“You can get her back,” Kane whispered, drawing up to her and grasping her shoulders. “I got mine back. Rowan bit me, and The Darkness was there. He had been all along. I just needed a claiming mark to release him.”
“A claiming mark like this?” Kiera asked, pulling the neck of her sweater to the side to expose the four puncture wounds Justin had given her. They were her greatest shame. Those scars were from a desperation to be made whole by someone who was so very broken.
Seconds stretched on as Kane stared at her scars, shaking his head in denial. The proof was there, though. What had worked for him and Rowan hadn’t worked for her. “My lioness is really gone. I’ve accepted it. Not easily, mind you, but I’m getting by. I guess I’m just here because I wanted some kind of connection to the life I had before she was taken from me.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Everyone from my old life is gone. I haven’t seen anyone from Apex, and then you come up on the news and you have him again. You have the dragon. I was sitting there watching you battle with your mate, spewing fire like you used to, and I was just… I guess I wanted to see you for myself.” Her eyes were burning with weak tears again, so she sniffed and kicked at the gravel. “I hate you, Kane. I hate that you got yours back, and I couldn’t make it happen for mine.” She looked up at him and gave him an emotional smile as tears streamed down her cheeks. “But I’m really, really happy for you.”
Kane’s eyes were full of heartache. He held out his hands, lips parted like he wanted to say something to fix this, but there was no such thing. There was no fix. There was just emptiness. He tried to pull her to him again, but she shook her head and stepped out of his reach. Kiera couldn’t do another hug from her old friend right now without losing it completely. “It was good to see you again, Kane. Good luck with your crew.”
“Don’t leave, Kiera.”
She forced her smile wider and gave him a two-fingered wave. “Later, Cowboy.” She’d told him that the day they’d taken her from Apex after she’d been “cured.” That was all she could think of to say goodbye, and it seemed fitting to say it again now. She wouldn’t ever see him again after this.
And then, just like Beast had done, she climbed into her car and drove off as fast as she could without looking back.
Chapter Two
Beast slammed on the brakes. His Raptor skidded at an angle until he came to a rocking stop on the shoulder of the winding mountain road. He was running. Always fucking running now. It’s why he hadn’t turned in his registration paperwork for the Blackwings. He’d given himself this beautiful out when shit got hard, and look what happened. It wasn’t the D-Team that had driven him away. It was some broken former shifter with gorgeous lioness eyes frozen in her face. A lioness! No wonder she’d been calling to his damn rutting animal. It was the way she looked that had made it so fun to watch her watching the D-Team. Her eyes, so striking, so much like those in his pride. His pride, his pride, his fucking dead pride! Beast roared and slammed his open palm against the steering wheel over and over until he could breathe again.
Female fuckin’ lion in his territory—of course his broken animal was hunting her. Kiera was all sick and pitiful and so goddamned beautiful he’d jacked off to her a dozen times since she’d slunk into his territory. He wished he could rip the memory of her beautiful face from his mind. Now that he knew what she was, he wanted nothing in the world to do with her. Why? Because every lion around him died. That was the curse. Didn’t matter if hers had been stripped out of her body in that godforsaken cleansing facility, she was lioness enough. Her eye color said as much. How could he not have put it together? It was like his lion had blinded him to what she was, but why?
Because I wanted to keep her.
“You can’t fucking keep her! You can’t keep anything!” His throat hurt from the yell that had scratched up his throat. He should leave until she was long gone from Kane’s Mountains.
Coward.
Beast huffed a hate-filled laugh and shook his head. Cowardly lion, that was rich. He bit the corner of his thumbnail and growled. That woman, Kiera—she was sick. And not just sick from her animal being stripped. There was something more. Head sick, heart sick, body sick—something was making her smell all wrong.
Dark hair, a deep plum color in the sun, spilling down her shoulders like she was a fucking dream. Dark eyebrows perfectly arched, her make-up flawless, tall, lithe, curves for days. But pale skin and a weak, hunched appearance that said she had some human sickness. Incurable maybe. Why else would she be hunting Kane, her old friend, if not to say goodbye?
Beast had been an asshole to her, but that couldn’t be helped. It was better than getting her killed. It was better than cursing her. She would’ve thanked him if she knew who he was.
For the first time in two years, since the murder of his pride, he felt like talking to someone. He felt like unburdening himself just to see if it took some of the ache away. He would never, but still, the urge was there.
It was the damn D-Team’s fault. He’d wanted to join Kane’s crew because the scary-ass dragon would supposedly stay strong and rule from afar. Instead, he’d put together a crew of shifters who like to air their shit all the time. Beast wished everyone would just shut up and deal with their issues behind closed doors. This drive to relieve himself with a listening ear was all their fault.
He glared at the sign beside his truck. Now Leaving Bryson City. That had been the plan the second the word had slipped from her perfectly puckered lips. Lioness. This was his nightmare. The whole reason he’d come here in the first place was no freakin’ lions, and then who shows up not three months after he applied for Kane’s crew?