Boarlander Beast Boar (Boarlander Bears #4)(21)

Mason had to start fixing himself before he lost her because she wasn’t alone in this bond. Beck—his beautiful, fierce, feathered Beck—had been so wrong.

He had chosen her back.

And it was up to him to do this better than her first mate because she deserved the effort.

She deserved everything.





Chapter Ten


Mason pulled open the door to Jason and Georgia’s screened-in porch. It creaked loudly, but just in case Jason hadn’t heard it, he knocked for good measure.

Georgia answered, clad in flannel pajamas, her wild curly hair piled on top of her head. A warm smile took her lips immediately. “You look like shit.”

Mason snorted. “Thanks.”

“No really. I mean, your beard looks rugged and manly and all, but you look like you haven’t slept in a week.”

“Is Jason around?”

Her delicate eyebrows lowered, and she pursed her lips. “Mason, I’ve heard about you in the woods. I don’t really want Jason Changing with you until you have more control.”

Mason nodded and ran his hand through his hair. He couldn’t be mad at Georgia. He really had been out of control, picking fights with anyone who even looked at him. “I’m not here to ask him to Change with me. I just need some advice.”

Georgia’s gaze tipped to the gashes on his shoulder, and with a slow, worried blink, she nodded and called out, “Jason. Mason’s here to see you.”

Jason appeared out of the back bedroom a minute later, wearing jeans, no shirt, and toweling off his hair like he’d just gotten out of the shower. “Hey, man. You okay?”

“Yeah. Listen, can I talk to you?”

Surprise slashed through Jason’s dark eyes, but the towering bear shifter recovered quickly enough. “Sure. I’ll be right out.”

A minute later, Jason was closing the door gently behind him and carrying a cold six-pack. “Come on,” he said lightly, pushing past Mason in his bare feet, his back still covered in droplets of shower water.

Jason didn’t say a word as he led him through the Gray Back woods behind the pristine trailer park, nor did he push conversation as they walked side by side, right through the porch light of Beaston’s trailer. The wild-eyed bear shifter was sitting on his porch, the door open behind him, and the soft glow from inside casting his face in shadow. All except those unnerving, glowing green eyes, which stayed on something behind Mason. Chills blasted up his neck, and Mason rubbed the skin there just to put warmth back into it.

“She ain’t here for what you think,” Beaston said low.

Mason looked behind him, but there was nothing there but the chilly feeling of wrongness. “What do you mean?”

Beaston lifted a shoulder. “You tell me.” He stood gracefully and crossed his arms over his chest, cocked his head. “I would come with you to the treehouse, but this is as far as I can get away from my raven boy.”

Mason smiled tiredly. He wished he had a baby to raise, but he was happy for Beaston. He was a good dad. Protective. “It’s okay, man.”

“Boar,” Beaston said as he and Jason moved off.

“Yeah?”

“She didn’t do it to hurt you.” Beaston shook his head sadly. “Some people just feel too much. Hurt too much.” Beaston climbed up the stairs and murmured, “She’s saying sorry.”

He closed the door behind him with a quiet click, and Mason clenched his shirt, right over his stomach where pain threatened to double him over. Beaston saw too much. Way too much. Mason had never told anyone that Esmerelda had taken her own life. He hadn’t even told Damon how she’d died.

“I didn’t know,” Jason said softly.

Mason tried to smile but failed. “No one does.”

Jason smelled of heavy sadness now so, unable to stand it, Mason strode past him toward the treehouse Beaston had built a couple logging seasons ago. He scaled the ladder and settled onto the porch, high up in the canopy, and dangled his legs off the edge. And when Jason had popped the tops on a couple beers and they’d each taken a healthy swig, Mason asked, “How did you get rid of your ghost?”

“I didn’t get rid of her. She had to decide to leave on her own. I don’t know, man. I blamed myself for her haunting me, but really, that was just Tessa’s personality to spend her afterlife pissin’ me off. She got louder and stronger when I first met Georgia, and then something changed.” Jason set his beer down with a hollow clunk, then cracked his knuckles. “The harder I fell for Georgia, the weaker Tessa got, until one day, she could barely talk to me. I was letting her go, sure, but in a way, I think she saw me moving on, and she was letting me go, too. I used to hate her. Tessa was my maker, my mate, but I wasn’t her only mate.”

“Oh, shit,” Mason muttered.

“Yeah, she died when she was with her other man, and she was mad I didn’t come to save her when things went south. Hell, I was mad at myself for a long time about that, too, but it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t her fault. It was a rival crew who didn’t care about killin’ off the women. The point—I used to hate her when she was alive. I hated her at her funeral because she’d bonded us, broken me young, and then she’d left me. Left me for another, left me on this earth mourning a woman who treated me like shit, but I couldn’t get her out of my head. I hated her for haunting me. For making me think Creed would have to put me down when I went crazy enough. But in the end, she saved me.”