Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
“Are you okay?” I begged. “Baby, tell me you’re okay.”
She could barely nod, sniffling as she rambled, “You came for me. You came for me.”
Relief sped through my veins, and I curled my arms around her as I pulled her onto my lap. She kept wheezing through the disorder, through the trauma and shock, and I was pressing a thousand kisses to the top of her head, murmuring, “I will always come for you, Little Moonflower. Always.”
SIXTY-THREE
RAVEN
I couldn’t stop crying. Couldn’t stop the emotion that flooded out of me on a torrent.
The relief.
The horror.
The vestiges of terror and the lingering pain.
But most of all, it was the feel of Otto. The surety of his arms that were held fiercely around me. His heart that thundered a savage beat against my ear. His promises that he mumbled at the top of my head.
“Always. I will always come for you. It’s over. It’s over.”
Hot tears kept bleeding from my eyes and into the fabric of his shirt as I choked and whimpered.
“I’m so sorry,” he mumbled, trying to get me closer. “I should have—”
I shook my head and fisted my hand in his tee. “No more I should haves. All that matters is the now. That you’re here. That we move on from here. Together,” I rasped.
I was finished living in the past.
Finished being chained.
The time had come that we were freed.
He clung to me the same way as I clung to him, his warmth saturating me, his strength surrounding me with an overwhelming force.
While our family stood in a semi-circle around us. Their harsh pants ricocheted from the walls as everyone processed the scene.
It’d all happened so fast.
In a flash.
A blink of events that closed the book on years of history.
Otto carefully shifted me, sweeping an arm under my legs and banding the other high up on my back.
Slowly, he stood.
Carefully.
Cradling me against his chest.
“Need to get her to the doctor,” Otto grumbled low, his lips still pressed to my forehead, unable to tear them away.
I wound my arms tighter around his neck, and I stared up at the man who I’d loved for all of my life.
My safety.
My security.
The one who’d whispered belief into my spirit for all those years.
And I didn’t need the mirror to see myself right then. To know who I wanted to be. To feel the fulfillment of who I’d become.
“I don’t want to go to Dr. Reynolds’ office, Otto. I just want to go home. With you. He can come to the house.”
He edged back enough that he could peer down at me with those blue, fathomless eyes.
“That where you want to be?” he murmured. “With me?”
“It’s where I’ve always wanted to be.”
His attention slid to River.
The two of them shared a silent conversation.
One that transpired as quickly as the events that had just taken place.
A flash and flicker.
But in it, a thousand things had been said.
A claim.
An oath.
A new understanding.
River’s voice was gruff when he said, “We’ll clean up this mess. Looks like a domestic dispute to me.”
He looked to Kane, Theo, and Cash, getting a round of agreement from them on how they were going to handle the situation. How they were going to cover it.
Then he lifted his chin when he looked back at Otto, a clear message woven in the words. “Get her home. Where she belongs.”
Otto’s nod was clipped, and he carried me across the room and out of the house.
It had to be midmorning, the sun steadily climbing the sky, the warmth of its rays expanding out over the earth and wrapping us in its embrace.
Otto kept me in those arms as he ambled down the steps and through the yard. Below the ramble of trees that were beginning to turn, the leaves a glorious patchwork of oranges, yellows, and reds.
He kept moving past the bikes that had been left at haphazard angles out front, and he headed down the pitted dirt drive.
“Where are we going?” I asked, my throat sore from the screams.
“Left my truck about a quarter of a mile up the road so they wouldn’t hear us coming.”
No question, they’d planned it all, utilizing their skills of getting vulnerable women out of bad situations to their full extreme.
As if he read the questions that played out in my mind, he explained, “Knew I had to get to you as quickly and as stealthily as I could. River, Kane, and I plotted it on our way out here, praying that we’d make it soon enough.”
“And you came.”
“Promised you I wouldn’t let this bastard get to you. Had almost been too late.”
“But you weren’t, and I’m fine and whole.”
A furor of fury rolled through him, and he pulled me tighter. “Can’t stand that he still managed to get to you. That we missed it.”
“None of us knew Sienna was involved.”