by T. S. Joyce
Why the fuck hadn’t she told him then? How many times had he been curled in on himself with hunger? How many times had he been driven to the edge of madness with desperation to hear someone talk to him? To say his name, or tell him everything was going to be okay? How many times had he been bone-deep cold in those snowy winter months and been sure that day would be his last?
Yet, she’d never revealed her human side to him. Aviana had watched and brought him tiny treasures, but she hadn’t given him what he really desired—companionship.
And now she was back after all these years, and for what? To reveal herself now after all the damage had been done. After he’d lost his mind, lost control of his bear, and was worthless as a functioning member of society? His thoughts had become clearer and clearer around her. His bear had quieted, and for a minute, he’d felt normal. Like maybe Creed wasn’t going to have to put him down. And it had been such a huge relief to feel safe for that instant, because every morning Easton woke up thinking today was going to be his last on this earth. Living in fear for his life like that for too long had ruined him from the inside out.
She could’ve ended his suffering years ago by Changing and talking to him. By looking at him like she had last night through those big blue eyes, as if he was worth something.
Instead, when he’d needed a friend the most, she’d flown away and left him altogether.
And after she’d gone, out in these woods all alone, Easton’s bear had killed the last good parts of him.
Chapter Twelve
Aviana waited for hours, hoping Easton would come back. Her night vision wasn’t as good as a bear shifter’s, and flying out after him wouldn’t work. Not with a sore shoulder, and not without a clear idea of where he had gone.
With the first streaks of dawn, she flew stiffly from the branch she’d been using as a lookout post, Changed into her human form, and stumbled into his trailer. She washed the salty tear streaks from her face, then dressed. There was a first aid kit still in its plastic wrapping under his sink, so she ripped it open and cleaned the bite mark as best she could.
A shrill whistle from the trailer park told her the others were waking up for their workday. She huddled into Easton’s jacket and sat on the front porch stairs, waiting.
Willa called out, “I’ll get him!” over the sound of truck engines roaring to life.
The sound of dry leaves crackling under footfall traveled to Aviana, and she wrung her hands as she waited for Willa to come. She couldn’t face the others right now, so she was grateful it was Willa who was coming to Easton’s trailer.
The spunky red-head froze in her tracks when she saw Aviana sitting there. Willa scanned the yard and asked, “Where’s Easton? And why do you smell sad?”
Aviana swallowed hard. “Easton’s gone.”
Willa’s eyes went hard as she asked, “Gone where?”
“He turned into his bear and went that way last night,” Aviana explained, jerking her chin toward the woods and hiccupping slightly. “I think he hates me.” A sob worked its way up her throat, and she clamped her mouth shut, biting her lip hard to punish herself for falling apart like this. Sometimes, she got so tired of herself for being so fucking weak. She turned her head toward Willa, but the stretch of her neck pulled on her injury and she hissed as pain rippled through her shoulder.
“Are you hurt?”
“It’s nothing I don’t deserve. Willa? Can I ask you something personal?” Easton’s bite had been bothering her all night.
Willa sat beside her on the porch stair. “Shoot.”
“If a bear shifter bites a woman, what exactly does it mean?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Willa reached across her and ripped Easton’s jacket to the side, exposing the bandage over her shoulder. Willa ripped into that, too, and stood. “You don’t smell like a bear.”
“Because I wasn’t ever human,” she said in a pathetic whisper.
Willa was scary as shit when she was mad, her eyes glowing green like Easton’s did when his bear was riled up. “What’s going on?”
Aviana’s face crumpled, and she wiped her hand across her leaking eyes. “I’ve known Easton most of his life, but not as a girl. I’m a raven shifter.”
The blood drained from Willa’s face as she stared at her with those terrifying, glowing eyes. Her voice pitched to a whisper as she asked, “You’re Easton’s raven?”
Aviana sniffled, and her lip trembled as she nodded. “He’s talked about me?”
Willa approached and sank down heavily beside her. “Yeah. He’s mentioned you.”
“He didn’t know I was a shifter when we were younger. He thought I was just a crow, and it took me a long time to get brave enough to find him. I wanted to wait until I thought he was ready before I told him who I really was, but last night, he bit me. And when I didn’t Turn, he started piecing it all together.” Aviana sagged against her. “Willa, he was so mad. He said I left him, but it wasn’t my choice. Nothing was my choice. I love him. I always have.”
“Holy hairy testicles, Crow.” Willa draped her arm around Aviana’s shoulder and rested her cheek against the top of her head. “That isn’t just a bite on your shoulder. It’s a claiming mark. Easton’s marked you as his mate.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Aviana said on a breath, sitting up straight and searching Willa’s dimming eyes. “He did it before he found out who I was.” Easton was probably filled with regret now. Her heart sank even lower. He wouldn’t want to keep her now. Not after last night.
“Willa! Easton!” Creed yelled through the trees.
“Aviana, listen to me,” Willa said urgently, grabbing her hands. “You can’t let Creed see that mark until you find Easton. You both will need to explain everything. He’s on thin ice with our alpha, and he disobeyed a direct order to claim you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I need to find Easton.”
“Yes. Think, Aviana. Did he say anything or give you any clues? Where would he have gone?”
“Willa!” Creed bellowed.
“Uuuh,” Aviana whispered, panicked. “He’s been holding onto my trinkets lately.” Memories. Flashbacks. She didn’t know what went on in Easton’s head. Not anymore. Home. Den. The divot in the windowsill she used to drop her treasures. Aviana gasped. “He might have gone to his parents’ cabin.”
“Are you okay to travel with your injury? You aren’t healing like you should.”
“Ravens don’t heal instantly like bears. I can do it if I fly in a straight line there.”
A twig cracked on the trail that connected Easton’s singlewide to the rest of Grayland Mobile Park.
“Hurry,” Willa urged.
“You won’t tell your alpha?”
Willa looked determined. “Let me handle Creed. You just get Easton back here.”
With a burst of desperation not to be seen by the dragon-blooded alpha grizzly shifter stomping this way, Aviana Changed into her raven and flapped her wings, ignoring the pain on her left side. Up and up she flew until Willa was only the size of an ant by the pile of Aviana’s clothes below her.
The world was green beneath her, covered in pine forest and bisected by rivers that snaked back and forth in gently rolling serpent shapes. Occasional cabins dotted the landscape, but not many lived in this wilderness. She circled once over her family’s dilapidated cabin just to get her bearing, and then caught an air current going due east. Many miles separated her childhood home from Easton’s, and she hadn’t returned since the day Dad had packed them up and taken her away from the boy he saw as a threat to his only daughter.
Still, the way was as familiar to her as her flight feathers. A million times she’d flown this journey when she was a young crow, visiting the broken boy in the woods.
She landed on the gnarled branch of the tree that had always been her landing place before. Now, the branch wasn’t thin and covered with tender pine needle shoots. It was aged, thick, and the bark was rough under her grasp.
Easton was there, wearing jeans that hung dangerously low around his narrow hips as he leaned against the battered door of the shed. His back was bare, but the cool March air didn’t seem to bother him. Easton had been made for these woods. Carved from them and made invincible by his struggles here.
He turned and looked directly at her over his shoulder. She expected his eyes to be glowing like a demon, but they were dim and sad. The color wasn’t the eerie lime green they usually were, but the darker green of mature forest moss.
“Do you know how many times I looked up onto that branch you’re clinging to after you left?” His throat moved as he swallowed hard and pushed off the door. He turned and approached, his gate hitched as he limped toward her. “A year. It was a full year before I could convince my stupid eyes to stop checking for you. And now here you are.”
Aviana flitted to the ground and Changed. The cool air stung against her bare skin, and she felt completely stripped down and vulnerable in front of him, but she had to tell him the truth now. She had to at least try to explain it wasn’t just him who’d been hurt.
“Do you know anything about raven shifters?” Her voice came out frail and weak, just like her.
He shook his head. “I didn’t even know you existed. Fuckin’ obviously.”
“My people aren’t like yours, Easton. You are a powerful apex predator shifter while I’m a bad omen.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you know how many of my people are shot each year while they are shifted? Just because of the bad luck we represent. It’s against our laws, on the punishment of being shunned, that we expose ourselves to anyone.” She arched her eyebrows and looked pointedly at him. “Anyone. And you aren’t just a human or a scavenger shifter, Easton. You’re a grizzly, a shifter my people naturally fear. Being with you as a crow was already a huge risk, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to be around you, or my life felt empty. Especially out here where I was being raised until I could control my shifts around humans. When your parents died—”
“I don’t want to talk about them with you.”
“When your parents died, my heart broke for you. I watched the boy I loved hurt and cry out for help, and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t tell my parents you were out here alone. I was scared they would call their council, and they would come out here and put you down. A lone grizzly cub with no people? I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened to you. All I could do was try to help you with snares and lures and scraps of food when I could sneak it away from my cabin. I couldn’t even carry a damned blanket when you were cold in the winters. Watching you break over those years broke a part of me too.”
“Then why did you leave? If you cared so much, why did you leave me here? You were my only friend. God dammit, Ana, there was no one. When you left…there was no one.”
“You got caught in that trap. Do you remember?” Aviana clenched her hands and forced her mind back to that awful day. “You were hurt, screaming. Bleeding. I thought you were going to die in that trap, and even in my human form, I was too scrawny to help. You tried and tried to get out of it, and your leg looked so bad.” She wiped her eyes again. “I flew back to my house and told my dad. I begged him to help you, and he was so angry. He said I’d betrayed my family and my people by making friends with you. I promised never to see you again if he would just let you out of the trap and not tell the council about you. I led him to you.”
“I remember him.” Easton crossed his arms over his chest and looked off into the forest with a faraway look in his eyes. “He was tall. Skinny. Fine boned like you are. He pulled the trap off and set my broken bone like he’d done it a hundred times. And then he ripped the trap out of the ground and walked off into the woods with it dangling from his hand and didn’t look back. I hadn’t seen another person in so long, I thought I’d imagined him. You sent him?”
“I didn’t know what else to do. He packed us up that night, and we moved to Rapid City the next day.” Aviana was shivering so hard now, her teeth chattered. “Did you find my last gift?”
“The shiny rock?”
She smiled sadly and shook her head. “It wasn’t just a shiny rock. It was a diamond. I found it on the ground, and I’d been saving it. It was my favorite possession. My dad said it was worth a lot of money, but I didn’t care about selling it. The night before we left, I snuck out and visited your treehouse for the last time. You were curled up inside sleeping with your leg all bandaged. I gave you the diamond because I hoped that someday you would escape this place.”
Easton screwed up his face and turned his back to her. He arched his head back and muttered a curse. He linked his hands behind his head before he spun back to her and wrapped her up in a bone-cracking hug. “I didn’t know it was valuable, but I wouldn’t have sold it even if I had. It’s in the box with the rest of the presents you gave me. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
Easton’s words were muffled against her neck, and she was openly weeping now. She’d been afraid he wasn’t ever going to touch her again. He lifted her off her feet, and she nuzzled his face because she loved him so fucking much she couldn’t be close enough to him. Not ever.
“Easton, Easton, Easton. I’ve thought about you all this time. Missed you so badly and compared every potential mate to you. I imagined how it would feel to hold you like this without my feathers.”
“You’re cold, Ana. You’ll get sick. Shit, you’re bleeding. Look what I’ve done to you,” he murmured, setting her down, his eyes on her shoulder. The skin was jagged and deeply torn where he’d bitten her, and sure enough, it was weeping red again. The multiple Changes weren’t helping.
“I wanted this. Stop fussing with it. It’s okay. I wanted you to choose me for a mate someday. I just didn’t know that was how it was done with your people. And I certainly didn’t know you were going to claim me our first time.”
“I hadn’t done that before. I messed up.”
“You haven’t claimed anyone before? I’m glad.”
“No. I mean, I’ve never slept with a woman.”
Aviana’s mouth dropped open.
A slow smile spread across Easton’s face as he pressed his finger under her chin until her mouth closed again. “You’ll catch flies.”
“Wait, you were a virgin? But you knew exactly what to do, and you were so good at it. You didn’t even ask me what I liked. You just knew.” Okay, she was rambling but, dear goodness, the man had given her a bona fide orgasm first try. And he was a virgin? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What difference did it make?” Easton was still smiling.
“I don’t know. I could’ve lit some candles or taken it slower or…something.”
“Yeah, well, lucky you. You got the first Beaston bang, complete with copious amounts of blood, teeth gnashing, and pain. Congratulations.”
“You’re teasing.” She liked that Easton could joke with her after all of the heavy grit that had happened. The smile slipped from Aviana’s face. “Can I ask you something?”
Easton rubbed her arms to warm her and nodded.
“If you would’ve known I was your raven before we slept together, would you have claimed me still?”
“Are you asking if I still want you for my mate?”
She dipped her chin once. His answer meant the world.
“I don’t regret my mark on you.”
“We have to go back home and explain everything to Creed. He’ll understand. He has to. You’re mine, and I’m yours, and technically you didn’t Turn me, so you didn’t disobey his order.”
“I thought you said ravens were naturally afraid of bears.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So if the Gray Backs scare you, I can claim my own territory and keep you safe. You won’t have to smell scared anymore.”
“But you love your crew.”
His eyes stayed steady and clear on her, but he didn’t answer.
“You’d give them up for my comfort?” she asked, stunned.
“Any good mate would, and since I’ll be shit at most of this, it’s the least I can do.”
Aviana trailed kisses down the line between his taut pecs and rested her cheek against his drumming heartbeat. “Silly man, I’d never ask you to give up something you love just for my comfort. The Gray Backs are growing on me. Take me home, Easton.”
Without a word, Easton backed away and kicked out of the too big jeans. With eyes full of adoration, he hunched into himself and exploded into the massive grizzly bear she’d treasured for all these years. She wasn’t dumb, or blind. Easton struggled a great deal with his animal side thanks to what he’d endured in this place. But he was still trying, and that spoke volumes about the caliber of man he was.
Easton strode off with powerful steps, his razor sharp claws digging into the earth as he moved away from her. And as he reached the first line of trees, he looked back over his shoulder and waited.
Aviana smiled and Changed into her raven. She beat her wings against the air until she reached the muscular hump between his shoulder blades. Gripping his silver fur in her small talons, she held on as he took off in the direction of the trailer park.
And though years stood between the last time they’d traveled together like this and now, she was filled with that same stomach-fluttering bond she’d built with Easton. She felt the same elation she had when she’d touched his fur for the first time as a raven when they were children. Their history together stretched on and on. No matter what lay ahead of them with Creed, she would be there with Easton, standing beside him, fighting for their second chance.