Kane shook his head, called them, “smart-asses,” then jammed his finger back toward the restaurant. “Leave! Now!” Power crackled through his words. Even Kiera could feel the command in his tone.
Kiera was having a hard time dragging her gaze away from where Beast’s truck had disappeared. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked Kane as the others meandered inside.
Kane hooked his hands on his hips and followed her gaze. With a shrug, he muttered, “A lot of stuff. It’s not personal, though, Kiera. He’s…troubled.” He twitched his chin toward his crew. “They all are.”
“But not you. Not anymore.”
Kane huffed a tired sound. “Or maybe I’m the worst one. Are you in some kind of danger?”
The question caught her off guard, so she hesitated before she nodded.
Kane reached forward and touched her dyed locks. She’d grown her hair out since they’d shaved it at Apex, colored her fair hair dark with a deep purple sheen all over. When he pushed up the side of her hair, she knew what he was looking for. He was searching for the scars from Apex. The ones that were part of the program to cleanse her, as the humans called it. The scars that helped to take her animal away. She jerked away from him and gave him a dirty look. They weren’t that familiar. Not anymore.
Kane swallowed hard and looked sick. Welcome to the fucking club.
“Why are you here, Kiera? Do you need something from me? Some kind of help? Name it, and I’ll do anything.”
“Why would you help me now?” she said bitterly, yanking her gaze away from him and giving it to the woods again as she leaned up against her ride. “Don’t you know it’s too late?”
“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?
Coward.
“Shut the fuck up,” he muttered to his inner animal as he pulled a U-Turn and headed back to Kane’s Mountains.
He didn’t want to run from the small sanctuary he’d found. Where else would he find an alpha big and bad enough to put him down when his animal dragged him into insanity? Nowhere. He needed the D-Team to keep him in check, and he would need Kane to protect the world from him when the time came.
Besides, Kiera was probably gone by now. He’d seen it in her eyes. She was a leaver just like him. That woman had one foot out of these mountains already. All he had to do was wait it out in the safety of his trailer until Kane gave him the okay
to come out again.
The dragon knew the real story behind Beast’s fall from power. He wouldn’t make him face Kiera. He wouldn’t. Beast was crew, and Kiera was sick.
She was ashes in the wind.
Chapter Three
Kiera huffed an angry breath and turned away from her El Camino for the third time. Why was leaving the Smoky Mountains this hard?
She marched back into her motel room and let the door click closed behind her. Her reflection in the mirror made her sad. She looked as sick as she felt. Tired and weak. She hadn’t slept well in years. Not since her lioness was taken. Now she had a constant feeling of restlessness. Like there was something she was supposed to be doing, something she couldn’t remember.
Biting her bottom lip, she pulled the duffle bag strap over her head and settled it onto the made bed. The comforter was impeccable except for the indentation the bag made—the only proof of her being here. She liked to travel light, like a ghost.
Usually she ripped her gaze away from her reflection, but she needed to own this. She needed to remind herself of why she’d come here in the first place. There was a full-length mirror hanging from the bathroom door, and she gave it her profile, frowning at her loose sweater and baggy jeans. With a steadying breath, she lifted her shirt and cupped the swell of her belly. There was an instant fluttering there, like butterfly wings against her insides.
She would make the worst mother.
What could she provide this baby? She was a roaming cocktail waitress who paid for hotels and rental properties with tips from rich guys who liked to stare at her ass in tight clothes. And right now, she couldn’t even do that job because she was four months pregnant, and unless clients had prego-fetishes, she wasn’t the body type anymore.
This baby wouldn’t be a fake human like her, no. This baby would be a lion shifter like its father. Fucking Justin. All she’d wanted was a meaningless claiming mark so she could get her animal back, but he’d negotiated terms. He’d drawn it out, demanded sex for the bite, and she’d given in time and time again, because he always acted like he would give her the bite during each coupling. He’d planned this, hadn’t used protection no matter how much she’d asked him too, and now in hindsight she could see everything so clear. This had been his plan. He thought the bite was going to work too, and if he got her pregnant, he thought she would step into his pride and pledge everlasting fealty like his other lionesses. He would’ve been the alpha to bring a rogue to her knees. Well, screw his plans. Now she was on the run, hoping with a bone-deep desperation that he didn’t find her. She would be damned if she let this baby be raised in his awful pride.
She couldn’t protect it alone, so the best thing she could do for the child she carried would be to give it to the dragons. Just the thought of parting with this little life inside of her made her eyes burn with emotion though. Even sick and weak, she wished the pregnancy would stretch on and on so she could keep this little piece of happiness. Even though she was going through hell, she wasn’t alone. She had someone to think of more than herself and that got her through the dark days.
Kiera sniffed hard and settled her shirt back over her stomach, then lay on the bed like a starfish and stared at the ceiling fan. When the fluttering intensified into a rolling sensation, she rested her hand there to see if she could feel the movement from the outside yet. She’d never wanted her lioness back as badly as when she’d taken those four at-home pregnancy tests. A huge part of her wished she had that strength back to raise the cub herself. But what kind of a life could she give a shifter when there was no chance of ever being a shifter again herself? Every time the baby Changed, it would break her heart.
But…
She loved the idea that this baby meant there was a little bit of lion in her right now. She liked imagining she wasn’t too broken to raise it outside of a pride. Sometimes she even pretended she could keep it. She already loved it so much she’d quit drinking, quit all the bad habits she’d been partaking in. Her old life had been wild and out of control, but now, her thoughts were consumed by doing what was best for the baby. If not for this tiny, fragile life inside of her, she would’ve never come to the mountains of the dark dragon.
Oh, she remembered Kane. Kane as a boy had been kind, protective even. Kane as a dragon was a monster. In Apex, she’d lived with the fear that they would not only succeed in taking her animal, but that Kane would burn the facility to the ground with her in it. Death by fire terrified her, yet here she was, facing the dragon again.
Kiera rolled onto her side and cradled her belly. She would do anything to give the baby a good home, but not with a pride. If it was a girl, she would be one of many mates to a dominant male. If it was a boy, he would be raised to breed many and connect with none. He would be raised a brawler. He would likely die young in fights to keep a pride. She needed the dragons to take the baby and protect it from Justin and all of his powerful allies because Kiera couldn’t. She was rogue without the ability to call on her animal to keep her child safe. Justin would find her, find her child, and he would kill her without a single thought if it meant he could keep his offspring. Cubs meant power and virility. Cubs kept Justin king over his domain. And Kiera would do anything to keep her child from being a number in his awful Tarian Pride.
Rumor had it Rowan wouldn’t be able to survive birthing a full-blooded baby dragon. Rumor also had it the dragons were searching for surrogates and possible adoptions. Rowan could survive by raising a little lion cub.
The complication? One badass, murderous, dominant-as-hell alpha lion named Beast. If he was as bad as everyone said, he was more animal than man and would kill another male’s offspring in his territory.
If she was going to stay here and feel out whether Kane’s Mountains would be a good home for her cub, she needed to hide this pregnancy. And beyond that, she needed to chase away the Beast. There was still time since he hadn’t officially registered to the Blackwing Crew.
She had to make sure he would never come back and harm her cub.
****
Beast pulled his truck to a stop in his side yard and narrowed his eyes at the dunce on his front porch. What the fuck did Dustin want?
It had already been an infinitely long day, Beast was caked in sweat from working at the gem mine Kane had just bought, his muscles ached, his head throbbed, and yeah, his dick was still throbbing, too, because apparently his stupid lion couldn’t let go of the vision of Kiera’s perfect fucking lips and tits. He really liked her purple hair and that cute little nose ring that looked like a tiny piece of glitter in the sun, and aaaah!
He didn’t want to deal with the mouthy wolf right now. He just wanted to drink himself into oblivion and maybe shift later and kill stuff. Dustin would be fun to hunt.
Beast snarled and shoved his truck door open. “I knew you were dumb, wolf,” he murmured, pointing to the No Trespassing sign he’d posted on the fence around his singlewide trailer. “But I didn’t know you were that dumb.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere with me, friend.”
“We’re not friends,” Beast muttered, kicking the gate open. He strode toward his porch. “Fuck off.”
“See, I disagree, on account of you saving my life. Remember? I was being slowly bled to death by three packs.” Dustin held three fingers up like Beast was the dumb one. He wanted to bite off his hand.
“And then here comes my ride-or-die lady and one scary-ass lion to help me out of that little jam. I’m still knockin’ boots with Emma thanks to you.” Dustin stretched his legs out from Beast’s green porch chair, bought on sale for two bucks at the grocery store. Stupid Dustin was going to make it smell like wolf farts. Beast curbed the urge to chuck Dustin, along with the chair, over the fence.
Irritated, he pointed to the black folder on Dustin’s lap, the one the wolf obviously wanted him to notice since he was pelvic thrusting it up in the air. “What’s that?” Beast wanted to sleep for a week, but this was a crew, and apparently he was supposed t
o make an effort with them.
“What this?” Dustin asked innocently.
Games. Beast rolled his eyes heavenward and yanked open the door of his trailer. “Bye, Dustin.”
But Dustin followed directly, as if he wanted to die today.
Beast rounded on him. “My territory, get out.”
“Kiera is still here.”
Well, that felt like a kick to the gonads. His heart sank to the laminate flooring under his feet. “What?”
“Kane was acting all sketchy, and have you noticed? Logan ain’t around. He’s been MIA for two days.”
“Yeah, well, he has a job now, one that doesn’t include killing people, so fucking good for him.”
“Yeah, he has that one, and the job Kane gave him.”
Beast narrowed his eyes. He thought he was Kane’s right-hand man. Kane always came to him first seeking advice with problems. Why? Because he’d done this alpha shit for ten years and knew how to navigate treacherous waters while the dark dragon was still a new alpha. One who sometimes barely liked his crew. Mostly because of Dustin. “What job?”
“Perhaps you should sit down for this,” Dustin said innocently. He wore a dumb grin as though savoring the stupid secret he was holding.
“Spill it or I’ll kill you,” Beast said nonchalantly as he walked to the fridge and pulled out a beer.
“Empty threats.”
False. Beast really did want to kill Dustin three dozen times a day and sometimes more. Same with Logan. Same with Kane, same with any male in his territory, thanks to his broken lion. Females were the only ones truly safe from him. Kane should probably put him down now. Or maybe Logan would do it since that was his old job—putting down sick shifters. He’d probably enjoy it. He and Logan fought like animals any time they were around each other.
“You get lost in your head a lot for a dude,” Dustin said, twirling the folder on one finger.
Beast glared at the werewolf and chugged his beer. Dustin spoke the truth, but fuck him for pointing it out.