The truth was, even when she wanted to hate Ryder after he’d left her, she couldn’t. She told herself she did in an effort to stop wondering about him. But it didn’t work.
“I see,” Thorn said in a low voice.
Kinsey jerked her gaze to him. “Excuse me?”
Thorn’s look wasn’t so fierce. “There’s no hate in your heart for Ryder. You care for him.”
“I cared for him. Past tense. He walked out on me.”
“And he told you why.”
Kinsey shrugged, annoyed that something so private was being discussed with strangers. “That’s supposed to make it all better? That makes it worse, because he could’ve come back. He didn’t.”
“He was there to protect you recently.”
At this, Kinsey had to laugh. “Me? He was there because Con ordered him to Glasgow. He was there to protect a city, much like you were in Edinburgh protecting it.”
“I wasna there to protect buildings. I was there to protect lives—human lives.”
Lexi sat back in her chair with a sigh. “Not even coffee is strong enough for this conversation.”
“I appreciate you trying to take some of the tension from the room,” Kinsey told her. “The fact is, this is my private life we’re discussing. Something I don’t even do with my sister.”
“Sister?” Thorn asked in surprise, his brow furrowed deeply.
Kinsey wasn’t sure what the problem was. “Yep. My sister.”
“How many other siblings do you have? Are your parents still alive? Where do they live?”
“Thorn,” Lexi chided. “One question at a time.”
Kinsey looked between the two. Thorn was visibly upset. “Ryder knows I have a sister. She’s much younger than I am. My father died when I was four. At eight Mum remarried and they had my sister. My mother and stepfather live in Hong Kong because of his job. My sister is finishing up her last year at university.”
“Shite,” Thorn said and pushed his chair back as he got to his feet.
Kinsey looked helplessly at Lexi.
“Your family is going to want to know where you are at some point,” Lexi explained. “They’re going to have questions about Dreagan.”
“Everyone has questions about Dreagan from what I hear,” Kinsey said.
Thorn paced the kitchen mumbling to himself. Kinsey tried to hear what he was saying, but she couldn’t pick up any words.
Lexi shifted in her chair. “There are only five women here who have family or close friends outside of Dreagan. Jane has a half-sister, Sammi, who happens to be mated to a King as well. Darcy has family on the Isle of Skye. Shara is a Fae, so she doesn’t have to keep secret who she’s married to. Then there’s me. My parents have passed away, but my friends who came with me to Scotland have been asking a lot of questions. Oh, I keep forgetting about Cassie, but she and her brother don’t talk. I guess that’s why I leave her out when I think about this.”
Now Kinsey understood. “You have to lie to your family?”
“Yes. They can’t know anything. I’ll be able to see them for the next five years or so, but after that they’ll begin to see I’m not aging as they are.”
“It’s not like I’ll be staying. As soon as my name is cleared and we catch who is behind sending me here, I’m gone.”
Thorn made some sound that wasn’t close to a word. It sent warning bells off in Kinsey’s head that it wouldn’t be anything close to that easy.
As if they would allow her to leave, knowing what she knew. She had been working side by side with Ryder seeing into a vast majority of their secrets and getting to know them.
MI5 was prowling the estate. Helicopters and planes continued to fly over the land. Cameras from news stations from around the world were at the entrance of Dreagan. The only reason the distillery wasn’t crawling with visitors was because it was closed for the winter.
Someone would pay dearly to learn a fraction of what she now knew.
Perhaps it was a good thing they knew she had family. It would make it more difficult for them to kill her.
As soon as the thought went through her mind she almost laughed. She knew for a fact Ryder could kill because she’d witnessed him doing it to the Dark in Glasgow. But her? He wouldn’t kill her, nor did she think he would allow anyone else to hurt her.
But there were dozens of other ways for them to ensure she never spoke a word of what she knew.
“It doesn’t matter that I have a family,” Kinsey said. “I’m not remaining here and neither are Ryder and I a couple anymore. Con can be happy in the knowledge that he won’t have another King mated.”
Thorn stopped pacing and stared at her for a long, silent minute. Then he walked to the table and sat next to his wife, lacing his fingers with hers.
It made Kinsey’s chest ache to see them so comfortable together. They reached for each other blindly, and the other was always there. She’d had that once—with Ryder.
And she missed it terribly.
Not just the intimacy, but the quiet times, the laughter, the sharing of everything. That kind of relationship was truly glorious.