What if she was the reason he was so lost now?
Her low battery signal flashed and the screen went dark.
“No,” she whispered as Easton’s slightly baffled smile faded to black.
She couldn’t go now. Aviana shook her head and closed her eyes at the thought of leaving. Easton, or Beaston, was terrifying. Hell, his entire crew brought shivers up her spine. Bloodthirsty, violent apex predators who obliterated everything in their path. They would eat a peacekeeping raven like her for breakfast and pick their razor teeth with her bones.
But Easton’s life was now more mysterious than it had ever been, and she had to heed whatever was drawing her to him.
She would see this thing through.
She had to.
Because a life of what ifs was no life at all.
Chapter Three
Easton pulled his knife from the sheath at his hip and cut in one swift motion the zip tie that bound a trio of thick cable loops.
Matt watched him thoughtfully. He did that a lot—tried to figure Easton out. It was annoying, but then again, everything was annoying.
Matt shifted his weight and leaned back on the giant stack of processed logs behind him. “I bet the real reason Clinton left is because you never made a knife for him.”
Easton huffed a laugh and shook his head. “Clinton left because he’s a D-team dick. His bad decisions had nothin’ to do with me.”
“Think about it,” Matt said. “He begged you for one from the first time he figured out you made them. Maybe if you gave him a knife, he’d come back to the Gray Backs.”
Easton looked down at the long, sharp blade of the knife he always carried. He hadn’t made Clinton a knife because he hadn’t deserved the effort. Willa, Gia, and Georgia had.
Easton ran from the house to the shed where Dad was working. In the branches of an old alder tree, the raven cawed. He grinned and waved to her as he blasted his little legs faster toward Dad’s workshop.
Shaking his head to ward off the memory, Easton said, “Clinton won’t ever come back. He don’t belong with us.”
“Where did you learn to make your knives anyway?”
In a flutter of wings, the raven swooped down from the towering alder and landed on the splintered windowsill of the shed. Easton gasped as he got to see her up close for the first time. Slowly and carefully, he padded toward the window. She was carrying something shiny in her beak, and when he approached, she set a small bent paperclip down on the ledge. He thought she would fly away, but she didn’t. She only watched him while he picked up the small gift and turned it in his hands.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“That raven sure likes you,” Dad said. He was leaned against his work bench watching the big, black bird with his arms crossed over his chest and his head cocked.
Easton looked at her proudly, so close he could almost touch her. Pocketing the paperclip, he said, “She’s my best friend.”
A soft sob whipped around on the breeze, easy for his sensitive hearing to pick up.
“Mom’s crying.”
Dad narrowed his eyes and turned his back to continue sharpening a thin knife blade. “Well, let her have some time alone. She’ll get over it.”
Easton sidled up to the table and fingered a set of clamps. “What’s wrong with her?”
With a sigh, Dad turned and squatted down to eye-level with Easton. “Son, your momma’s going to have another baby.”
A smile spread across Easton’s face as he thought of a brother or sister to play with. Another sob carried on the wind from the house. He frowned.
Dad ruffled his hair. “Your momma’s scared. She fancies she has the sight and can see her future. She thinks the baby will be hard to have, but she’s just being emotional. Human women are like that. Soft and full of tears.”
“She doesn’t want the baby?”
“She will.” Dad stood and blew on the newly sharpened blade of the knife he was making.
But Easton knew all about babies. They had raised pigs all his life, and he’d seen how the boar got the sows with piglets. “If Mom didn’t want a baby, why did you put one in her?”
Dad tossed him a hard look and went back to examining the sharpened silver. “Someday you’ll understand. Your momma is flighty, and I don’t want her leaving us. Now she won’t. Not with two cubs to raise. Sometimes you have to make the hard decisions for the people you want to keep around.”
Easton winced as he put his weight on his bad leg, the one Willa had ruined when he’d Turned her without her consent. All because he wanted to keep her around. Dad had been wrong. Making decisions for women got his bones snapped, and then Creed had ordered the Gray Backs not to set his broken leg. He’d done a shitty job of trying to fix it himself, and now every step he took, man or bear, hurt. His limp would always hurt.