“I don’t know what to think. When my sister became too unpleasant for Travis to deal with, he had her sent away. Now, you’re doing the same thing to me.”
“Like hell I am. I’m trying to protect you. I’m trying to protect you and Riley both.”
“By foisting us off on the Order?”
He uttered a curse, knowing there was an element of truth to her accusation. As much as her wellbeing mattered to him, he had also been motivated by fear—his own. Foreign as it was for him to feel that weakness of emotion, he felt it to his bones when he thought about losing Leni. And he was losing her now, he realized.
“That’s not what I want, Lenora. It’s not what I wanted when I made that call this morning.”
Her breast rose and fell with her rapid breaths as she stared at him. “Then what do you want, Knox?”
He considered every moment they’d spent together, from the minute he stepped into her diner and was greeted with her warm smile and kind heart. All of their conversations, both the combative and the tender ones. All of her breathless sighs and the pleasured screams he swallowed with his kiss.
What did he want?
All of it.
Forever, if she would give him that much.
But in killing Travis tonight, he had ignited the war he’d known was coming with the Parrishes. And in so doing, he had put Leni and Riley in the crosshairs along with him.
What he wanted now didn’t matter.
She couldn’t go back to her home, and for that she might never forgive him.
And he couldn’t ignore what she’d said about Shannon. There were fates far worse than death or any depth of injury. Just because Leni’s Breedmate gift shielded her from one kind of harm, there were other things that could be done to her that would make her wish she were dead.
The fear that thought brought with it chilled him to his marrow.
Leni stared at him in his tormented silence. She shook her head. “You can’t even say the words, Knox.”
He wanted to. Damn it, he wanted to tell her everything she made him want. Her forgiveness. Her trust. Her love.
Her eternal blood bond.
He wanted it all.
All the things he couldn’t say right now swamped him like a tide.
A small cry sounded from the bedroom where Riley was sleeping. “Aunt Leni, where are we? I’m scared.”
With one last look at Knox, she pivoted away and went to the child.
CHAPTER 21
She stayed with Riley for a couple of hours, until his restlessness finally faded under the heavy pull of sleep and she was able to slip off the bed without making him startle or stir.
Leni was exhausted, not only from the upheaval of tonight’s run from Parrish Falls, but from her clash with Knox. Especially that.
She couldn’t deny her hurt over his apparent want to be rid of her, despite the fact that she could only blame herself for believing there was something real between them. Something that existed beyond his sense of duty toward a woman—any woman—born with a teardrop-and-crescent-moon mark on her skin.
She was the one who had made that mistake, allowing herself to care for him, to fall in love with him.
She had never been in love, had never felt the twisting ache of longing and affection that stirred within her whenever Knox was near. She had never felt the desire to make a place for someone beside her until she met him. Now that he was there, she didn’t want to consider returning to the way things were before he came into her world.
But she would have to do more than consider it now. Knox himself had put her back on that path when he made the call to his brother. Sooner or later, the Order would be coming to ensure his wishes were carried out.
If Knox had simply walked away without any explanation it wouldn’t have wounded her as intensely as his willingness to discard her.
