The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1)(105)

Silver and Alex’s story is far from over. The Rebel of Raleigh High started out as a standalone story, but as I neared the end of the book it became very apparent that they weren’t done telling their tale. In light of this, there will be a further book coming out (fingers crossed) in late June.

If you’re interested in finding out what Alex and Monty have planned for Jacob Weaving, and if you want to know what happens with Ben, then keep an eye out for the cover reveal and title announcement that will be coming soon on facebook and other social media platforms. I promise I won’t keep you waiting long.

Once more, thank you for reading this book. It was a labor of love to write, and I adored these characters and connected with them on such a base level. Their struggle and their plight to overcome resonated with me as I wrote, and it’s my sincere hope that it spoke to you in some way, too.



All my love,



Callie x



P.S. Keep on turning the pages for a VERY special surprise!





Surprise!





Yes, that’s right! Coming in late August, Zeth Mayfair will be getting an entirely new book, and this chapter in his journey is going to blow some minds!

Want a little taste? Who am I to refuse…

Enjoy!



PROLOGUE





The acrid tang of Gasoline bites at the back of my nose. Tonight, death lingers on the cold mid-winter Seattle air. Somewhere, across the snow-laden winter city, a woman is dying in a pool of her own blood. She’s alone, her fingers half-curled around a crucifix, her dark hair spun out around her head like a sheet of rumpled black silk. The light in her eyes is fading, the pulse fluttering in the hollow of her throat gradually slowing. Her cheeks, normally flushed with all the brightness and enthusiasm of youth, are leeching of color, turning waxy and sallow.

It’s within my power to save this woman.

It’s possible to stem the flow of her vital life force before it evacuates her body beyond the point of no return.

I’m the only person who can bring her back from the brink.

But I don’t.

I turn my back on the steaming, surging, churning city, and I face the mountain at my back instead. I’ve been standing still for so long that the leather of my jacket crackles with ice as I twist around and look up into the looming darkness.

Not too long ago, a house stood on the side of this mountain. A woman lived there. A doctor. I somehow came to find myself there, too, pulled out of the filth and the muck of my own miserable existence and allowed to exist within her orbit, a miracle I never envisioned for myself. We had a life together there, within that house. A strange, off-kilter, chaotic kind of life, but also peaceful. Also, wonderful.

We created a life there.

Not just a routine, or a home.

An actual life.

Ten fingers.

Ten toes.

Intense, fierce brown eyes, and wild, dark curls.

A tiny body, bursting with so much potential and promise.

All of it gone now.

All of it shade, and dust, and ashes, and smoke…

Yes, on the other side of the city, with shards of ice forming within the narrow canals of my veins and the marrow of my bones gripped by frost, I ignore the pleas of my conscience and I allow a woman to die.

She deserves her fearful, sour, undignified death.

She deserves so much worse.

My hand closes around the gun in my pocket, the metal lamenting as my grip tightens around the handle; it’s as if the weeping steel knows what comes next. As if it somehow senses all of the pain and destruction I am about to cause with its sleek, cool, heavy form in my grasp.

It can’t know, though. How can it? It’s just a gun. It’s enough that I know what will happen over the next few hours, and days, and weeks.

Men will die.

Mothers will lose their sons.

Children will be orphaned.

Even more blood will flow, until the snowdrifts of the mountainside and the heaped white snowbanks of the winter city are marred and stained a brutal shade of red.

No matter the cold. The whole world will burn before I’m through with it.

There will be no rest.

There will be no hesitation.

There will be no mercy.

For the black-hearted few who took that most precious from me…I am the apocalypse. I am the darkness. I am the night.

I am the storm that will not be weathered.



CHAPTER ONE





ZETH





Once upon a time…



That’s how all good fairytales start. A princess lies asleep for a hundred years, awaiting the kiss of her one true love to waken her from her slumber. A beautiful young woman is cruelly oppressed by her evil step mother, only to be rescued by a fairy godmother and a magical glass slipper. A child visits her ailing grandmother, bringing her food and drink, only to discover an interloper masquerading as an old woman in her bed.

This story is far removed from those tales of whimsy. For starters, there’s no magic here. None of what follows hereafter is make-believe. Good does not always win out. The righteous do not always overcome. The vile and the wicked are not always punished.

Will there be a happy ending? Who knows? Our rough accounting of what happened in Seattle this winter has only just begun and not yet reached its climax. But one thing’s for certain: this story will deliver everything and nothing, depending on your heart’s desire.