“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.”