Ravage by Lacey Andersen (ebook reader online txt) 📕

known each other from a really young age, including Rayne and his friends, even though they didn’t go full time until a few years ago.”

Yeah, I knew. My parents hadn’t sent Rayne for anything but the summers when we were kids, but slowly he went longer and longer until the year they decided he’d go pretty much year-round. I think it’d been when he turned seventeen. I’d only seen the guys a couple times after that, and Rayne only for the occasional holiday, so I just nod.

“Well, Rayne and his friends were all about the ladies until around the time they turned twenty. All of the sudden, they just stopped dating. They stopped so much as looking at women.” She smiles as she talks. “Your brother even tried setting them up, but they didn’t take the least bit of interest. Some people said they must have found their mates, but they denied it. Your brother, on the other hand, didn’t realize I was his mate until…one night. It was just eight short months ago. But that night, the mate connection hit us like a storm, and there was no separating us ever since. Until…” Her smile fades, and her entire face falls.

I look away from the pain in her expression. I had enough of my own that I didn’t need to see hers too. She doesn’t say any more, and it gives me a chance to think. So, Lucian, Bron, and Dwade had been ladies men until they were twenty? That was the last time they visited, other than the night my brother died, and at his funeral. That trip stood out to me for some reason, probably because it was so strange.

Hell, maybe they had met their mates and decided they didn’t have enough fucks left to give for me.

The idea pissed me off.

I stand. “Is the cafeteria open yet?”

She stands too. “Yeah, I think for early dinner-goers.”

“Good.”

It takes me a minute to realize that Mary Ann is walking beside me. I stiffen and stop, turning to look at her. Does she think we’re eating together? Or that we’re friends?

She looks uncomfortable. “I know you’re new here…so maybe I can tell you more about everyone and how things work.”

I want to tell her no, but some self-awareness realizes it’s because I’m angry with her. Or maybe angry at Rayne, if she’s actually his mate and he didn’t tell me about her. But I push down my turbulent emotions. If I’m ever going to find out anything useful, I need to try to be less closed off. Mary Ann might be just what I needed.

“Okay then. Lunch together.”

She gives a small smile that actually reaches her eyes.

I try not to feel guilty as we head across campus. I’m not using her exactly. But something inside of me feels uncertain. With my monsters and ghosts, I tried never to lie.

But with my own kind…I had to lie. They were just…too dangerous.

As we walk, she speaks, sounding slightly more relaxed. “So, did Rayne ever tell you why he was fighting with the guys?”

Every muscle in my body tenses. “They were fighting?”

“Yeah, just before he died.”

“Why?” My head feels light as I ask.

“It was something about what Rayne was researching. They wanted him to stop.”

They never told me that. My hands curl into fists and the rage within me beats against the walls around my emotions. For the first time, I realize that I’ve added them to my list of suspects in earnest. And if I discovered they were responsible for this, I would have to kill them.

Everything about my brother’s death and Bron’s appearance in our home town changes, holding new meaning. And even though I’m starving, I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep a bite down.

I feel…betrayed.

11

Bron

The news that Esmeray is trying to find her brother’s killers is disturbing. And the idea that she stole a dagger tells me that she’s planning on killing her foe, whether her powers work on it or not.

Which is fucking insane.

I don’t know if it’s because Esmeray is my mate, or because of the lessons circling through my mind from my step-father, but I can’t stomach the idea of her hurt in any way. Part of me logically knows that Esmeray is not like my mother, that she doesn’t need me to protect her, but every instinct inside of me denies it.

The world is full of dangers that we must protect those we love from. My teeth grit together.

A memory from my childhood slams into me. Three men had followed my mother as she walked home after visiting with a friend late one night. She called my step-father, scared. The men were shouting at her, chasing her, laughing and describing what they would do to her. He played every word of it through the phone’s speaker for me to hear.

I can still remember their words to this day.

My step-father brought me with him to face the men and sent her inside the house. And then he beat the men. Not a little. A lot. I stood in my pajamas, a young boy, watching in horror as the men screamed and begged to be let go. But there was something in my step-father’s eyes that night, something that said he was the judge, jury, and executioner for these men.

And he’d deemed their crimes worthy of a slow torture.

The next day, the news talked about the men and what had happened to them. All four of them were in the ICU, unable to talk, and people wondered what mob of psychopaths had beaten them. And what weapons they’d used to deliver the blows.

I was the only one who knew the truth. It was only one man, and his fists were the only weapons. He just wasn’t human.

What I saw scared me. Both the violence of it, and the voice of doubt that whispered that I could never protect someone I loved as well as he had that night. My step-father’s influence