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Ariel knelt down beside me and immediately reached out to check Liam’s pulse.
“He’s alive,” I stated gruffly. “What are you two doing here?”
She looked at me and smiled, which kind of creeped me out. “Autumn sent us. She told me you needed help and here we are. Though, it looks like you two had it under control and you didn’t actually need us after all. That witch is freaking strong, that’s for sure. And she’s already feeling a connection with your coven. I see good things for you guys with her.”
“Right,” I muttered, unwilling to speak of Autumn while here in this place where she’d been terrorized her whole fucking life. I didn’t know why but it felt wrong to be discussing her here.
“We need to get everyone out of here and back to the truck. And then out of this wretched place.”
Ariel nodded and she stood back up. She closed her eyes and clapped her hands. Vines came down from the trees and began to wrap themselves all around the four men who had attacked my brother.
Ariel clapped her hands again and the vines dragged the men off into the woods.
“Where are they taking them?” I asked her curiously.
“Back to the vehicles. They’ll keep them tied up until we get there. I figured you’d want us to help you carry Liam instead of having him travel like that. This place really has some bad juju though and, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not hang around here any longer than necessary.”
“There might be more of them out here,” Rain said from behind me.
Ariel’s eyes flashed an eery white for a second before turning back to their normal green. “There’s no-one else alive in these woods. The dead have claimed it for themselves. It’s time for us to leave now.”
Well, that wasn’t fucking creepy or anything.
But she was right about one thing. It was time to get the fuck out of these woods.
Hopefully for good this time.
19
Raven
I wanted to kick my own ass for coming on too strong, but god damn, I knew I was right and Autumn belonged with my coven.
She was our missing link and I was going to do everything in my power to make sure she stayed with us and never wanted to leave. After this scare with Liam I wasn’t going to let her slip through our fingertips. Keeping her with us was more important than ever to me.
She’d shut down on me after breakfast the other day and retreated back into the safety of her mind. I should have waited for a better time and done it right with the rest of my coven by my side so they could have told her how much they wanted to keep her too.
And I should have more than probably had a conversation with the rest of them to make sure we were on the same page. There was just too much shit going on and I didn’t want to add anymore stress to their plates. I always tried to take it all on myself. I thought that was part of my job and I loved being the protector.
But I couldn’t help but feel like I might be going about this all the wrong way.
She’d just gone through one trauma after the next and the last thing she probably needed was me trying to push my needy shit at her. She likely needed space and a chance to breathe.
I scowled viciously at everyone in the room around me. This shit was not going to help matters at all either.
Rain had called a meeting in my fucking house like he owned the damn place. And every single person was in attendance.
We were in the library room. It was one of my favorite rooms in the house because I loved the mammoth fire placed that took up half of one wall. Winters here could be brutal and that fire place could heat the whole entire downstairs of this house I had built.
The built in bookshelves were all overstuffed with books of every kind and they reminded me of my grandmother. She’d been a mean old bitch to almost everyone but me. She’d hated her coven and hadn’t been able to choose on her own who she’d ended up with. Instead the Council had chosen for her and she’d ended up with a group of depraved, but incredibly wealthy, assholes.
When she ended up pregnant with my dad she’d had enough and ran away from them. She’d spent the rest of her life in poverty and I’d grown up dirt poor.
That old woman had loved very few things but books had been one of them. She’d passed that love onto me.
Reading used to be my greatest escape. Building my construction company from the ground up into something that meant we’d never be poor ever again took up the majority of my time for years but I always made time to read. Sometimes the mind just needed an escape from reality and it was always my greatest one.
This room always made me feel close to my grandmother. Like her spirit was in here watching over me whenever I spent time in here. Sometimes I even imagined I could smell the scent of her clove cigarettes in the air, choking me.
