“I think you should leave,” she murmured to Robbie. “You should go back home and really get to know our son. He’s amazing if you would just see past your prejudice.”
Robbie shook his head for a long time, stared out the front window as the fire dimmed in his eyes. “Beck, I can’t do this anymore.”
“Can’t do what?”
Robbie leveled her with a hard look and murmured, “That was my last offer to be a part of his life.”
“I don’t understand,” Beck said softly.
“I don’t want to pay no child support on a kid I never wanted.”
Mason gave her a sad look and moved off with the others, leaving her and Robbie alone again.
“Robbie, you don’t pay child support now, and I still let you see him whenever you want.”
“Yeah, but we already went through the courts, and last paycheck, they docked me by a lot. I have two kids on the way, Shelly can’t stand shifters, and she needs more than you did, Beck. She needs the big house and the shiny new car to be happy.”
“So what do you want me to do? I can’t afford to go back to court to beg them to stop docking your pay, and even if I did, that stuff isn’t up to me. And frankly, you should’ve been paying something. He is your son too, and you’ve put the entire financial burden of raising our child on me.”
“I think I want that burden to stay on you.”
She shook her head in confusion, unable to come up with a single response.
“I think I want to give up my parental rights.”
Beck huffed out a shocked sound. “W-what?”
“Your man or mate or whatever is right. I’m one-hundred percent going to screw Ryder up. I don’t like shifters, Beck. Never have. I don’t think you’re natural. You don’t fit into the food chain.”
“We fit fine. You just hate that I’m higher on the food chain than you,” she gritted out.
“I still want the gene therapy. If it was up to me, I’d strip that owl out of Ryder tomorrow and be done with it. I’m not putting my new family’s needs second by giving you all my money to raise a shifter. If you’re going to fight fixing Ryder, then I’m out.”
And with that, Robbie stood and left without looking back.
Chapter Seventeen
“Okay, thanks June. And no matter what happens, you guys will still be in his life. You’ve been amazing grandparents.”
“Well, I sure appreciate that,” June said in a tear-soaked voice. “I just wish Robbie wasn’t so bone-headed. Call us tomorrow and let us know if we need to meet you halfway.”
“Okay. Have a good night.”
“You too, honey. Bye.”
Beck hung up the phone and set it in her lap, face up in case Robbie called to change his mind. Although, according to his mom, June, relenting his rights had been on his mind for a while now.
“I should’ve seen this coming,” Beck said softly to Mason from the passenger’s seat. “Ryder’s already asleep so I couldn’t talk to him. God, I hope Robbie is in his right mind when he talks to him about this. Or should he even say anything? I mean, Ryder might not realize Robbie isn’t in his life anymore because he really wasn’t present to begin with. I don’t know what the right thing is to do. I don’t know anything,” she whispered helplessly.
Mason intertwined his fingers with hers and lifted her knuckles to his lips. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“Will it? Genetic testing! I still can’t even wrap my head around that. Robbie’s ultimatum was to physically and emotionally scar Ryder or reject his child altogether? I already felt alone raising Ryder, but now I’m really, really alone.”
“No you aren’t,” Mason said fiercely. He looked at her with the fire of promise in his eyes. “We’ll figure this all out.”
But Mason didn’t see what she did. His headlights illuminated a woman in the middle of the road. She was cast in an eerie blue glow, her long dark hair flowing unnaturally, and her eyes were black as night.
“Mason!” Beck screamed. “Look out!”
Mason jerked his attention to the road and slammed on the brakes, skidding sideways right into the woman. But right before they careened into her, she disappeared.
A terrifying whisper filled the cab. “They’re coming.”
“Hold on!” Mason demanded, turning into the skid with one hand pressing Beck so hard against the seat she couldn’t breathe.
Fishtail after fishtail spun the truck this way and that, and the smell of burnt rubber choked Beck as they slammed to a final stop.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Beck chanted, horrified as her heart threatened to leap out of her chest. She turned and looked behind them, expecting to see a body on the road, even though there had been no impact. “What was that?”
“That,” Mason gritted out, his furious gaze on the rearview mirror, “was Esmerelda.”
****
Mason ran his finger under the covers, along her ribs, and down the curve of her stomach to the swell of her hips. “Can’t sleep?”
“Sorry,” Beck whispered in the dark. “I was trying to be still so you could get some rest.”
He brushed her hair out of the way and pressed his lips on the back of her neck. “I can’t sleep either.”
Easing back against his strength, she whispered, “Why does it feel like everything is falling down around us? Our rights are being stripped, Robbie…Esmerelda. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I think I understand about the claiming mark now.”
Mason sighed and hooked his arm around her stomach, pulled her tight to him. “Beck, it’s not that I don’t think about it. I mean, I feel obsessed. My boar wants you, I want you, and damn, I will love seeing my mark on you someday.”
“But Esmerelda. She’s getting stronger in your life, just like I am, and you want to know why before you give me a mark. You don’t want it to be me and Esmerelda fighting for your attention when you claim me. You want it to be about me and no one else.”
“Close. I want it to be about you and Ryder. He’s my only shot at a kid, Beck. I feel like you’ve opened this door to a life I thought I would never have.”
“Do you feel pressure?”
“Yeah. Hell, yeah. Before Esmerelda, I would’ve jumped right on you, marked you, claimed you. I was young, but Beck, I was so ready for a family. A mate, kids, all of it. I was right on the cusp of taking the alpha position over my people. I had a great job. Providing for you and Ryder wouldn’t have been a concern at all, and back then, that was the most important thing to me. Security.”
“I’m not asking you to provide for us, Mason.”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I have the means to provide for you now, too, but when I met you, that wasn’t the first thing I thought about. I’m different now. The first thing I thought was, ‘oh shit, how can I make her happy while I’m dragging this baggage?’ And the answer is I don’t know if I can. I couldn’t make Esmerelda happy, and now look what’s happened. She wasted her last years on me, and now she’s wasting her afterlife on me, too.”
Beck turned in his arms. Her night vision was impeccable so she could see every worried line of his face, every indentation of muscle across his shoulders, every ounce of sorrow in his dark gaze. “I don’t think she would see it as a waste.”
Mason traced the outside of her ear with a light touch. “Jason said he thinks she’s here to tell me to pay attention to you and Ryder. He thinks she’s here to tell me to move on from her death.”
Beck searched his eyes, but he wasn’t meeting her gaze anymore. “And what do you think?”
“I was fine with that explanation until I saw her standing in that road tonight. I’m letting you in. I’m falling in love with you. I’m nervous, but excited to meet Ryder.” Mason lifted his soft brown eyes to hers, held her steady there. “So why is Esmerelda getting stronger?”
Beck shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know.” That had scared her badly. She’d already been freaked out by Esmerelda talking to her in the restaurant, but seeing her and feeling her cold, dead breath against her neck in Mason’s truck had stolen the safety Beck felt here. Sure, she’d known ghosts existed, but physically seeing a ghost, feeling Esmerelda’s presence, and watching the effect it had on her mate was completely different. Her owl hadn’t settled down since they’d almost wrecked. Scratch, scratch, scratch, her inner bird of prey clawed at her skin, asking to be released just so she could fly off some of this emotion.
“Will you Change with me?” she whispered, too chicken to look him directly in the face and watch the rejection there.
Mason hooked a finger under her chin and lifted her face, pressed his lips to hers. His mouth moved against hers like water, soft and gentle. And when his tongue brushed hers, she opened for him, allowing him to taste her, allowing him in. Although she wouldn’t admit it out loud, Mason had all of her. Everything she had to offer, he could have if he would just keep her. Because this feeling—this chest fluttering, stomach-dipping, happy sensation—hadn’t existed before he’d breathed life into her.