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 br**sts, 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 br**sts. “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.
Even angry, the scent of her wrapped around his senses, making him hunger for her with a power that still failed to amaze him.
“Daddy wanted to meet you,” she finally said. “After the celebration of the passing of Breed Law, he wanted to thank you for rescuing me. He was disappointed.”
Kiowa snorted at that. “He didn’t know the truth then.”
“No. Not all of it,” she agreed, breathing in deeply. “Why did you leave like that? Without saying goodbye?”
“I wouldn’t have been able to leave if I had said goodbye, Amanda,” he finally said starkly. “I did it the best I could. And you shouldn’t have followed me like this. It was hard enough to give you back your life. You should have taken it and run.”
“Was that what you did?” She arched her brow mockingly then. “Gave me back my life? I was unaware anyone had stolen it from me.”
His teeth clenched at the deliberate sarcasm in her voice.
“This wasn’t the life you wanted, Amanda,” he snapped then. “You wanted to go home, back to your own dreams.”
“And you couldn’t have been a part of that?” Oh yes, she was angry. The scent of it filled the air like a blast of heat. “Is trotting from hellhole to hellhole more important than being with me? To working out a life we could both be satisfied with?”
He stared at her in surprise before shaking his head in confusion.
“You’re the President’s daughter, Amanda. How easily do you think your world would accept me? A Coyote Breed, one with no last name, no education. How long before you began to see what everyone did and hated me for the life you became trapped within?”
“Oh, poor Kiowa?” She was snarling with her fury. “Aren’t you just so full of self-sacrifice? Or is that bullshit you’re so full of?”
Surprise surged through him, as did a kernel of amusement.
“I’ve been accused of both.” He shrugged as though unconcerned, though a building hope was surging within him.
“I can understand why.” She was flushed, her eyes glittering with anger, her body trembling with it.
“Why are you here, Amanda?” Point-blank, there was no sense in beating around the bush any longer.
“I walked away and gave you what you asked for. After the hell you endured to escape me, what else did you expect?”