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She gave the baby to the maid, giving her one final kiss. Her bright eyes, the same shade of blinding green as her dad’s, stared up at her, innocent and lacking comprehension.
It was better that way. She likely wouldn’t even remember her, which made leaving ever so slightly easier. She said goodbye to the cook and maid without any indication that it was going to be the last time.
Kirsten grabbed her suitcase and closed the door behind her, with the rain still striking hard against the cabin, her car, and the top of her head. To her, it sounded an awful lot like pleading. Something pleading for her to stay, to talk it out, to let go of her fear of not being enough to the magnificent tiger shifter.
She couldn’t, though. She had committed herself to that, and she wanted to believe that two facts could be true at the same time. On the one hand, she felt an undying love for both Zara and Henry, but at the same time, she thought that Sher was the one that belonged with them.
Kirsten put her bag in the back and climbed into her car, not realizing that her hands were trembling, and tears had been streaming down her face. She started the ignition, the keys jingling in her hand. She breathed in deeply, telling herself to go.
So she went, trying desperately not to look back. She tried to keep her mind focused on the future, thinking that she could move to Seattle and start a whole new life there.
A life without Henry, a life without Zara. It would burn her for a long time, possibly forever, but it was the price that she was willing to pay for doing the right thing.
She rammed on the gas to get out of the snowy mountains post haste.
THIRTY
HENRY
Henry stood stock still, unable to process what Jana had just said. His mind was spinning, unable to reconcile her words with what had happened.
She’s out looking for treats for that cat of yours.
He ran to his room and found the note on his pillow. The excuse she gave wasn’t especially important, but the message was. She had left him because of her insecurity, believing deeply that Sher was the one who belonged in his and Zara’s life. He let the sheet of paper drift to the floor
Henry could feel his knees getting weak, his vision darkening. He had never passed out before in his life, other than the times that he had too much to drink in his youth. But the shock of possibly losing his mate was enough to make his blood pressure drop.
He headed back to the kitchen, where Jana was holding a sleeping Zara in the crook of her arm.
“I’m going to start packing,” he said, still feeling the dozy effects from the news. “I need you to stay for a day or two with Zara. I will pay you double over time.”
Jana nodded, looking at him like he was a ghoul, something beyond the supernatural nature of his tiger shifting ways.
“I will stay as long as you need me to,” Jana whispered.
He nodded, then nearly levitated his way up the stairs into his bedroom. He could still smell her in her guest room, in his room, in what he had started considering was their bed. Henry did everything within his power to ignore it as he packed, desperately tossing clothing into a traveling bag, her essence everywhere and nowhere, his eyes beginning to water with a flurry of emotions.
Once he had gathered all of his things, he said goodbye to Zara. The baby was a blessing in so many ways. Her temperament was one of patience and understanding, even when she had no clue what was going on.
“I will be back in a few days,” he said to Jana at the door. “Call me anytime if you need anything, okay?”
Jana nodded. She had been present for the growth of their entanglement, the main audience member of their story. He trusted her as much as he trusted anyone else who worked under his name.
Henry traveled all around his property, first in his Land Rover, then, as a tiger. He knew his mate’s scent the most out of all of the scents he had ever encountered. But as he scoured the entire acreage of his property, he found that it had drifted away, far beyond the atmosphere that his tiger nose could reach.
He was furious with sadness, unable to find a trace of her for the two days that he explored the snowy mountain area. He decided to try another route as he headed back to his cabin, the traditional shifter way having fallen short.
Henry tried calling her again and again as he stayed home, day in and day out. He avoided work altogether. Sleeping, showering, and all forms of self-care had flown out the window. He couldn’t believe that she would go, leaving only a letter for him, not allowing them to have a proper conversation about everything.
As he expected, she didn’t pick up. He left her only a few messages, knowing that it was mostly pointless. She would block him at some point, and that would be the end of it all.
But Henry had connections due to his wealth, and he took advantage of them. He hired a cyber security team to start tracking her phone, one that he had stopped calling altogether. They were finally able to discover where she was three days after she left.
They informed Henry that she was staying at a bed and breakfast in Seattle. Hope rushed through him like a steady rain.
There was a part of him that felt guilty about tracking her without her consent, but he also felt like he needed an opportunity to plead his case. Kirsten clearly didn’t understand how fated mates worked because as hard as he had actually wanted things to work out with Sher, she wasn’t his true mate. They could live a life void of passion, stale, and reproduce on a mechanical level.
But it would be nothing compared to the fire that roared inside him for Kirsten. The thought of her breath on his skin, her full lips approaching him open wide to devour, made him shiver.
