Holy. Shit.
Shifters like Beck were thought to be extinct. Most of the animal shifters were, and though some flight shifters still existed, like falcons and ravens, snowy owls hadn’t been seen or heard from in decades.
I picked you the first time I saw you.
Mason ran his hands over his baseball cap, took it off, and chucked it at the trailer. He hadn’t been paying attention. He’d been in the muck, trying to tread water and keep his shit together. He’d been concerned with taking it slow because, until dinner tonight, he’d thought Beck was human. They were different. Humans ran on slower timelines, so he’d been fine with push-and-pull in an attempt to get her to stick around. He wanted to try and become a good man for her eventually, but her animal had already picked him. She’d picked him? At his worst?
Him—a haunted beast boar with no roots.
Him—a sterile widower unable to let go of his past.
Him—a man who had no shot in hell at keeping a woman like her happy.
It made no sense. Yeah, their physical chemistry was off the charts in molten lava territory. His head was consumed with thinking about covering her, but Beck had seen through all his grit, and her animal had somehow latched onto him despite his one-way ticket to rock-bottom.
His timeline had just shrunk to nothing. He didn’t have years or even months to figure out what was wrong with him. He needed immediate improvement so he wouldn’t cause the hurt he’d seen in Beck’s eyes just now.
She’d been right. He’d been so focused on his own decade-old loss that he had assumed her divorce was less-than. God, he was an idiot. He’d witnessed her heartbreak after her phone call with Robbie, and he was really preaching to her about “actual love”?
He hooked his hands on his hips and stared into the woods where she’d disappeared into the dark canopy. The deep talon marks on his shoulder burned like fire, but he deserved the pain, as well as the scars they would leave. Beck was a fierce beasty, and though a part of him surged with pride, another piece of him was ashamed he’d drawn her animal out of her like that. He’d been throwing his words at her, telling her in his own fucked up way, “You don’t understand,” and he’d been so wrong. She was a feeler. Her heart was full of deep emotion and empathy, and he’d mistreated that quality about her instead of coveting it.
Warmth trickling down his shoulder and soaking his T-shirt. Mason jogged down the stairs to his truck, and then he blasted down the road toward Grayland Mobile Park. He had to fix this.
Mason had to start fixing himself before he lost her because she wasn’t alone in this bond. Beck—his beautiful, fierce, feathered Beck—had been so wrong.
He had chosen her back.
And it was up to him to do this better than her first mate because she deserved the effort.
She deserved everything.
Chapter Ten
Mason pulled open the door to Jason and Georgia’s screened-in porch. It creaked loudly, but just in case Jason hadn’t heard it, he knocked for good measure.
Georgia answered, clad in flannel pajamas, her wild curly hair piled on top of her head. A warm smile took her lips immediately. “You look like shit.”
Mason snorted. “Thanks.”
“No really. I mean, your beard looks rugged and manly and all, but you look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
“Is Jason around?”
Her delicate eyebrows lowered, and she pursed her lips. “Mason, I’ve heard about you in the woods. I don’t really want Jason Changing with you until you have more control.”
Mason nodded and ran his hand through his hair. He couldn’t be mad at Georgia. He really had been out of control, picking fights with anyone who even looked at him. “I’m not here to ask him to Change with me. I just need some advice.”
Georgia’s gaze tipped to the gashes on his shoulder, and with a slow, worried blink, she nodded and called out, “Jason. Mason’s here to see you.”
Jason appeared out of the back bedroom a minute later, wearing jeans, no shirt, and toweling off his hair like he’d just gotten out of the shower. “Hey, man. You okay?”
“Yeah. Listen, can I talk to you?”
Surprise slashed through Jason’s dark eyes, but the towering bear shifter recovered quickly enough. “Sure. I’ll be right out.”
A minute later, Jason was closing the door gently behind him and carrying a cold six-pack. “Come on,” he said lightly, pushing past Mason in his bare feet, his back still covered in droplets of shower water.
Jason didn’t say a word as he led him through the Gray Back woods behind the pristine trailer park, nor did he push conversation as they walked side by side, right through the porch light of Beaston’s trailer. The wild-eyed bear shifter was sitting on his porch, the door open behind him, and the soft glow from inside casting his face in shadow. All except those unnerving, glowing green eyes, which stayed on something behind Mason. Chills blasted up his neck, and Mason rubbed the skin there just to put warmth back into it.
“She ain’t here for what you think,” Beaston said low.
Mason looked behind him, but there was nothing there but the chilly feeling of wrongness. “What do you mean?”
Beaston lifted a shoulder. “You tell me.” He stood gracefully and crossed his arms over his chest, cocked his head. “I would come with you to the treehouse, but this is as far as I can get away from my raven boy.”
Mason smiled tiredly. He wished he had a baby to raise, but he was happy for Beaston. He was a good dad. Protective. “It’s okay, man.”
“Boar,” Beaston said as he and Jason moved off.
“Yeah?”
“She didn’t do it to hurt you.” Beaston shook his head sadly. “Some people just feel too much. Hurt too much.” Beaston climbed up the stairs and murmured, “She’s saying sorry.”
He closed the door behind him with a quiet click, and Mason clenched his shirt, right over his stomach where pain threatened to double him over. Beaston saw too much. Way too much. Mason had never told anyone that Esmerelda had taken her own life. He hadn’t even told Damon how she’d died.
“I didn’t know,” Jason said softly.
Mason tried to smile but failed. “No one does.”
Jason smelled of heavy sadness now so, unable to stand it, Mason strode past him toward the treehouse Beaston had built a couple logging seasons ago. He scaled the ladder and settled onto the porch, high up in the canopy, and dangled his legs off the edge. And when Jason had popped the tops on a couple beers and they’d each taken a healthy swig, Mason asked, “How did you get rid of your ghost?”
“I didn’t get rid of her. She had to decide to leave on her own. I don’t know, man. I blamed myself for her haunting me, but really, that was just Tessa’s personality to spend her afterlife pissin’ me off. She got louder and stronger when I first met Georgia, and then something changed.” Jason set his beer down with a hollow clunk, then cracked his knuckles. “The harder I fell for Georgia, the weaker Tessa got, until one day, she could barely talk to me. I was letting her go, sure, but in a way, I think she saw me moving on, and she was letting me go, too. I used to hate her. Tessa was my maker, my mate, but I wasn’t her only mate.”
“Oh, shit,” Mason muttered.
“Yeah, she died when she was with her other man, and she was mad I didn’t come to save her when things went south. Hell, I was mad at myself for a long time about that, too, but it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t her fault. It was a rival crew who didn’t care about killin’ off the women. The point—I used to hate her when she was alive. I hated her at her funeral because she’d bonded us, broken me young, and then she’d left me. Left me for another, left me on this earth mourning a woman who treated me like shit, but I couldn’t get her out of my head. I hated her for haunting me. For making me think Creed would have to put me down when I went crazy enough. But in the end, she saved me.”
“How?”
“She had something to say that was worth listening to, Mason. Georgi
a and Harrison? They’re here because Tessa warned me Georgia was in danger from those poachers. You remember that. You were there. Damon’s mountains went to battle, and it was Tessa who told me to Change Georgia to save her. To save me. I didn’t hate her in the end because, it turns out, she was there for a reason.”
Mason sighed and dangled his beer bottle over the side of the porch. “So you think Esmerelda is here for a reason. Because she has something she needs to say?”
“Does she have words?”
“Only two, but they’re getting stronger. Tonight at dinner, Beck heard her.”
“Beck? The publicist?” Jason’s lips twisted in a slow smile. “You bangin’ her?”
Mason looked away to hide a smile. “None of your damned business.”
“So, no. Zero pecker strokes for the sad pig.”
“We aren’t there yet, jackass. I want to be. She’s all I think about…”
“But Esmerelda?”
“But lots of things.”
“Like what?”
Mason gritted his teeth. He hated exposing himself to anyone, but he’d come here for Jason’s help, and he owed it to Beck to try. “Like she has a kid. And an ex who hurt her badly. Who still hurts her. And I’m…” Mason took a long swig of his beer, stalling. “I’m not good for anyone right now, and I don’t want to add my baggage to her already complicated life.”
“Who wants an uncomplicated life? I’m serious, man. Who wants a boring existence?” Jason arched his dark eyebrows. “The complications? The little blips and hiccups and heartaches? Those are what add texture to a life and make it good. They make people strong, make them able to appreciate happiness. And someday, when you get your head out of your ass, you’ll be grateful for where you’ve been. Hell, you’ll even be grateful for the time you had with Esmerelda because, in her own way, she’s prepared you for this.”
“For what?”
“For seeing the life you want and leaving the grit behind so you can go and get it. What does Esmerelda say, Mason?”
He stared at Jason, utterly shocked by how insightful the Gray Back jokester was being. “She says, ‘they’re coming.’”
“They’re coming,” Jason repeated softly. “Beck and her kid.”
Mason swallowed over and over, afraid his voice would crack when he spoke. “You think Esmerelda’s telling me it’s okay to move on?” God, what was this feeling coursing through his veins? Hope? He almost didn’t recognize it. Hope had eluded him for a long damn time.
Jason gripped his shoulder and shook him slowly. “Yeah, man. She’s letting you go. It’s time to let her go, too.”
Chapter Eleven
Beck sniffed and wiped the last of the dampness from her cheeks as she shoved her legs into her jeans. The air had cooled up here in the mountains of Wyoming, chilling the floor boards of 1010’s front porch, making the soles of her feet tingle.
“I saw you,” Clinton said.
Beck gasped and pulled her pants up as fast as she could. Mortification blasted heat through her body in a wave before it landed in her cheeks. “Great, you pervert. You saw me.”
Clinton frowned. In the dim porch lighting, he stood leaned against the rail near the bottom stair like he’d been there all night. It was eerie how quiet he’d been. She wasn’t snuck up on easily, but her shame at what she’d done to Mason had her head spinning like a top, distracting her from the dangers of the Boarlander woods.
“I didn’t mean I saw you naked. I meant I saw your animal. I knew you were a flight shifter. Just didn’t know what kind. A snowy owl.” His natural hate-filled scowl had morphed into an expression that looked almost impressed. Clinton cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, which had lightened to silver. “You’re sad. Why?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” With Clinton or with anyone else. She would need to leave this place. Run. Flee back to her old life where she felt steady. Here, she dared to want things that would never come to fruition for a person like her.
Clinton looked off into the dark woods. “You know, I had a girl once who was sad. She thought bottling up hurt meant she was strong, but it didn’t.” Clinton dragged his inhuman eyes back to her. “Silence will hurt Mason, and it’ll hurt you, too.”
Warily, she approached the side railing and looked down on the normally furious bear shifter. “Why do you care? I thought you didn’t like me.”
Clinton snorted. “Don’t matter who I like, Beck. It matters who Mason likes. He’s a jackass.” He twitched his head behind him toward the trailer park. “They all are.” Shrugging one shoulder up to his ear, he lowered his voice and murmured, “But they’re my jackasses. Mason’s known that quiet sadness before. It brought a strong man to his knees, and he hasn’t learned to stand yet. I can see him trying with you, though. Don’t break him before he gets there.” And without another word, Clinton ripped the one remaining rosebush out of her landscaping, threw it in the middle of the yard, roots up in the air, then sauntered to his trailer next door and disappeared inside.
As his door banged closed behind him, Beck released the breath she’d been holding. Up until a minute ago, Clinton had terrified her, but maybe Mason had been right when he’d said Clinton would grow on her.
Break him? She didn’t have the power to break Mason Croy. What Clinton didn’t know is that she’d marked him. She’d claimed him because her animal required scars. She was a monster. And now the only one at risk of breaking here…was her.
What the hell had she been thinking? Everything had become so clear as she’d soared high above Damon’s mountains, lost in her swirling thoughts of the man she loved. What had possessed her to fall for a huge, dangerous boar shifter? She and Mason came from completely different worlds, obviously, and her decision to claim Mason didn’t just affect her. She had Ryder to think about, and a tentative alliance with Robbie that could go up in flames at any moment. Her pairing up with a shifter wasn’t going to make co-parenting with him any easier. Robbie was anti-shifter. Always had been. Always would be.
God, she’d messed up so badly with Robbie, and now she was making the same terrible mistake. Only this time, she didn’t have the excuse of naïve youth, inexperience with men, or a shotgun wedding for freak’s sake. She hadn’t learned anything from the first time around, but had dove in beak first once again. And Mason didn’t feel the same. He was hooked up on his ex and not ready to move on, and yet again, she was alone in this.
She had to get out of here.
Her stomach curdled and soured at the thought of leaving this place, these people, Mason. Today had felt good, freeing, and she’d owned who she was. She’d owned her inner animal right in front of Mason. But that wasn’t enough to capture a man’s heart, and she was in way over her head with this.
Affairs of the heart couldn’t be trusted with someone whose heart had been fractured like mirror glass.
Beck shoved open the door to 1010. Maybe it was this old trailer’s fault she’d fallen so unexpectedly hard. Cora had told her it was magic, and she hadn’t listened. Instead, she’d gotten drunk on feeling a part of this place and clawed up Mason! He would never forgive her for doing that without his consent. Hell, she would never forgive herself.
Stupid owl thought she knew all the answers. She thought instinct trumped logic, but she didn’t understand how the real world worked. Beck wasn’t just an animal! She was a person, too, who’d just slashed an illegal claiming mark into the shoulder of a man she barely knew.
Facing Mason again couldn’t happen. Not when she was this horrified by her reckless behavior. She would tell Cora something had come up and she needed to do her publicist duties from Saratoga, not from 1010, which was apparently akin to one of those cute little naked cupids shooting love arrows into everyone’s asses.
She yanked her suitcase from the closet and rushed to the built-in set of drawers.
“Where are you going?” Mason asked.
“Aaah!” Beck screamed, clutching her chest as she spun on him.
<
br /> He stood in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, muscles bulging, eyes blazing a brilliant blue.
“I’m leaving,” she squeaked out.
Mason blinked slow and raised his dark eyebrows. “Why?”
“Because I don’t belong here! I don’t have any control over my actions, which is insane because I’m a grown-ass woman. I’ve felt old and drained to emptiness for years, and then I come here and I’m making all these mistakes I can’t afford to make. And I’m mortified by what I did to you.”
Mason approached slowly, backing her into the corner as she countered him step for step. “What did you do to me?”
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t draw a single full breath into her lungs, and he was too close, too dominant, too riled up. A submissive snowy owl did not belong with a beast boar! Unable to force enough air past her voice box, she circled her finger in the general direction of the bloody tears in his shirt. When he stared at her like she’d lost her mind, she rasped out, “I marked you.”
Mason shrugged flippantly and said, “Woman, it didn’t hurt for more than a couple minutes, and it’s already forming into a scar.”
“How can you be so calm about this, Mason? It’s a big deal! I never marked anyone before.”
His face went completely slack as a spark of understanding lit up his eyes. Slowly, he dragged his gaze to his shoulder and pulled the tattered material to the side, exposing four perfect, deep, half-healed wounds. “You marked me? Like…marked me?” His voice jacked up in volume. “You claimed me?”
“I tried to stop my animal, I did, but I was angry, and my owl thought I was ruining things between us, and she really wants to keep you.” Beck swallowed audibly and dropped her gaze to his scuffed work boots. Softly, she corrected herself, “I really want to keep you. I shouldn’t have done that without talking to you about—”
Mason’s lips crashed onto hers. The wind was knocked out of her, not because of his heavy dominance, but because he was squeezing her against his hard body.