Novak Raven (Harper's Mountains Book 4) (17 page)

“I was never yours, Benjamin.” She dared a look up at him. “I am my own.”

Benjamin huffed a breath and shook his head. His eyes as cold as a snake’s, he said, “This isn’t over.”

Ryder was picking at his teeth with the pointed blade of the machete and made a loud sucking sound. “It should probably be over if A, you don’t want Weston serial-killing all you assholes, and two, our alpha charring your corpses like little crispy chickens and getting her eat on. Our monsters are better than yours.” He arched his red eyebrows up. “Bye.”

Weston and Ryder didn’t say a word as the raven shifters filed out of the shop with Caden leaning heavily on Dad.

They followed them out and watched them leave in a gunmetal gray Jeep Patriot. And when the sound of their engine disappeared completely, Avery whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

“Ave, please tell me you aren’t really engaged,” Weston growled out.

“No! Well…kind of.”

Weston ripped his hat off and threw it into the yard, strode away from her down the porch and returned looking frightful. “What do you mean you’re
kind of
engaged?” His voice was dark and intimidating.

“What happened was…I told the council I was engaged to you, and they allowed me to live here to obey our customs of courtship.”

Weston shook his head in shock and blinked hard. “What?”

“So, you and I are kind of technically engaged. Or we were, before you told them we weren’t.”

Weston stared off in the direction the Patriot had disappeared. “Ave, that makes no sense. They seemed to think you were still with Benjamin. They sure as shit didn’t seem to think we’re living our happily ever after!”

“I don’t understand what they were talking about. I swear I’m telling you the truth. My Dad telling me I didn’t have to stay with you—”

“That was your dad?”

“Yes. He was acting all concerned for me, but that’s not the relationship we have, Weston. It’s not! I left in the middle of the night from Raven’s Hollow, sure. But my mom encouraged me to elope with you.”

“But I didn’t even know you were here for me. We aren’t even engaged!”

“Yeah, but the council didn’t have to know that. I was just going to live here near you, near the Bloodrunners, and pretend I was under your protection so I didn’t have to marry Benjamin or anyone else. Benjamin is scary. He’s powerful in the community, the future head of the council, and he would give my family the rank they want. But he’s the boy who was awful to me. He’s always hated me, and now he wants to marry me? No. He wants to have control over me. I couldn’t do it, Weston. The day after I left, my mom gave the council a letter I’d written, telling them I couldn’t marry Benjamin because I was being courted by you. It was a desperate move, but I didn’t see any other way they wouldn’t come for me. I called her when I had been here a couple days, and she told me the council approved a courtship with you. And of course, they did. I should’ve wondered why they let me go so easily, but I was just so happy to be out of there, I didn’t ask questions. But you’re the Novak Raven! Why wouldn’t they be happy that I was being courted by you? That was the game plan since birth, right?” She held her hands out helplessly. She hated the disappointment on Weston’s face. “I don’t know why they were here acting surprised and concerned. They aren’t like that. None of them are.”

“Benjamin said this isn’t over,” Weston murmured, a deep frown marring his striking face. “You can’t go back there. What can I do to stop them from coming?”

Marry me.
She wouldn’t force him into that, though. If he’d told Dad that yes, they were engaged, this would be done. But that wasn’t fair on Weston. He’d only just begun trusting her again.

Weston was staring at her, waiting for an answer, so she gave him what she could. “Until I’m married, I’m up for grabs. Claiming marks don’t count in Raven’s Hollow. I’m of breeding age and apparently Benjamin is determined.”

Standing here, looking into Weston’s eyes, the ones that had grown dark with his anger and disappointed at the turn of events, she hated the ravens for tainting her home here.

“What do we do?” Ryder asked grimly.

Weston didn’t take his angry gaze from Avery, but he answered his best friend without a moment of hesitation. “We call a crew meeting. Avery’s one of us now. If the ravens pose a threat to her, they pose a threat to the Bloodrunners.”

“If the ravens are coming, I can’t protect her,” Harper said.

Anger blasted through Weston’s veins. His alpha was sitting on the tailgate of her truck beside Wyatt, who looked sick.

“It’s okay,” Avery whispered. “I’m not one of you.”

“Stop,” Weston gritted out. He swung his pissed-off glare to Harper. “What the fuck, H? You’ll throw down for anyone here, but when it comes to the mate I choose—”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Wes,” Harper gritted out, her blue dragon eye flashing brighter. “I love you like my own brother. I love all of you. Avery is one of us, sure enough. I knew it from the first time I saw you two together, but I can’t physically protect us if the shit hits the fan right now.”

“Why not?” Weston yelled.

“Because I can’t shift! I don’t have a dragon for you. I don’t have fire. I don’t have the fucking ability to shield you right now.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I’m pregnant!”

Weston felt socked in the gut. All of his air whooshed out of his lungs and wouldn’t return.

“Harper, you’re pregnant?” Alana sounded like she was crying.

Lexi reached her first, though, hugged her up. Alana followed, and slowly, submissively, Avery padded to the tailgate and slipped under Harper’s outstretched arm.

The girls were new to the crew and didn’t understand though. Harper could die from this. Female dragons weren’t like bear shifters or flight shifters. Harper was going to have to force herself not to Change for the next nine months until she grew weaker and sicker and likely died in childbirth.

“What the fuck man?” Weston asked Wyatt.

Wyatt gritted his teeth so hard the muscles in his jaw jumped. “You don’t understand.”

“I do! I understand this could kill her.
Kill her
, Wyatt!” Weston squatted down and clutched the back of his hair, so pissed he didn’t know what to do. He stood and jammed a finger at Wyatt. “You were supposed to protect her!”

“Beaston said she won’t die in childbirth. Not after we lost Janey.”

“Beaston,” Weston repeated. “Everyone relies so fucking heavily on my dad, but visions don’t work like that!”

“Yours don’t,” Aaron murmured. “Maybe Beaston’s are different.”

Harper was crying, and she wouldn’t meet his gaze. He was fucking this all up but, goddammit, he loved Harper.
Loved
her. She was one of the few he trusted, one of the few people in the world who was more important to Weston than air. He didn’t want her to die. He didn’t want to watch her wither away. “Fuck!” he yelled.

“Wes, I want a baby,” Harper said in a heartbroken voice. “I felt empty after I lost Janey, and I need this. I have a lot of grizzly shifter blood in me, some black bear, too. My grandfather did the math, and I’m at about a fifty-fifty percent chance of survival, even without your dad’s prediction.” She released the girls and rested her hand on her still-flat stomach. Tears fell down her cheeks, and Wyatt rubbed her back. “I’m going to do this. I’ll be strong enough. I know I will. We’ll have a baby in the crew, and I’ll be back to my fire-breathing badass self afterward, but right now, he needs me more. Do you understand?”

“He,” Weston said, his eyes burning.

“Beaston called me the vessel for the next male Bloodrunner Dragon. A fire-breather like me. A brawler like Wyatt. He’s seen it.” Harper’s voice tapered to nothing as two more tears streaked down her cheeks. “I already love him so much.”

Weston scrubbed his hand down his face and strode over to her, pulled her hard against him. A sob wrenched from Harper, and she clung to him tightly, clutching his T-shirt in her fists. Wes shook his head and pulled Wyatt to him, too, cupped his dumbass head, and held him for a moment before he shoved him away. Wyatt chuckled thickly and wiped his cheek on his shoulder, sniffed once, and got pulled into a back-cracking hug from Ryder.

Avery stood near him, smiling and clearly touched as the girls wrapped themselves around Wes and Harper. Whatever came next with the ravens, the Bloodrunners were down their biggest weapon. The second the world realized Harper couldn’t shift anymore to protect her child, enemies would come out of the woodwork. Vampires, wolves, ravens, unforeseen dangers. But that had to be okay. Weston would fight with his life to protect what they’d built here, to protect his alpha, to protect Avery, and the others in this crew would, too.

“Oh, Harper girl,” Weston murmured, rocking his alpha slowly. “You
are
going to do this. You’re so strong, of course you will. You’ll give our crew a better treasure than even the mountains. Rest now, Dragon. The Bloodrunners have you.”

****

“I don’t think they’ll attack,” Avery murmured.

“Hair band,” Harper said, holding out her hand. She was sitting in the rocking chair behind Avery who sat on the porch. She was French braiding Avery’s hair into two long pigtails.

She handed back the black hair deal she’d been fiddling with. “Ravens aren’t made for war. I really don’t think they’ll come here to fight.”

“Why don’t you think so?” Weston asked from where his head rested on her lap. Over and over, he was throwing a baseball up to the rafters of the porch of 1010 and catching it. The Bloodrunners were all spread out over the porch, recovering from the emotional charge of Harper and Wyatt’s big news.

“I don’t think they’ll physically wage war on us because they are scared of other shifters. Not just nervous, but terrified, of dragons and bears especially. I think that’s why they visited the shop instead of confronting me in Harper’s Mountains. Threatening three flight shifters I can see, but threatening the predator shifters in this crew?” Avery shook her head. “I think Benjamin was bluffing. I can’t see any of our people rallying to fight. They have no fight experience, and all the females have been trained to be scared. They aren’t equipped for battle, and almost all of them are submissive.”

“Almost all of them?” Alana asked from where she rested her back against the porch railing beside Aaron.

“Yeah, some of the males are dominant, but raven dominant…not fire-breathing dragon dominant. Caden is one of them.”

“Caden?” Weston asked, catching the ball and sitting up.

“Yeah, the guy you smashed against the wall.”

“Caden Edwards?”

Avery frowned, her head jerking back and forth with each braid Harper wove into her hair. “Yeah. Do you know him?”

Weston narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Yeah, he was engaged to my mom for a year before she ended it and chose my dad. We’ll just say he didn’t handle it graciously. She had her parents’ support, though, so it made it easier for her to leave Rapid City.”

Avery huffed a stunned breath. She’d had no idea Caden had been engaged to Aviana Novak. How the hell had that been hidden from the flock? “Yeah, he’s been an asshole for as long as I’ve known him. He was the council member who would put me in The Box when I needed ‘rehabilitation.’ Even if I struggled. I heard about the days the flock was located in Rapid City, but after Aviana left, the ravens all relocated to the Blue Ridge Mountains outside of Damascus. They named the community Raven’s Hollow, and the rules became really stringent. The council, led by Caden, sequestered us off from other shifters and most humans after your mom left. The council got scared all their strong-minded ravens would pack up like Aviana had done, and our shifter species would fall apart and slowly go extinct. They made the rule that women couldn’t get jobs anymore after what happened with your mom pairing up with a bear shifter. Aviana’s parents were already low ranking, but when Aviana picked your dad, they were put at the very bottom of our community and shunned. When I was ten, I remember they left in the night. I didn’t blame them. I wished they had taken me with them. The only interaction the ravens have with the outside world now, other than the internet, is the public school system, where we get to go to classes with human kids. Caden has been trying to get a school just for raven shifters approved, though.”

“What a boner biscuit,” Ryder muttered, drawing his legs up around where Lexi sat on the porch in front of him.

“Total boner biscuit,” Lexi agreed, chipping away at her half-gone nail polish.

It didn’t sit well with Avery that Caden had history with Weston’s mother. Not when there had obviously been some long-term plot to lure him back to Raven’s Hollow. She had the sick feeling they weren’t just drawing him there to put some new genetics into the community anymore. She would bet her first paycheck that Caden had been behind the plan to use Avery as bait in the first place. Who else in that community would have a reason to connect so directly with Weston and Aviana? No, she didn’t like this at all.

Maybe she should call her mom and see if she could get more information from her. She owed Avery.

Aaron jerked his attention to the front gate of the property and froze. Eerily, Alana and Wyatt did the same. Weston, Ryder, and Harper were next, and now Avery could hear it—the soft hum of an approaching vehicle. Dread filled her veins as she stood with the others, preparing to face whatever was coming.

Blue and red lights flashed through the trees.

“Sheeyit,” Ryder muttered. “What do we do?”

“Hold steady, crew,” Harper murmured. “We have no beef with the cops here, and we’ve done nothing wrong.”

But every instinct screamed for Avery to flee. Something was wrong, and she naturally feared law enforcement. Why? Because the ravens worked very hard to keep human law out of Raven’s Hollow, and it had been ingrained in her since birth to avoid flashing lights like the ones on the police cruiser bumping and bouncing through the gate of Harper’s Mountains.

Weston pulled her behind him protectively, his hand gripping her hip. She ran her hand up his back, to steady herself as much as him, and every muscle was hard as a rock, tensed and ready.

“Should I Change?” she asked, panicking as two uniformed police officers got out of the vehicle.

“No,” Harper said sternly. “It’ll only cause more trouble if one of us runs.”

A second police cruiser coasted through the gate, and now Avery couldn’t breathe. They were here for her. She knew they were.

“Evening,” one of them said. “We’ve had several calls about an Avery Foley being kept here.”

“She’s not being kept here. She lives here,” Weston said calmly.

“That’s not the story we’ve heard. There was a missing person’s report filled out five weeks ago in Damascus.”

“No, I’m not missing,” Avery said, stepping in front of Weston. “I’m here because I want to be.”

The officers shot each other matching frowns. “If that’s true, then we’ll sort through it, but we’re going to need you to come down to the station and answer some questions.”

“She can answer them here,” Harper said. “She already told you she’s here because she wants to be.”

“Bloodrunner Dragon,” the officer said.

“Harper, please.”

He inhaled deeply and rested his hands on his hips, right near his holstered weapon. “Harper. We don’t want any trouble, but we have an entire community convinced she’s been taken from them and brainwashed. The calls have been relentless, and then there is a video that has caused some concern. The detective handling her case is on his way from Damascus right now, and in order to clear all this up, we have to bring her in. We don’t want any trouble. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Weston Novak, we’ll need you to come in as well.”

“What the fuck? They aren’t going anywhere,” Ryder exclaimed, taking a step off the porch.

“Ryder, stand down.” The power in Harper’s voice brushed through Avery, rocking her on her feet.

Instinctively, she hunched her shoulders and ducked her gaze, but the quieter of the two officers was watching her with a concerned frown.

“Ms. Foley, it’s okay. We’re here to help you.”

“But I don’t want to leave. I have a house and I have people, and my hair isn’t done.” Avery showed them her half braid. Her cheeks flushed with heat, and she stared at the ground, fiddling with the ends of the braid. “I’m tired and I want to go to sleep in ten-ten, and I want to wake up and all this be over with.” Her voice crumpled to nothing, and then she began to cry.

Weston hugged her up tight, rubbed her back, and pressed his lips to the top of her head. “I can come with her?” he asked.

“Yeah,” the taller police officer said. “We need you both to come in.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

“I know, darlin’,” Weston murmured against her ear. “But I’ll be right there. I won’t let anything happen to you. We’ll answer their questions, and then I’ll bring you right back home, okay?”

“Swear?”

He chuckled like she was cute. “I swear.” Easing back, he ticked his finger under her chin. “Come on, little phoenix. You’ve got this.”

She tried to smile, but her lip trembled instead.

“Okay?” Weston asked.

She nodded and let him lead her down the steps by the hand. The quiet police officer helped her into the back of the police car, and she slid all the way over to make room for Weston. But the officer shut the door before he got in.

“Wait,” she said, knocking on the window frantically. “There’s been a mistake!”
Knock, knock, knock.
“He’s supposed to be with me!”