AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I hadn’t felt this weak in a very long time. I almost reconsidered exploring and climbed back into the very comfortable bed but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I did. I wouldn't be able to quiet my mind no matter how hard I tried and I’d just lay there while my mind raced on in a million different directions.
I gave myself a minute and then stood up again. This time my legs were steady beneath me.
I shuffled my feet across the plush carpet and peeked out around the door and into a hallway.
It was empty but it also wasn’t what I had been expecting. The hallway was long but there was a railing all along it that opened up to the downstairs.
I tiptoed to the railing and peeked over. This was not my idea of a normal house from what I had read in books. It was large and open down there and I could see practically everything.
There was a long table with chairs all around it. Rain was seated at the table and it was like he had some crazy superpowers because as soon as I looked down his eyes shot right up to me. I wanted to shrink back and hide from him but it was too late, he’d already seen me.
He was bold, I’d give him that. He raised his fingers and gave a jaunty little wave. Everyone else at the table turned to look up at me.
Gods damn it.
I scowled at the man for ruining my plans but it only made him smile broader. I bet he drove both his daughter and his girlfriend insane.
“Come join us, Autumn,” he called up to me. “I’ll have Raven fix you a cup of coffee, assuming you drink coffee that is.”
My eyes shot to the man I remembered from before, assuming he was Raven. He dipped his head towards me in acknowledgment.
So his name was Raven. I couldn’t remember if he’d told me before or not. Pain has a way of clouding the mind and my time tied to the tree was a little hazy.
I knew I would like to try coffee though. It had been a delicacy in camp and only something the Elders had been allowed to drink. I knew it really was not though and there had been some days in the winter where my body had been so cold I would have traded a lot for a cup of something hot to warm my belly, no matter how bitter it was rumored to be.
I was not cold right now but I felt like I wasn’t exactly in a position to refuse Rain’s subtly challenging request. He’d been fishing for answers in my room and I knew he hadn’t liked my silent treatment very much. This was his way of putting me on the spot to see what he could get out of me with an audience.
A room full of strangers and then there was me.
Oh, I’d definitely say I minded being put on the spot by one Rain Kimber.
By the look on his face he knew I was uncomfortable and he was highly amused by it. What an odd man.
I changed my opinion of him right then and there. I was no longer intimidated by the man. But I did think he was kind of an arrogant asshole and I bet both his daughter and his girlfriend wanted to smack him upside the head from time to time.
I knew I certainly wanted to right then.
I dipped my head as I headed down the open hallway towards the stairs. I was never one to back down from a challenge and that’s exactly what this man had been attempting to do to me since the moment I’d woken up in that foreign bed.
I held on tightly to the handrail as I very slowly and carefully descended the stairs. I did not want to trip and fall down the stairs just to land in a heap at the bottom of them in front of these strangers. Normally I wouldn’t care what these people thought of me, hell, my own people practically hated my guts and barely tolerated me on a good day, but for whatever reason I didn’t want to make a fool of myself in front of these men.
Which was stupid because they meant absolutely nothing to me.
Was I really so sad and desperate and lonely that I now cared what complete strangers thought of me?
I desperately wanted to reach up and touch the strange markings on my face that I had always been cursed with my whole life. What did they think of them? Did they think me just as much of a freak as the people I had been around my entire life?
For some reason that thought made me unbearably sad.
I had never really stood a chance in this life. There was no place for me to fit in anywhere.
I now had no people to call my own and never really had.
No coven.
No family.
No longer even in a place in the forest to call home.
