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“None. ” He didn’t believe in them.
“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, Kiowa,” she said, her eyes drooping sleepily. “Now, I do want to go home…” The end of what she would have said slurred slowly until sleep took her. She fell asleep as she shattered his soul.
He leaned down, kissed her soft lips and breathed in roughly.
“I love you, Mate,” he whispered then. “I’ll always love you. ”
Then he stood and walked to the dresser. Ovulation was over, there would be relief for her, at least for a while. Long enough he prayed, for her to forgive him, but he doubted it. There were few things to pack. He didn’t own a lot. His guns, his knives, the tools of his trade. A few changes of clothes, his jacket. He was packed within the hour and standing on the porch steps, once again staring back at Dash Sinclair.
“Did she conceive?” Kiowa asked, his voice controlled. Calm.
“There was no conception. ” Dash crossed his arms over his chest and glanced at Kiowa’s duffel bag.
“The additional hormone is looking like a blocker,” he reported. “According to preliminary tests, it could be used to ease the effects of the mating heat. It could be years before we’re certain though. Dr. Grace doesn’t think she retrieved enough to actually make any headway. ”
Kiowa nodded bleakly.
“Let her know if she needs me…whenever…I’ll come to her. ”
“Why not just stay, Kiowa?” Dash asked him then. “She's your mate. You know you'll never be satisfied without her. And the threat against her may not be over. The blood supremacists somehow managed to blackmail one of the Secret Service agents protecting her. He drugged the others so no one could help her. ”
“I can't force her. ” He shook his head. “This wasn't her dream, Dash. It's not my life she wanted. I won't take that from her. But I'll make certain she's protected. I'll always protect her. ”
He picked up his duffel bag and moved down the steps.
“Kiowa. Your mother didn’t remarry,” he said then. “The final report came in last night. Your grandfather lied to you. There was no marriage, no other family. From what the investigators found, she spent those years searching for you and her father. I don’t believe she willingly gave you up. The investigators say that for a period of a year and a half, both Joseph Mulligan and his daughter disappeared. When she resurfaced, she was searching for her father. I believe he kidnapped you after he learned what happened. ”
“It doesn’t matter now. ” Kiowa shrugged, careful to keep his expression blank, the pain inside. “It’s over now and they’re all dead, Dash. Every one of them. Tell Amanda I said goodbye. ”
He walked away. Each step was a burden; every foot away from the cabin was another knife in his heart. He would come to her, if she needed him. But he wouldn’t force anymore from her than he already had. He would let her live her dream, and he would dream of what could have been.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Colorado Mountains
The cabin wasn’t as big as he remembered it being. Kiowa stepped into the dim light of the well-made log structure and stared at the small living room with a man’s vision rather than a child’s hatred.
The television was still mounted to the wall, the collection of movie discs stacked around it. There were dozens of movie discs. His grandfather, Joseph Mulligan, hadn’t scrimped in the education he had meant to give Kiowa. Books lined the walls, a layer of dust covering them, the dull, fine powder covered the entire room.
To the side was the bathroom. A tiny cubicle with a bath and toilet. It was dark, heavy with oppressed silence. Next to it was the bedroom Kiowa had never used. He could see the bed from where he stood, the narrow lines unbroken, still perfectly made with the thin sheet that had covered it during the years he had lived there. Alone.
He stepped through the room, heedless of the tracks he made in the dusty floor and entered the kitchen. A chair sat beneath the small table in a corner. The stove and refrigerator separated by the sink on the other wall. The cupboard sat in the same place it always had been, duller, smaller than he remembered. He walked to it, opened the squeaking door slowly and stared inside. The quilt was there, just as perfectly folded as it had been when he placed it on the shelf. A can of beans sat on the bottom shelf. A few magazines on another. It was as empty as his childhood had been. As empty as his life was now. Leaving Amanda had been the hardest thing he had ever done in his life. Reaching out, he touched the quilt, feeling the warmth he remembered feeling, even as a child when his grandfather had thrown it at him. So much rage. His grandfather had hated him with a strength that still had the power to cause regret to well within him.
Had his mother been searching for him when she had died? He assumed it was possible. Vaguely, he remembered a time before his grandfather had brought him to the cabin. Joseph had moved him around a lot, always traveling, always slipping in and out of town in the dead of night. Kiowa’s investigation over the years as he searched for any other family had turned up surprising facts about the man. A religious fanatic. He had been a man that Kiowa often thought would have fit in well with the blood supremacists.
He shook his head wearily. It was too late for answers, the mystery of why his mother had given him into Mulligan’s care would likely always haunt him. For so many years he had thought she had found happiness, that she had put him and his existence to the back of her mind and that she never bothered to think of the child that had been forced on her.
He reached in and gathered the quilt from the shelf, tucking it under his arm as he turned to leave the room. As he turned, he came to an abrupt stop as he came face to face with Amanda. It had been nearly two weeks since he had seen her. Nights filled with a cold emptiness that he felt swallowed by. A loneliness he had never known, not even as a child, had eaten at him. She was dressed as he had often seen her before he was forced to rescue her, mate her. Jeans molded her slender legs and a heavy cream sweater covered her full breasts, the loose material falling just past her hips. Her long beautiful hair flowed around her, thicker, more silken-looking than he remembered.
“Mighty Kiowa,” she said quietly as she leaned against the doorframe. “You’re a tough man to catch up with. ”
She was angry. He could smell it on the crisp air that filled the cabin.
“How did you get here?” he asked her rather than answering her comment.
“Dash flew me in when he got word you were sighted in Denver,” she answered calmly, though her hands were clenched as she crossed them over her breasts. “He’s been looking for you ever since I woke up. ”
“That doesn’t tell me why you’re here. ” He could push past her, continue into the bleak existence he assumed lay outside that cabin door, but he had already walked away from her once, he wasn’t strong enough to do it a second time.
