“She’s back here,” Hunter says over the sound of footsteps crunching toward me. He runs to the side of me, smiling, but his smile fades when he notes my expression. “What’s wrong?”

I point at the snow, and his expression plummets.

Jax runs up then with a snowball in his hand. “What’re you guys …?” He drops the snowball as his gaze falls to the footsteps and red droplets that may or may not be blood.

“Is that blood?” Jax asks in horror.

“What’re you guys looking at?” Zay is approaching us now.

Hunter nods at the trail of footprints and questionable blood.

Zay pauses when he reaches us then continues forward, following the path. Hunter takes off after him, and I do, too. Jax grabs a hold of my hand, I think to stop me, but then he walks with me, holding my hand. When I look at him, he offers me a smile. I smile back, but I’m so damn perplexed.

“Is everything okay with you and Hunter?”

He nods, brushing snowflakes out of his hair with his free hand. “Yeah. For now, I think we are.”

“Oh.” I bite down on my bottom lip, wanting to ask him so many questions. Like, is it okay for him to be holding my hand? Can we still kiss? Is Hunter still going to touch me?

I don’t get the opportunity, though, as we discover what the trail of footprints and blood leads to.

A raven.

A dead raven with a knife stabbed through it. And painted in blood in the snow are the words …

“Consider this the start of my retaliation,” Hunter reads the words aloud. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Hunter glances at me and Jax, and both of us shrug, but Jax latches onto my hand tightly. I know why, too. I didn’t miss the hidden message, the fact that a raven is dead and my name just happens to be Ravenlee.

Dread webs in my stomach. Who the hell did this?

Hunter looks at Zay, who’s been oddly quiet. “Do you have any idea what this is about?”

He doesn’t say anything right away, skimming his finger along the cuts on his hands as he stares off at the end of the road. “I did something tonight. Something I thought might help us figure out who threw Raven off the bridge.”

Hunter’s face turns cold, his fingers clenching at his sides. “What the fuck did you do?”

He rubs his lips together and says some ominous words. “Well, I think I may have unintentionally started a war.”

11

ZAY

I messed up. I’ll admit that. But I was trying to get some answers so that we didn’t have to enter that school completely blind. So, when I left the house tonight, I went to this party that Porter was at, because I’ve had my assumptions that it was him from the start. That whole bullshit story I told Hunter was because I wasn’t ready to tell him what I’d found out yet, not until I was sure.