A Very Beastly Christmas (Gray Back Bears Book 7) by T. S. Joyce Page B

had been so beautiful in place before slipped to a deep frown. “I have to Change.”
    “Wait, now? Don’t you want to hear what I have to say?”
    He shook his head slow, his jaw making a faint scratching sound against the popped collar of his jacket.
    “Why?”
    Beaston stepped out of arm’s length and dropped his gaze. “Because you’ve pulled away from me. You stare out the window too much now. I don’t want to hear it because it will hurt.” And without another word, he strode off toward the woods, his limp deepening as he left her standing there with her mouth hanging open and her palms out.
    So he had noticed.
    Their distance had been her fault. Her fault for stopping her birth control without his knowledge. Her fault for giving up on begging for a family and taking matters into her own treacherous hands. Her fault for the secret she’d kept from him.
    He’d felt her betrayal all along.
    “What’s wrong?” Willa asked, eyes round as she settled beside her.
    Aviana didn’t want to tell anyone before she told her own mate, but she couldn’t leave the question hanging between them. Willa should see how bad she was. How weak.
    As her eyes rimmed with tears, Aviana whispered, “I’ve done something awful to him.”
    And a moment later, the woods shook with the roaring of Beaston’s bear.

Chapter Two
     
    His Ana would leave him. She would.
    Beaston raked his claws deeply down the sides of a birch tree just to destroy something. He had to fix whatever he’d broken. He had to make her happy again because, lately, Ana wasn’t smiling as much. She wasn’t even Changing into her raven anymore, as if the wonder of flight had left her completely. He’d somehow stolen her joy, but he was helpless to know how. Of course he was doing something wrong. Growing up alone meant he had no map on how to make a woman happy.
    Whatever she had to say, he didn’t want to hear it. He’d avoided serious talks for the last month because he couldn’t stand to hear his shortcomings, whatever they were. Maybe this wasn’t the life she’d wanted. Maybe she regretted being shunned by her raven shifter people by choosing him. Maybe she was homesick and wanted to leave to be closer to her parents again.
    Maybe he just wasn’t enough.
    Motion caught his attention, and he jerked his gaze to a massive brown bear waiting just through a thicket of trees. Jason. Jason was good to his bones. His best friend.
    He was also half-idiot if he thought taking a walk through the woods with Beaston’s bear, ready to maul anyone and anything in his path, was a good idea. Usually, Jason was smarter.
    The brown bear blew steam in a huffed breath and tilted his head, exposing his neck. Ears down, stump tail tucked to nothing, Jason walked slowly with him, several layers of trees between them.
    Fine, let him follow.
    Beaston made his way down a narrow deer trail, his six-inch claws digging into the snow as his ears picked up the distress cry of a rabbit. It was far away, and he wasn’t really hungry, but he wasn’t ready to go back to his trailer and face his unhappy mate yet. Sure, he was running like a coward, but the thought of this being the last hour he could be happy in pretending that Aviana was his forever was worth chasing a dying rabbit.
    Huddled in the corner of the shed, Easton coughed out the scent of lingering smoke.
    Beaston closed his eyes tightly to ward off the memory that was clawing at his mind, but it was no use.
    It had been months since he’d burned the house to free his mother’s ghost, but still the smell clung to everything to remind him of all he’d lost. Now all he had to live in was a drafty shed. His stomach growled, and he clutched his middle tighter and huddled more deeply under the blankets. Nights were the worst. He was so lonely.
    After his father had broken his neck, his shifter healing had allowed him to arrive just in time to tell him and Mom goodbye before he died, and then his mother had passed a few