by T. S. Joyce
“You coming?” Kirk asked.
“We’re waiting on Momma,” Ryder said. “Momma!! Hurry up or we’re gonna miss the river!”
Mason chuckled and told him, “Don’t rush her, boy. We’re still waiting on Harrison, Emerson, and Audrey, too. Don’t worry. We won’t miss the river.”
When Mason stood and turned toward his trailer, he was stunned to stillness at the sight of his mate. She was walking this way, her bird-fine frame on display under a purple triangle bikini top and holey cut-off shorts she must’ve borrowed from one of the girls. They hung loose on her hips in the sexiest way possible. He’d never seen her in anything other than a matching pajama set, matching lingerie, power pants, or crisp, designer jeans under a blouse, but damn, she sure was fitting in now. The black sparkly flip flops on her feet were a little big and clacked with each step she approached, and those long, sexy legs had him adjusting his dick. The afternoon light gleamed off the silver stretch marks over her hips, but it was her cleavage, bouncing enticingly with each step that held his attention for too long. How did he know? Because when he finally managed to rip his gaze away from those perfect tits of hers, she’d shoved her white-rimmed sunglasses up on her head and her gorgeous green eyes were dancing as she offered him that knowing grin he loved so much.
Damn, his woman was beautiful. She pulled her petal-pink towel off her shoulder, exposing the raw, red slices he’d given her a few hours ago. Not just his woman anymore. A slow smile stretched his face. His mate.
Emerson walked beside Beck, chattering on happily in her green two-piece, the swell of her belly leading the way. And on Beck’s other side, Audrey was in her white tiger form, mouth open in a soft pant as she strode gracefully toward them, her giant paws spreading on the soft ground with each step. Her tiger loved the water.
The soft tinkling of Beck’s laughter filled the clearing. Beck had said Ryder’s smile meant the world to her, but Beck was changing, too. Likely more than she realized. Mason had noticed her smiling more, opening up more, relaxing into the crew. A few weeks ago, he’d been at one of the valleys of his life, and standing here, watching Ryder run to Beck, watching her catch him in her arms and spin him as they both peeled into giggles, he thought he couldn’t be any happier. What a turnaround. What a complete one-eighty his life had undergone in such a short amount of time.
Gentle movement across the trailer park in the woods beyond captured his attention. There was something in the tree branches. Something blurry, hard to make out, tinged in blue. Mason took a step forward and squinted. As Esmerelda came into focus, his blood chilled to ice, and a horrified sound scratched up his throat. She was hanging from a rope, her body transparent so that he could make out the pine needles behind her. Her neck was broken against the rope, her bare feet swaying gently in the breeze, her white sundress pristine and lifting at the hem, just like he remembered. Almost. Her eyes were open, staring at him, beseeching him as her lips formed the words, they’re coming.
With a gasp, he closed his eyes. His lungs hardened to rock, like he was the one dangling from that hanging rope.
Mason.
Don’t say my name, Essie. Please don’t say my name.
“Mason!”
He shook his head hard as Essie’s voice morphed into Beck’s. His mate’s nails were digging into his bicep as she shook him hard. “Mason, what’s wrong?” Her tone was pitched high and scared.
Mason forced himself to look back at the trees, but Essie was gone. Just…gone, like she’d never been there at all. He wanted to believe he’d just imagined it, but the chills on his arms wouldn’t go away. He rubbed the cold skin on the back of his neck and dragged his horrified gaze back to Beck. She was real. She was real, touchable, and here, and she would never leave him like Essie had.
“I’m okay,” he rasped out in a voice he didn’t recognize. “We’re okay.”
Beck looked behind her at where Esmerelda had been hanging, but she shook her head like she didn’t see anything. Thank God.
Mason swallowed bile and hugged her tight against his chest so he could hide how much seeing Essie hang from that damned rope was affecting him. She hadn’t left him alone like he’d thought, but Beck didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve the taint of Esmerelda’s ghost on her big day. Not on the day he’d marked her.
Beck was saying something. Asking a question. Forcing himself to listen, he answered her. “No, it’s nothing. I thought I saw something, but I didn’t.”
Beck’s blazing yellow eyes and the frown that marred her delicate ruddy eyebrows said he wasn’t lying well enough, but that couldn’t be helped. This was the best he could do after that shock. They’re coming. He fuckin’ knew! He had them! He had Beck claimed, Ryder was his boy no matter genetics or paperwork, so why was Essie still here screwing with him?
After a week of silence, he’d thought the ghost of his past had found rest, but still, Mason was failing her in some way he couldn’t understand.
****
Mason’s heart was drumming too fast under her face, and Beck took a second look in the direction he’d been staring. His expression had terrified her. It had been as if his heart was being ripped from his body. There was only one thing that could’ve caused that kind of horror in his eyes, but he’d just lied to her. He was trying to protect her from his past.
Beck hugged his waist tight. “I’m here. You’re here, too.”
“Yeah,” he murmured, but his voice cracked on the word, and his hands rubbed in jerking motions against her back.
Suddenly desperate to get him away from whatever he’d seen, she said, “Come on,” and tugged his hand toward the trail that led through the Boarlander woods to Bear Trap Falls.
Up ahead, Ryder was standing with his arms out in a circle at his side, grinning as Audrey sauntered straight toward him, putting her giant face into the circle he’d created. Her purr was so loud that it drowned out the birds in the canopy. This was their game. Ryder liked to pretend he was a ringleader in a circus, and Audrey seemed fine playing along.
“Ryder, don’t ride Audrey,” Beck scolded him.
Too late. Ryder had already grabbed the scruff of her neck and scrambled on her back. “She likes it!”
If he was hurting Audrey, the giant tiger didn’t show it. Audrey twitched her tail and smoothed out her gait as Ryder hung on like a tiny tiger jockey. Emerson giggled and snapped a picture of them, and up ahead on the trail, Harrison wore the biggest grin. The alpha watched them with a tenderness that told Beck they wouldn’t wait too long to try for cubs of their own.
“I call next!” Bash said through the trees.
“No,” Harrison said.
“Why not?” Bash asked, a frown furrowing his dark eyebrows.
“Because you’re two-hundred-fifty pounds of grown-ass man, Bash. She ain’t a pony, and this ain’t your party.”
Bash crossed his arms over his chest and muttered, “Fine.”
“Whose party is it?” Ryder asked before he stuck his tongue back out and his focus-face returned.
“It’s yours,” Mason said.
Beck sighed a breath of relief that he seemed to be thawing out again.
“Because we had to tell ‘Merica that I’m an owl-boy?”
“Yeah, and because me and your mom are bound now. And look here.”
Ryder slid off Audrey’s back like a nimble little monkey and squinted at Beck’s shoulder where Mason was pointing.
“You got two boo-boos, Momma.”
Bash snickered. “Well, it would be weird if she had three boobies!”
Ryder grabbed his stomach and doubled over laughing. “Not boobies!”
“Is that what I think it is?” Emerson asked, running her finger just under the marks.
Heat flashed up from Beck’s chest to her cheeks and settled there. With an emotional smile, she nodded. “Mason gave it to me right after we registered, right there beside the courthouse.”
“Oh, my gosh!” Emerson exclaimed, pulling h
er into a gentle embrace.
Bash came charging through the woods like a rhino and lifted her and Mason up in a back-cracking bear hug.
Mason was laughing now, Esmerelda apparently forgotten, and he ruffled Bash’s black hair. “Okay, Bash Bear. Don’t squeeze my mate too hard. She’s got those fine bones, not like a big old bear.”
“I knew she was gonna be one of us,” Bash said too loud as he set them down too hard. “Emerson, didn’t I say that? I said day one, publicist is gonna stay here. She had to. She was stayin’ in ten-ten. Ten-ten wins again!” Bash whooped loud enough to echo through Boarlander woods and grinned big at each of them.
“Do you need to run?” Harrison asked.
“I need to run!” Bash yelled, right before he spun around and bolted for the river.
“Can I run, too?” Ryder cried.
Cracking up, Beck nodded. “Don’t go in the water yet, though,” she called as her son blasted off on those fast little legs of his, swim trunks billowing behind him and giving him a little bubble butt.
Mason frowned and yelled, “Bash, don’t let him in the water!”
“I’ll keep him safe!” Bash called from a distance.
Beck nudged his rock-hard shoulder. “Protective.”
“Yeah, about that. My instincts are insane lately. I don’t want you or him out of my sight. Is that normal?”
Beck stooped to pick a thorn from the bottom of her flip flop while resting her hand on Mason’s forearm for balance. “It’s completely normal for me, so probably.” Robbie sure didn’t have any paternal instincts, but Mason was the sun, and her ex was the darkest night. The two couldn’t be compared.
Mason picked her up so fast she left her stomach on the forest floor. He nuzzled his sexy facial scruff against her tender belly until she was squirming and shouting laughter. His biceps bulged as he rested her over his shoulder and strode through the woods with a strong, confident gait behind the other Boarlanders.
“Just to warn you, I’m gonna be starin’ at those sexy tits of yours all day, so keep your little smirks to yourself.”
“No deal. When did you have time to plan a floating trip?”
“When you and Ryder were down in Saratoga the other day for that Lumberjack Wars meeting with Parks and Rec. I went and got the tubes from Moosey’s Bait and Barbecue, the bait side. They had a little lifejacket, too, that looked the right size for Ryder. I even got a tube for Big Blue.” Mason set her down and pointed to where Kirk was shoving the cooler into a square floaty.
Bash had placed himself between Ryder and the river waves lapping at the beach. “I bought girl drinks, too, and rainbow umbrellas so you can feel fancy.”
Ally lifted a bright red fruity beer from the cooler and handed it to Beck while Mason went to work helping Kirk and Clinton duct tape a bunch of giant yellow inner tubes together. Across the river, a commotion snatched Beck’s attention.
“Yooohooo,” called a petite, red-head with thick glasses, a floppy straw hat, and a yellow polka-dotted saggy tankini. The Gray Backs filed out of the woods behind her.
“Hey, Willa!” Emerson yelled with a wave.
“Hell, yeah,” Kirk said. “Now it’s a C-Team party.”
“The Ashe Crew is meeting us down river.” Creed, the dark-haired alpha of the Gray Backs called through cupped hands, “Hey, Ryder-man!”
“Hi Mister Creed!”
“Congratulations on owning your owl today, buddy!”
“Hooo, hooo!” Ryder called.
Her son was practically vibrating with pride as Beck snapped him into his life jacket, and a well of excitement bubbled up her throat. Today had turned out so differently than she’d thought it would.
They piled into their inner tubes, Ryder into the smallest one, and rowed clumsily with cupped, splashing hands to the middle of the river toward the Gray Backs, who were doing an equally horrid job of steering. They were all cracking up by the time they reached each other and linked up. And behind them, Kirk, Bash, and Clinton jumped all the way over the falls and into the river with huge cannon-ball splashes. Ryder got so excited, he squeezed his juice box all over himself and giggled uncontrollably when the rowdy Boarlanders popped out of the water right beside his tube and splashed him. A slow-floating quarter-mile down river, and the Ashe Crew was waiting in the shallows, true to their word, and with a couple of kiddos around Ryder’s age. Wyatt was the blue-eyed bear shifter son of the Ashe Crew alpha, Tagan, and his mate, Brooke. And Bruiser and Diem’s daughter, Harper, linked up her little tube to the boys’ too. She was a striking girl, with dark hair and one soft brown eye like Diem’s, the other blue with an elongated reptilian pupil. But despite the fire-breathing dragon that resided inside of her, she was polite and gentle with Ryder when they splashed around.
When Mason swam up behind Beck and rested his elbows on her tube, then leaned in and nuzzled her neck, another layer of happiness washed over her. Looking around at the different crews who were greeting each other like they hadn’t seen each other in months instead of days, and under Mason’s easy affection with the soundtrack of Ryder’s laughter echoing through the river valley, this incredible sense of belonging drifted over her like a warm, comfortable blanket.
And now she had another reason to fight for the shifter rights vote.
Because someday, someway, she and Ryder and Mason were going to register and pledge as official Boarlanders.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mason readjusted Ryder’s weight in his lap so he could drape his arm around Beck’s shoulders. A distracted smile still lingered on her lips as she swayed from side to side with the rocking motion of Clinton’s truck. She was happy. Mason could sense it coming off her in waves, and damn, what it did to his animal. Hoof stomping, chest up, head held high, his animal hadn’t ever been a prideful creature, but today he was.
On the other side of the truck bed, Kirk was rubbing his mate Ally’s shoulder absently as she dozed off. Usually, Clinton drove like a bat out of hell, but today, he’d acted almost normal. Maybe 1010 was working its magic on him, too.
The sun was setting behind the mountains, painting the sky in neon pinks and oranges, casting Beck’s face in a pretty glow. She smiled up at him, as if she could hear his thoughts. Hell, maybe she could. He’d never marked a woman before. It had been against the rules of the boar people to give Essie one because she was human, and he’d cared deeply about what his people thought about him back then. Now, all he cared about was Beck, Ryder, and the inhabitants of Damon’s mountains.
Clinton pulled under the Boarland Mobile Park sign and onto the new gravel road. He parked in his yard over the scorched words he’d burned into his weeds and, exhausted from the day, they all climbed out of the truck. Ryder was still hanging on, but Mason would bet his tusks he would sleep like a winter grizzly tonight.
But when he turned for 1010, there was a familiar, beat-up old white Ford truck parked on the new concrete pad beside it. And on the front porch rocking chairs, Beaston and Aviana sat with matching smiles.
“Beaston!” Kirk called with a wave. The others greeted him, too, but the feral-eyed bear shifter only nodded a greeting, his glowing green eyes never straying from Ryder.
With a frown, Mason led Ryder and Beck to the porch. The boy hadn’t met the Novaks yet, but not for lack of Mason trying. It seemed Beaston had trouble being separated from his raven boy more than a few yards, and he’d grown protective and unwilling to take him out of the trailer he shared with Aviana behind the Grayland Mobile Park.
Beaston was cupping something gently on his lap and didn’t stand as they approached like his dark-haired mate, Aviana, did. Instead, he cocked his head at Ryder and murmured, “I’m Beaston.”
Ryder had gone quiet, and Mason understood. Beaston’s eyes glowed like a demon’s, and the air around him was heavy with dominance.
“Tell him hi,” Beck encouraged him.
“Hi,” Ryder said shyly, his eyes on the floorboards.
“Introduce you
rself,” Beck murmured, inching him forward by the shoulders.
“My name’s Ryder Layton Anderson and I’m five years old and I live in a trailer park.”
Beaston cracked a crooked smile, just for an instant before his eyes went curious again. “I came here to see you.”
“Why?” Ryder asked in that little squeaky voice of his.
“I have something to show you.”
“Is it a puppy?”
“No, but it’s the most important thing to me. The best thing.” He held out his cupped hands, and on his palms sat a tiny, fluffy, jet-black chick with a glossy, black beak and big round eyes that blinked curiously at Ryder. “This is my raven boy, Weston. Someday, you’ll call him Wes.”
Ryder’s eyes went round, and Mason knelt beside him to get a better look at Beaston’s son. “He’s already shifted?”
“Early,” Beaston said with a nod. “I wanted to come today. Wanted to come to the river for Ryder, but Weston Changed and...”
Aviana settled her hand on her mate’s tensed shoulder and whispered, “It’s okay.”
“I had a dream,” Beaston said, his eyes steady on Ryder. “A black raven and a snow white owl were flying over a crowd. Everything was loud. Cheering. They flew as one. Happy. My Aviana will only bear me cubs now, and Weston will be my only raven boy, and you…you will be like his brother. You’ll be fierce. Strong.” Beaston’s eyes blazed like green flames as his voice dipped lower. “And do you know what they will call you?”
“What?” Ryder whispered.
“They will call you Air-Ryder, Son of the Beast Boar, Blood Brother to the Novak Raven.”
Chills blasted up Mason’s arms, and he jerked his eyes to Beck, who looked equally as stunned.
“Who,” Mason asked, fully aware that Beaston’s dreams had never been wrong. He had the sight, like his mother before him. “Who will call him that?”
