“You fuckin’ heard me, Alpha.”
There was a loaded moment between the two brawlers, then Kane stood in a rush and looked at Kiera. The dragon had left his eyes to leave them soft brown, like the Kane she’d seen in Apex. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.” He made to leave but hesitated by Beast. He ran his hands down his dark whiskers and murmured, “Beast—”
“Don’t.” Beast twitched his head and kept his gaze on the window.
Kane swallowed hard and turned to Kiera. “Please come see me tomorrow. Come to my mountains. Talk to me. I’m asking you as a friend not to leave until you can convince me you’re okay. I won’t be able to stop looking for you again if you don’t.”
“Okay,” she murmured.
And then Kane left without a look back. He strode across the darkening parking lot, got into his Bronco, and pulled away. Surely, he wouldn’t leave her here with Beast if he thought she was in danger…right?
“Number one-sixty-five and one-sixty-six,” a bored-sounding teenager said over the intercom.
That was her, but when she stood to retrieve her food, Beast gestured for her to stay put and muttered, “I’ve got it.”
When he set the tray down in front of her too hard, her burger bounced. He carried his own tray back to a table one closer to her. He didn’t seem inclined to speak, but she had questions, so after a few minutes of munching in silence, Kiera moved one table closer to him, and now only one empty table separated them.
Beast cleared his throat and moved to that table, cast her a quick glance, inhaled deeply, and then went back to eating one of his three hamburgers and mini Mount Everest of tater tots.
Kiera was drawn to him. She wanted so badly to sit across from him while they ate. She didn’t mind quiet. Her life had been bathed in it, and Beast seemed like a man of few words. What she did mind, though, was the lingering fact he was a murderer.
“You smell scared,” he said, his voice low and growly. He wasn’t meeting her eyes, but she could see a bit of the color of his every once in a while, and they weren’t human.
“I know who you are.”
“Nobody knows who I am.”
“You’re Beast of the Calamity Pride.”
He ghosted her a glance and huffed a breath. His lip snarled up. “So you know my name. Doesn’t mean you know anything about me.”
“Alpha ten years, from age eighteen to twenty-eight. Your pride had twelve females in it—”
“Stop,” he demanded.
“One of the biggest prides in North America. You were a legend—”
“I said stop,” he uttered louder, sitting up straight.
“—until you murdered your entire pride,” she gritted out. He should fucking know she wasn’t some prey he could follow around. She wasn’t the hunted. She’d been through hell and back and wasn’t about to fall victim to some serial killer in a pretty package.
Beast snarled out a terrifying sound, eyes locked on something out the window. In a blur, he stood, chucked his food in the trash, and then bolted out the door. He ran his hand roughly back and forth over his short hair as he jogged to his truck. At the door, he turned back around, his face so full of pain it hurt to look at him. Chest heaving, he locked his gaze with hers and scrubbed his hand down his dark blond facial scruff. He yanked the door open to his Raptor and pulled out a notebook. He bit off the lid of a permanent marker and spit it into the car, then scribbled something as he strode back toward the window. When he reached it, he slammed the notebook against the glass, right in front of her face.
You don’t know me. No one does. You’re wrong.
“About what?” she asked.
“Everything,” he barked through the glass, his eyes flashing with such conviction it stole her breath. He walked away, his furious golden gaze lingering on her over his shoulder. And then he loaded up into his Raptor, and spun out of the parking lot.
I can’t stop thinking about her.
Kane had forced the truth from the titan lion. Perhaps he wasn’t hunting her. Perhaps he was as curious about her as she was about him.
She was wrong about everything? Every rumor she’d ever heard about Beast had painted him as a monster, but now she wasn’t so sure. He’d been hurt when she mentioned what had happened. His body had been shaking. This whole time, she’d thought Kane had made a misstep by letting a true killer into his crew, but Kane was smart. He always had been, and clearly devoted to his mate. What reason would he have to let someone who murdered an entire pride into his crew?
Unless…
Perhaps Beast wasn’t the beast she imagined at all.
The red glow of his taillights disappeared into the evening shadows.
This was the second time he’d run away, and she was just as baffled by him this time as the last.
Chapter Five
Kiera pulled to a stop at the very top of the road that led down into the valley of Kane’s Mountains. It was such a steep drop-off, she couldn’t see the road in front of the nose of her El Camino. She just had to trust that the gravel lane was there.
Trust wasn’t her forte. Never had been, and this leap into the unknown felt like a parallel to trusting Kane. If she went another inch further, she would be in the dragon’s territory and skidding down a road that wouldn’t let her escape quickly.
It was a moment of commitment. She would let Kane in. She would give into her curiosity about Beast. She would risk exposing her pregnancy to get closer to these broken shifters.