Not in your heart. Not in your soul.
Sometimes I wonder if I even have one to have so easily killed those men, to have found that violence and been able to execute them without a second thought in those moments.
Raven did her damnedest to convince me otherwise more than once since we’ve been up the mountain. Telling me it was about survival. Insisting it was a primal protective instinct to defend my land and my people.
But it was more than that.
That’s why I left the first time. That’s why I kept leaving. That’s why I made the decision to permanently move to the top of the mountain.
Because something changed inside me that night.
It awoke something dark that terrifies me and should terrify everyone around me. Especially the woman who slept so soundly in my arms, as if she was in the safest place imaginable instead of wrapped around a killer.
The farther I move away from the hunting cabin and Raven, the harder it becomes to keep myself moving forward instead of turning back. Even though I know she’s safe there, that it’s probably the only place on the East Coast the Lorells can’t get to her, I can’t shake this sense of dread in my gut.
Maybe because this has been coming for weeks and now it’s finally time to unleash her story and face the music with Killian and Liam, not to mention Willow and Lucky when they learn the truth.
Still, I force myself to keep moving through the trees, picking my way down some of the steepest terrain of the mountain back toward where we left the ATV that will get me all the way down to the homestead much faster.
While I’m dreading the confrontation that I know is coming with my brothers—it’s what this will do to Lucky that will really hurt.
She’s finally settled into life on the mountain. After carrying around so much guilt, she is finally learning to let go of the past and move on from what happened with Lorell. She and Liam are happy with their little Gremlin running around, biting ankles.
This is going to shatter her new sense of home and safety all over again.
It’s going to be a terrible reminder of what she brought with her unwittingly, of what she was running from when she stumbled upon McBride Mountain and fell into Liam’s arms.
I thought it was ridiculous how quickly those two became attached. Their feelings for each other developed so fast that he was ready to die to protect her within literally weeks of meeting her. But considering how much the way I’ve felt about Raven has changed in only the last two weeks, I guess I can’t say that anymore without being a fucking hypocrite.
Because things have certainly changed…
And despite me wishing otherwise, it’s about more than just sex. More than just being with someone because they’re there, it’s convenient, and it feels fucking incredible and fulfills that base human need for sexual release.
It would be so much easier if that were all it was.
But Raven isn’t the same woman I brought up the mountain.
That one hated me. She had let her adolescent hurt and anger over one night build into something that consumed her as an adult. And I let her hatred spur my own in return, never realizing the root cause.
I didn’t even think she remembered that night. Yet it was somehow the one that turned both of us into who we were when I threw her over my shoulder and dragged her up to my secret refuge.
Somehow, she became one for me.
What happens when the story hits?
It can’t change the past, but it might be able to change the future.
For all of us.
I may never be able to sleep on the homestead again, but maybe everyone else will be able to without worrying about what’s coming in the night.
You won’t sleep again in the hunting cabin, either.
Not after she leaves…
My chest tightens merely thinking about it, so I push it aside and pick up my pace. The quicker I get to the homestead, the quicker I can get back up. For once, my desire to race back up the mountain has nothing to do with escaping my bloody recent past or fleeing from my demons, it’s about running toward a confusing, unknown future I want to figure out.
The roar of the rapids hits my ears as the late morning sun finally starts to trickle through the canopy and burn away the last of the fog.
