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Rain and Romero had been watching him like he was a bomb waiting to blow.
I didn’t like it, it put me on edge. We were already walking into a place that gave me the creeps and we didn’t need to add anymore unknowns to the mix.
“You want to keep her,” Mason said as he turned around in his seat to stare back at me. There was no accusation in his tone or on his face.
And it was quickly becoming a fact.
“Why not?” Gunner said. “She’s beautiful and she clearly needs a safe place to be. We can offer her that safe place. She should stay.”
I hummed noncommittally under my breath. I had plenty of thoughts but none that I was ready to share with them just yet.
“All female witches need a safe place to stay,” Scout interjected. “It doesn’t mean we should be the one to give her one.”
“You don’t like her?” Liam asked curiously as he turned away from the window.
“I don’t know her,” Scout shot back heatedly, “And neither do you. Just because you’re curious about her doesn’t mean we have to keep her in order to study her. She’s not a pet.”
“No,” Liam shot back angrily in a heated voice. “She’s a powerful witch that’s obviously spent her entire life being abused, doesn’t understand how the real world works, and she could use some people to look out for her while she figures it out. We found her first, so why shouldn’t we be the one’s who get to look out for her while she figures everything out? Yes, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m curious about her, but it’s not just that. I’m sick and tired of coming across these beautiful but broken women and I’d offer up our home to all of them if I could because they all deserve to know how it feels to be safe for once in their lives. I’m sick and fucking tired of it. Enough is enough.”
The rest of the car ride was silent while we digested his words.
Liam very rarely lost his cool and this little outburst was out of character for him. But I completely understood why he was so upset.
We’d seen it time and time again and enough really was enough.
All witches deserved a safe place in the world where they didn’t have to worry about simply existing.
“That’s why we’re here, brother,” Mason finally said in a gentle voice.
I sighed. Yes, that was mostly why we were here.
I was here because I couldn’t get the sight of seeing a naked and bleeding woman tied to a tree out of my mind and there was a good probability that image would never go away. She had to have been terrified. And she still wouldn’t turn her back on them.
It made me sick to my stomach. That kind of loyalty should never be abused in such a way and it made me horribly nervous for her for what she would be like with her future relationships. She would need careful watching over until she came into her own.
“We’re here.”
Fuck.
Time to get my head in the game and focus. My coven needed me to have their back. It’s what a good leader did, they always looked out for their people first and foremost.
And I was going to treat Autumn like she was one of my people. Probably even after she left us. That was how loyalty worked.
I had a feeling I wasn’t the only one.
We got out of the SUV and met up with Rain and his crew.
“So, what now?”
Rain laid it all out for us. Go in soft. Try not to scare anyone. Figure out who was in charge. Try to get them out of the woods and somewhere more stable so they can be under Rain’s watchful eye where he can contain them or set them up with their new lives.
I didn’t even want to know what contain them meant.
This shit was why we needed to establish a new Council, one where the people were an actual priority instead of something to further be abused. People who could deal with this shit so that we didn’t have to.
Rain didn’t bring up Autumn or how we’d found her and I thought maybe that was for the best, even though it pissed me off.
These people were more likely to tell us the truth if we got them to trust us. That is, if they were anything like Autumn because she was locked up tight.
