The next page was an official looking document with the Apex logo across the top.
Kiera is showing signs of success. We almost lost her last week, but she recovered and this morning wasn’t able to Change. We thought she was lying to us again, but when she was prodded with electricity, she was truly unable to defend herself. We aren’t there yet, but we’re getting closer with her. I think this one will live.
Beast’s hands shook as he barely resisted the urge to crumple the paper and burn it to ashes. He hated Apex with the fire of a million suns. Kane was just now pulling out of what they’d done to him, and Beast constantly saw the cracks in the dragon’s façade. Kiera would never get the chance to recover. She never got her animal back like Kane did.
There was a Ziploc bag with pictures. Beast pulled them out carefully. They were all out of order. That bothered him, so he spread them out and put them right. There was one of Kiera probably around the age she drew the picture of her and her mom. Sandy-blond hair, bangs in her big blue eyes, hair all curled and in pigtails, two missing front teeth. Cute kid. It was a school picture, and she was sitting up straight. She looked happy. Normal. Her shirt read Teachers Rule. Beast smiled. He couldn’t help himself. She was probably the class brownnoser. He could imagine her sitting at the front of the class and raising her hand as fast as she could every time the teacher asked a question.
There were pictures of her on a soccer team, one of her in a cheerleading uniform being thrown up in the air. Next was a selfie. She was standing in front of a mirror in a black dress, dead eyes locked on the camera, cheeks and nose red as though she’d been crying. She was maybe fourteen.
Beast rushed through the rest of the pictures, all apparently from Apex. He couldn’t look at those for too long. Kiera was like a corpse. Sometimes her eyes were blue, and sometimes one was gold. The ones where she was emaciated, her head was shaved, showing three deep surgical scars on the side. In those, her eyes were dead and frozen in that lioness color.
Kane had once shown him a similar picture of himself when Beast had asked about Apex.
There was a tattered newsprint obituary for her mom. Firefighting accident. Burning building her mom hadn’t been able to escape. She died saving a little boy. Apparently Kiera had some hero in her bloodlines.
Next was a list of names Kane had put together.
Holly Dunes – lion, killed in transition
Brandon Fastmen – wolf, killed in transition
Meghan Stewart – grizzly bear, killed in transition
Dawn Evener – grizzly bear, no trace of animal, married, two human children
Kannon Dayton – wolf, deceased, took life
Kiera Pierce – lion, no trace of animal, never married, never registered to a pride, no children
Caleb Porter – panther, killed in transition
Ben Porter – panther, last seen in Bilk Creek Mountains. On the move. In hiding. Married. Mated? Animal? One child. Human? Shifter? No established contact.
Where the fuck are you, Ben?
LSKDJFLSKJFDLKF
Kane had found Ben only recently. And now he’d found Kiera.
No animal, never married, never registered to a pride, no children, and hell, he was having a really hard time hating her now. She’d lost so much. Perhaps she’d even lost as much as Beast. He never thought he would find someone as irreparably damaged as him, and yet here was this woman who was now sick, without her animal, and completely rogue. Of course she’d never registered with a pride. Prides weren’t like crews. They didn’t accept humans, and that’s how they would’ve seen Kiera. She had no shot of joining up with other lions. She either had to join a crew, which she clearly didn’t do, or join the human world that had stripped her animal from her.
He didn’t know Kiera, but something deep inside of him told him that after her mom died, she had never fit in again. Back when he was alpha, back when he was okay, back when he was king, he would’ve taken her into his pride, even as a human.
Beast frowned. But then she would be dead.
He couldn’t read this shit anymore, so he shoved everything back in the folder and slapped it closed.
The thought of Logan watching her hotel room drew a deep rumble up his throat. He wanted to gut that bear for hunting her, and he didn’t really give a single fuck that Kane had ordered Logan to do it. Kiera was a lioness, or she had been once. This wasn’t Logan’s business.
Beast made his way into his room and dressed as fast as he could. Since his chest was still wet from the shower, it made dark spots all over his black sweater, but so what? No one looked at him like he was fuckable. More like a monster instead. He snarled when he caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Stupid face all torn to hell, a constant reminder of what had happened. No wonder Kiera had smelled scared of him.
She was a beauty. He was a beast.
He needed to chase Logan away. No, wait. He was supposed to chase Kiera away. From the mountains, from Kane’s territory…from his territory. But that didn’t feel right anymore. Stupid protective instincts had confused him for a minute, but he was getting his head back on straight little by little. He just had to ignore the pictures he saw. If she stayed here, near him, he would ruin her life even more. And a huge part of him wanted Kiera to be all right now. To be a success story. To get her act together, find her strength, and heal from whatever was making her smell sick.
Beast grabbed his coat and winter hat and shoved the door open. He didn’t even bother turning off the lights in his trailer before he bolted down the porch steps and through the gate to his truck.