Chapter 17 Avery
AVERY
Clara’s smile was brilliant as she gave me the most enthusiastic wave I’d ever received. “Hi, Avery! How are you?”
“I’m good,” I replied slowly as I took in the car’s dark interior.
Clara was perched on the cream leather of the passenger seat, dressed in a lacy camisole and trendy dark jeans.
Another teenage girl sat behind the wheel, this one wearing a vintage Nirvana T-shirt that had somehow been cut into a flattering crop top.
She had auburn hair and familiar bright green eyes.
“What in the world are you doing here?” I asked.
Clara held up her phone. A location-sharing app was on the screen. “Stalking my brothers, of course.”
“Stalking your brothers,” I repeated dumbly. “Um, why?”
The redhead leaned over the center console. “So this is Avery, huh? The Avery who sliced Paul Blankenship into ribbons?”
Clara beamed at me with pride. “Yep.”
“Badass,” the redhead said, nodding her approval. “That guy is such a prick. Why haven’t you sic’d her on the Nelsons, C?”
“Avery is not an assassin for hire, Willow. She’s going to be a Guardian.”
“Hey,” I said, attempting a redirect. “Why are you stalking your brothers to a bar you aren’t old enough to get into, Clara? Are you in trouble again?”
“Oh, no,” she said quickly, waving a dismissive hand. “It’s just—”
“Willow!”
A very angry bear was marching toward the car.
“Ah, fuck,” Willow huffed, slumping behind the wheel.
Wyatt appeared at the driver’s side window, his face livid. “What are you doing here, Willow?”
She raised her chin and tossed a casual arm over the steering wheel. “None of your business.”
He gripped the window ledge and leaned in, narrowing his eyes at what he saw in the backseat. “Winona? Are you fucking serious right now?”
Now that he mentioned it, there was, in fact, an even younger teenage girl in the backseat. She had strawberry blonde hair that hung in stick-straight sheets around her face, a contrast to her sister’s—because yes, these had to be Wyatt’s sisters—wild red curls.
“Whatever, Wyatt,” Winona drawled. “I’m allowed to be in the car with Willow in a parking lot.”
“Don’t bullshit me,” he snapped. “You three were going to sneak into the bar. How were you planning to manage that?”
Willow held up what looked like her driver’s license. “By walking through the front door with ye olde fake ID, obviously,” she replied, giving it a flick.
He made a grab for it, but she snatched it away. “Willow, for the love of the fucking Moon,” he growled. “I expect this from you, but Winona is fifteen.”
“Like you didn’t get up to way worse stuff when you were my age,” Winona said indignantly. “I remember when Mom caught you sneaking two half-naked girls and a bong into the pool house on Christmas Eve.”
Wyatt heaved a long-suffering sigh, and his eyes met mine over the top of Willow’s head, frustration and guilt brewing in his gaze. He probably came out here looking for me, since I’d left the bar after the lovely reminder of his transgressions with Callista.
I locked the cage on my beast and returned his look with stone-cold nothingness.
“Our plans have changed anyway,” Willow announced. “Go away, Wyatt. We want to hang out with Avery.”
Wyatt squinted at her. “Why?”
“It’s girl talk!” Clara said brightly. “We’re not going into the bar.
You can tell my brothers we’re just going to hang out with Avery for a minute, since I haven’t seen her at all since that night, you know?
” She gave him a sad little look and wrung her hands.
“Please? Then we’ll go back to Gale Manor. Promise.”
Wyatt was no match for the big pleading eyes of the angel among the little devils in the car.
“Fine. But if I catch you three anywhere near a bar or club on this street, I will be escorting you home to explain yourselves to Mom.” He looked at Clara.
“And you will get to explain yourself to Heath. He’s not in the mood, I promise you. ”
“Yes, yes, we get it,” Willow said, shooing him away from the car. “Go waste your money on beer that won’t get you drunk and let the girls paw at you or whatever it is you like to do in bars.”
He clenched his jaw and straightened his posture. He sent one last dark look my way. “I want to talk to you later, Wildcat.”
As if my stare could get any more glacial.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you!” Winona hollered from the back.
I pointed at her. “What she said.”
“I mean it,” he growled.
I opened the car door, slid into the backseat next to Winona, then slammed the door.
Willow cackled. “Bye-bye, big brother.”
She cranked the wheel and hit the gas.
I fumbled for my seat belt and then clicked it into place right as Willow peeled out of the parking lot.
I was beginning to regret my split-second decision to jump into a small sports car driven by a seventeen-year-old just to avoid Wyatt when Willow finally slowed to a normal speed.
She paused for an appropriate amount of time at a stop sign, and then we pulled onto a quieter street that was lined by quaint antique stores and coffee shops that’d long since closed for the night.
Clara turned around in her seat to grin at me. “This is nice. We never get to hang out.”
“Clara,” I said, giving her a pointed look. “Why are you guys stalking your brothers?”
“Because they’ve been acting weird,” Winona said. “All four of them have been staying at our house, you know. They were there for weeks before you guys all went to camp, and they’ve been back on some of your nights off. We’re just investigating.”
“Weird how?” I asked.
“Well, um….” Clara chewed her lip, considering her next words. “You remember how my dads are making me bond soon?”
“Yes,” I replied darkly. “Have you had more bad dates? Do you need to come stay in my cabin? I have an extra bed, and I’m sure Ward would okay it. He owes me.”
“That’s so nice of you to offer,” Clara gushed, though she couldn’t quite hide the little wrinkle of her nose. Not a camp girl, got it. “But no, thank you. I’ve been staying at Willow’s house, and the quad that I’m, um, promised to is in Europe all summer.”
“What?” I snapped. “Your parents already found the quad they’re going to force on you?”
“Yes, and they suck huge bear testicles,” Willow offered helpfully. “Heath and Aiden caught them talking about knocking Clara around if she gets out of line.”
My hand jerked like I was going to reach for my swords, but those were stowed safely in my car. “Did Heath or Aiden happen to knock them around after that?”
Clara gave me a sad smile. “They would if they could, Avery. But you have to understand, my dad, Holden, is very powerful. He’s even more powerful than Heath, and Heath’s the most dominant Alpha wolf in the South.”
“Heath hasn’t fought my dad,” I muttered as I contemplated climbing through Holden Blackwell’s window with my blades.
“They did leave the snake with you, C,” Willow pointed out. “He kept those Nelson bastards away for the rest of the school year, and now they’re across the ocean, thank the Moon.”
“That’s where George was last semester?” I asked Clara, frowning. “With you?”
She nodded, and her chest puffed with pride. “He and I are friends now. After all the, um, suffocating of my enemies and stuff. The Nelson boys stopped trying to take me on dates because George wouldn’t leave my side, and he wasn’t very nice to them.”
A wisp of relief left my body.
Elijah hadn’t kept George away from me last semester. Not maliciously.
George had been out on a job.
“Anyway,” Clara said. “My brothers made a plan to get me out of this whole mess. They’re really trying, Avery.” She bit her lip again. “At least, they were.”
“Because that plan,” Willow added, “involved them finding the right girl for their bond, and fast.”
Understanding dawned.
We had a purpose when we did what we did, but we were very wrong in assuming you couldn’t be part of it, Elijah’s silky voice whispered in my mind.
We had reasons, sweetheart. Reasons to seek what we thought was a guarantee of power and stability in our bond, and to do it quickly, Aiden’s imperious voice added.
Dread began a slow creep through my veins.
Willow shook her head ruefully. “The literal second the word got out that they were truly in the market for their central, everyone in school talked about it non-fucking-stop for months.”
“And that’s what we’re investigating,” Winona said in a conspiratorial whisper. “It was public knowledge, and they seemed like they were really going to do it, but then they just… quit.”
“They didn’t go on a single date the entire month they were at the Gales’ this summer,” Clara went on. “They were always shut up together in Wyatt’s suite. Talking.”
“Plotting,” Winona said.
“Brooding,” Willow added. “And they won’t tell us shit.”
I sucked in a deep breath, my fingernails digging into my denim-covered thighs. “Clara, this plan to save you involved your brothers growing their power,” I stated, my throat dry as a fucking desert.
The kind of power they thought they could get through a bond with a latent female from a Prime shifter line.
She nodded sadly. “Heath plans to formally challenge my dad for custody of me before I turn seventeen in October because my parents are planning to make me bond with the Nelson Quad at the first Full Moon after my birthday. He thinks he’ll lose without a bond, Avery. Maybe even… die.”
It was a punch right to the gut. My chest tightened. My tiger let out a guttural snarl and shoved at her cage.
Heath’s voice echoed in my head.
If I’m wrong, I might die for it, but I won’t ask my brother and my best friends to sacrifice for me anymore.
“When did this happen, Clara?” I asked softly. “When did your dads secure the deal for your bond?”
“Oh, um.” She tapped her lip with a polished pink fingernail. “It was when Aiden and Heath were at home for spring break.”
The fist lodged in my gut twisted. Dread ignited into something like rage.
Something like despair.