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“Yes. I made them this morning for Misty. She loves them.”
Misty. Her face got hot with shame. Misty, the adopted daughter they were supposed to be raising together. The sweetest girl with the soft auburn hair and the startling green eyes.
Kier was the one raising her. The one providing. The one giving love and opening up his life. He was the one taking the great risks, because he believed that was the best way forward.
When she inhaled deeply to stop a sob, she smelled the fresh air trapped in Kier’s hair and on his skin. The smoke from the fire he kept going around the clock because that’s how he heated his small house. And the rough, masculine scents of a shifter. Both animal and man in one body. He didn’t smell the way any males smelled in her own clan. She was sensitive to noticing things like that.
He kept his palms open to her like she was afraid of being out there alone with him. She wasn’t. She just wished he would move on and leave her alone.
This wasn’t fair to him. It wasn’t fair to her either, but he was the one who remembered thebefore.He was the one who had lost everything, even though she was the one who had no past.
He looked like a statue, so she made herself move. She walked to him, dodging past low hanging branches and the thick trunks of ancient trees. She stopped near a huge pine.Ponderosa.That name came to her out of nowhere, where others would not. She held back a sigh of frustration. Sometimes things came to her, and it was like waking from a dream—for a split second there was clarity, and she could remember a smell, a sensation, or a name. But then when she tried to hold on to that thought, to pull it out from the recesses of her subconscious, it vanished once more. Receding back into the depths of her mind, and try as she might, it had gone with no trace that it had ever existed.
“Kier.” His name felt wrong on her tongue. She dropped her eyes and studied the forest floor.
“Taylee. I just wanted to…” He trailed off. It was obvious what he wanted. To check up on her. Because she was just an obligation. If the past month had taught her anything, it was that.
“Make sure I’m alright?” The rage that was running hot through her evaporated when she noted the way Kier’s strong shoulders slumped. He was made entirely of granite. A huge male like all the males of his clan. Six five and as heavily muscled as any shifter she’d ever seen.
She couldn’t remember a thing about him from before the accident, but she’d learned a few things during the past month.
Kier might be a hulking man with a permanent shadow on his carved out jaw. He might have that deep brow, but his eyes were just about always that soft butterscotch.
He was rarely cold. He always wore a thin plaid jacket, jeans, and work boots, even in December. If it was raining or sunny, he chose the same things.
He was kind. She’d been at his clinic in Greenacre for over a week following the accident, although she was pretty much out of it for two straight days of the nine she spent there—but she’d seen enough of him to know he was good and soft spoken despite his huge size.
He was patient. He didn’t mind taking orders from the human doctor who ran the place, or from his alpha. The men who were his friends thumped him on the shoulder, or gave him the kind of looks that said there were close bonds between them. The bonds forged from a lifetime. If that wasn’t enough to tell her that he was loyal, the fact that he refused to give up on the idea that they were mates, even though she had no memory of him at all, proved it.
He was a man of his word. He’d explained everything about their life before. How they met in secret and loved each other in secret. How they decided they were mates and promised their lives to each other. He told her in painstaking detail every memory he had of her pregnancy and of her giving birth. He told her about the life they were supposed to share, his house, his friends, his clan, the daughter they’d agreed to adopt because she was a shifter in a human world and she needed a family. And then he’d told her as much as he could about her clan. He’d brought her brothers in, her parents, friends she no longer knew, even their clan alpha to do the same.
All of it just made her feel like she was less of everything.
“Don’t worry. I haven’t wandered off. You don’t need to check on me. Clay was just here ten minutes ago, making sure I haven’t lost my mind completely and gone off somewhere.”
“That’s not what he thinks. It’s not what any of us think.”
“You think I’m a child that has to be watched, like Onyx.”
“No.” The denial wasn’t flimsy.
“Where would I go?” She looked around. “The woods have always been home anyway. I’ve always hated the city. That’s a feeling I have. Not a memory. It’s funny how the fear and loathing of something stays with you. Even the thought of all that stuff made by people is terrible. I’ve always been more at home in what was made of the earth. Clay told me that. And Jem. And my mom. They’ve all been out here this morning.”
Clay had said she’d always loved what was alive and not dead. What had a spirit in it. He’d only just left and she’d shed angry tears as soon as his back was turned, dashing them away, steaming hot against the cool wind whipping through the trees.
“Where could I go when I have no idea who I am? I barely know my family. I have a feeling that I’m safe with them, but other than that, there’s nothing. I’m still learning everything. I’m completely displaced. I guess I can understand one thing about how Misty feels after coming here. Confused. But Misty has a past. She remembers, even if she shouldn’t, even if she cries at night.” That was something Kier had explained to her a week ago. “I know I should be there for her. You bringing her here isn’t enough. I should, but I just can’t.”
“I know. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.”
Her hands curled into fists. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have a right to be angry about it.”
“You’re absolutely correct. You can be angry if you want.”
“With you?”
“With me, if it helps.”
She wished he would fight with her. No one would. They all treated her like she was made of glass. When she’d been cleared to leave Josephine’s clinic, she’d refused any offers of seeing a specialist. It didn’t mean Kier would ever stop trying.
