Under an Endless Moon (Moonlit Ridge Book 2)

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.”

I wanted to hate her, but in the scheme of it, it didn’t matter. I didn’t have any space left inside myself for the animosity to infiltrate. No room for the fear, humiliation, and shame.

I was letting it go.

All of it.

And I was doing it today.

Otto peered down at me, and his brow arched in speculation. “You want to tell me what he was talking about when he claimed you killed his brother?”

I curled deeper into his hold. “I don’t know why I was always so afraid of telling you.”

Unease rolled through his being. “Tell me what?”

“That I followed you that night. That I knew what you were doing. That you were somehow going to go and make the ultimate sacrifice. Thinking that it would make up for what happened to Haddie and me. But I couldn’t let that happen.”

He slowed a fraction, and he pulled me even closer as old pain wisped from his mouth. “It was you.”

My throat clogged off, and he hugged me tighter.

“You were the one who saved me. Gave me a new lease on life.”

I peeked up at him. “Because I always knew you were destined to spend this life with me.”

“Fuck, Raven, you…” He trailed off.

I looked up at him without shame. “I never regretted it, Otto. To me, what I did was the exact same thing as what you all do for Sovereign Sanctum. Stopping an atrocity from happening. And no, I don’t love the way I had to go about it, but would I take it back? Change it?”

I stared up at him as the rays of sunlight speared through the breaks in the trees, the glittering rays flaring around him like beacons.

“Never.” It was an urgent whisper. “Because you were always worth it to me. Because I would always fight for you, the way you promised to fight for me.”

The wings on his throat thrashed as he swallowed. “You found me at my lowest.”

“Just the way you always found me in mine. And now it’s time we both rose above it.”

He inhaled, those arms strong, and his boots crunched over the uneven terrain.

When we made it to his truck, he angled around to the passenger side. He opened the door and carefully settled me inside. He shut it and ran back around the front, sliding into the driver’s seat.

He turned it over and let the engine roar to life, then he turned to look at me, hand gentle as he brushed the pad of his thumb over the tiny freckle near my lip. “Thought I was going to die when I got to Moonflower and found you missing.”

“Were you coming to tell me how much you love me, my burly bear?”

I wound as much lightness into it as I could manage, though it was thick and soggy.

“Yeah, baby, I was coming to shout it from the rooftops and pray you’d shout it back.”

Love filled my chest to overflowing, years of it that had been shrouded and contained.

Love that was no longer trapped.

I blinked and another tear fell. “You’re my favorite person in the world, Otto Hudson.”

Otto reached down and hooked his pinky with mine. “And you, Raven Tayte, are mine.”

Then he dragged me across the bench seat to tuck me to his side. He put the truck in drive, then curled his arm around my shoulders as he whipped a U-turn in the road. “And now, Little Moonflower, I think it’s time you learned exactly what that means.”