Boarlander Beast Boar (Boarlander Bears #4)(48)

“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 f*ckin’ 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 her 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.