Boarlander Beast Boar (Boarlander Bears #4)(20)

“Damn straight, I’m angry,” she said, shoving off him to get some breathing room. “You think you’re the only one with real estate in ‘actual love’? You think you’re the only one who lost it? I loved Robbie. Loved him. Lucky you, your mate loved you back, but mine didn’t feel the same about me. So no, I can’t call him my mate because I wasn’t that to him. I wasn’t enough! And don’t you f*cking talk to me about ghosts, Mason. I can see my ghost. I share a child with him, have to talk to him, see him, watch him move on with some woman younger and prettier than me. I have to feel the slap of his rejection constantly, and I will have to bear it my whole life. He couldn’t stand to touch me! Couldn’t stand to f*ck me unless it was from behind and he wasn’t looking at my face, and I knew what he was doing. He was buried in me, thinking about the women he kept on the road. He spent more on them every holiday than on me. I could see our bank accounts, knew what was happening, but my animal was in it. I was trapped. I was mated. He was not. I’m sorry you lost your mate. I really am. My heart bleeds for what you’ve been through. But I think that somewhere along the way, you became so buried in your own pain that you can’t see the good things that are sitting right in front of you.”

“Like what?”

“Like me!” Tears streamed from her eyes, and angrily, she wiped them with the back of her hand. “You lost your mate, and I’m sorry for it. Not because I pity you, but because I care about you. I don’t want you to hurt because I know what the ache of loss can do to a person. What it can do to your animal. You lost a mate, and I know it’s not the same to you, but I lost one, too. And now I’ll lose another.”

“What do you mean?”

Miserably, she ducked her gaze. In a shaking voice, she whispered, “You know what I mean.”

Mason approached slow, and she countered back until her hips hit the porch railing. “Tell me.”

Her face crumbling, she swallowed a sob and said, “I picked you the first time I saw you. I picked another man who can’t pick me back.”

And as he took another step toward her, she gave into the pulsing power of her animal. She would be damned if another man ever trapped her.

****

Mason held his hands out soothingly, palms up, because Beck smelled different. He was hurting her, just like he knew he would. She smelled of anger and sadness and something more. Something inhuman. Beck hunched inward and imploded in an instant. Her clothes dropped to the floorboards and a massive white owl blasted toward him. She used his shoulder to leap from, her long, curved talons slicing through his flesh before she beat her powerful wings and caught air. She lifted easily, gracefully, glided to the tree line. He’d never seen anything more beautiful. She was larger than any wild snowy owl by five times, at least, and her wingspan was massive. Flowing downy feathers covered her outstretched legs, and her talons looked like daggers. And just before she disappeared into the night, she let off a surprisingly guttural and fierce call.

Holy. Shit.

Shifters like Beck were thought to be extinct. Most of the animal shifters were, and though some flight shifters still existed, like falcons and ravens, snowy owls hadn’t been seen or heard from in decades.

I picked you the first time I saw you.

Mason ran his hands over his baseball cap, took it off, and chucked it at the trailer. He hadn’t been paying attention. He’d been in the muck, trying to tread water and keep his shit together. He’d been concerned with taking it slow because, until dinner tonight, he’d thought Beck was human. They were different. Humans ran on slower timelines, so he’d been fine with push-and-pull in an attempt to get her to stick around. He wanted to try and become a good man for her eventually, but her animal had already picked him. She’d picked him? At his worst?

Him—a haunted beast boar with no roots.

Him—a sterile widower unable to let go of his past.

Him—a man who had no shot in hell at keeping a woman like her happy.

It made no sense. Yeah, their physical chemistry was off the charts in molten lava territory. His head was consumed with thinking about covering her, but Beck had seen through all his grit, and her animal had somehow latched onto him despite his one-way ticket to rock-bottom.

His timeline had just shrunk to nothing. He didn’t have years or even months to figure out what was wrong with him. He needed immediate improvement so he wouldn’t cause the hurt he’d seen in Beck’s eyes just now.

She’d been right. He’d been so focused on his own decade-old loss that he had assumed her divorce was less-than. God, he was an idiot. He’d witnessed her heartbreak after her phone call with Robbie, and he was really preaching to her about “actual love”?

He hooked his hands on his hips and stared into the woods where she’d disappeared into the dark canopy. The deep talon marks on his shoulder burned like fire, but he deserved the pain, as well as the scars they would leave. Beck was a fierce beasty, and though a part of him surged with pride, another piece of him was ashamed he’d drawn her animal out of her like that. He’d been throwing his words at her, telling her in his own f*cked up way, “You don’t understand,” and he’d been so wrong. She was a feeler. Her heart was full of deep emotion and empathy, and he’d mistreated that quality about her instead of coveting it.

Warmth trickling down his shoulder and soaking his T-shirt. Mason jogged down the stairs to his truck, and then he blasted down the road toward Grayland Mobile Park. He had to fix this.