Boarlander Beast Boar(12)

Anger lashed at her heart that he was comparing his loss to hers. They weren’t the same, but he didn’t know how deeply she’d been cut. “And now she’s haunting you.”

Mason clacked his teeth together and pulled to a stop in front of 1010, and before the wheels had even locked up, she shoved open the door and scrambled out. Clutching her purse to her stomach to keep her pain from leaking from her body, she strode toward the porch. And when she heard him slam his door and follow behind, she jogged to escape him.

She reached for the door handle, but Mason was there in a blur, hand on the barrier. “You’re angry.”

“Damn straight, I’m angry,” she said, shoving off him to get some breathing room. “You think you’re the only one with real estate in ‘actual love’? You think you’re the only one who lost it? I loved Robbie. Loved him. Lucky you, your mate loved you back, but mine didn’t feel the same about me. So no, I can’t call him my mate because I wasn’t that to him. I wasn’t enough! And don’t you fucking talk to me about ghosts, Mason. I can see my ghost. I share a child with him, have to talk to him, see him, watch him move on with some woman younger and prettier than me. I have to feel the slap of his rejection constantly, and I will have to bear it my whole life. He couldn’t stand to touch me! Couldn’t stand to fuck me unless it was from behind and he wasn’t looking at my face, and I knew what he was doing. He was buried in me, thinking about the women he kept on the road. He spent more on them every holiday than on me. I could see our bank accounts, knew what was happening, but my animal was in it. I was trapped. I was mated. He was not. I’m sorry you lost your mate. I really am. My heart bleeds for what you’ve been through. But I think that somewhere along the way, you became so buried in your own pain that you can’t see the good things that are sitting right in front of you.”

“Like what?”

“Like me!” Tears streamed from her eyes, and angrily, she wiped them with the back of her hand. “You lost your mate, and I’m sorry for it. Not because I pity you, but because I care about you. I don’t want you to hurt because I know what the ache of loss can do to a person. What it can do to your animal. You lost a mate, and I know it’s not the same to you, but I lost one, too. And now I’ll lose another.”

“What do you mean?”

Miserably, she ducked her gaze. In a shaking voice, she whispered, “You know what I mean.”

Mason approached slow, and she countered back until her hips hit the porch railing. “Tell me.”

Her face crumbling, she swallowed a sob and said, “I picked you the first time I saw you. I picked another man who can’t pick me back.”

And as he took another step toward her, she gave into the pulsing power of her animal. She would be damned if another man ever trapped her.

****

Mason held his hands out soothingly, palms up, because Beck smelled different. He was hurting her, just like he knew he would. She smelled of anger and sadness and something more. Something inhuman. Beck hunched inward and imploded in an instant. Her clothes dropped to the floorboards and a massive white owl blasted toward him. She used his shoulder to leap from, her long, curved talons slicing through his flesh before she beat her powerful wings and caught air. She lifted easily, gracefully, glided to the tree line. He’d never seen anything more beautiful. She was larger than any wild snowy owl by five times, at least, and her wingspan was massive. Flowing downy feathers covered her outstretched legs, and her talons looked like daggers. And just before she disappeared into the night, she let off a surprisingly guttural and fierce call.

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.”