone down when they were fifteen. Weston debated bolting for his truck, but Ryder was yelling at him again as he stomped out of Drat’s.

“What the fuck, man?” Ryder yelled. “You know her? And you didn’t tell me?”

“We were pen pals,” Weston gritted out as the other Bloodrunners filed out of the bar.

Ryder’s face was as red as his hair right now. “You had a fucking pen pal? Dude, we grew up together. We told each other everything. Why would you keep that from me?”

“Because she was mine! She was just for me. I didn’t want any of you giving me shit over her because I was having a hard enough time figuring out what she was to me. My mom and Avery’s mom decided we would be good pen pals. I could learn about raven culture, and she could have someone outside of their community to talk to. Something was wrong with Avery. Something big, but no one ever told me. Her mom just said she needed something outside of Raven’s Hollow to hold onto. And that was me. But then…”

“Then what?” Harper asked softly.

Weston shook his head for a long time, stared off in the direction Avery had gone. “I don’t know. I thought she betrayed me.”

“Didn’t sound that way to me, man,” Aaron said, his arm around Alana’s shoulders. “She didn’t sound like she was lying at all when she was telling you off.”

“You should go after her,” Harper said quietly.

“Yep,” Weston said grimly, jogging for his truck. He didn’t know where she lived, but there were only a few main streets, and if he drove reckless enough, he might be able to catch her before she turned off onto a side road.

He slammed the door beside him and sped out onto Main Street. The needle on his speedometer was gracing sixty before he even hit the edge of town. This place was a speed trap, and he was definitely running the risk of being pulled over, but screw it. He had this overwhelming urge to right whatever wrong he’d just done to Avery.

Bathed in darkness, the Smoky Mountain woods blurred past. A mountain jutted straight up on his right, and a winding river was on his left, which didn’t leave much place to pull over. He squinted his eyes and scanned the dark road up ahead, hoping for the soft glow of taillights, but there was nothing. He was alone out here. Shit. She was probably going sixty to get away from him.

He connected a call back home and hoped Mom and Dad were still up. They’d always been night owls.

“Hello?” Mom said in that sweet voice of hers.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No, what’s wrong? You sound upset. Do you want me to get your father on the line?”

“No, no, I called for you. Remember that pen pal I had when I was a kid?”

Mom went quiet. After a few breaths, she murmured, “Avery Foley.”

“Yeah, her. She found me.”

“Oh, Weston…” She already sounded like she pitied him, so he pushed on.

“Ma, I remember meeting her when we were freshmen in high school, but right before that, everything had gone wrong. Right? Her mom told you about the council?”

Mom sighed. “Weston, it was too complicated to explain it in a way you would understand. You got the condensed version.”

“But I’m not a kid anymore, Ma. Tell me. Tell me everything because I’ve been really angry at this girl for a long time, and then she shows up and she’s acting hurt by my rejection. It makes no damned sense. What happened? I want to know everything.” He remembered the hurt on Avery’s face. “I
need
to know everything.”

The shutting of a door echoed through the phone, and his Dad murmured, “Is that my raven boy?” in the background.

Static blasted across the line as though Mom was covering the phone, but Wes could still hear them. “Yes. Avery found him.”

His father didn’t respond. Or perhaps he did, but just silently. Weston could imagine him, dark eyebrows arched in surprise, inhumanly bright green eyes wide, mouth set in a grim line. Dad had never liked the idea of Weston being pulled into raven culture, and Avery had done just that.

Weston gripped the steering wheel tighter as he hugged a curve. “Ma, tell me.”

“I used to be friends with Avery’s mom, Hannah, back before I left my people to find your Da. I kept in touch with her because it was nice to have a friend who was like me. You have to understand I left everything I knew, my culture, my family, everything, just on the off-chance that Beaston would be the man I hoped he’d grown into. I was in a crew of predator shifters, and ravens are naturally timid. It was hard, feeling stretched between both worlds, and I didn’t want you so immersed in Damon’s Mountains that you didn’t know where I’d come from. Where
you
…came from. You were going to grow up a raven, a flight shifter, in a crew of bears and dragons, and I didn’t want you feeling alone. When Avery’s mom got pregnant after I did, it felt so good to go through that with a friend who understood my raven side. And hearing stories of Avery as she grew up, I thought more and more that maybe she could be a comfort to you someday if you ever grew unhappy with being different in the Gray Backs.”

“But I wasn’t different. No one ever treated me differently.” Sure, his friends teased him about being a flight shifter, but that’s what friends did. They gave each other shit.

“But you were. You were quiet like your dad, and you came to me one day, wondering about ravens. And Avery’s mom had mentioned letting you two be pen pals for years before you questioned your heritage. So it felt like the right time. For you, and also for Avery.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something was wrong with her raven. Not…wrong to a Gray Back, but wrong for Raven’s Hollow. She is dominant, Weston.”

Dominant? She didn’t feel dominant, but maybe she was for a raven. Maybe that’s why she could talk well on the phone and converse so easily with customers. Maybe that was why she was able to tell Shelly to get off him tonight. “Why would dominance be a bad thing?”

“Dominant ravens aren’t supposed to exist, especially in a female. They like the flock as steady as possible, but Avery shook up everything. She was a late Changer, and soon after her raven emerged for the first time, her parents were stripped of their rank. In an effort to make Avery’s animal more submissive, the council required the community to…”

“To what?”

“Weston, I don’t know all the details, and that’s something Avery will have to explain to you. It doesn’t feel right talking about her like this.”

“But when I was a kid, you told me she was untrustworthy. That she had betrayed me. You told me she was willing bait to take me away from the Gray Backs. From you and Da. She doesn’t sound like bait, though, Ma. She sounds like a victim.”

“Wes, her mother went to the council about our friendship, told them everything about me. Every discussion, every admission, ever insecurity I had leaving our people. And when I got pregnant, they implored Hannah to get pregnant, too. They hoped for a girl.”

“What?” Weston’s thoughts were churning. He hadn’t known this part. “What are you saying?”

“Avery was conceived in the hopes that she would be a female who could seduce you back to Raven’s Hollow. And I know them. They would’ve sequestered you away from Damon’s Mountains, brainwashed you, turned you into one of them. I want you to live the life you choose. Not one someone chooses for you.”

Wes scrubbed his hand down his face and stared blankly ahead at the road winding under his tires. Why him? Why go to such effort to draw him back to a culture he didn’t connect with? “When I was a kid, you told me her mom had betrayed us to the council for all those years. You told me the council had been reading my letters to Avery, picking them apart, using them to manipulate our friendship. But if the council hates dominant ravens, why the fuck would they even want me there? What’s the point of all the manipulation?”

“I don’t know,” his mother said helplessly. “Hannah let it slip one day while they were planning their trip to Saratoga to let you two meet for the first time. She mentioned the council was allowing her to come unchaperoned, and I was confused about what they had to do with anything. She said it as a joke, but when I pushed, she clammed up. And then two days before they came to Saratoga, she broke down crying on the phone and told me everything. She told me how she’d told the council everything about me, and how they’d guided her conversations. About how they’d pushed for you and Avery to have contact. I felt played. I felt stupid. I’d put you, my only boy, my only raven, in the sights of the council, one I had worked so hard to escape myself. Over and over I asked why they wanted you, but Hannah wouldn’t tell me. Or maybe couldn’t, I don’t know.”

“If you were so angry, why did you let us meet? Why did you still go through with it?”

“Because you asked me to. Don’t you remember, Weston? You are so loyal, but you give few chances. You said you wanted to look her in the face and ask her why she’d played games. Why she let the council read your letters. Why she pretended to care so deeply for you. You wanted to see her eyes when you asked her why she hurt you.”

“But I didn’t. I remember sitting at the restaurant, and she was smiling like she didn’t even know she was doing anything wrong, and I was so angry I couldn’t speak. I thought I would cuss her out in front of everyone.” None of this made any damn sense. Clearly, the council had played a big part in Weston and Avery’s relationship growing up, but how much? “Ma?”

“Yeah?”

“Is it possible that Avery didn’t know she was bait for me?”

The sigh she gave off said she didn’t think so, but she allowed, “If she didn’t know, there was a huge amount of manipulation she missed. It would mean there was a mountain of secrets she was sitting right on top of, unaware.”

“But there’s a chance?”

Silence.

“Ma.”

“Yes, there is a chance she was unaware. Weston, I have to tell you something.”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know if I should.”

There were brake lights up ahead, but they were at an angle. And as Weston slowed and pulled behind the beat-up old car, it was apparent why. Avery had pulled over onto the side of a steep embankment, and her driver’s side door was shoved open. There was her little white sundress, soaking on the ground in the mud. Weston leaned forward, scanning the trees branches in the dark woods. She must’ve got desperate and Changed in there. Shit.

“Mom, tell me quick. I think I found her.”

“I don’t want to tell you to trust her because I don’t know her. I don’t know her intentions, but you’ve always been good at reading people. If you think she’s a victim, she might be really and truly trying to break away from Raven’s Hollow. And if that’s the case, she’ll need help. A lot of it. They make it really hard for raven shifters to leave the flock, especially females. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

Weston threw his truck in park and leaned back against the headrest. “I understand.”

If Avery really was here with good intentions, she was in trouble from her people.