The thought nearly broke her. Vision blurring with unshed tears, she closed her eyes and nodded. Her mother was already talking about juice cleanse diets. Raven knew she couldn’t live off cranberry juice for two weeks but telling her mother that was all but useless.
Raven excused herself and went upstairs. She didn’t linger in her room. Instead, she crawled out the window to sit on the roof outside. This was where she and her sister often crossed paths in the meager hours apart from their mother. Now, Raven realized she would never see her sister here again. River had a new home now. She lived with Jensen on the Barnes territory.
Raven’s loneliness seemed inescapable. It had always been hot on her heels, but had been steadily overtaking her since she and Adrien first parted ways. That was what she had loved about him. They had come together, each needing to have someone beside them. The way he had listened to her had made her feel whole for the first time in her life. She’d been riding that high ever since, and now it was about to run out.
The temptation to go back to him tonight nearly won. She knew that he would open his door to her. He would invite her inside and hold her all throughout the night if she asked. But she couldn’t keep doing that to him. They had broken up for a reason. Their families didn’t want to see them together.
The three mated pairs between the families had caused enough trouble already. Raven might have succumbed to temptation had more of her relatives fallen for Barnes shifters. If her brother or Bryce had chosen mates among the Barnes family, then Raven wouldn’t have feared tipping the scales.
She didn’t want to be the one to cause the power shift. She didn’t want to be the next to upset her mother or provoke Quincy.
Raven yearned for an easy answer, but nothing in her life had ever been easy. Always on constant lookout, her soul had been worn thin. The easiest path now was to do as she was told.
Even though that meant giving up all freedom.
Adrien needed to find a way to tell Raven that she was the only woman for him. He sat at the bar and watched his cousin pour drink after drink, but no amount of empty staring brought him any closer to the revelation he needed. Ember paused and gave him a pitiful glance before someone approached with a drink order.
His beast squirmed under his skin. He knew it needed to get out and stretch its wings soon, but he didn’t trust the creature so soon after holding Raven again. If the beast had its way, it would take Adrien straight to her doorstep, and it wouldn’t leave until it got what it wanted.
Raven.
He’d been infatuated with her for years before he finally kissed her. She’d always had curves, something hardly ever seen on dragon women. The shape of her had mystified him. He’d yearned to get her attention, to drag her gaze off the ground and see her face light up. Young and dumb, he’d tried everything in the book.
Adrien had bought a skateboard and taught himself to ride so that when they crossed paths on their way to their separate schools, Raven might see him and be impressed with his sick skills. The skateboard had lasted long enough for Baylee to steal it and break it. After that, Adrien had tried to crack jokes whenever Raven was within earshot. Baylee had broken those, too, with her incessant need to be the center of attention.
It had seemed as though nothing would work until he’d found her hiding behind the local laundromat. He’d crouched beside her and waited for her to say something. At first, she’d told him that he shouldn’t get caught with her. He’d mulled over the statement and realized that it wasn’t that she didn’t want him around.
No, Raven didn’t want him to get in trouble for being around her. From that moment, Adrien threw caution to the wind. He’d sat beside her, their shoulders touching. When she didn’t run away, Adrien began talking. He’d talked about anything and everything until he felt her tension melt away.
Before she left, she’d leaned into him and kissed him full on the lips. He’d never told her, but Raven had been his first kiss.
Since they broke things off, Adrien had tried and failed at loving other women. He knew what to do and all the right things to say, but his heart had never been in it. Even now, he looked around the room and saw a dozen pretty faces looking his way. He could have slid off his barstool and taken his pick of them.
The idea felt cheap. He didn’t want to choose a face at random. He wanted to win a heart so that he could give his in return.
“What is wrong with you tonight?” Ember slapped a bottle onto the counter between them. She lifted it and poured, a thread of amber rushing from the spout to fill his glass. “You have the same thousand-yard-stare as Theo.”
Adrien sighed. Being compared to the family shut-in was never a good thing. Not that Theo had always been like that. A brush with the local fae queen and her dragon ex-husband had broken that man.
“I’m not busted,” Adrien grumbled before lifting his drink to his lips.
Ember looked like she had something she wanted to say, but movement drew her attention away. Cash Montoya climbed the stairs to the stage at the far end of the bar. When Adrien looked back at his cousin, he saw the adoration swirling in her gaze.
Adrien wasn’t the only one in the family who had spent their life loving a Montoya shifter. Ember’s love, unrequited for years, had been returned. Cash became her mate. The two had been inseparable ever since.
The thing about Ember’s romance was that she and Cash never had a hidden fling. Ember kept her feelings from Cash for a long time. Their love was a new flame, whereas the fire between Adrien and Raven had begun to gutter. The thought pained him, but he suspected it to be true.
His heart belonged to a woman who would never love him the same way again. He’d given himself over to her, but her affection had waned into nothing. He wanted to deflate and let his head drop onto the bar top. Instead, he squared his shoulders and sucked in a shuddering breath.
He twisted on his stool to watch Cash play. The new bridge between the clans that once loathed one another was new to Adrien. He’d kept his nose out of these affairs since they’d started because he’d assumed they would all end the same way his love had. But mate bonds formed between old enemies, tying them together forever.
From those bonds came a new clan. Both Ember and Baylee lived with their Montoya mates on a sliver of territory between the clan borders. They followed the man responsible for the feud because they hoped that he would help them erase it once and for all.
Adrien hadn’t yet met this Logan fellow, but he doubted the man could erase decades of animosity. No one would be able to wipe the hatred from Alice Montoya’s heart. He certainly wouldn’t be able to change Quincy Montoya’s mind. Adrien heard that the Old Lizard had been picking fights all over the place, probably with the hopes that he would eventually find Logan’s weak spot.
Could a man with no mate have a weak spot? Logan had supposedly fallen for a Barnes woman. When Elliana’s family kept her from her mate, she wasted away into nothing and left this world. Her death had caused Logan to burrow, as some powerful dragons did when death was not an option for them.
Logan’s presence couldn’t change anything for Adrien. Only Adrien could fix this.
He slipped off his stool and made his way to the door. His beast still sat just under his skin. The creature would have to wait until he reached the edge of town, though. Whispers filled his mind. It seemed the beast had a lot to say about the situation.
The way Adrien’s chest tightened, he could tell that this could end one of two ways. He feared that it would end horribly. The truth wrapping around his heart threatened to break him. If he spoke it and got nothing in return, he would come undone for sure.
Would he burrow? Or would he prove weak?
For Adrien knew that his heart belonged to one person. The mate bond had formed and bound him to Raven whether he liked it or not. There was a strong possibility that she would not feel the same way. Just because she reacted to his touch did not mean that her heart belonged to him.
Adrien needed to f
ind out.
“Shit! I think Cash is already playing!” Baylee surged past him, running for the door.
Gale followed, pausing only to give Adrien a welcoming nod as he passed. Behind him trailed Jensen and River. The red-head’s resemblance to Raven always caught Adrien off-guard.
River stopped and smiled up at him. “I don’t know if this would be of any interest to you, but I wanted to extend an invitation to my sister’s wedding. I know the thought of going to a Montoya event is probably heretical to you, but…the more the merrier.”
The world stopped spinning. Silence rang in his ears as if someone had just dropped a bomb. Adrien blinked and tried to focus on the woman before him, but his life flashed before his eyes instead. He saw Raven grinning after their first kiss. He saw her lips parting as he brought her to climax in the woods.
Adrien swallowed, careful to keep the tremble from his voice when he spoke. “Your sister?”
“Yeah,” River said with a laugh. “I only have the one. You met her the other day. Remember?”
Oh, he’d known her much longer than that. Adrien almost wanted to confess right then and there, but this wasn’t just his secret. If Raven hadn’t told her sister about them, then she had a reason, and he would respect it.
“Of course,” he croaked.
River raised a brow but didn’t ask. Her attention drifted past Adrien. He could almost feel Jensen’s gaze on his back. Adrien managed to keep a straight face while his mind reeled.
Married? Raven hadn’t mentioned having a fiancé. Surely, she would have brought up a mate before Adrien touched her. If Raven was getting married…
“The wedding is in two weeks,” River said. “I’ll get an invitation for you.”
With that said, River stepped around Adrien and disappeared into the bar. He was left alone on the sidewalk. Thought after thought tumbled through his mind. He could barely grasp one before another crashed into focus.
He stumbled forward, blind to the world around him. The beast thrashed beneath his skin. It roared defiantly, making his ears ring again. If he let it out now, it would surely wreak havoc. The beast wanted nothing more than to hunt down the man engaged to Raven so he could sink his teeth into the man’s throat.
That would do nothing, though. Fighting Raven’s fiancé would piss her off. It wouldn’t win her back.
But Adrien recalled the way she’d felt in his hands, as if she hadn’t been touched in years. It had felt like old times. They’d loved one another as if nothing had changed. That had to have meant something. Adrien refused to believe she could lie so easily to him.
Raven still had feelings for him. If he could show her just how much he loved her, then there was a chance they could be together after all. They didn’t have to let the feud keep them apart any longer.
3
Raven had spent the past hour looking at dresses online. Defeated, she sighed and closed her laptop. No matter what she bought, she would have to pay extra for plus sizes and then drop a hefty fee on alterations. Wedding boutiques didn’t like to service people of her size, and it showed.
She stared longingly at the latte she’d purchased before sitting down. After taking a few sips, she’d let it grow cold because guilt had set in. This wasn’t a new sensation for Raven. She had overheard every single thing their mother had said to River, as if Raven might absorb her diet advice by proximity. Raven never understood why their mother had focused all of her diet advice on River when Raven grew larger every holiday season. It felt like Alice had given up on her other daughter, which granted Raven a modicum of relief and a lot of grief.
While she was happy to be free of her mother’s nagging in that regard, Raven had yearned to be the favorite for years. She was clearly on the bottom rung. Reece was the favorite because he was strong and capable and seemingly unbreakable. River earned all of their mother’s attention for reasons Raven never really understood.
Then, there was Raven. She was the fat daughter. She wasn’t particularly good at anything. She would never win any beauty contests. Raven would have been better off being the invisible child.
Her stomach growled.
Lattes were a liquid. Surely, she could finish this one on her liquid diet.
She grabbed the cup but didn’t lift it to her lips. Indecision made her waver. The beast inside her grumbled hungrily. It begged her to get a burger from the place down the street. It dragged her attention to the case of pastries. She was so damn hungry.
The bell above the door chimed. Raven stiffened, afraid that her mother or Bastien had found where she was hiding. But the smiling face belonged to her sister. Raven’s shoulders relaxed. She slumped in her seat while River ordered a tea and two pastries.
“Baylee told me that the café was a good place for shifters to hide if they didn’t want to be found,” River said after taking a seat at the table.
“Is that so?” Raven guessed the Montoya and Barnes shifters weren’t so unalike after all.
“She also told me this was where she’d hidden when her family wanted her to marry someone she had no interest in, too.” River gave her sister a knowing look.
Raven wished she was the kind of person who could openly roll her eyes or scoff at someone. Instead, she swallowed. Her gaze dropped to the plate between them. The cinnamon roll made her mouth water.
“Go ahead,” River said. “I bought it for you.”
Raven bit her tongue. She couldn’t. She had to abide by the rules before the wedding. If she didn’t at least lose a few pounds, then everyone would know that she didn’t try. Perhaps this wasn’t how she would prove herself, but she wanted some kind of acknowledgement, and this was the only way she could think of.
Her sister watched her with a knowing glint in her eye, but didn’t bring it up. Instead, River brought up something else. “You’ll never guess who I ran into the other night.”
Heart pounding, Raven pretended to not know what she was talking about. Raven stared at the cinnamon roll while her mind wandered back to the man she tried so hard to not think about. No matter what Raven did, Adrien lived in the back of her mind. Though she wanted to claim that she couldn’t shake free of him, the truth was that she hadn’t tried that hard.
Adrien was the reason she had survived. He’d given her a reason to live. Seeing him had breathed a kind of life into her that no one else could. Which only made it hurt more when she thought about what she had to do.
Her appetite faded, leaving her queasy.
“Adrien Barnes seemed pretty surprised to hear that you’re getting married. When I invited him to your wedding, he looked like he’d been told that the world was ending.”
“You invited him to the wedding?” Raven’s jaw dropped.
She shouldn’t have been so surprised. River hadn’t known. It wasn’t like Raven had ever told anyone about Adrien. He’d been her secret, one that she had shared with no one. The thought of telling her siblings had terrified her.
They really were the worst triplets in history.
River shrugged. “What’s so wrong with inviting him? I know he’s a Barnes, but they’re not all bad.”
The truth almost tumbled out of Raven. She clenched her jaw and scanned the café for anyone who might overhear them and take the information back to their mother. If Alice Montoya learned about Raven’s rebellious romance, then the world might actually end.
Once she was pretty sure that there were no eavesdroppers, then Raven told her sister the truth. With each word Raven said, her sister’s look of astonishment grew more and more intense. Guilt filled Raven’s stomach with sour bile. She should have told her sister earlier. She should have been a better sibling and trusted River.
“I ended our relationship before graduation,” Raven said. “I was afraid of what would happen if we kept going. If we went public, Mom would have lost her mind. If we kept it a secret, then there was a chance we would have grown to hate each other. I didn’t want it to end either way, so I broke up with him before anything
could go wrong.”
River just stared at her for a long while. Was she seeing a whole new side of her sister? Did she feel betrayed because Raven had kept this a secret for so long?
Then, River pretended to take something off her head and set it on Raven’s head. “Here. You officially take the crown for ballsiest Montoya child.”
Raven’s jaw dropped.
“I’m absolutely serious,” River said. “I thought I was being defiant when I moved out of the house, but you had a relationship with a Barnes man long before I learned how to stand up to Mom. That takes major guts.”
They laughed and savored this moment of camaraderie that didn’t take place very often. Their mother’s expectations had driven a wedge between each of them. While the sisters had no idea how to get closer to Reece, it seemed a shared interest in Barnes men could bring the two of them together.
“You could always tell Mom that the wedding is off,” River suggested.
Raven’s blood went cold. She couldn’t imagine standing up to their mother like that. Sure, it would keep all attention on Raven, which was what she wanted. So long as the focus remained on Raven, then River could enjoy the peace and quiet for a while. But Raven didn’t want to stir a fight in order to make that happen.
“I’d rather just do what she wants.”
River scowled. “You don’t have to be her puppet. She’s a person just like anyone else. You can say no to her from time to time.”
But Bastien had already flown all the way out to Nebraska. The wedding venue had been booked and the caterers were busy putting together a menu that would make Alice Montoya happy. If Raven broke it off now, then so much time, effort, and money would go to waste.
She might as well follow through with her mother’s wishes. It’s not like Raven and Adrien could have a happy ending, anyway. They were still on opposite sides of an age-old feud that her mother hadn’t yet forgiven.
The goal was to make life easier for those around her, not add fuel to the fire.
A Star Crossed Fate (Great Plains Dragon Feud Book 4) Page 2
