Easton swallowed down the loss that filled him and pressed the feather into it.
She was a ghost, and he couldn’t keep her. Not anymore. He owed it to his crew to move on.
Every trinket held a memory, and he would have to watch them burn, one by one.
Not today, though.
Today he wasn’t strong enough, but maybe tomorrow he would banish the ghost raven.
Chapter Two
It was him.
Aviana King clutched her arm to her middle, wishing for the pain to stop.
A sob clawed its way up her throat.
It was him. Her bear. Easton.
Easton, the one she’d grown up with.
Easton, the one her heart had latched onto.
Easton, the boy who broke.
It had to be him. His eyes were that same bright green color she’d never seen on another person. He looked different now. Harder. Feral. He felt different, too. Scarier. The power that rolled from his shoulders had washed over her raven form and terrified her. Her feathers had lifted uncomfortably from her skin just being that close to him.
Now, he was one of the wild bears her people spoke of. One of the dangerous ones.
Tears blurring her vision, she studied the long slice under her arm. Blood streamed from it like a crimson river. He’d become better with blades. Much better than when he was a boy.
She hated the bears, but she envied their healing abilities. Raven shifters didn’t repair themselves so easily.
Easton had hurt her.
Clutching her arm, she curled in on herself, naked in the woods and miserable at the memory of his wild face.
The sweet boy she’d known was gone.
The flutter of bird wings drew a gasp from her lips. When she looked up into the evergreen canopy, it was only a woodpecker, not a raven. Still, it was a stark reminder that she shouldn’t be here. This was against all the rules, and if her people found out she was so close to the bears, she’d be shunned.
Aviana stood, ignoring the jolting pain in her arm. Her pile of clothes was neatly folded over a young tree’s low-hanging branch to keep the forest floor bugs from them.
She dressed quickly and jogged down to her car that was at the end of a deer trail she’d followed in. She drove a trusty white sedan whose easily muddied color and shoddy suspension were not made for the rocky terrain and pothole-riddled roads in these mountains. More proof she didn’t belong in the woods. Not anymore. She’d been ripped from them long ago and had fought tooth and nail to move on.
And dammit, she’d led a good life. A safe one with friends and family and adventures. She’d never wanted for food or clothing, and she’d been able to follow her dreams of becoming a school teacher. So why hadn’t she been able to stop thinking about Easton after all these years?
With a long, steadying exhalation, she slid behind the wheel. She turned the car around and headed for the main road that would lead to her childhood home.
He’d been here all along. She’d gone back to his territory once a couple of years ago, but it had been apparent Easton had left it long ago. She’d been riddled with such guilt when she’d left, she had forced herself to stop searching. It was the promise she’d made to her father. The first promise she’d ever broken.
Even now, another overwhelming wave of remorse washed over her. Aviana gripped the steering wheel and willed herself to stop feeling bad. If anything, seeing him like that was for the best. Now she could stop thinking and obsessing about him. She could stop imagining him in his adult form, fantasizing that he was as happy and fetching as she’d thought he was when they were younger.
Now, equipped with his angry snarl and the vitriol with which he flung that knife to kill, she could get over him. She could move on and accept Caden’s proposal. She’d already quit her job at his request. All that was left to do was say yes to the small ceremony he’d proposed. She was of breeding age, and Caden had been kind to offer her a place at his side.
She was lucky. He was handsome and cunning, and his proposal had been highly sought after. He was perfectly nice. Perfectly nice. She could bear him children and raise them, create the perfect nest for the family she would build with Caden.
Her life would be easy.
Her life would be planned.
Another tear rolled down her cheek.
Her life would be perfect.
A flawless, emotionless existence because she’d given her heart away years ago to a broken boy with a silver grizzly inside of him.
And now that boy was dead.
After driving miles of winding backroads, Aviana pulled her car to a stop in front of the cabin she’d grown up in. It was abandoned now, but the house from her memories was beautiful. Mom had set up summer rose gardens all around the porch and hung potted plants from the rafters over the porch swing. Inside had been small, but tidy and comfortable. It had been a home, and one she’d connected with more than any other that followed.