I don’t deserve your help, but I’m asking for it anyway. For Lane’s sake, if nothing else.”
Keenan felt his nostrils flare. “I can’t grant you a place in my lair—I don’t have that kind of authority. Only Knox and his mate do. And if you’re not going to be straight with them about everything, they won’t even consider taking you in.”
Her eyes slid to the side. “Could you not ask them to give me and Lane a place as a personal favor to you?”
“It wouldn’t be a personal favor to me. I don’t want you in my lair.”
She flinched. “Keenan, I’m so sorry that you’re still hurting after I—”
“Hurting?” he echoed. His demon laughed. “I’m not hurting, I’m just plain pissed. Mostly at myself for choosing to buy your lies and excuses over and over. I meant it when I said I was done, Thea.”
His gaze flicked to Lane. He was a cute kid. And he looked about as sober as Keenan had no doubt looked as a small child, when his mother had dragged him to the homes of “old friends,” looking for their help. They’d never helped Katherine, just as her parents hadn’t helped her. She’d been viewed as lower than dirt for having a child while unmarried—it was unthinkable in those days.
Keenan looked back at Thea. “But I won’t turn away a kid who needs protection—something you know perfectly well. And I don’t fucking appreciate that you’d use my past against me.”
“I’m not trying to manipulate you—”
“Yes, you are.”
“Okay, fine, maybe I am. But not to be cruel. I want my son safe, and I’ll do anything to make that happen. Lie. Cheat. Manipulate. Anything.” She closed her eyes. “Please, Keenan. Please help us.”
“I’ll relay your story to Knox and Harper. I can’t say whether they’ll choose to grant you a place in my lair. You’ll be contacted either way.” That was truly the best he could do. Had she been Keenan’s mate or anchor, his Primes would have granted her a place without question. But Thea was none of those things to him, so she’d be assessed in the same way anyone else would.
“I’m sorry for everything, Keenan. Really. Whatever you might think, I do care about you—I always have. And I-I missed you. A lot.”
Keenan laughed, and there was a bitter edge to it. “You took a mate, Thea. You had a child with him. You couldn’t have missed me that much.”
Annoyance in every stride, he crossed to his car, unlocked it with his key remote, and then yanked open the driver’s door. He honestly wasn’t sure what pissed him off more: that Thea would think it acceptable to ask a favor of him, or that she really thought he’d want to do her a favor.
It was like she had no self-awareness; no ability to look back on her actions and realize that, hey, she’d fucked up in a major way. It was one thing to know you’d done wrong. It was another to fully grasp the weight of said wrongdoing. She didn’t seem able to do that. Never had.
Although his peripheral vision told him she hadn’t moved an inch from where she stood near the building, he didn’t look at her as he smoothly reversed out of the parking space. Nor did he glance back at her as he drove through the parking lot and out onto the main road.
He wasn’t sure if he believed her story that Gavril had set her up to take the fall. Purely because she’d given him no reason to believe it was true. Why she thought Keenan would have taken her at her word when she’d proven in the past that her word meant shit, he had no clue.
Would Gavril frame someone for murder? Maybe. He didn’t seem to have a lot of scruples, from what Keenan had observed. But that wasn’t to say that he’d framed Thea, was it? What motive would he have to possibly do it? And why would she withhold said motive when it could prove her innocence?
Her story just didn’t make any sense.
Keenan couldn’t have turned her kid away, though. It would have made him no better than the many people who’d turned Keenan and his mother away all those centuries ago. Shit, he needed to shut down that line of thinking fast. Ruminating on his childhood only ever pissed him off. He hated that Thea had dredged it all back up again.
By the time he arrived at Raini’s address, he’d found some