Page 6 of Bear Haven
“Do you even hear yourself?”
“Do you? Defending those monsters? Those freaks? They’ll turn on you. You’re nothing like them and they’ll turn on you. They’ll finish what the one started.”
“And then maybe you’ll finally get the rest of your life back.”
“I don’t want you dead.”
“But that’s what you accomplished when you kept me locked up, a prisoner in my head, in my house, away from her and our child.” Tears slipped down Beck’s cheeks. Tears he hadn’t shed in years, tears he hadn’t been sure he’d ever be able to shed again.
He’d wept for Jolene He’d wept for the life they’d never life together and all the plans they’d made. He’d wept for the child he never got to see or know. The one he hadn’t wept for was himself. Not since the attack. Not since the shifter had clawed the flesh from his body. He’d wept then, lying in the forest, wanting to die. He’d wept until there was nothing left, until he closed his eyes and calmed to the point of wishing for death.
He didn’t cry again until he’d woken up in the hospital, the pain just as excruciating, but minimized by the massive dose of painkillers on a near constant drip.
“She came to the hospital. You were gone. I was too drugged to respond, to even open my eyes. I heard her voice. I felt her hand. I heard her sadness, her sorrow, her regret. I heard the nurse tell her I wasn’t expected to live, the injuries too severe, the damage too great. You let her keep on believing that.”
“She didn’t see you under the bandages. She didn’t see what that animal did to you. She would have back to her safe, little life. She wouldn’t have stayed. She wouldn’t have loved you anymore. She would have pitied you.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make, Father.”
“I was the only one who could make a decision and I wouldn’t change it. I gave you the best possible life I could. I let her have her life and her child.”
“And denied me mine.”
He sensed rather than saw movement to his right and turned his head. He caught the gaze of the man who’d been in the kitchen. He glanced between Beck and his father, then the man disappeared out the front door of the cabin.
He wanted to ask about the man, but he didn’t. It didn’t matter who he was or why he was there. Nothing and no one mattered except trying to get his father to see reason.
Sadly, it was proving futile.
“Do you feel better? Making me out to be the villain? Do you feel better?”
“No. I don’t want you to be the villain, but if you keep up, if you keep doing what you’re doing, keep killing, that’s what you’ll be.”
“So, you’re still choosing her? Is that why you’re here? Are you going to beg for her life? Are you going to beg me not to kill her?”
“Would it do me any good?”
“No. She’s an animal the same as they are. She’s one of them. She has to be put down. They all do.”
“She’s my daughter. She’s your granddaughter.”
“She’s an animal, Beck. She’s a half-breed animal.”
Beck held his father’s stare for long, silent, and tense moments. He finally looked away, focusing on the flames once more. “Then, yes. I still choose her,” he said softly. “I will always choose her. And you’ll have to kill me too.”
* * * * *
Luke settled in the brush outside the Mayor’s hunting cabin. Just the suggestion of hunting made the fur ripple across his skin.
He knew he shouldn’t have fled the bluff earlier, leaving Gus alone, but he took the one moment Gus wasn't watching to hopefully gain an advantage for them in the long run.
Beck was inside the cabin talking with his father. Luke couldn’t make out the words being spoken, only the rumble of the voices. He was too far away from the outer wall to discern anything from the conversation beyond the fact that it was heated. He could tell that much from the cadence and volume.
He also didn’t trust the Mayor not to do something to Beck. The man couldn’t be happy that his son chose to take up for Bex, to stand with her. And Luke wasn't one for praising anyone, but even he had to admire the way Bex stood up to the Mayor and dared him to take her or any of the other shifters out in the middle of her yard. She’d been scared. How could she not be? The fear had poured off her in waves and all the shifters had to have smelt it, sensed it, but they’d all let her face down the man responsible for killing so many innocent pure blood animals and shifters.
His ears stood straight on his head. The voices from inside the cabin rose again. Luke wanted to get closer, wanted to know what was being said, but he didn’t know how many other hunters besides the Mayor in and around the cabin.
He’d circled the perimeter when he arrived and hadn’t seen anyone standing guard, but that didn’t mean they weren’t around somewhere. He needed to stay out of anyone’s line of sight, but close enough he could see movement or let Beck know he was there when the man decided to leave.
