“Different how?”
“It’s hard to explain,” she drew out. Kiera sank onto the mattress and pulled her legs in crisscross-applesauce, like one of her elementary teachers had called it. “It’s like I constantly feel like I’m forgetting something. Does that make sense?”
“Is it your lioness you feel like you’re forgetting? Because you can’t feel her anymore?”
“Yeah. So I wake up all the time, and my senses are always on alert. It’s like I can’t settle down enough to let my body go into a deep sleep. I move around during the night a lot, just doing dumb shit. Checking window locks or investigating every little sound. I feel like something’s going to happen to me all the time.” She shook her head helplessly. “I’m tired, Beast.”
“Do you sleep in big rooms?” he asked, leaning onto the table. His blond brows were lowered in a worried expression that she wanted to smooth from his face. “I can’t sleep in big rooms. If your lioness was dominant, and she’s still in there somewhere, she won’t like big spaces. You need a smaller den.”
“She’s not in there. She died.”
“Kiera—”
“No, it’s okay, Beast. I accepted it a long time ago. I had a flare up recently when Kane got his dragon back. I thought I could get my animal back, too, but our story isn’t the same. Our cleansing procedures weren’t the same. I don’t feel my animal at all. If I didn’t hear and see better-than-average, and if I didn’t have these eyes”—she gestured to the frozen lion eyes in her face—“I would think I dreamed her. I don’t even remember what it feels like to share my body with the animal anymore.” She shrugged and tried to smile. “Maybe that’s a good thing because now I just want to move on.”
“By roaming?”
“Maybe.” It was a bullshit answer. She was shutting him down because she always got defensive when she felt someone digging too deep. She didn’t like the way Beast leaned back in the chair, and his eyes closed down on her, too. That was her fault. “Sorry. I’m not used to answering this many questions in such a short amount of time.”
Beast nodded slowly, a faraway look in his eyes as he stared at a miniature salt and pepper shaker in the middle of the table. “Kiera?”
“Hmm?”
“You have all your shit here, thanks to Dustin. You have no reason to go back to the motel tonight. Why don’t you stay here, just for the night, and actually open up to the possibility that you don’t have to run forever?”
“Who says I’m running?”
“Me. That restlessness you’re feeling? That’s what happens to rogues who don’t settle in a pride. You need to stop somewhere, just to see if you even can. Your momma was a rogue, but that don’t mean you have to be one, too.”
“I’m not a rogue, Beast. I’m a human.”
“Bullshit,” he said, making his way to the door. “You say you don’t feel your lioness, but she’s there. Somewhere. I can smell her, Kiera.” His lip twitched slightly, and his voice lowered to a husky, gravelly tone. “I can feel her. She was calling to my animal before you even knew I was stalking you. I feel like a rutting alpha again being around you. No human can pull that kind of a response from a lion. Just because you can’t call on her for a Change doesn’t mean she’s dead.” Beast pulled open the door and made his way outside, and right before the door swung closed, he said, “Apex failed.”
Kiera hissed. She didn’t know what possessed her to do that. She hadn’t done that since she was a kid, but Beast was wrong, and he was pissing her off. He was giving her hope in words, but he had no right to. He didn’t know. He didn’t feel the bleak emptiness inside of her. He didn’t feel the bottomless hole that once upon a time she’d tried to fill with things like drinking and partying and hell, even sleeping around. She was just getting ahold of this, just accepting it. Kiera just needed to accept being human so she could be happy with her life someday.
And here Beast was telling her he smelled her lioness. That he felt her, like she wasn’t some ghost long-dead.
Well, fuck him.
Eyes burning, she blasted off the bed and stomped outside.
Beast had his back to her as he walked purposefully toward his trailer. He had to have heard her coming, but he didn’t duck out of the way when she shoved him in the back.
“You have no right.”
Beast snarled and rounded on her.
“You have no right to give me hope, no right to say she’s still here. You aren’t me! You don’t feel what I do!”
“And what is that, Kiera?”
“Nothing! I feel nothing! I’m empty.”
Beast pulled her against him so fast, she didn’t know what to do with all of these roiling emotions inside of her. She felt so much. Safe, angry, warm, overwhelmed. With a long sob, she sagged against him, and then before he could trap her completely in the hug, she pushed off him and made a bee-line for her car on the other side of the park.
“Where are you going?” Beast asked from right behind her.
“Home.”
“And where’s that, Kiera?” he barked.
“Anywhere but here! You think it would be good for me to stay in this trailer park where I’ll have to watch you all shift into your precious animals while my heart gets ripped out every time? Hell no. This place would torture me. And you spouting off about my lioness like you know her—”