Hell, maybe the fact she was too good for him wasn’t the real reason he had never gone to see her.
Maybe he was just scared.
Scared that she wouldn’t want him.
That she would never consent to step into his world and be his mate.
Maybe it had felt easier, and less painful, to keep his distance from her and carry on with his life.
Maybe he really needed to stop thinking maybe and admit to himself that it had been all those things and more that had kept him from going back to see her.
He wasn’t strong. He wasn’t brash and reckless. He wasn’t himself. Not where she was concerned. She had a terrible way of stripping all of that away from him, leaving him weak and vulnerable, afraid to make a move because he feared she would never want him.
“Gods,” he uttered and sank forwards, resting his head against his forearm as he pressed it to the trunk of the tree. “I’m pathetic.”
Or maybe he was just a bear in love.
In love and terrified that if he admitted it to her, if he found the courage to take the leap, that things wouldn’t turn out the way they had for Lowe.
Terrified that the happily forever after some secret part of him had been dreaming of from the moment he had set eyes on Skye would be denied him.
He would never know if he didn’t try. Then again, did he want to know? Not when the greater part of him kept saying she would reject him. No. If he kept things as they were, then there was hope, a tiny seed of it that kept him going. If he didn’t stride right up to her and tell her that he was crazy about her, that he loved her and wanted her as his mate, needed her to take an incredible leap and step into his world, then she couldn’t reject him. He could carry on as he was, as a whole male, not the broken shell of one he would be if she turned him down.
Gods, Lowe would laugh at him if he were here. His brother would tell him to take the leap, to risk it all for the sake of love, and trust in fate. Destiny had made Skye for him, sure, but that didn’t mean she would want a bond with him. That didn’t mean she loved him.
Knox was starting to wish that just one of the thousand times he had wanted to tell Lowe about her and what he had done, that he had found the courage to go through with it.
Lowe had always been able to talk him down when he was spiralling, working himself tighter and tighter. He was sure his twin would have talked him down about Skye too, would have made him see that she was worth the risk and that love conquered all.
Or some bullshit like it.
His brother would have given him the courage he badly needed.
“How much further is it?” Karl’s voice drifted through the waning darkness.
Skye eased away from the tree and peered up. Knox looked over his shoulder at the lightening sky too, trying to see what she was looking at, but the trees where he was were too closely packed together for him to make out anything.
As Knox looked back at Karl and caught him looking at the sky too, his features slowly hardening, he got a sinking feeling that she was running out of time. They would be on to her ruse soon and would know she was leading them nowhere.
“Maybe a mile more.” She sounded bright as she glanced at Karl, as if she was relieved, but she didn’t feel it to Knox. She felt scared. Suddenly more nervous than before. She gave Karl a half-smile.
“How do you know where this cabin is?” Karl frowned at her.
Cabin?
Knox’s eyes widened as he remembered something and realised she wasn’t leading the men nowhere—she was leading them somewhere. He had forgotten all about the old hunter’s lodge up in the valley. He hadn’t been up that way in years, not since the human male who had frequented it had stopped coming each summer. The cabin was small, hidden among the trees on this side of the valley, closer to the base of one of the largest peaks.
“This valley seems dead to me. I doubt anyone could live here.” Wade rounded a tree to Skye’s left and Knox wanted to growl when she jumped and twisted towards him, her hand coming up to her chest.
A chest the bastard dropped his gaze towards as he smiled at her.
Knox barely stopped himself from bursting from the trees to beat the crap out of the male, shut down that urge when Wade checked his assault rifle over.
“It’s winter.” Skye’s tone was firm, had Knox smiling himself as he remembered her speaking to some of the men in the bar like that, subtly laying down the law and showing them who was boss. “In summer, it’s a different picture. Hunters come here all the time.”
They didn’t.
The odd group of teenagers came up the valley, mostly young males trying to impress females, and the occasional serious hunter looking to bag himself a moose, but for the most part, the locals avoided the valley.
And with good reason.
Knox and his pride didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat for anyone who dared to set foot in their territory.
“The cabin belonged to an old friend of the family.” Skye adjusted the strap of her dark green pack and sighed as a wistful look crossed her beautiful face. “He died a few years back, but his kids and grandkids use it now.”
They didn’t.
What she said explained why he hadn’t seen the male for a while now, and had that feeling stirring inside him again, the one that made him deeply aware of how fragile humans were and how short their lives could be. Here he was pushing one hundred and thirty and with potentially a good few hundred years more ahead of him, and Skye had to be closing in on forty, was reaching the halfway point in her life.
Gods, he wanted to change that.
He wanted her to be his mate and share those centuries with him, looking as she was now, their lives bound together by an unbreakable bond.
Cooper rejoined the group and they started off again, heading towards the cabin.
It struck Knox that it was the opportunity he had been looking for. He took one last look at Skye to check that she was all right and then sprinted through the woods in the direction of the small lodge, trying to decide what he was going to do once he got there.
Continue stalking them.
Or make a move?
Chapter 11
Skye was bone-deep and soul-crushingly tired by the time they were close to the cabin, had never felt more depleted. It was as if her life had been draining from her with each step, leaving her feeling hollow inside, so tired she was dead on her feet.
God, she hoped she remembered where the cabin was and hadn’t missed it or led Karl and his men on a wild goose chase. What if the family had torn it down? She had been lying through her back teeth to Karl and she feared she was about to pay her dues for it.
“How much further?” Cooper sounded as tired as she felt.
She flexed her numbed fingers and looked at the mountains that formed stark white jagged lines against the golden sky as the sun rose.
If she was remembering correctly, the cabin was just south of the pass between this valley and the next one, which meant it had to be a matter of feet from her now. The nearest mountain stood proud in front of the next one she could see, the sweeping slope of it that extended from the base of the high grey cliff beneath the peak cutting across the forest in the distance. That had to be the pass.
“We’re close.” She glanced back at Cooper and offered him a smile. “If no one is there, we can at least get warmed up and rest for a while.”