Boarlander Beast Boar(30)

Chapter Twenty-Three




Mason stood leaned against Ryder’s open doorframe, arms crossed over his chest as he watched him sleep. The little boy’s lips were parted, and his face was completely relaxed. He used to think boar offspring were the cutest, but now that seemed ridiculous. Ryder was the cutest. Little fluffy owlet, always wanting Mason or Beck to hold him when he Changed. Mason had tucked one of his downy gray and white feathers into an empty matchbox for safekeeping since Ryder wouldn’t be this little forever.

Beaston’s dream proved that. Someday he would grow up, and Mason wouldn’t get to cuddle the little owl anymore. He would get manly hugs and back slaps. Son of the Beast Boar. Mason gritted his teeth against the urge to fall apart. He sure didn’t feel like The Barrow anymore.

Beck was in the living room folding laundry and watching some reality show she roped him into sitting through after Ryder went to bed at night. Any other woman, he would’ve fought it, but Beck liked snuggling and talking about the characters, and damn, he would watch a documentary about water boiling if it made her happy.

She’d been on the warpath since they’d been forced to register. Her days were filled with balancing motherhood and being a champion for the shifters. She had meetings and conference calls, organized events, and bullied the crews into community service with a relentless tenacity. Cora Keller had called Harrison and told him to keep her happy because the work Beck was doing for shifter public relationships was making a huge difference. Even Cora was back to joking on her phone calls, where for a while, she’d been so stressed, like the weight of their future was on her shoulders.

Mason was so fucking proud of Beck for stepping up. She had everyone doing a job, visiting the websites, answering questions, doing community outreach, and volunteering at Parks and Rec events down in Saratoga. At her direction, the girls of the Ashe Crew had built a huge rapport with the surrounding areas at the flea market where they sold their shabby chic furniture and décor. Willa’s Worms were now a staple at every bait shop from here to Kansas, and every one of the crews spent more time in town and signed autographs whenever anyone asked.

Beck had her hand in so many pots, and she was the epitome of grace under fire. None of the negativity seemed to get to her. She brushed off the protesters in Saratoga like they were no more than annoying gnats, and yesterday, at a meeting at City Hall, she’d been called out for the first time for her animal. Her cheeks had flushed for a moment, but then she’d lifted her chin proudly in the air and told them, “Damn straight, I’m a snowy owl shifter. I’m proud of where I come from.”

She’d stared down that committee, eyes bright yellow and daring them to look away, like some warrior woman ready for battle. Mason had sat there beside her, completely stunned that he’d landed a tough-as-nails woman like her. Just the memory of the fierceness on her face drew up Mason’s boar.

Mason tucked the covers around Ryder’s little body, wrapping him up like a burrito before he strode into the living room. They’d moved out of 1010 and into his trailer the day after floating the river, and over the last week, Beck and Ryder had fit in easily here. And now, he could barely remember this place without them. They’d stamped their presence here so completely that every room, wall, and floorboard now held a memory of his little family.

Bash had once said Emerson was his air, and Mason hadn’t understood the sentiment at the time. But now he did. Beck and Ryder were the oxygen that made him breathe easy and feel normal.

“Let me do the rest,” he murmured, gesturing to the laundry basket. Ryder only had what he’d packed for Robbie’s, and since the boy loved playing in the dirt, he and Beck were doing laundry constantly now. They soon would need to go back to Douglas and pick up her car and move her out here officially. She hadn’t been keen on going back to a place where she’d been cut so deeply, and he understood that.

He could never go back to his first home either.

But looking at Beck now as she smiled up at him from the couch, he didn’t have the urge to anymore. Home was where she and Ryder were. Home was here, with the Boarlanders.

Boar-lander. He should’ve known he was destined for this crew.

Beck opened her mouth to say something, but her attention landed somewhere behind him, and her face transformed into one of horror. Her eyes turned from green to yellow in an instant.

Mason’s skin prickled with the cool breeze of wrongness against the back of his neck. He didn’t want to turn around, didn’t want to see her, but Esmerelda was here, and he couldn’t make Beck witness her alone.

Slowly, Mason turned. Essie stood there in the kitchen, eyes so sad, a rope burn deep in her neck. She was tinted blue, transparent, and her hair and white dress fluttered around her in a stiff wind that didn’t touch him.

“They’re coming.” Her lips moved just after the words reached his ears.

“Essie, I moved on, just like you wanted. You have to let me go. You can’t come here anymore.”

Her eyebrows arched high, and a strangled sound screeched from her throat, as if she wanted to say more but hadn’t the power. Her hair whipped about, and the front door ripped open, slammed against the wall with a crash.

And Esmerelda was gone.

Outside, she whispered it again. “They’re coming.”

She was luring him. He knew it but was powerless to stop his legs from carrying him toward the door.

“Mason,” Beck said in a shaking voice. She pulled his hand but, helplessly, he dragged her with him. What was happening to him? He stared down at his legs in horror, willing them to stop.

“Mason, don’t go out there!” Beck yelled, her bare feet stuttering against the laminate flooring as she struggled to stop him.

The second his boot echoed onto the porch in the evening light, Beck’s hand slipped from his. She stood frozen in the doorway, hair tumbling down her shoulders, eyes round, chest heaving.

Eyes wide with terror, Beck whispered, “I can’t move.”

Enraged that Essie’s power was affecting Beck, Mason looked to the woods and yelled, “I’m here! What do you want from me?”

They’re coming. Coming, coming. They’re coming. The hissed whispers filled his head, each word cluttering the next. Coming, coming. They’re coming.

Mason squatted down and covered his ears. He hated her voice, hated that she was still here haunting him. Hated her. “Gaaah!” he screamed as the volume of her whispers drowned out everything and filled his head.

The noise dipped to nothing so suddenly that Mason opened his eyes, and there she was, right in front of his face. Tears streaming down her translucent cheeks, she said, “Mason, they’re here.” Esmerelda was blasted backward and disappeared in a puff of cerulean smoke.

The ground rattled under his feet like an earthquake.

“Mason,” Clinton said, warning in his voice. He stood on top of his trailer next door, eyes on the woods where trees were shaking. Something awful was coming closer and closer. Shit.

Boom! A gunshot echoed through the valley, and in an instant, Kirk threw his trailer door open. “Ally!” he yelled. His massive silverback ripped out of him, and he charged the woods. Clinton landed hard from where he jumped off his trailer.

“Call the dragon,” Mason barked out, but Clinton was already dialing on his cell phone.

“What’s happening?” Beck asked in a voice that trembled with terror.

The trailer rattled as the vibration grew closer, and Mason held onto the banister to steady himself. “Beck, stay inside. No matter what you hear, you go in Ryder’s closet, and you don’t come out. You protect our boy.”

Everything was so clear now. So bright. So obvious. He’d been wrong about what Esmerelda had been doing here. She hadn’t been telling him to let her go. She’d been warning him against the people who had cut her heart wide open when she’d been alive. She’d been warning him, not because she couldn’t let go, but because she wanted him to protect what he’d found—Beck and Ryder. The Boarlanders. He ran for the woods, peeling off his shirt as he went.

“Mason,” Beck shrieked. “Is it IESA?”

“No!” He called back at her. He gritted his teeth against the hatred that welled up inside of his chest. “It’s the boars.”

Emerson ran by as Bash and Harrison melted into the woods in front of him, a deep snarl in their throats. She bolted for Mason’s trailer with a gun in her hand. “I’ll take care of them!” she called out. Her eyes were full of terror, but her voice was steady, determined.

Good Emerson. Brave human, knowing just what to do so he could focus on the blood he was about to let. Fuckin’ Robbie for outing him, and fuckin’ Jamison for not being able to let Mason go.

A sick feeling twisted his gut as his boar roared to be set free. Now, he had everything to lose.

Another gunshot boomed through the valley, and the drum of a silverback beating his chest echoed through Boarlander woods. His people were going to war, and their pain would be on him. Their blood would be on his hands.

He could smell them now as he wove through the trees. The thick, dizzying, musty scent of dominant boars tainted the air and filled his senses. The deep-throated squeal of a battle cry blasted through the forest. There would be no talking them down. They weren’t here to negotiate his return. They were here to steal everything he loved.