Do it! Kill me!
Beast turned and stared at the perfect swell of Kiera’s belly. If the baby had been human, he could’ve had everything.
He’d been so…fucking…close.
Kane might as well light him up and turn him to ashes and dust.
Beast was as good as dead inside anyway.
Chapter Ten
Kiera couldn’t move. She was trapped in the massive lion’s heartbroken gaze. It was clear he wouldn’t be able to move past this. He wasn’t one of those shifters who could accept another man’s child. And it wasn’t just another man, either. It was the child of a man who had helped kill his pride and taken everything away from Beast. It was the child of the man who helped to break him.
Her heartbreak was infinite.
Somewhere over the last couple of days, she’d toyed more and more with the idea, pretended perhaps, that she could have everything. That she could keep her baby and be good enough for it. If she had someone like Beast keeping her on the straight and narrow and supporting her, maybe she could be okay at this.
But her first instincts about Beast—and the giant, dominant animal inside of him—were right. He was governed by his animal side. That much was clear by the bloodshed he’d just started. Lions in the wild killed other male’s offspring. They couldn’t accept cubs with different genetics. And Beast was more animal than man with an acute hatred for Justin.
Everyone was bleeding. The clearing smelled like iron and smoke.
She should be focused on the fire-breathing dark dragon perched above them, but she couldn’t take her eyes of Beast. Beautiful, dominant, brawling Beast had just roared a challenge to Kane. A challenge like he’d given the others. She’d watched him spiral. Watched him bleed his crew. Watched him roar for his own death in the face of The End of Days.
He couldn’t keep her steady. He couldn’t even keep himself steady.
Tears streamed down her cheeks, burning more than they should, as if made of lava. Cradling her belly, she whispered, “Beast, I wanted to tell you, but I wasn’t ready to tell anyone.”
Kane backed off, careful not to crush the trailers in the park, stepping gingerly as he snarled a deep rattling sound with every smoky breath. She’d never seen the dragon so in control. The Kane she knew in Apex would’ve burned Beast to nothing with that challenge.
So, people could change. Just maybe not people like Beast.
Kiera ripped her gaze away from Beast because he was staring at her belly with such fire in his eyes. And yeah, it hurt. It hurt, okay? He looked at her differently. She was a pregnancy now to him, not a person. Not someone beautiful and mysterious and worth getting to know. She’d given away her heart when they were making love and now it felt like he was squeezing it in his hand.
The others were Changing back, so she wiped her eyes. Logan’s chest and abs were shredded, and he couldn’t stand on his own. Emma and Dustin were trying to get him to his feet, but Winter had other ideas.
Naked, clawed up, and with gold fury in her eyes, Winter ran at Beast. She shoved him so hard she stumbled. “Fuck you, Beast. Fuck you! We were sleeping. We were happy. You ripped our animals out of us, and then you nearly killed him. You nearly killed him, you fucking fuck!” Winter’s shoulders shook with her crying, and she shoved him again.
Beast didn’t fight it. He let her push him and walked slowly past Kiera toward the woods, each footstep graceful, but heavy as if he shouldered the weight of the world. Perhaps he always had.
Hands touched Kiera’s back, and she jumped. It was Rowan looking down at her belly. “You got a baby in you, Kiera?” she asked softly.
Kiera broke down…just…sobbing. It felt so good to have it out there, and so utterly terrible all at once. Rowan hugged her tight, but she could still see him, the shifter she wanted walking away. She watched him until he disappeared into the shadows, and never once did he look back.
A few seconds more, and a long lion bellow sounded, and then another and another. They got shorter and shorter until Beast quit his lament and shrouded the trailer park in silence.
He was just on the edge of the woods, so close…yet completely unreachable.
She was mindless with sadness right now, overwhelmed and overpowered by it. For a moment, she’d felt whole. She’d lost the hollowness. Beast had filled it up, and now she had to go back to being empty again. “I almost had him, Rowan. I almost had everything.”
“Shhhh, he just needs some time.”
But Rowan didn’t understand. Kiera had seen that dead-eyed look in a lion before. She’d seen it on Tammy’s face when she told Kiera’s social worker she couldn’t take her in. It was the look of goodbye.
“Emma, can you get the bleeding stopped?” Rowan asked over Kiera’s shoulder.
“I’ll do my best,” the woman answered. They were trying to get Logan inside the doublewide trailer he shared with his mate, but he was dead weight and not much help. His feet dragged behind them, leaving two lines in the dirt.
Beast had done that. She’d done that.
Kiera was in way over her head here. Too much hung in the balance with these troubled shifters. One argument could spell death for one of them. Or all of them. They’d gone to battle with such single-minded tenacity, it left her shaken.
“Come on,” Rowan said, pulling her toward the silver RV. “You’re bleeding, too.”
Kiera stumbled numbly beside her and stared down at the new claiming mark. What had possessed him to do that? With Justin, she’d begged and begged for the shot to get her animal back like Kane had. He’d been bitten by Rowan, another dragon shifter, and his dragon’s return had been immediate.