by T. S. Joyce
“Think about it,” Matt said. “He begged you for one from the first time he figured out you made them. Maybe if you gave him a knife, he’d come back to the Gray Backs.”
Easton looked down at the long, sharp blade of the knife he always carried. He hadn’t made Clinton a knife because he hadn’t deserved the effort. Willa, Gia, and Georgia had.
Easton ran from the house to the shed where Dad was working. In the branches of an old alder tree, the raven cawed. He grinned and waved to her as he blasted his little legs faster toward Dad’s workshop.
Shaking his head to ward off the memory, Easton said, “Clinton won’t ever come back. He don’t belong with us.”
“Where did you learn to make your knives anyway?”
In a flutter of wings, the raven swooped down from the towering alder and landed on the splintered windowsill of the shed. Easton gasped as he got to see her up close for the first time. Slowly and carefully, he padded toward the window. She was carrying something shiny in her beak, and when he approached, she set a small bent paperclip down on the ledge. He thought she would fly away, but she didn’t. She only watched him while he picked up the small gift and turned it in his hands.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“That raven sure likes you,” Dad said. He was leaned against his work bench watching the big, black bird with his arms crossed over his chest and his head cocked.
Easton looked at her proudly, so close he could almost touch her. Pocketing the paperclip, he said, “She’s my best friend.”
A soft sob whipped around on the breeze, easy for his sensitive hearing to pick up.
“Mom’s crying.”
Dad narrowed his eyes and turned his back to continue sharpening a thin knife blade. “Well, let her have some time alone. She’ll get over it.”
Easton sidled up to the table and fingered a set of clamps. “What’s wrong with her?”
With a sigh, Dad turned and squatted down to eye-level with Easton. “Son, your momma’s going to have another baby.”
A smile spread across Easton’s face as he thought of a brother or sister to play with. Another sob carried on the wind from the house. He frowned.
Dad ruffled his hair. “Your momma’s scared. She fancies she has the sight and can see her future. She thinks the baby will be hard to have, but she’s just being emotional. Human women are like that. Soft and full of tears.”
“She doesn’t want the baby?”
“She will.” Dad stood and blew on the newly sharpened blade of the knife he was making.
But Easton knew all about babies. They had raised pigs all his life, and he’d seen how the boar got the sows with piglets. “If Mom didn’t want a baby, why did you put one in her?”
Dad tossed him a hard look and went back to examining the sharpened silver. “Someday you’ll understand. Your momma is flighty, and I don’t want her leaving us. Now she won’t. Not with two cubs to raise. Sometimes you have to make the hard decisions for the people you want to keep around.”
Easton winced as he put his weight on his bad leg, the one Willa had ruined when he’d Turned her without her consent. All because he wanted to keep her around. Dad had been wrong. Making decisions for women got his bones snapped, and then Creed had ordered the Gray Backs not to set his broken leg. He’d done a shitty job of trying to fix it himself, and now every step he took, man or bear, hurt. His limp would always hurt.
“Hellooo,” Matt drawled, waving his hand in front of Easton’s face.
Red, boiling rage took his middle, and he snapped his teeth hard at Matt’s hand. Matt flinched back and cursed. “I’m not challenging,” he said, hands raised in surrender as he stepped away, never giving him his back.
“Beaston!” Power cracked in Creed’s voice as he yelled from under the skyline where he was securing new cables. “Don’t you fucking do it today. Damon finally lifted our numbers. He’s trusting us more. Don’t ruin this shift for us.”
Easton’s bear squirmed inside of him, burning him from the middle out in desperation to escape. He wasn’t even mad at Matt. The memories made it so he couldn’t help himself. Fighting made them go away.
With a snarl, he turned and skidded over the ledge of the landing. Below, there was a steep mountainside cluttered with felled lumber the Boarlanders had cut down for the Gray Back Crew to strip and load for shipment to Saratoga. The terrain was steep and uneven, and one wrong misstep meant a lumber avalanche that would go careening down the hillside, picking up steam and demolishing anything in its path. He loved this job. There was always an edge of danger in everything he did. Here, he could focus better than anyplace else on earth. Which was pathetic since he still fought the other Gray Backs all the fucking time. Irritation bubbled inside of him as he headed to where Jason was standing on a stack of logs and writing numbers on his clipboard. Clad in a yellow hardhat like his own, Jason was easy to spot.
“Hey, you okay?” Jason asked.
“I’m fine.”
His dark eyebrows shot up as he shook his head and went back to scribbling on the clipboard. “Lay off my hide today, will you? I’m still sore from our row yesterday.”
“Sorry,” Easton muttered as he climbed onto the pile next to his friend. And he really was. He liked the Gray Backs more than any other people in the world, but that hadn’t stopped his need to fight with them.
“Creed will kill me soon,” Easton said, dragging his gaze to where his alpha was climbing into the machinery under the skyline.
“He won’t.”
“He will.”
“Easton,” Jason said, slapping the clipboard against his thigh. “Anyone messes with you, they’ll have to claw their way over my cold and lifeless body to do it.” Jason inhaled slowly and leveled him a look. “Breathe.”
Easton drew a slow, deep breath and felt the fire inside of him cool by a fraction.
“There you go. Now think about it. Creed has put a lot of time into rehabbing you. He didn’t kill you when you Turned Willa, did he?”
Easton shook his head, still uncertain about his future.
“And now Creed would have to answer to the girls if he put you down. Willa would filet him and suck on his marrow, Gia would boot him out of their trailer, and Georgia would shoot his ass. Nobody’s giving up on you, so you don’t give up on you either. Okay?”
The flutter of wings in the tree line distracted him.
“Easton,” Jason murmured, gripping his shoulder. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” Easton said with a jerky nod.
“Good. Now make it today without bleeding us, and me and you will go into town later and grab a beer.”
“Creed won’t agree to that.”
“He will if it keeps us on track with our numbers today.” Jason jumped over a pile of beetle-infested, dead lodgepole pines and made his way up toward the processor. “Chest up, eyes ahead, and focus, Beaston. No bleeding today, and I’ll buy.”
Beaston. He couldn’t decide if he liked that nickname or not. It certainly fit his inner monster, but it was also a stark reminder that he was different. More abrasive, more combative, less in control.
With a sigh, he reached in his pocket and pulled out the bent paperclip his raven had gifted him all those years ago. It hadn’t been Matt’s fault for dredging up memories. It was his own for tucking this trinket in his pocket this morning.
His dad had scoffed at Mom for thinking she had the sight, but he’d been a fool to shrug off things he didn’t understand. Mom was special and could see things no one else could. Easton hadn’t understood until he got older, but she’d gifted him with the ability to see things in the beyond, too. He’d seen the ghost of Jason’s first mate when the others hadn’t been able to.
Easton lifted his gaze from the paperclip in his hands to the raven in the tree across the clearing.
And now he could see his ghost raven.
Dad had been wrong about a lot of things.
Chapter Four
Aviana sat stunn
ed on the branch, trapped in Easton’s gaze.
He’d kept the paperclip.
She remembered every trinket she’d ever found. It was a blessing and a curse to a raven. So many baubles bounced around in her head, but her memory was impeccable, and she wasn’t able to let go of even one.
That had been the first gift she’d ever given to him. She’d done it to get his mind off his Mom crying inside the small cabin he shared with his parents. She’d given it to Easton to show that she cared, and then he’d gone and rewarded her by telling his dad she was his best friend.
That day, she’d given him the folded paperclip and her heart.
From the branch she’d dug her claws into, she could hear his low, rumbling growl before he ripped those eerie green eyes away from her and looked back at a man climbing down the mountainside toward him.
Tiny heartbeat pounding, she bounced sideways down the limb and hid behind the body of the tree. The tree was hurting, and its spirit almost faded to nothing. Pine beetles had suffocated and starved it. She could feel its pain, but that was nothing compared to the ache of watching what had transpired with Easton and the rest of his crew.
He was struggling. An outcast in a crew of outcasts. It seemed he was in trouble with his alpha, but she couldn’t figure out why. It was apparent he was on the verge of a Change, too. His eyes had always blazed like a demon’s when he was close to a Change, but in the last two days, the glow had been constant.
She liked that man, the one with the clipboard who’d dared to grip Easton’s shoulder despite the terrifying rumble in his throat. He’d tried to make Easton feel better about things she was helpless to understand.
It was suddenly overwhelming, the years that stood between them.
She’d missed most of his life.
There was tragedy in that.
A trio of heavy steel cables, hanging from a line high above, blasted down the mountain side. There was staggering power in the machine that pushed the cables toward Easton and the other Gray Back. Matt? It was hard to put their faces to the pictures on Jason’s social media when they were wearing yellow hard hats.
Easton and Matt worked to tie the long cables in loops around logs, three at a time. Then they gestured with a thumbs up to the alpha above them on a ledge, and the logs were dragged up the slope at a frightening speed. Tirelessly they worked, hooking logs, always running around, jumping, sure-footed as mountain goats. Easton sported a limp now, but it didn’t seem to hinder his work. Pain slashed through her chest when she saw him wince, though.
Perhaps his limp was from the bear trap.
It was March and still cool up in the mountains, but Easton only wore a white T-shirt and threadbare jeans with holes in the knees over heavy work boots. His pants clung to his tapered waist and powerful legs. When she was younger, she thought Easton the most dashing boy she’d ever laid eyes on, but Easton the man was a work of art. His cut arms pressed against the thin fabric of his shirt, and as the day wore on and he worked up a sweat, his shirt clung to the defined muscles in his back. And when he linked his hands behind his head while waiting for the cables to come flying back down the hillside at him, she could make out ripped abs as the damp material clung to his torso. His skin was tanned from the outdoor manual labor, and at one point, he smiled at Jason who was working a big machine that stripped the limbs off logs and leveled the ends. Easton’s teeth were white and straight. If he would only smile deep enough, she’d be able to make out the shallow dimples he’d had when he was a boy. The ones he used to flash her before everything got so messed up. Before he was broken.
Easton was stunning. Masculine, lithe, powerful. Full of barely checked aggression as he worked alongside Matt, who seemed to dig at Easton’s nerves when he spoke. Easton was terrifying and beautiful, like a tornado she’d witnessed from a distance when she was ten. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.
Her heart rate wouldn’t settle down, and it left her feeling dizzy. She gripped her tiny talons into the bark more securely as Easton rolled his neck and wiped his cheek on the shoulder of his shirt.
This feeling right here—the breathless, stomach-dipping, bewildered one—this was what falling for a man should feel like. Perhaps the elders could’ve convinced her this feeling didn’t exist if she hadn’t already felt it. Caden had formally asked to court her, and for twelve long months, she’d been trying to force herself to feel something—anything—for him.
But after seeing that bent paperclip on Easton’s palm today, any hope of settling for Caden was lost.
Easton as a boy had tempted her heart.
Easton as a man was ruining her for anyone else.
****
As the sun sank down, half-hidden behind the mountains, the alpha waved his crew up to the ledge he stood on. They chuckled at something Jason said, all but Easton, who stared at the ground as if it held the answers to all the secrets in the world.
The rest of the crew loaded into a fat-tired charcoal gray truck, but Easton got behind the wheel of an old, beat-up white Ford truck and took off behind the other pickup alone.
Aviana followed, desperate to watch him as long as she could manage without him noticing. Getting close to him near his trailer wasn’t an option anymore. Not with his impeccable aim with knives. But out here, where there was more room and more trees to hide her, she felt safe to observe him, as she’d done for so many hours in her youth.
She flitted from tree to tree as the Gray Backs bounced and bumped down switchbacks and old dirt roads that led them toward the Grayland Mobile Park. Finding her courage, she circled high above as Easton parked his truck beside the one his crew rode in, then he strode through the woods to his mobile home. In the trailer park, the other Gray Backs reunited with their mates. Some were playful, like Matt and Willa, and others sweet, like Jason and Creed with their women. Those made her look away and swoop back toward Easton’s territory.
He had no one to come home to.
Sorrow and hope churned in her middle. Even among the Gray Backs, he lived a solitary existence. Perhaps he didn’t want a mate. Or perhaps he couldn’t handle one after everything that had happened. Or maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t found the right woman.
That last part lit her up with longing.
She was too chicken to show herself. She hadn’t been able to do it in her youth, and the rules hadn’t changed. No one could know raven shifters existed. Especially terrifying, murderous bear shifters.
But Easton was different.
From high above, she watched him stride deliberately into his trailer. The door banged closed behind him.
Was he different?
Her arm was still cut from where he’d hurt her, and he’d seemed barely in control of himself at his jobsite.
Maybe she was just fooling herself into thinking he was the boy she’d grown up with. His wild eyes said that part of him was long gone.
But…the paperclip.
Baffled, she flapped her wings and caught an air current that pushed her toward the cabin she’d grown up in. She needed time to think about all of this. And something else was weighing heavy on her mind now—something that made her cringe to consider.
She needed to call Caden.
Being the careful raven she was, Aviana searched a perimeter around her house before she Changed back into her human skin. It wasn’t painful or slow like it was for some shifters. Ravens were lucky in that respect. She just tucked her animal away in the span of a moment, and her feathers disappeared like magic. The stairs sagged dangerously under her feet as she padded up to the house, careful to avoid the nails that stuck out of the floor boards. Her phone had enough charge, so she scrolled through her contacts and hit the call button when she found Caden’s number.
She let off a long, steadying breath as it rang.
“Hello?” Caden asked.
“Hi. It’s me.”
“Aviana? Where are you? I’ve been calling for two days, looking for you everywhere. You can’t do this shit. I nee
d to know where you are at all times, or this doesn’t work.”
She’d only been gone two days so his reaction was overblown.
“I think that’s a problem for me. I mean, one of the problems. I don’t like that you need to keep tabs on me. And I don’t like that you made me quit a job I love.” Oh, she was in it now. “And I don’t particularly like…you.” Her voice faded off on the last word. She wasn’t trained in being so direct with a man. “This isn’t what I want. A pairing between us isn’t going to work.”
Caden was quiet for so long she checked her phone to assure herself he hadn’t hung up.
“And you’ve thought this through?” he asked in a low, steely voice that brought a shiver up her spine. “You’ve thought about your place with our people, and you are fine with your rank staying at the bottom where you’ve always been? You’ve thought about the fact your refusal of my courtship will keep your family at the bottom?”
Aviana swallowed the lump in her throat as tears stung her eyes. She loved her parents and didn’t want them to be beneath anyone, but she couldn’t live a lie to elevate their status. She would only grow to resent them. “Y-yes.”
“Yes, what?”
Aviana gritted her teeth and hated herself as she whispered, “Yes, sir.”
“Who is he?” Caden asked. The emptiness of his voice echoed on and on in her mind.
“He’s not you.” She hung up the phone as a sob crept up her throat.
She’d done it, and part of her was proud she hadn’t just given into what was expected of her. She was proud she’d stood up for a life she wanted. But the rest of her was scared shitless. Caden was important, and taking his last name would’ve given her family a much easier life. More respect.
But she wasn’t giving up the comfortable life Caden could provide for another male raven, or God forbid, a human mate. She was giving it up for Easton, a monster grizzly with little apparent control who had tossed a knife at her as though she was less than nothing.
She was betraying her people by choosing a bear, but she couldn’t help herself now. Easton was hers—had always been hers—and coming back here to find him even more broken than when she’d left him had sealed her fate to his.
