Kane sighed to himself as he looked through the album of his wedding. Ava had never looked more beautiful than she had in her ceremonial gown as the council oversaw their union. It had been exactly two years and nine months before the second most important girl in his life had been born, and then three more years until he had lost Ava. It just didn’t seem like enough time.
Kane sat the album gingerly back in the drawer of the nightstand beside the bed he had shared with Ava for the only happy years his life had ever known. This room was a testament to the love they had shared. Little love notes scrawled in Ava’s impatient hand were on the dresser, and her clothes still crumpled in the drawers after she had packed her things hastily to contribute to the war effort. How he wished there hadn’t been any war at all. To only see his wife six times in the last three years of her life was the cruelest of fates.
And now he was betraying her memory with his engagement to this human girl, this mere child, when it was a human that had put him in this horrible position in the first place. It seemed there was no end to the cruel turns that fate would take Kane’s life through. He would just have to settle with the fact that he was doomed to a life of singular misery. All but for Courtney, he hadn’t found any reason to smile since he’d lost his wife.
But being in this old room never did him any good. He hadn’t even spent the last night in there with his wife. She had been off to war, treating the wounds of people she shouldn’t have been treating. Her compassionate heart had truly been the end for her, and there was nothing he hated more than being right about how her kindness would someday get her into trouble.
He couldn’t think about that right now, though. It was too difficult. Too much pain in one area of his mind and heart. And so, Kane stood from the bed and, with one last lingering look at the remains of the life he had led with the only woman he had ever truly loved–the only woman he would ever truly love–he left the room.
“Dad! There you are!” Courtney exclaimed, her voice clearly annoyed.
“Were you looking for me, sweetheart?” Kane asked, furrowing his brow.
“Yeah! Where were you?” she demanded.
Kane sighed heavily and the irritation on his daughter’s face suddenly melted into compassionate understanding.
“Oh…well, anyway, after this morning–which, thank you, by the way, for letting me know I was going to have to take the bus, I was almost late to my first class–I’d really love it if we got the thing with my engine straightened out.”
“Of course,” Kane said, kicking himself. He had been so consumed with trying to avoid seeing Lia when she woke up that he had left the house as early as he could to spend some time by himself near the river. He’d completely forgotten that Courtney wouldn’t be able to get herself to school. At least, not in her own car.
“Good. Thank you,” Courtney said. “Things have just been way too weird lately for me to be comfortable not being able to get myself around.”
“That makes sense,” Kane said. “I’ll get it done today. Don’t worry.”
“All right,” Courtney said, kissing Kane on the cheek. “I’m going to get some studying done now. If you need anything, just let me know. I could make dinner or something.”
Kane raised his brow as he watched his daughter bound up the stairs. The only time she ever offered to cook was when she thought he was feeling upset about something. Her mother, in particular. He would have to stop being quite so transparent. It was probably pathetic.
“Oh shit!” Lia exclaimed with a soft laugh when Kane pushed through the door and onto the front porch. “You startled me.”
Kane took in the sight of her beautiful face, a smile light and fresh like a beautiful spring flower, and then noticed the book in her hands and couldn’t help but grin.
“Doing some deep reading?” he asked. He knew what it could be like to be consumed in the material you were working on. And he also knew that Lia was a bright girl capable of incredibly deep thought.
“Yeah, pretty much,” she said, smiling sheepishly. “I’ve been wanting to get this novel finished forever now, but with the demands of school lately, I haven’t had a chance to get back into it.”
“What is it?” Kane asked.
Lia showed him the cover and he raised a brow, impressed. It was a classic by one of the only world-renowned shifter authors in existence. It had been published the year before Kane was born, and he had loved it all his life.
“I didn’t know you read Vex Andrews,” Kane said, sitting down beside Lia. “Did you know he was born right around here? A few miles down the road from Stonybrooke.”
“Really?” Lia exclaimed. “Near bear territory?”
“Apparently, it was a complicated birth,” Kane said with a grin. The story never ceased to amuse him. “His mother had been furious with his father. He had been trying to do everything he possibly could to make her happy and comfortable. You know, shifter men can be very accommodating toward their mates.”
Lia’s eyes flashed for a moment and Kane felt a rush of forbidden heat surge through him.
“Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat. “She was mad that she had caught him talking to a female friend of his. Being a bit hormonal, though, she didn’t realize that all he was doing was trying to ask for advice on how to do the laundry properly so she wouldn’t have to and had jumped to conclusions.”
Lia laughed, a sudden musical sound that made Kane pause for a moment just to listen to it. It was refreshing to be around her. Everything about this girl was rich in some way. He was pretty sure even her temper would be thought-provoking and sexy, somehow. But he had to fight the thoughts away. He couldn’t allow himself to feel that way about anyone. Not only was he still mourning his wife, but she was just a child.
“So she stalked off, real huffy like,” Kane continued, enjoying, as he always did, the re-telling of one of his favorite stories. “Until she found herself out in bear country. She heard a noise, probably just some kind of raven, and it spooked her so bad that her water broke right then and there. Luckily, her husband had been following her, making sure she didn’t get herself into any trouble and they delivered the baby right there, without any of the bear shifters being none the wiser.”
“So Vex’s family was originally from Stonybrooke?” Lia asked, her blue eyes bright. Again, Kane’s heart pounded involuntarily in his chest. She was going to have to stop being so damn beautiful or the wolf inside him was going to talk him into doing something awful.
“No!” Kane exclaimed with a quick laugh. “Actually, that’s the funniest part. They were just here to spend time with the wife’s father, who was just getting over an illness. He should have been born on the west coast. There’s a pack of shifters out there too. Settled in after the first war.”
“Wow,” Lia breathed. “So much drama.”
“Stonybrooke has quite a bit of local history,” Kane said. “I bet you would love it as much as I do.”
“I’m sure I would,” Lia said warmly, her pale blue eyes searching Kane’s shyly.
They stayed like that for a moment before Kane cleared his throat and glanced back at the garage.
“Hey, I promised Courtney I’d get her car fixed for her tonight so I should get on that,” Kane said. He didn’t want to extract himself from the conversation, but the sun was getting lower in the sky and he still had a lot of work to do once the car was finished. “We can pick this up later, okay?”
“Sure,” Lia said, her face alight with another sweet smile. “We might as well spend the time we have together usefully.”
The look in her eyes, though he couldn’t pinpoint just what it was about it, stirred the wolf inside him to a frenzy. This girl was dangerous. She was everything he had never even considered to look for in a woman. Ava had her own hobbies and passions, and literature had never been one of them. It was strange to have such an intellectual connection with someone. Especially somebody so much younger than he was. Kane had to force the wolf to settle down before he let any of his emotions show through. None of them were anything he was particularly proud of.
Kane disappeared into the garage, refusing to allow himself to look back at Lia, who had already averted her attention back to the words on the page of her book. She devoured them just as he once had, back when he’d developed a passion for literature and had only just discovered the incredible journey of Vex’s characters.
Nowadays, his only passion was reading. The only thing that kept him afloat, other than being there for his daughter, was drowning his thoughts away with literary concepts and ideas. Many would probably think it was a sad way to live, but it suited Kane just fine. Nothing, not even a bright-eyed, gorgeous young girl like Lia, would ever ease the pain of losing his wife. And it would be stupid for anybody to try.