Chapter 17
CONNOR
I’ve hiked this path so many times that I could’ve done it easily last night in the dark. But in the thick pre-dawn mist blanketing the trees, a painful sense of regret for leaving Raven this morning settles squarely on my shoulders, so I can only imagine how I would have felt if I hadn’t stayed.
We never would have had that.
Whatever that was last night.
It was different from the other times we’d been together.
More intense. More intimate.
Just…more.
That made it far harder than I thought it would be to wake up with her draped across me and climb out of that bed I shared with her, the only place I’ve found any real peace since everything went down, and to head back to the place where everything feels wrong.
To a homestead that doesn’t seem like home anymore.
To a place where my brothers look at me like I’m a different person than the one they’ve known their entire lives.
Maybe they should.
Because I am.
No one can take lives like that and ever be the same.
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.
I’m close to where I left the ATV now. Only a few more hundred yards—
Voices float through the forest, and I freeze mid-step before I even make it to the clearing I have to cross to get to where I left the small vehicle.
Shit.
There shouldn’t be anyone up here.
The hair on the back of my neck rises, and I listen intently, slowly reaching back for my axe strapped into my backpack—the only weapon I have since I left the gun with Raven.
My hand closes around it, the wood smoothed by years of use slides over my calloused palm as I pull it free.
Footsteps move through the forest, approaching from the river where I just heard the voices. I tighten my grip, prepared for whatever might appear through the trees.
But a familiar face I haven’t seen in years steps from them, hands raised and a smirk curling his lips.
Barrett fucking Briggs…
His blue gaze sweeps over me, then stops on the axe. “I promise I don’t bite unless you ask nicely.”
“Barrett?”
The youngest of the Briggs brothers walks forward and holds out a hand for me to shake, and I transfer the axe into my left one to accept the gesture. I can’t help but notice the new scar that runs from his left temple down, beside his eye, and almost all the way to his mouth.
In the weeks since I left with Raven, I had pushed my conversation with Liam at the lumberyard to the back of my mind and hadn’t even thought about the return of Barrett and Tripp Briggs. “Liam said you were back…”
He nods slowly, scanning me up and down again, that gaze more intense and deeply assessing than I remember it from back in high school before he left for the military. “And you’ve been missing.”
Shit.
Tony’s warning only a few weeks ago that he was about to send out a search party rings in my ears.
“Not missing, just…”
Hiding?
That word doesn’t feel right, either, yet that’s exactly what I was doing up there with Raven.
I was hiding from the Lorells, from the McBrides, from the world.
I was pretending none of it existed every time I kissed Raven.
Every time I slid my cock inside her.
Every time I looked at her and wasn’t asking myself what would happen the moment we went back down the mountain because I couldn’t consider the possibility that things might return to the way they were.
Barrett watches me. “Well, if you aren’t missing, then I don’t know what me and Tony and your brothers have been doing on the mountain. Playing a long-ass game of hide and seek?”
Fuck.
“Is that why you’re up here? Looking for me?”
He nods. “And Raven Perry, who also vanished. Your brother is at the river.”
“Shit.” I run my free hand over my bearded jaw. “Which one?”
“Killian.”
Double shit.
There’s no escaping it now.
Barrett grins at me as he leads me out of the woods, almost as if he’s enjoying knowing Killian is about to tear into me. Considering the way the Briggs brothers were always doing the same growing up, his humor isn’t in any way malicious.
We step through the treeline and into the same clearing where we found Willow. Killian stands talking to Tony animatedly, but he turns at our approach.
I can practically feel the rush of relief as he releases a breath and stalks across the grass and wildflowers toward me. But that relief quickly morphs into an iciness in his gaze and clenching of his fists.
Barrett moves toward his brother, giving us some space. He may have been gone for years, but some things never change—especially how volatile Killian gets when he looks like that.
“Where the hell have you been?” Killian practically snarls at me, his anger making his nostrils flare. “Raven’s missing. We could have used your help instead of wasting our time having to look for your dumb ass, too.”
I wince and brace myself for the onslaught that is about to hit me. “She’s not missing. She’s been with me.”
“What?” His blond brows fly up. “Why the fuck was Raven with you?”
His anger is completely warranted.
I didn’t tell anyone I was taking her up the mountain because I didn’t want someone to inadvertently lead the Lorells to us or be put in danger themselves by just having the information of our whereabouts.
Keeping her safe meant keeping everyone else in the dark.
But it also meant they’ve been panicking this entire time, believing something happened to her.
They’re used to me disappearing.
Not Raven.
“It’s a long story, Killian. I can explain everything, but I need to tell you, Tony, and Barrett together.”
He glances back at them, then turns his narrowed gaze on me. “What the hell is going on, Connor?”