Page 185 of Under an Endless Moon

Could feel the emotion radiate from all the way over there. It clutched my chest in a grip of thankfulness that Raven had someone like Charleigh.

Someone to confide in.

Someone to trust.

Knew their relationship had changed both of them, their belief and encouragement in each other pushing the other toward their goals and dreams.

Didn’t mind that I had likely been the main topic of conversation during their lunch, either. Without question,Charleigh had Raven’s back, no matter what, even when her heart belonged to the man who was going to hate me when he found out.

He would.

The oath I’d made him all those years ago swirled through my head.

Raven might have liked to believe that he would see through it to support us, but she didn’t know the full extent of the promise I’d made to her brother.

But I wouldn’t be so much a coward that I would keep it from him for long. No chance I would keep the woman like a dirty secret.

Charleigh pulled away, then turned and started up the sidewalk. Raven watched her go, her expression filling with a grin when she lifted her phone to look at it.

I started to round the counter so I could meet her at the door, just needing to get her back into my arms, when I felt it.

A change.

An omen that blustered through the atmosphere.

The sense that I always got when something bad was about to go down.

Nothing but a slick of wickedness.

A thick stench that coated the oxygen and turned it evil.

I went clamoring for the door, shouting her name from within the confines of Moonflower.

“Raven!”

But it was too fucking late.

Too fuckin’ late because some vile motherfucker came from out of nowhere. Manifesting from thin air, emerging from the crowd in a flurry of depravity.

Panic surged through me when I saw he had a brick in his hand.

My hand was on the knob at the same second as Raven whirled his direction.

Sensing it, too.

No, Raven, no.

My heart leaped to my throat, and I ripped open thedoor and tore out onto the sidewalk at the same time as he brought the brick down hard and struck her on the side of her head.

She didn’t scream or fight.

She didn’t do anything but crumble to the ground.

“Raven. No!”

Fury and fear bashed at my senses, hate careening through my veins and sickness churning in my guts.

No. Raven. No.

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