Page 52

Them, he'd said. Notit.I looked down and blinked back the stupid tears threatening to assault me.

You stupid, stupid girl.

I'd gotten so comfortable around my family that I never even thought about the scars on my body anymore unless I was looking at myself in the mirror or one of my guys was caressing my scars with love. I'd gotten too comfortable in my own skin, and the clothing I wore now showcased this. The black tank top I wore had an inch and a half of see-through lace along both the top and bottom, and it dipped down into my breasts, exposing a fair amount of cleavage. The thin button up sweater I wore over my tank top was unbuttoned, hanging off my shoulders, and the sleeves were pushed up to my elbows. The tattoo on the inside of my wrist that Rain had given me was visible and on display for all to see.

Now I wished I'd dressed differently and the tattoo had been the only thing on display. The scars and burn marks along my collarbones were very on display and visible today. And Liam had not only noticed, but had had the balls to point them out to me.

I struggled with the need to dig through my duffle and pull out the hoodie I'd packed away in there so I could exchange it for the sweater, and then my scars wouldn’t be exposed anymore. Except for my face, of course. There was no hiding that.

I didn't dig the hoodie out of my bag and I didn't cry. My hands clenched into fists in my lap and my fingernails dug into my palms painfully. I was using pain to center myself all the time now, and falling back into old habits wasn't exactly healthy for me. Not on top of everything else I was dealing with at the moment.

"Liam," Raven growled, the gentle sweetness I'd only ever heard from him now a long-lost memory. It had been replaced by steel, gravel, and something sinister. "You need to think before you speak, and you should really apologize to Ms. Kimber. She doesn't deserve your veiled insults and to be on the receiving end of your sharp tongue. I've already told you she's different and nothing like Annabell. You should have taken my word for it and made all of our lives easier. Now you've gone and pissed me off."

Really, he'd pissed us both off, but...

Ms. Kimber?

Weirdness overload. He'd only ever called me by my first name before.

I cleared my throat and shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "Don't call me Ms. Kimber. It's just Ariel. And for the love of all that's holy, don't ever compare me to Annabell the Destroyer again."

"Annabell the Destroyer," Liam murmured, sounding amused. "That has a nice ring to it."

So did Annabell the Shameful and fifty thousand other things I could come up with to call her.

"The woman who raised me as my mother was incredibly abusive, as were the many men that came through the revolving door that was her vagina. I'm not ashamed of my scars, though I don't appreciate having them pointed out so rudely. They are a testament to my strength and they mark me as a survivor. Please don't make references to them again. And, a piece of advice, I wouldn't mention them again in front of the members of my coven. They don't take kindly to people trying to hurt me. Even when it's not the physical kind of harm. That's almost worse."

The majority of the rest of the ride was thankfully traversed in silence. The unfortunate part was it was done in astrainedsilence. I shouldn't have cared, but I did. I didn't exactly need friends and I had no clue how to maintain that level of a relationship with someone, but in this instance I didn't think it would be bad to have more people on my side.

The thing about Raven that hadn't been sitting well with me since the dinner party the Council had forced us to attend, was that Raven hadn't seemed to have any sort of loyalty to the Council whatsoever. He'd watched them fall face first in their food, out cold, and Raven hadn't even batted an eyelash or attempted to help them. That seemed wrong to me on so many different levels. I mean, I hadn't tried to help them either, but that was because I was so far from being a fan it wasn't even funny.

And, sometimes, some people got what they deserved.

But why hadn't Raven stepped in? Why hadn't he even seemed upset by what happened? Nothing about Raven made sense to me. Hell, he'd even been drugged himself by Rain and he hadn't thrown that in my face once. If it were me, I'd be so pissed about that.

When we were about ten minutes out from the motel, Raven decided it was time to break the silence. He'd thus far been solely focused on the road ahead.

Liam hadn't been subtle in watching me over his shoulder, and for most of the ride I'd had to look out the side window to avoid his searching gaze. It seemed like he was trying to see into my soul and drag out each and every secret I'd buried deep in there.

"What's really going on here, Ariel? I'm a lot of things, and stupid has never been one of them. I was there, remember, when Adrian first broached the subject of you joining their ranks. It hadn't been a no you gave them, but ahell no, and then they found themselves face down ass up. A position, I might add, that I found myself in not long after."

I racked my brain, trying to remember if that had been true or not. I winced when I recalled him falling out of the chair he'd been placed in. Okay, so maybe face down and ass up hadn't been a dramatic statement on his part.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I lied.

Liam snorted. "I call bullshit."

I glared at the back of his head, pissed he was finally facing forward so he missed it. It didn't matter he'd been right in his assumption.

"You ever wonder why I didn't freak when shit went off the rails that night? Why I kept my mouth shut about it this whole time?"

Of course I'd thought about it. I'd be stupid not to. Every time I'd brought it up to Quinton and tried to talk about it with him, worried it would backfire and blow up in all our faces, Quinton would tell me not to worry about it and blow the whole thing off like it had never happened. Which had driven me even crazier because it didn't make any sense to me. Quinton was the protector, he didn't sweep potentially dangerous things under the rug and pretend they weren't there. He faced them head-on and destroyed them. It hit me just then that maybe Quinton had been hiding something from me about Raven.

"I don't like Adrian," Raven casually threw out there, as if he wasn't speaking blasphemy. "In fact, I kind of hate him. My coven deserved so much better after what Annabell did to us. Adrian blamed it on my guys and acted like Annabell was an angel. He had sex with her in front of my coven, as some type of a punishment and a slap in the face for us. It was a whole lot of fucked up, but the worst part was that Annabell seemed to have gotten off the most on it. Quinton did his thing to her not long after that and I got in touch with him. We're not friends, exactly, but we have been exchanging some very interesting information since then. I've learned a great deal about the Council over the years, and my curiosity started long before Annabell the Destroyer came into our lives. You see, there was this girl growing up. My father had suspected she was special. That—"

"Raven," Liam murmured urgently. "We don't know if we can trust her. I want you to think very carefully before you say anything next. Man, I'm going to advise you to keep your mouth shut. She's an odd one and I don't trust her."

This fucking guy.