All she had to do was convince the council she was off the table for a match and make sure the Novak Raven never found out about her.
Big Flight ATV Tours was her ticket to freedom.
Chapter Two
“Excuse me,” Weston Novak said to the woman in front of him. He handed her the purse she’d let slip from her shoulder and onto the ground. “You dropped this.”
The woman in front of Weston turned and seemed to look right through him. It was her eyes that made him stop walking. They were hollow and so sad, so hopeless, that a heaviness settled over him. She began walking again without taking the purse he offered. City lights illuminated the night on the other side of the bridge they were walking on, and the recent rain made the asphalt under his feet shiny and reflective. No cars were driving on the bridge, and up ahead, the woman’s long, floral sundress whipped around her ankles. Why wasn’t she wearing shoes?
Weston’s fingers moved on their own, rifling through her purse. Stop! He pulled out a wallet and opened the button, flipped through a plastic sleeve of pictures. There was one of a smiling man with a beard and thinning hair, and one of a little blond boy. There was another picture of all three of them, and the woman’s beaming smile was genuine. She was happy. So what had changed? Why did her eyes harbor a thousand ghosts now?
The next plastic sleeve held a folded newspaper article. Weston pulled it out. Why couldn’t he stop himself?
Slowly, he unfolded it and read the headline and first few sentences. It was an obituary.
No. Weston looked up at the woman. Her shoulders were shaking, and she was wiping her cheeks on the thin sleeve of her dress as she walked away. She’d lost her little boy.
“Ma’am,” Weston warned as she climbed onto the railing. Shit. “Ma’am!” He bolted for her. She was sobbing uncontrollably now, chanting the little boy’s name, chanting how sorry she was.
This couldn’t be happening! He reached her in time and grabbed her hand, but his fingertips went right through hers as though he was an apparition. No, no, no.
“Look at me!” he yelled. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll make sure it’s okay. Just come down. Let me take you home!”
Balanced with her back to the churning water far below, she was looking at something right over his head. She couldn’t see him at all.
“Jean!” he yelled, reciting the name from the obituary. She’d survived her child. No parent should go through this. Weston scrabbled at her legs, her arms, anywhere, desperate to be solid. To pull her back down and hold her and tell her everything would be okay eventually, even if it was a lie. Even if he knew she would never get over this, she had to live. “Jean, please look at me!”
Jean’s face fell, and tears streamed down her cheeks like rivers, and then she did. She lowered her gaze and looked right at Weston, right into his soul. “Thanks for being here,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to do it alone.”
And then she launched herself off the bridge.
“Noooo!” Weston screamed, bolting upright in bed.
His skin was cold and clammy, and his legs were all tangled up in the sheets. Desperately, he kicked out of them and rolled over, buried his face against the pillow, and yelled as loud and as long as he could. His voice grew hoarse, but it didn’t help release the vision of Jean from his mind. She was a stranger, and he hadn’t been able to help her. She was probably alive still, but he’d done this over and over, tried to fix the future, and every time, he somehow made it worse. If he tried to save Jean, she would still take her own life, and it would be even more gruesome. His visions were non-negotiable. They existed for no fucking reason other than to torture him with fates he couldn’t change. With people he couldn’t help. He punched the mattress over and over as hard as he could. Then stood and ripped the lamp cord out of the wall and chucked the lamp at the doorframe. It shattered, but still didn’t erase the prophesy.
He needed to Change. He needed to Change and fly, drink himself to oblivion, or do something that could remove the image of her streaming tears, of the hopelessness in her hollow eyes from of his mind.
He fucking hated the sight. Hated it. His father had had it, and his grandmother, too. He’d thought it had skipped him, but six months ago he saw his alpha in a dream, telling him to come home. Since Weston had come to Harper’s Mountains, the floodgates had been opened.
He wasn’t okay.
His phone vibrated on the nightstand, and for a moment, he considered throwing that, too, just to hear the satisfying sound of it shattering against the wall. But there was already a massive mess of glass shards to clean up, and his cell phone was ringing again. Maybe whoever it was could be his savior.
“Hello,” he answered in a scratchy voice.
“H-hello? Did I wake you?”
Weston glared at the glowing green time on the alarm clock. 6:15. The answer should’ve been ‘yes,’ but Jean had woken him first. “No. Who is this? No, wait. Don’t tell me.” Talking to a stranger would be better.
“Okay.” There was a long pause before she murmured, “Are you okay?”
No. “Yeah, I’m fine, just…” He sank down on the bed and ran his hand over his face. “Do you ever have bad dreams?”
“Uuuh.” Static sounded on the phone. “Sometimes. I used to have them more when I was a kid.”
“I never had them until I grew up.”
“Did you have one tonight?” she asked. Her voice was pretty. Soft and hesitant, but with a clear tone. She probably sang well.