Page 74 of Tangled Fates

And as we all sat on pins and needles, waiting for her to fill us in, dread filled her face. A dreadful look that I’d never get out of my memories, no matter how hard I tried.

25

RAVEN

While I was glad that we were off the fated mate drama train, the idea that had just dawned on me rendered me speechless. Was it possible? Did we honestly have a witch hunting us down? I had to admit, part of me hoped they weren’t real. That the guys had just been pulling my leg in the beginning to see what kind of bullshit stories they could weave for their own entertaining pleasures. But the more we dove into where the hell Brody had gotten off to, the more I couldn’t look away from the haphazard truth sitting directly in front of us.

I mean, I was living proof that fantasies were real.

And now, I had to take this witch thing seriously.

“Raven,” Dean said, “you okay?”

I swallowed hard as I stood. “Hold on a second.”

“Wait, where are you going?” Levi asked.

“Just upstairs,” I said as I rushed toward the staircase, “you guys stay down here a second!”

“I’m coming with you,” Hudson said.

“No!” I exclaimed. “Just give me a second. I’ll be right back!”

With the guys hanging out downstairs, I rushed into my father’s bedroom. I slammed the door closed behind me and trudged back to his closet, ripping everything out that I could put my hands on. I tossed his shirts to the floor and shook out his pants. I grabbed his shoes and vaulted them over my head, listening as they crashed against the wall on the opposite end of the bedroom. There was something that I was missing. Something important. Something that I knew would give me more than mere rumors of things that existed that used to keep me up at night as a child.

However, once I had emptied the closet, I still found nothing.

“Come on, Dad. I know you’re not that stupid,” I murmured.

I walked into the measly closet and knocked on the walls. Maybe there was a hollowed-out portion Dad had carved out years ago or some shit like that. I knocked and touched. Fiddled and fondled. I damn near took the doors off their hinges just to get to a few more spots that I could knock.

And yet again, I came up empty-handed.

“How am I going to do this?” I whispered.

I had to protect the pack, but I also had to get to my cousin. My father would’ve never let him die. Hell, my father would’ve never let him be taken in the first fucking place. I had been so wrapped up in my own precious, pretentious bullshit that I hadn’t stopped to take stock of what was around me. A pack that loved me. Men that adored me. Memories that made me smile.

It was all here, in my childhood home. In the place where I had spent my most formative years.

And just when I needed the answers, every crevice of the house stayed silent.

“Come on now!” I bellowed.

A soft knock came at the door. “Raven?”

I closed my eyes at the sound of Dean’s voice. “What is it?”

He cracked the door open. “Did you know this house has an attic?”

My eyes shot open as I whipped around to face him. “Show me.”

An attic. Why in the hell hadn’t I thought about an attic? Well, because I had lived in apartments my whole fucking life, and most of the rundown places in L.A. didn’t even have proper heating systems, much less attics. I followed Dean down the hallway until he stopped in the middle and pointed up to the ceiling. So, I looked up and found the outline of a rectangular shape embedded into the roof.

With a string dangling down about four inches.

“How the hell did I not see that?” I whispered.

Dean reached up and tugged at it. “They’re painted to blend in for a reason. And they’re short so mountain men like Hudson don’t inhale it for breakfast.”

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