Boarlander Beast Boar(15)

Lowering his weight on top of her, he slowed his pace and ground out her name. “Beck. My Beck.” His voice sounded too low, too feral to pass as human, and she loved it. Loved this feeling he filled her with.

He moved inside of her until every last aftershock had subsided, and then he rolled over and cradled her to his chest. Mason’s heartbeat drummed against her cheek, and Beck’s face crumbled. Her eyes burned with tears because, God, it felt so good to be cared for. To not be used in the bedroom. To feel accepted and adored and coveted.

“Shhh.” Mason stroked her hair, and his arm around her shoulders went gentle. He rubbed soothing circles right next to her spine, and his lips lingered in her hair.

Was that soft sob hers? Mortified, she squeezed her eyes closed and inhaled his scent, anchored herself in this moment as a tear streamed from the corner of her eye and made a tiny splat against the pillow.

“Please tell me these are happy tears,” Mason murmured in a worried voice.

Beck drew her arms into his stomach and snuggled closer. Mason reacted immediately, hugging her up safe and warm in the circle of his strong arms.

Softly, so she wouldn’t ruin the magic of this moment, she murmured, “I’ve been waiting all my life for you.”

Mason’s heartbeat raced faster, and he swallowed hard. When he spoke, there was a smile in his voice. “You’ve got me now, Beck. You run, I’ll just follow. Beautiful, fierce… woman, you just drew my boar up and bound us.”

“No, Mason.” She smiled and laid a soft kiss against his chest, right over his heart. “We bound each other.”





Chapter Twelve




Mason had gone quiet beside her, tracing the vertebra in her spine as she lay relaxed on her belly. It wasn’t an awkward silence, but the kind that was comfortable. It was the quiet that said he was as lost in this moment as she was.

As his gaze locked on hers, Mason’s lips curved up in that slight smile he’d been giving her for the past half hour. He dragged his fingertip up her back to start at the top of her spine again.

Curiously, she asked, “What are you thinking about?”

He lowered his lips against her ear and whispered, “I never thought I would get a second chance at this feeling.”

Fluffing the pillow up under her cheek, she said, “Claiming marks don’t mean the same to boar people.”

A frown marred his brows for a second before his face relaxed again. He shook his head and pressed his lips to her shoulder, then rested his cheek on his palm, elbow on the mattress. “I thought owl shifters were extinct.”

“Very rare. Not extinct.”

“Mmm,” he rumbled in that sexy, deep timbre of his.

“Are there lots of boar shifters?”

Mason dipped his chin and traced her shoulder blade. “We number near a thousand.”

“And you were supposed to rule them all?” She frowned. If she had other owls she could talk to and raise her child around, she would’ve done it, but as far as she knew, it was just her mom, Beck, and Ryder. “Why did you leave?”

The smile dipped from his lips, and his eyes went dark and serious. Mason lay on his arm right in front of her and searched her eyes. “Don’t run.”

“I won’t. I just want to know you.”

“We live in groups of ten to twenty called Drifts. Each is run by a dominant boar, but there is one Drift that governs the rest.”

“That was your Drift?”

“My family’s, yes. Bash was right about boar people coveting money. We live well, and there is pressure to find high-paying jobs because paychecks are deposited into the same account for the good of the Drift. It is an honor to be an earner. To be able to provide for your Drift, as well as your mate and offspring.” His eyes darkened with some emotion she didn’t understand. “I was a very good earner. I had a brother, and we competed because, someday, we would battle for dominant boar over all our people. We had to excel in everything. To hold a top position, I had to be perfect. I had to have a high-paying job and a good mate who bore me offspring. Only I fell in love with an intern at the security company my family owned. I ran the company, had a good head for business, and I hired Esmerelda because my boar chose her the second she walked into my office for that interview.” His eyes took on a faraway look. “She was beautiful. Dark hair, dark eyes, gorgeous Spanish accent. My human side had nothing to do with it, or I would’ve slowed us down.”

“Why?”

“Because she was human, and boar shifters tend to stay together. I brought her into my Drift knowing she would be treated second-rate. My animal didn’t care about that, though, because every woman I’d been raised around was strong. Tough. Thick-skinned. I assumed Esmerelda was the same.” His lips pursed into a thin line before he murmured, “I was wrong. Her depression presented itself immediately. She swore it was seasonal and tried to hide her mood swings, but within the first few weeks we’d been mated, I got this sick feeling deep down that I couldn’t make her happy. That nothing could. She started feeling the pressure of her station in our Drift. She was supposed to give me piglets and enable me to fight for the dominant boar position. She felt pressure to be perfect. She said having a baby would make her happier, so we tried. And tried and tried, and nothing happened. And the sows in my Drift were awful to her, because boar shifters procreate easily. Fertility problems are rare, and they blamed her for hurting my standing with our people. They wanted me to leave her, like I could just break the bond, and I started to hate them. My brother, Jamison, was the worst. He dug in, hounded her, because he could see hurting her was the best way to hurt me. He was after that dominant boar position, and our trouble conceiving gave him an edge because his mate was not only a sow, but she got pregnant right away. I was losing, but somewhere along the way, I stopped caring as much because I loved Esmerelda.”

Heartbreak slashed through Mason’s eyes as he ran the tip of his finger down Beck’s cheek. “I worked a lot. My instinct to provide for Esmerelda and our future babies kicked up so hard, I couldn’t stop pushing myself. More time at the office, more weekends ruined, and I couldn’t see it, but Essie saw it as me pulling away from her. She couldn’t understand shifter instincts because she wasn’t one. I thought I was being a good mate, setting up a nest egg because I knew that someday we would get pregnant, but to her, she thought I resented her. She thought I was abandoning her. She was crying all the time. Arguing over nothing. She didn’t want me to touch her. Stopped wanting to sleep with me. She would say, ‘What’s the point? I’m broken.’ I didn’t know what to do. I was twenty when we first paired up, young, stupid, head-strong, didn’t understand depression, didn’t understand her. She quit my company, didn’t want to work, didn’t want to get dressed, didn’t want to brush her hair or go out or talk to people. I watched her wither. She became obsessed with these apple trees in our backyard. Just…babied them. Maybe they were her babies while we tried, I don’t know. She was always out there with them, talking to them, pruning them, reading under their branches, obsessing over the fruit and any dead leaf. And one day, I came home from work dog tired, my Drift had been on my ass about offspring, had to fire someone that day, just in my own little world when I walked through the door. I couldn’t wait to unload all my burdens on her because she always made me feel better. So I called her name, and when she didn’t answer, I knew something was wrong. Just knew it.” Mason’s voice hitched, and he took a few seconds before he continued. “I found her in the backyard, hanging from one of the apple trees.”

“Oh, my God,” Beck murmured, pressing her hands over her mouth. “Mason.”

“I went mad after that. Just…” Mason shook his head for a long time, and his eyes went hollow. “I didn’t care about anything or anyone. I blamed my Drift for pushing her over the edge, but mostly I blamed myself for not knowing how to save her. My people started calling for me to prove myself if I still wanted to be in the running. I needed offspring, a mate, something. I was earning, but Jamison had pulled far ahead, and my dad wanted to step down as dominant boar. So he gave me two sows and told me to earn my keep.”

Bile rose in Beck’s throat. She hugged him tight and buried her face against his warm chest. She was a coward and couldn’t watch the phantoms in his eyes anymore.

Mason’s voice dipped to a ragged whisper. “I cared nothing for them. I just wanted Esmerelda back. But I’d stopped feeling somewhere along the way, and it was nice to escape into a rut and focus on breeding them just so I didn’t have to think about how damned broken I was. So I didn’t have to spend nights alone, listening to those goddamned apple trees creaking in the wind outside. By the end of that year, Jamison had me declared The Barrow. Rutting had made me weak. I hadn’t been thinking about food, Changing, fighting, or anything. Just sex. Just this single-minded desperation to prove I wasn’t worthless—for me, for Essie, for my Drift. I wasn’t in any shape to fight and I knew it, but I went ahead and challenged Jamison just to put an end to all the pain. He was the only one who could match my boar. The only one who could send me to Essie with honor.”