Chapter Eighteen
Mason cracked his knuckles and paced in front of 1010 again. Maybe he wouldn’t be so nervous about meeting Ryder if Beck didn’t look sick to her stomach with worry.
Robbie would be here any minute with Beck’s five-year-old boy, and so much was riding on this. Flight shifters were notoriously fierce parents, and Beck held information about Ryder close to her chest. Drawing details from her lips about her son was like pulling teeth, and when he’d asked Beck, “Why?” she’d told him, “I guess I’ve always had to hide him away to protect him, so I learned to keep him to myself.”
Made sense. She’d been raising Ryder in the human world, distant from any shifters, and with a human mate who didn’t accept the animals in either her or Ryder.
Beck’s body rang with tension as she stood near the entrance of the Boarland Mobile Park, talking into the phone too low for Mason to hear all the way from back here. Likely, she was directing Robbie where to go. God, what was taking him so long? Anyone with eyes in their head could see Beck needed to see her son, and now each minute was dragging.
The other Boarlanders were down in Saratoga, participating in a charity bake sale Beck had set up for them. It was at the community center, and she was supposed to be making a pro-shifter speech in a few hours, but she’d been right when she had told him everything worked on Robbie’s schedule. He was already two hours later than what they’d planned.
Beck stood on tiptoes, watching the road, and Mason could hear it now—the soft rumble of a truck engine kicking up gravel in the distance.
He was going to be sick. This was his shot at a family, but if Ryder didn’t take to him, he had no doubt in his mind Beck would tuck her little owl under one arm and sacrifice her happiness for her son’s.
Shit. He should’ve read some of those parenting books Beaston had. Now he was panicking, feeling like Ryder would hate him for sure, Beck would leave, and the cracks in his soul that Esmerelda had left would be blasted wide open.
Breathe.
Mason forced himself to sit on the bottom stair of 1010’s porch because every instinct urged him to rush to Beck’s side and rub her shoulders and promise her everything would be okay. This wasn’t about him, though. It was her hurt and Ryder’s pain, and his sole responsibility in this matter would be to listen and be there for them as they picked their way through this.
An old, rust-eaten, navy Chevy bounced and bumped under the Boarland Mobile Park sign, then smoothed out as Robbie hit the newly paved part of the road. Through the window, Robbie gave Beck a hate-filled glare as she waved back in response to the little hand waving out the window.
“Robbie, stop!” she cried as he coasted past her.
“Momma!” Ryder yelled through the open window, reaching for her.
Goddamn, Mason hated Robbie. Clenching his hands, Mason stood as the asshole made his way in a straight line toward 1010, forcing Beck to jog after his truck.
Robbie skidded to a stop right in the newly sodded yard and shoved the door open with a creeeaak. He barreled toward Mason, but halted when Mason stood to his full height and gave him a don’t-you-fuckin’-dare glare.
“I just want to see my kid’s new dad in the light. It’s your fault, right?”
Behind Robbie, Beck was pulling a little golden-haired boy from the front seat and hugging him tight against her chest.
“Man, I don’t want this. I don’t want you cutting out on your kid’s life,” Mason said low.
“Yeah, well I did some thinkin’. And Beck used to be a pushover. She was. She let me have girlfriends for years before she asked for that divorce. If I said ‘jump,’ she said ‘how high,’ but now suddenly she can’t get on board with doing something that will give her son a good life?”
“By stripping the animal out of him?” Mason gritted out, about to lose his shit on this motherfucker’s face. “There isn’t anything wrong with him. Nothing. You, on the other hand…you’re all kinds of messed up for even considering torture as an option.”
Robbie huffed a humorless breath, his dark eyes sparking with fury. After running his hands through his highlighted, stupid-looking hair, he looked like a pissed-off porcupine. Mason could squash him with a look if he wanted.
“I want to see the shit-hole you’ll be raising my son in.”
“What?” Mason asked as the idiot shoved past him and up the stairs. “We haven’t even discussed that stuff, and this isn’t my trailer.”
Robbie stomped across the new porch in heavy soled work boots, but yelped when his leg went straight through a floorboard. He let off a string of muttered curses. The dangling 0 of the house number that had been holding on by a single rusty nail for so long suddenly loosed and fell onto Robbie’s head with a resonating cong. An accidental laugh huffed from Mason’s chest. 1010 was fighting back.
“What the fuck?” Robbie shouted, struggling to free his lanky leg from the splintered jaws of the porch where he’d sunk hip-deep.
“Ten-ten apparently doesn’t like being called a shit-hole. You just got your ass kicked by a thirty-five-year-old trailer, mister. Might want to leave now before it eats you whole.”
Robbie struggled out of the broken porch like a beached trout, then stood in a huff and rubbed his head. “It’s your fault Beck is being such a pain in the ass about all this.”
“Okay.” Mason bit his tongue against the verbal lashing he wanted to give this entitled little shit because that wouldn’t help Beck or Ryder.
“I don’t like him,” Robbie yelled, jamming his finger at Mason.
Beck approached the porch, Ryder clinging to her tightly, and tears had already rimmed her eyes. “You don’t have to like him. Who I pick has nothing to do with you, just like I couldn’t say anything about who you picked.”
“Well…” Robbie hooked his hands on his hips. “I think it’s messed up that you came here to work, and instead you moved on inappropriately fast from what we had.”
Mason pursed his lips and convinced himself not to whack this moron upside the head. Robbie had started banging Shelly way before he and Beck were even separated, so the fact that he thought he had any right to judge her was downright laughable.
Beck sighed and looked exhausted. “Can we talk about this in private, away from Ryder?”
“Nah, our little freak should hear what a whore his mom—gulp.”
Mason tightened his hand around Robbie’s throat and narrowed his eyes at the little cretin. “I could pop your face off your body with little effort, and you calling Beck a whore in front of her kid is making that prospect mighty tempting. Best go carry this conversation on in private, and mind the names you call her, yeah?”
Robbie made choking sounds and scratched at Mason’s fingers, trying to loosen his grip. “Okay,” he rasped out.
Mason gave him an empty smile and dropped Robbie back to earth.
Beck stood there wide-eyed, legs splayed, holding Ryder’s face against her neck. Slowly, she lowered her son to the ground and knelt in front of him. “Ryder, this is Mason. He’s our friend. Would you mind hanging out with him for a few minutes while I talk to Daddy?”
The little boy’s lip was pouted out, and his eyes, the same seafoam green of his mother’s, were filling with tears. In a broken whisper, the boy said, “That’s not my dad. He said don’t call him that no more.”
Fuckin’ Robbie.
Beck looked gutted and kissed each of her son’s palms, then patted him on the bottom and watched as he climbed the stairs slowly. When he got to Mason, Ryder arched his neck way back. He looked scared. Mason had that effect on people.
Beck’s gaze lingered on her son as she followed Robbie to the tree line. Geez, Mason wished he could be there, but Beck was strong and had been taking what Robbie dished out for a long time. She could handle herself, and besides…she’d asked him to stay with her son.
Clearing his throat, Mason squatted down to eye-level and said, “What your dad called you…”
“F-freak,” R
yder whispered.
Mason leveled him with a look and gripped his tiny shoulders. And with a slow smile, he said, “You’re not.” Pointing to the first trailer on the left, he said, “You know what kind of shifters live there?”
Ryder’s eyes went round. “They have animals, too?”
Mason nodded. “A great grizzly bear and a white tiger.” He pointed to each trailer as he said, “Silverback gorilla, bear, bear,” and when he pointed to the trailer behind him, he grinned even bigger and said, “You know who lives here?”
“Who?”
Mason chuckled at his little owl hoo. “The coolest shifter of all. Your mom. The awesome, fast-flying, sharp-clawed bird of prey, snowy owl.”
“Like me,” Ryder said, the corner of his lips trembling into a smile before it disappeared again.
Mason nodded and pointed to his frail chest. “Just like you.”
“Are you a monster, too?”
“Nah, there’s no monsters here, Ryder. We’re all normal, just like you. You want to guess what kind of animal I have?”
Ryder nodded solemnly. “A bear?”
“Nope.”
“One of Santa’s reindeer?”
Mason laughed and shook his head. “Nope.”
“What are you?”
“I’m a boar shifter.”
“What’s a boar?”
“It’s a big, giant…pig.”
A fit of tinkling giggles shook Ryder’s little shoulders, and the tightness that had been constricting Mason’s chest loosened at the sound of the boy’s laughter. He would be okay. Mason would make sure of it.
Robbie’s yelling reached them on the breeze, and Ryder twisted around, looked scared again, and the next time Mason got a peek at his eyes, they were bright yellow.
“You want to Change?” he asked easily.
“I’m not supposed to.”
“You can Change whenever you want to here. Your mom just Changed last night and flew all around the woods.”
“I cain’t fly yet,” he said in that squeaky voice with the little country accent that was making Mason want to cuddle him up and erase all the damage Robbie had done.
“Ah, but someday you will.”
“All I do is get mad and turn into a little bird and just sit there.”
“Well, that’s what little birds do. You’ll get your flight feathers when you grow up big and strong, and then you can fly all around with your mom.”
Ryder looked off in the direction of Robbie’s yelling, then back at Mason. His eyes were blazing the color of the sun. “I don’t like when he yells at me and Momma. If I Change, you won’t get mad and tell on me?”
“Never. I Change a lot, too.”
“Into a pig?”
Mason grinned. “Yep. Change if you want, and I’ll sit right here and keep you safe, okay?”
Ryder’s little voice dropped to a whisper. “Promise?”
Mason swallowed hard a couple of times. He would bet broken promises to this kid numbered in the hundreds. That wasn’t him, though, and from here on, Mason was going to show him that a man could follow-through and keep his word. “Always.”
And then with a little squeak of pain, Ryder disappeared under his clothes.
Carefully, Mason plucked his green T-shirt away, and his heart froze in his chest as he laid eyes on the tiny, fluffy, gray and white owlet.
Mine.
Choked up on emotion, Mason asked, “Do you want to sit with me?”
Ryder swayed on his feet a few clumsy steps toward Mason, his little curved talons clicking on the wooden board beneath him. He looked up at Mason with those yellow trusting eyes, so much like Beck’s when her animal was close to the surface. He blinked slowly, one eye quicker than the other.
My boy.
As gentle as he could, Mason cupped his hands around Ryder, then rested his back against the side of 1010. And slowly, so he wouldn’t harm one perfect, downy feather on Ryder’s frail body, he cupped the owlet to his chest and let off a trembling breath as he blinked back the burning sensation in his eyes.
My little bird.
When he looked toward the tree line, Robbie’s neck was red and veiny from yelling. Mason locked eyes with Beck, whose face was transforming into the most beautiful smile, like her ex and all his poisonous words had melted away and all she saw was him and Ryder.
Mason returned her smile as a warm, tingling sensation unfurled in his chest.
My family.
Chapter Nineteen
“Mason,” Ryder whispered.
Beck cracked her sleepy eyes open in time to see Mason’s shoulder shake under her son’s little hand. She gave a private smile and stretched.
“Mason,” Ryder said louder.
“Mmmm,” Mason rumbled. “What is it, boy?”
“I’m hungry.” A smile tinged Ryder’s tone. “I want bacon.”
Beck stifled a sleepy laugh. This had been the game for a week straight.
“No bacon in this house, boy.”
Readying for tickles, Ryder hunched in on himself, grinning big in his red flannel pajamas. To her son’s giggling delight, Mason snaked his arm out and pulled Ryder close. Mason tickled him and then released the little early bird, who went scampering into the next room, trailing laughter behind him.
Beck’s face hurt from smiling so wide. Fluffing up the pillow under her cheek, she watched Mason sit up in bed and run his hand sleepily through his hair, spiking it up in all directions. The shiny scar of her claiming mark contrasted with his smooth skin.
“You know you don’t have to get up with him every morning,” she murmured. “I’m more used to it than you.”
Mason snorted. “Bull. I’m a logger. I’m no stranger to early mornings. Besides…I read women biologically require more sleep than men.”
She believed him. When she’d sat down at the computer yesterday to answer emails, there had been a tab open. Mason had been searching the Internet for how to make a woman happy. And let her sleep in was number five on the page he’d pulled up.
She giggled and squeezed his hand as he stood. Mason gave her one of those sexy sleepy smiles as he pulled a pair of low-riding gray sweatpants over his briefs. No shirt for him, and it wasn’t lost on her that Ryder had begun to ask to sleep without a shirt at night, too. He watched everything Mason did.
Watching them together over the past week had broken her heart wide open. After she got up and readied for the day, she knew what she would find when she padded into the kitchen. The first streaks of gray dawn were filtering through the small window over the kitchen sink, and in the dim light, her boys stood side by side in front of the stove. One stood so tall and strong, his head almost touched the low ceiling, and one, her little mini-me, stood on a red stepstool Mason had picked up at the store.
Her heart caught in her throat like it did every day that began like this. Silently, she rested her shoulder against the fridge and listened to them.
“Don’t get too close to the hot coil now, boy. You’ll singe your feathers, and your mom will have my hide.”
“What’s a hide?”
Mason poked Ryder’s bony arm. “A hide means skin.”
“Pigs have thick skins. Momma told me so.”
As Mason stirred the eggs he was scrambling in the pan, he chuckled that deep sound that said he really enjoyed being around Ryder.
“Well, your mom’s a wise woman, and she’s right. When I’m Changed, it’s hard to hurt me.”
“I wish I was a pig shifter.”
“Nah, boy. You’ll see the value in your owl the older you get. I wish I could fly like you will someday. You want to fly like your mom, don’t you?”
“But won’t I be scared so high up?”
“Maybe the first time. It’s okay to be scared, as long as you don’t let it take you over.”
“Can I crack an egg?”
“You think you’re ready?”
Ryder arched his head way back to look at Mason and nodded once. “I’m r
eady.”
“Do it in the bowl then.”
Ryder smashed it into the bowl, and Mason laughed. “Pick out the shells.”
“With my fingers? Grandma Junebug says I shouldn’t touch eggs.”
“Well, don’t touch them at Grandma Junebug’s house, but here you can touch them as long as you wash your hands after.”
Ryder peeled into giggles as he picked through the slippery egg to chase shell fragments.
“Use those little talons, boy,” Mason teased.
“Hoo hoo,” Ryder said in a barely audible voice as he dug harder.
Mason let out a loud, booming laugh.
God, it felt so good to hear Ryder talking openly about his animal. It hadn’t ever been like that for him before and, apparently, he needed this acceptance, because ever since he’d come to the Boarland Mobile Park, he’d asked so many questions about his shifter side. Her little boy had garnered the fealty of every one of the Boarlanders in a matter of hours, and what an incredible experience for Beck to watch him fit in here. To watch the wariness in his eyes fade away. To watch him smile so often.
He hadn’t asked about Robbie much, but when Beck had watched Mason tuck him in bed last night, she’d overheard Ryder tell him, “My dad doesn’t like me.” Mason had gone quiet for a minute as he tucked the comforter in all around him. Then he’d sighed and told him, “Your dad cares about you. He just doesn’t know how to show it. But you know what? I like you.” Ryder had nodded his little head and rolled over and hugged his favorite blanket tight. And just before Mason left the little guest room they’d set up for him, Ryder had murmured, “I like you, too.”
And then Beck had gone outside and bawled her eyes out in the woods because her heart had been so touched by that tender moment. When she’d claimed Mason, she’d thought she couldn’t love him more than in that moment. But then he’d been patient and tender with her, and she thought she couldn’t love him anymore than in that moment. And then she’d seen him with Ryder…and she fell in love with him all over again, every day.
As they sat down for breakfast, chattering away about plans for the day, there was a commotion outside, and Clinton yelled out, “Mason! Beck!”