by T. S. Joyce
The Second of the Blackwing Crew reached forward and dabbed the washrag onto the bloodied claiming mark. It stung, but not as bad as Kiera had expected. Rowan frowned and eased closer, pressed a bit harder. Her gold eyes twitched to Kiera, then back to the wound, but Kiera understood the bafflement. She wasn’t bleeding anymore, and it looked half healed.
“Oh, my God,” Rowan said reverently.
“Chills blasted down Kiera’s arms. “What’s happening?”
Rowan looked over at Kane with eyes as round as moons. And when Kiera followed her gaze, Kane was staring at her claiming mark with the strangest smile on his face.
“You can’t Change when you’re pregnant, Kiera,” he rumbled in a voice that wasn’t entirely human yet.
Kiera didn’t understand. “I can’t Change at all.”
Kane’s smile widened slightly. “Not yet. You picked wrong with Justin.” He nodded his head to the side, toward the woods where Beast had disappeared. “You got it right the second time.”
Her shoulders shook when it hit her what he was saying. But oh, she needed to make sure so her hopes didn’t get annihilated again. “Just say it,” she begged.
Kane stood and limped to her, held her tight, and against her ear, he murmured, “Beast gave you your animal back, Kiera. You smell like a lioness, and you heal like a shifter. Have that baby, and you’ll Change again. She’s staying quiet so she can protect your cub.”
Kiera sagged against him, and a soft wail came from her lips as she cried. And then Rowan was there, hugging her and Kane tight and crying right along with her.
She couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to get her hopes up, because what if it wasn’t true? But something had clicked into place when Kane had said that. She’d felt her lioness when she and Beast had been together. Let me show her to you.
Beast had known exactly what he was doing.
He hadn’t just made love to her.
He’d made her whole again.
Kane eased back and released her into Rowan’s arms. He pulled a blue folder off the table and returned.
He swallowed hard and dragged his emotional gaze to Kiera’s. “I don’t know what will happen with Beast. I don’t understand the dynamics, and I don’t know why he has been putting off pledging to my crew. But whatever happens”—he handed her the folder—“I don’t want you to run.” The corner of his lip turned up in a sad smile, and then he pulled Rowan’s hand, and led his mate out of the trailer.
At the door, Rowan let off this beautiful little sigh and smiled prettily, her eyes so full of emotion. “Kiera, you’ll be calling me Roe now. That’s what my friends call me. I’m honored you thought of us when you were considering a home for your baby.” Her smile dislodged twin tears right before she turned and left the door to swing closed on the RV.
Kiera inhaled deeply as she opened the folder. Inside was the official paperwork for registration to the Blackwing Crew. Stunned, she gently lifted the black bear paw beer bottle opener from the clear sleeve in the center and stared at the Blackwing Crew logo on it.
Beast had made her whole, and the dragons had just offered her a permanent place to grow her roots.
But if she did this—some instinct deep inside of her said it would chase Beast from these mountains. Although that had been the plan to begin with, now, it would rip her heart out to take his home away from him.
She sat heavily on the bed and looked at her name written in purple crayon on the wall.
Perhaps she was meant for a place like this—a home on wheels. Perhaps she was meant to never settle. But Beast, Kane, and this fucked-up crew of monsters made it so tempting to slam on the brakes and stop rolling down the hill of destruction she’d found herself on.
But even if she really, really wanted this, she couldn’t push out Beast. He’d been through hell, and he’d chosen this place for sanctuary. She couldn’t take that away from him.
Kiera gripped the bottle opener hard in one hand and with the other, she traced her name that Dustin had written on the wall with her fingertip.
It was time to own every bad thing that had happened and start looking toward a better future for this child, for her, and for Beast, because she couldn’t give up on him. Not after what he’d been through, and what he’d given her. Not after she’d seen the good parts of him he’d only shared with her.
Kiera sighed and glared at her name on the wall with newfound determination.
It was time to step up and see a wily werewolf about a plan.
Chapter Eleven
Beast maneuvered the arm of the excavator and dumped another load of mine dirt into the back of the dump truck.
“Are you just going to ignore me all day?” Kane asked testily from where he stood beside the machine.
“Well, that’s the beauty of not being officially registered to the crew yet. I don’t have to answer your questions.”
“I can order you to.”
Fucking dragon had a point. Beast snarled his lip at him, blasted the claws of the bucket back into the black earth, and scooped another load into the back of the truck.
“So she’s pregnant,” Kane said from below. “It’s not the end of the world. It could be a good thing.”
Beast swung the giant metal arm away from the truck and cut the engine. Pissed beyond belief, Beast jumped out of the machine and scaled the side of the dump truck to pull the tarp over the back. “It’ll be a lion cub.”
“And you’re a lion. I can’t think of a better man to show him or her how to navigate this life, Beast.”
“It’s not mine, Kane! It belongs to one of the fucking murderers of my pride!”
Kane readjusted his white hard hat and spat in the dirt. “Maybe if you give it some time, that won’t matter so much.”
Beast snarled when he passed Kane. Asshole had just come out to the mine site to piss him off and make assumptions about shit he didn’t know anything about. The dragon pulled himself up into the passenger’s seat too fast for Beast to leave his ass on the mountain. Beast shifted to first and eased the truck onto the steep mountain road that would lead down to the gem mine, newly named The Dragon’s Treasure. Clever. Kane had bought the place from the last owner and now was advertising the black dragon inside of him. Smart marketing, actually. Tourists came from all over, not only to mine the beryl, corundum, and sometimes even rubies from the mine dirt, but also to meet Dark Kane, the last Blackwing Dragon on earth. They got to shake the hand of the Apocalypse. Business had been booming.
“That baby won’t belong to a crew, Kane. He’s property of the pride he was conceived in.”
“Property,” Kane repeated softly.
“Yep, Lion Law. We have an entire council devoted to making sure everyone follows the rules.”
“Kiera doesn’t want the baby raised in that pride.”
“Great. I wish her wants mattered to the council, but they don’t. She’s a lioness.”
“Jesus.”
“You think I don’t know how fucked up that is, Kane? Huh? I do! I treated my females like queens, but not every pride is like that. Very few are, actually, and the Tarian Pride? Biggest pride since mine, and all run by a monster, Kane. She picked a monster!”
“Your monster could match him.”
“Don’t fuckin’ tempt me, Dragon. Challenging Justin means I die or I take over his pride. The timing’s off. You know my story. Surely you can understand why I want nothing to do with running a pride again.”
“You should talk to Kiera, Beast.”
“I’m not exactly in the right state of mind to have an intelligent conversation about this. All I can think of—the only thing—is hunting Justin. And for what? So I can keep his claim? So I can keep his kid? I’m supposed to wait, Kane! I’m supposed to hunt him when he isn’t an alpha anymore. Going to war with him means going to war with his females, and I’m not doing the same shit he did to me and my pride. I’m not doing it! And now Kiera—my mate—is carrying his baby. Fuck,” he uttered as he felt
socked in the gut. “I won’t have anything good to say to her right now. I just need a minute to wrap my head around everything that’s happened.”
“This isn’t a pride, Beast.”
“No shit.”
“No…I mean…if Kiera doesn’t want to raise her baby in a pride, I don’t care about Lion Law. She was like a little sister to me once, Beast. I watched her break.” His voice cracked on the last word, and the dark-headed alpha slammed his head back on the seat. Softly, he repeated, “I watched her break. Watched them all break in that goddamned facility, but Kiera was different. She’d just lost her mom, just been rejected by the pride who could’ve saved her lion, and she wasn’t fighting the process. She went into the testing rooms hollow looking, like she was already walking through life as a ghost, and she was fifteen years old. There were two extremes in Apex. Kids who gave up too quick—they died. Kids who fought too hard to keep their animal—they died, too. Kiera came in dead-eyed. Do you understand what I’m telling you? The lions didn’t do shit for her, so if she doesn’t want to raise that little cub in a pride, I give zero fucks.”
“What are you saying?”
Kane rolled his head toward Beast. “Screw pride rules, Beast. You aren’t in a pride anymore, and Kiera never belonged to one. If she wants in the Blackwings, she’ll have my blessing, and she’ll have my fire, too, but I know her. You’re the obstacle now.”
Beast frowned. He didn’t understand what that meant. He wasn’t anyone’s obstacle to anything. He wasn’t chasing her out. He just couldn’t be around her right now without hurting her feelings. He’d done this shit before. Females were sensitive. Anytime his pride had gone at each other’s throats, he’d had to tiptoe around like he was in a fucking minefield.
He didn’t know what to say to Kiera. She had a claiming mark from Justin, was carrying his child. She didn’t belong to Beast, and what could he really do if the pride came for her? Nothing. And if he tried, they could kill her, and the council would look the other way. For abandoning Justin, the council would consider the punishment justified. Cubs were everything to lions. She had a brick of gold in her belly, and she’d picked one psychotic pride to conceive in. The second Justin found out she was carrying his cub, he would have her, or no one would.
Beast was a broken rogue responsible for the deaths of his entire pride. He wouldn’t be responsible for Kiera’s death, too.
Kane preached about his fire belonging to Kiera if she needed it, but the dragon didn’t understand. He hadn’t been raised around the different shifter cultures. He’d grown up alone. Lions weren’t like the other shifters. They had their own set of rules and policed themselves, and as much as Kiera wanted to stay rogue, the tiny life inside of her made her a Tarian by technicality.
Beast had bonded to her, but he’d never really had a shot at making her his.
He gritted his teeth against the pain that unfurled in his middle. The urge to Change was so strong he shook his head hard to rattle the lion off his mission. And as he rounded the last turn in the dirt road, salvation came in the strangest form.
Dustin stood leaned against his black sports car, face in a serious frown for once. Emma stood on the other side, her chin resting on her arms on the roof of the car. Her face was unreadable.
Beast pulled to a stop and rolled down the window. “What?”
“Emma has an appointment with the ear doc up in Asheville. She needs new hearing aids. The others don’t work for her very well after she went wolf.” Dustin shrugged and stared at the new sign on the main building of Kane’s gem mine. “I figured maybe you would want to come to Asheville with us. Stay in a hotel a couple nights, get away, get your head on straight.”
Beast huffed a soft, single laugh at the joke, but Dustin wasn’t smiling. “Are you serious?”
Dustin scratched the sandy blond scruff on his jaw and gave him his lightened blue and green eyes. “Last night was bad, Beast. You almost killed Logan, and I saw your face when you challenged Kane. You were off the rails.” Dustin nodded his chin to his car. “Get in.”
In general, Beast didn’t like to be told what to do, and especially not by some smartass submissive werewolf, but Dustin was offering him something he couldn’t turn down. He was offering him an out. A distraction. An escape from the body-wracking pain that washed over him every time he thought about going back to the trailer park and having the talk with Kiera. He wasn’t ready to let her go, so okay.
Beast threw the truck into park and climbed out.
“Are you serious?” Kane asked.
“I need a couple days off work.”
“Beast—”
“It’s this, or I break now,” Beast said from where he stood on the ground below. “I want to keep her, Kane. I want to keep Kiera for a couple more days, even if it’s just in my head.”
“Don’t worry, Alpha. I’ll keep our resident psychopath from hunting Daddy Lion,” Dustin promised Kane. Like he knew everything. Little piss-ant was annoying for thinking he knew Beast’s mind. He did, but still. It was obnoxious that he couldn’t just keep it to himself.
Beast snapped his teeth at Dustin as he approached the car. Move. But when the wolf didn’t jump back or get out of the way for Beast to climb in the back, Beast knew something was up. Dustin smelled off. Nervous. What the fuck was going on?
Beast strode around the front of the car, his suspicious glare on the back of Dustin’s head. Emma let him in just fine, and as he began to maneuver his giant frame into the back seat, the roar of the dump truck accelerating drowned out everything. He got about halfway in before her scent hit him like a ton of bricks. Kiera.
Beast paused, halfway in, halfway out of the car.
“Get in quick before Kane sees me,” she murmured. Her voice was hollow, dead-sounding, and she looked like she’d been crying. Shhhit.
Beast rattled off a growl and sank into the seat beside her. His shoulders took up two thirds of the back, but she was much smaller than him, so he wasn’t squishing her. Yet. Dustin would probably drive like a bat out of hell and have Beast scrabbling for purchase so he wouldn’t hurt Kiera and the…the…baby.
Kane had pulled the truck up to the building, so Dustin and Emma got in and shut their doors in a rush.
“What’s going on?” Beast ground out, looking at the back of the seat, out the window, at his clenched hands in his lap—anywhere but at Kiera. She smelled so sad.
Fix her.
Beast shook his head as a wave of dizziness blasted through his skull that was followed with a piercing pain behind his eyes. Stupid lion was scratching at his skin, threatening to rip out of him again. Today had been a pill.
“We’re going to Asheville,” Dustin explained innocently. “You have a two o’clock meeting tomorrow with one mega-chode lion shifter named Justin, which by the way, I hate that his name rhymes with my name because he really is the world’s biggest shit-flake.”
Beast canted his head at the stupid death-wish-having werewolf. “You put together a meeting with Justin.” It wasn’t a question. He had no doubt Dustin somehow thought this was a good idea. “And you just lied to Kane about what we’re doing.”
“Nope!” Dustin clipped out as he pulled onto the main road. “My moral compass is still broken and pointed due-south, but I haven’t quite honed my lying skills when it comes to the dragon. We did make an appointment at the ear doc so I wouldn’t have to lie. I just omitted some of the truths.”
Beast huffed a breath and shook his head, rested his elbow on the window and bit his thumbnail. “Does Justin know about the cub?” he asked Kiera. Because if he did, Kiera was already chained to the damn Tarian Pride.
“Yes. He could tell before I even knew.” She sounded terrified, as she should be. “He doesn’t know where I am, but I know he’s looking. I’ve been on the move to stay ahead of him.”
Fuck, fuck, fuckety, fuck. “There will be no good outcome to doing this. He’ll take you away.”
Something slapped against his leg.
It was a blue folder Kiera had tossed onto his lap. When he looked up at her, Kiera’s eyes were rimmed with tears.
She inhaled a trembling breath and jammed her finger at it. “Everything I didn’t even have the imagination to dream of is in that folder, Beast. I came here to see if I could give my baby away to the dragons, so it wouldn’t be raised in that awful pride. I talked to Kane and Rowan about it last night, and they gave me an option that’s so much more than I deserve, but that I want really, really badly. I want to be a Blackwing, but even more than that, I want you to stay and try for the same because you deserve this, too. But I know we can’t move past this until it’s all in the open. I don’t want us living our whole lives wondering what if. I don’t know your heart, Beast. I only know mine, and I would wonder for always what we could’ve been, because I truly, deeply care for you. So much it scares me. If you can’t accept this child, tell me now, and we’ll go back to the trailer park, and I’ll pack my shit and leave. If your animal can’t get past it, lay it out there right now so I can try to move on. But if there is a way that you could still care for me despite what I used to think was a mistake but is now something I truly love…” Kiera wrapped her arms around her little stomach and looked so beautiful. Like a goddess. Like everything he wanted. “Then we’ll go, and I’ll beg Justin to let me live my life the way I want to, with you. With the Blackwings. I’ll plead on my knees if I have to.”
Beast snarled at the thought of his queen on her knees. He would bleed the entire fucking pride before he saw her bow to them.
She didn’t know what she was really asking. It wouldn’t be a clean break. Justin wouldn’t let her go, no matter how much anyone groveled. Beast knew what it took to run a pride that size. It took lethal decision-making skills and a darkness of the heart. And he’d seen the emptiness in Justin’s eyes the night he went to war with his pride. He killed females like they were nothing. Kiera had given him simple choices—tell her he couldn’t get past the baby’s parentage and move on, or fix this for her. She had it wrong, though. She wouldn’t be begging her freedom. Instead, she would be the single bullet in the chamber that would incite war between Kane’s Mountains and the lions.