AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I was getting real sick and tired of him watching me like that. At least this time he wasn't watching me like I was his prey. Instead, he appeared to be studying me and he looked confused. At least there was that.
"Do you know why I haven't stepped in to stop this?" he asked me in that sweet voice of his, a voice so at odds with his appearance it wasn't even funny. I didn't want to like anything about him and certainly not something like his voice.
I shook my head. "No," I said, shifting uncomfortably. "Was I supposed to?"
My guys hadn't told me much about the other covens except to tell me about some of the women before. I would like to think that they might have told me the key points if they'd known we were going to be ambushed by them tonight. I thought I might be fooling myself with that one though, because they liked to keep me in the dark as much as possible.
Raven looked away from me as he crossed his thick arms over his chest. He watched as Julian dragged a seemingly unconscious Annabell by her ankles off toward the swing she'd been on earlier when I'd first noticed her.
"She came tovisitmy coven before she went to stay with the one you're with now. I didn't fall for her tricks and knew immediately that I didn't want anything to do with her. Some of my guys fell though, and they fell hard. She does good work, I'll give her that much. She only stayed with us for about two months off and on, and my coven wanted to keep her, like, really keep her and have her join our family. I was opposed to it and tried to warn them off from her. They didn't listen and when the time came to ask her to stay she laughed in their faces."
He turned back to me with gleaming eyes and a look so brutal that I almost took a step back, even when I knew that look had absolutely nothing to do with me.
"You see," he rasped out, "my coven isn't abundantly wealthy. We have money because we work hard for it and have a business we run amongst us. That wasn't good enough for her and she called my coven peasants as she laughed at us. She got them to fall in love with her, tried to manipulate them into doing her bidding and, when they didn't, she laughed in their faces as she broke their hearts. They're so closed off now from people that the thought of inviting someone new into our coven would not go over well amongst them."
I could believe that of Annabell.
Unceremoniously, Julian dropped Annabell onto the swing. Her back landed hard and the side of her head smacked against the wooden arm. She was definitely going to have a lump there tomorrow and a wicked headache. Dash was right behind him with Rachel and he tossed her on to the swing beside Annabell. Rachel's head fell into the other woman's lap as her feet landed on the grass.
I turned away from them.
"Then why are you here?" I asked in an accusing voice. "If you know your coven is so against the idea of someone new, then why are you here? You made it sound like earlier that you're here for me. Why? That makes no sense to me."
"Me either," Tyson said under his breath.
"Because you're different."
"How would you know that?" I shot back.
"Everyone is talking about you," he answered. "Didn't you know that? Adrian has been spreading stories about you far and wide to anyone who will listen. We're just the first of the covens who are going to come and see you, who are going to want more than just to take a peek at you. The way Adrian tells it, you're something incredibly special, the likes of which we've never seen before. He claims you're different because of how you were raised and that because you've been forced to suffer so much abuse that you're a survivor now, and stronger than the rest of our females. He says you're sweet too, not a bitch who demands everything be handed to her on a silver platter like that one over there. He says you're like our women of old before we watched them all die, went into hiding, and everything about our culture changed."
My heart rate sped up the more he spoke. He had to be wrong. There was absolutely no way Adrian had been saying those things to people about me. No fucking way.
"You're lying," I croaked out past a suddenly dry throat.
If he wasn't lying then my life would never be the same again. I'd always be on display, and they'd all come to look at me like I was some kind of freak and they'd all want something from me.
Raven turned his big body to face mine as his hands dropped from his chest down to his sides. Tyson's arm lowered from where it'd been wrapped around me and he moved to stand slightly in front of me, between Raven and myself. I was grateful for his presence and that he'd put himself in the middle.
"I'm not a liar," he said softly," and Adrian, as it turns out, wasn't lying about you either. You are different and special. There's something very refreshing about you and I know if the rest of the others of my coven got to meet you, they would see it right away as well. I'll be sticking around for the next few weeks and I'm going to make it a point to visit with you often. I'm just being honest and putting it out there because I'm not an asshole, and I'm not going to hide anything from you or your current coven. I'm telling you right now, I want you to join my coven and I'm going to put in the effort to get to know you and you to know me, so that you can make an informed decision." He shrugged his thick shoulders. "If, in the end, you say no, I will accept that and hope we can part as friends... Good friends, of course."
He grinned at me, big and slightly manic.
This conversation had taken a turn for the worst and I was done with it.
Rain stepped up behind Raven, his dead eyes filled with rage and a nasty snarl on his face. He raised his hand and plunged the needle in it into the side of Raven's neck. He pushed the plunger down, pulled the needle free, and stepped back.
Raven's eyes rolled back into his head and he went down like a sack of potatoes. Neither Tyson or Rain moved to grab him before he hit the ground.
Marcus moved in to our little huddle and bent over to pick Raven up from under his arms. He dragged him around the side of the table and sat him up on the seat he'd occupied during dinner. Marcus took a step back, and we all stood there in silence as we watched Raven tip to the side and fall to the ground.
Marcus shrugged in a gesture that screamedwhat can you doand walked away.
"This is one of the weirdest nights of my whole life," I groaned, and that was saying something, because there had been several doozies in there.
A commotion at the back of the motel had me turning to face the building in time to see everyone else we were missing come running out.
"We got what we were looking for," Damien said, as he came to a stop in front of the table. He held a stack of papers high and waved it at the rest of us. "Everything on the hunters that they had, we made copies of."
