Page 14 of Bear's Rejected Love

Ora smiled sunnily. “Oh, no, that’s him.”

“Him?” Tabitha asked.

“Roan, He can do a bunch of animals. He said he mentioned he was in the lab to you,” Ora responded, as her eyes went back to the owl. To Roan…?

“He did, but… he didn’t mention anything about this.” She couldn’t stop looking at the huge bird. It was so majestic, the posture so like Roan’s, but was it even possible? He was a bear shifter.

“He can do other animals too,” Helena went on. “At the lab, they didn’t inject us with other blood, or Silver. They put diseases into her. With us, they were obsessed with tracking us as we grew and developed. They took our blood all the time. But he got the cocktail. He can do his bear, the birds, a mountain lion, a panther, and a wolf that we know of.”

“That’s…” She had to grasp the railing. “That’s—”

“Messed up.”

She whipped around and the owl’s head cocked to the side in her peripheral as Corbin approached. He was out without a jacket or even a hoodie. He just had his t-shirt and baggy jeans on. He shot the bird a scathing look and didn’t spare a glance for the girls, or Honor—even when he started to whimper. Ora pulled him into her lap and soothed him, rubbing small circles on his back.

“He doesn’t have all those other forms under control,” Helena tried to explain. Sometimes we just have to wait until the other side gives him back.”

“You have no idea what it’s like, living with all those beings in one body. It goes against nature and Roan does his best. More than his best.” Ora shot up, her pale face finally coming alive. She’d clearly defend Roan to the death, even holding a baby.

Honor didn’t like the tension. He started to wail. She bounced him, but she still stared daggers at Corbin.

“You also have no idea what that lab was like,” Helena stated quietly. She stood up beside her sister and put a hand on her shoulder. “For all of us.”

“I don’t care,” Corbin sniffed. “Not when it comes to him. “Mom gave him another chance and he decided not to take it. He doesn’t get a do-over for the do-over. My mom shouldn’t have to keep getting her hopes up only to get them smashed.” He snarled at the owl. “Hear that, bird? We’re done. I’ve got by this far without a father, and I don’t need you. You stay away from us in all of your forms.”

Tabitha tried to be the mother. She tried to take back control of her seething, angry teenager. She wanted so badly to wash the bitterness out of him. She never wanted him to close off his heart. She’d tried to prevent pain for him because she was his mother and that’s what parents did, but coming here was even worse for him than being in the city. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who was secretly hopeful. She still wasn’t giving up, but Corbin was truly angry and closed off now and getting through that was going to be quite a challenge.

Corbin stormed off. She was torn between standing there to comfort the shocked girls, facing down the owl in the tree, or going after her son. She sent them all a look of apology before racing after Corbin.

She’d always thought that finding Roan would prove the impossible She didn’t realize that the true impossibility would be repairing how broken they all were.

Chapter 6

Roan

Two Months Later

Tabitha and Corbin seemed to settle into Greenacre over the months that followed, while he sunk deeper and deeper into the uneasy feeling that there was something very wrong with his life. He didn’t try to approach either of them and tried to keep out of their way. The girls mentioned things occasionally from school, but he never asked. He’d had one shot and he’d made a total mess of it. Not even Silver or Sam or his other friends in the clan could convince him to go begging for another. He couldn’t tell Sam what had happened, only Silver and the girls knew his secret, but when he’d freaked out and shifted into the owl, it just proved to him what a freak he was.

If he’d been the type to self-analyze then he might have accused himself of doing exactly what he did with Tabitha, the first time around. Running off when things got difficult—except he wasn’t running off anywhere, and it was clear that she and his son had no room in their lives for a monstrously fucked up excuse of a man like him.

He’d made a point of making himself scarce at any clan gatherings. The girls went and he stayed back with the baby, always with the excuse that Honor was too young, even for morning events at the town hall. Sam and Lily organized a welcome breakfast for Tabitha and Corbin, and he didn’t dare show his face. He stayed home with Honor, who was running an imaginary fever instead of wrecking their day. The girls only let him get away with that lie because Honor had been teething on and off for months and was fiercely cranky that morning in particular.

Not that he’d ever been much for social interaction, but he avoided the diner and the main street in general after Tabitha got a part time job there.

He was getting so good at evading her it was almost easy for him to believe it could go on forever. He was blindsided and wildly unprepared to run into her in the middle of the woods on a Saturday morning.

When Tabitha and Corbin had arrived in March, the weather was gray and rainy, day after day, but now it was the middle of May and the sun had been doing its best to make up for the dreary winter, coming on extra strong. It was like that ever since he’d been in Greenacre. The mountains sometimes threw strange weather into the mix, but generally winters were wet, but spring and summer were glorious.

Three years he’d been there.

Three years of freedom.

Finding Tabitha in the middle of the woods was akin to finding an alien spaceship. She looked extra sunny and golden, on her hands and knees rooting around in the earth, a wicker basket cast off to the side, half full of mushrooms and greenery. How could he have forgotten how much she liked to forage as well? And garden. She’d probably force Corbin to get out there and do the planting of the Greenacre gardens that Thaddius tended. Maybe she wouldn’t have to force him. Maybe loved it as much as his mom did. She’d probably be out there, volunteering all her free time watering and weeding and making those plants grow. It was yet another place he’d have to avoid.

He turned around as silently as possible. He just about made a clean getaway, but the tree roots strewn all over the place had other ideas. He cleared them, but when he picked up his feet to get over their gnarled humps, he tripped over a skinny fallen spruce and his own basket went flying. He couldn’t fall silently, even with all the underbrush there to catch him.

One branch. It was one dead branch that snapped.

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