Novak Raven (Harper's Mountains #4)(21)

Weston’s smile grew wicked. “Because you went to a bar tonight and held your own with dragons and grizzlies.”

Avery gulped. “Dragons plural?” she squeaked out.

Weston shot her an incredulous look. “Yeah, Harper and Kane.”

“Kane’s a dragon?” she said too loudly.

Weston chuckled. “He’s the last Blackwing Dragon. We call him Dark Kane. I shit you not, I watched that man almost kill Ryder’s * dad with his bare hands in front of an entire bar of people. He’s not a shifter you f*ck with…” Weston’s voice darkened as he added, “But he seemed to like you just fine.”

She remembered how nervous Kane had seemed outside of the bar and how he’d told her he liked to hide, too. So even big, lethal, terrifying shifters had insecurities. The last Blackwing Dragon had bought her drinks and been nice to her. Come to think of it, the Bloodrunners had all been nice to her. Sure, they could rip her from limb to limb with zero effort, but not once had they given into the urge to put a smaller shifter in its place. Not once had they treated her like she was less-than. The more time she spent with shifters outside of Raven’s Hollow, the more she thought the council was expertly manipulating all the ravens who lived in their community just to create fear. But why? To keep the ravens in line? To keep them too scared to ask questions? To keep the females dependent?

They were wrong about so much.

Avery gave her attention to the thick greenery blurring by her window, just on the edge of the headlight illumination. “I think you were lucky to be raised in the Gray Backs.” She couldn’t even imagine Weston as one of the chauvinistic jerks in Raven’s Hollow. Instead, he’d been raised by a strong woman, while surrounded by other strong women. Hell, Weston’s alpha was a woman. Before Harper established the Bloodrunners, Avery had never met a female alpha. They existed, and she’d heard stories of them, but she’d never seen that dynamic for herself.

The road wound through the Smoky Mountains, edged by a river on one side and jutting cliffs covered in blankets of ivy on the other. In some places, long vines hung from the towering trees like green snakes. Some vines were even long enough to brush the top of the truck.

Mom lied.

Avery winced away from the thought she’d been avoiding. From the betrayal. She just wanted to look at the scenery, really see how beautiful this place was, instead of give into all the dark truths of her life scratching at her heart. Crossing her arms over her chest like armor, she tried and failed to keep the stupid wisps of disappointment at bay. She was born to tempt the Novak Raven? That was insane. And horrible. Her parents had raised her not as a person, but as a means to an end. As a weapon. As a harpoon, aimed straight for the shifter they wanted to drag in close.

And for what? Maybe the flock was getting low on genetics. A lot of the marriage contracts looked at that now. Benjamin had to get the council’s approval on her lineage before he was allowed to submit a marriage contract to her father. Maybe that was it. Maybe they needed a new genetic line in Raven’s Hollow. Maybe they wanted the son of Beaston and Aviana to start a new line of War Birds, or perhaps they would get him there and pair him with a submissive female and breed the dominance out of the Novak line. Whatever their reasons, she hated them. Weston had been lucky to live a life outside of The Hollow, and they had tried to use her to draw him close. She felt fiercely protective over his freedom, as she was of her own.

Like Weston could hear her dreary thoughts, he slid his hand comfortingly over her leg and squeezed it.

“I’m really sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t know. I thought I hid your letters well, but maybe my parents gave them to the council while I was at school or…I don’t know. My dad is desperate to raise his rank, and he’s been talking about gunning for a council seat for years, but I had no idea I was a part of any of that. I just thought I was allowed to have a friend to talk to outside of Raven’s Hollow. I thought you were just for me, but apparently I was wrong. Every time I think of you being hurt in all of this, I get this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach.”

“Avery, it’s okay—”

“I kept writing to you,” she blurted out before she could change her mind.

“What?” His frown was back, and his eyes sparked with confusion.

“It felt good to write everything going on in my life down on paper, and when we parted ways, I still craved that connection. I still wanted to feel like I had a friend, so I wrote to you like nothing ever happened. Like the meeting went well. I know it’s stupid, I do, and I never intended to send them. It just”—she shrugged her shoulders up to her ears—“felt good to not be alone.”

“Fuck.” Weston shook his head for a long time.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, afraid she’d offended him.

“Don’t apologize to me anymore, okay? I don’t want you saying sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong. I f*cked up. I should’ve trusted you over what I was being told—”

“You were just a kid—”

“I was old enough, Avery! I was old enough to question what people were telling me. Yeah, my mom was right, and the council had bad motives, but you didn’t have anything to do with that. I’d been writing to you for years, I’d built up trust with you, and the second someone told me you betrayed me, I believed them. Just like that.” Weston looked sick in the dim light. “I used to give Ryder so much hell for how loyal he was. I did. But I should’ve tried to be more like him instead. I was the wrong one. I was the one who should’ve stuck with you. I’m the one who should be apologizing, so don’t say that word anymore to me, Avery, okay? You don’t have to say sorry anymore.”