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 fucked 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.”
But it wasn’t that easy. She’d been trained to duck her head and apologize for everything. She was twenty-four years old and likely that habit would be one she carried until the day she died. Why? Because she’d been methodically convinced that she was only as good as her ability to secure a high-ranking mate. “Can I ask you a strange question?”
“Sure.”
“What would it mean to you to be the highest ranking man in Raven’s Hollow?”
“Nothing,” he said decisively. “I would rather be the lowest ranking member of the Bloodrunners than the highest ranking member anywhere else.”
A smile stretched her lips. That right there told her so much about Weston. He wasn’t about power, or what others thought about him. He was a decent man who was happy with a simple existence. Who was happy growing his business and taking care of his friends instead of chasing ranks.
“I’m sorry, Avery,” he said suddenly. “Do you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive.” Silly man. She was the one created to hurt him. He’d only reacted to her assumed betrayal like anyone would.
“Can you just say it out loud?” he asked so softly she almost missed it over the roar of his truck engine.
Avery slipped her hand over his on top of her leg and squeezed it gently. “Weston Novak, I forgive you.” She leaned her head back on the seat and gave a private smile to the woods outside her window. He was the first man who had ever apologized to her, but he had been forgiven from the day they’d met all those years ago. Why? Because he’d been so kind to her in the letters. He’d saved her when she was a kid in so many more ways than he would ever understand. When the loneliness of Raven’s Hollow had threatened to swallow her up, she’d read his letters and imagined herself in Damon’s Mountains with him. Weston didn’t know it, but he had always been her beautiful escape.