Big Bear

by Scarlett Grove

  Big Bear

  Rescue Bears

  Scarlett Grove

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  About the Author

  Also by Scarlett Grove

  Copyright © 2016 by Scarlett Grove

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  1

  Angus Grant walked up the slope, his crampons sinking into rigid blue ice. Snow covered the rocky ground, high up on Fate Mountain. He kept walking along the slope and came to an area where there had been a massive avalanche. The snow sat in huge chunks in front of him. He sniffed the air, picking up the scent of human under the chill scent of snow. Angus brought his walkie-talkie to his lips, squinting in the bright reflection of the snow.

  “Big Bear to Alpha Station, I’m picking up a scent near a recent avalanche,” he said, giving his location.

  “Copy that, Big Bear,” said his chief, Levi.

  Angus continued sniffing the air, becoming more convinced that the missing skier was under the fresh snow. He yanked his pack from his back and pulled out a pickaxe. Angus started to shovel, hacking away at the frozen chunks. They gave way to his strength, tumbling down the snowy hill.

  The scent grew stronger, and he saw a thin blue line of a boot. Angus dug into the snow, gripping at the boot. He held it, sweeping the snow away with his bulging arms. Angus’s size and strength was legendary in the Rescue Bear crew. This was one of those times when he needed to use it.

  He finally got a good hold of the boot, feeling it twitch under his hand. The body of the man broke free from the snow as Angus pulled him out. The human’s face was blue and cold. Angus knelt, blowing the hot breath of life into the man’s body.

  The human shuddered in the snow, and Angus pulled a thermal blanket from his backpack. He wrapped the man in the blanket and put some warming packs inside his coat.

  “Big Bear to Alpha Station. I’ve recovered the target. Requesting air extraction.”

  “Copy that, Big Bear. The helicopter has been dispatched.”

  “Travel to the following coordinates,” Levi said over the walkie-talkie.

  Angus placed the wounded human onto the rescue sled, making sure he was well strapped in. He pulled the sled toward the extraction point. As he crested a slick hill, he saw one of his crew members skiing toward him through the snow. It was Zach, code name Ski Bear. Zach hurled down a slope and jumped over a rocky outcropping, flipping in the air. He twirled in the blue sky and came to a landing on his skies. Not missing a beat, he skidded down to Angus.

  “Sup,” Zach said, his blue eyes shining. The wind ruffled through his bright blonde hair.

  “This skier was in an avalanche. I’m waiting for extraction.”

  “I’m here to help, bro,” Zach said.

  They pulled the skier to the extraction location and the helicopter came flying in a few moments later. The wings whipped above them, slicing through the air. The helicopter lowered a rescue gurney. When it reached the ground, Zach and Angus lifted the sled into the gurney and strapped the man down with the secure straps.

  They stood back and gave the thumbs up to the helicopter before it lifted the gurney into the chopper and waiting medical help. The helicopter lifted away and into the clear blue sky.

  “There went our ride,” Angus said.

  “I’ve got an extra pair of skies,” Zach said, smiling.

  Angus put his big boots into Zach’s skies and the two of them started down the mountain. Without the rescue sled on his back, he could move faster. Propelling down the slope with Zach, he felt the wind whip past his face. Zach did stunts by his side, and Angus laughed to himself.

  Zach was a spirited polar bear. He could get distracted by his quest for a good time, but Angus loved the bear like a brother. He and Zach had been friends since their days in the military when they’d served as Navy SEALs. After the war, his crew had all come to live on Fate Mountain. Angus had never resented the draft like other bears.

  Fate Mountain had become a mecca for shifters. Many opened businesses with the veterans benefits they’d received after the war. Maybe it hadn’t been fair to force shifters to fight in a human war, but Angus had enlisted as soon as the war started.

  Twenty years ago, when the Great Shifter Council decided to break the news that shifters had lived among humans for thousands of years, they hadn’t expected the backlash that followed. It was nearly the twenty-first century. It was a time of social acceptance. The Shifter Council had thought it was time to reveal themselves. They’d been wrong.

  So many of Angus’s friends had suffered for being shifters. It had been far worse than staying in hiding. It seemed that as soon as the world knew about shifters, the magical veil that had protected them for so long was lifted. Shifters got outed right and left. Hate crimes and police brutality had been everywhere.

  His own family had always been out. He’d had a good childhood with shifter parents and had been sheltered from much of the hatred that reined for so long in his country.

  That’s why he signed up to go to war, to defend his homeland. He’d wanted the human government to know that shifters were loyal citizens. Now that shifters had come home from war, the media had done a complete one-eighty in regard to them. All the morning talk shows and women’s magazines constantly talked about how shifters were sexy, hot war heroes.

  Things had changed so much that human women now wanted to date shifter men. Since there were so few female shifters, males had always found their mates among humans. Since shifters had been outed, dating became really hard.

  His friend Corey had created a dating site to help male shifters find their human mates. It would have been impossible a few years ago, but now it was much more accepted. Angus had been on the dating site for months but still hadn’t found anyone.

  Angus and Zach made it to the snow line and put on hiking boots, strapping their skies to their backs.

  “Have you signed up for Geek Bear’s dating site?” Angus asked Zach.

  “I signed up, but I haven’t been matched yet.”

  “Mate.com already hooked up two members of our crew,” Angus said.

  “Three,” Zach corrected.

  “Sure, but Brew Bear’s bride ran away,” Angus countered.

  The men shared a sad glance.

  “Did you find someone yet? I know you signed up a while ago and were considering dating someone who wasn’t a hundred percent match,” Zach said.

  “I haven’t found my fated mate yet. I did meet a woman for coffee last week, but it just didn’t feel right.”

  They made it back to Alpha Station and helped the rest of the crew break down the tent where Chief Bear Levi and Geek Bear Corey organized the rescue missions. Brew Bear Drew was already loading equipment into the back of Levi’s truck.

  “It was another successful mission, men. You should all be proud,” Levi said. “Angus, are you ready for the wedding rehearsal tomorrow night?”

  “Yes, Chief,” Angus said to Levi.r />
  Levi and his mate Juliet were finally tying the knot. They’d found each other on Mate.com and had hit it off from the start. Juliet was a sweetheart and Levi couldn’t be happier. The wedding would be in just a few days and everyone at Fate Mountain Lodge was preparing for the event.

  “Where are we celebrating today?” Zach asked. “I vote burgers at the diner.”

  “Definitely burgers,” Angus agreed.

  “The diner it is,” Levi said.

  Everyone started to climb into cars. Zach and Corey got in Levi’s crew cab. Angus hopped into the passenger seat of Drew’s SUV. Drew hadn’t been himself since his mate had taken off a few months ago.

  “How you holding up, man?” Angus asked as Drew drove down the mountain.

  “Why does everyone keep asking me that?” Drew said.

  “Why don’t you go after her?”

  “She doesn’t want to see me. She won’t even talk to Juliet.”

  “Levi’s mate still hasn’t heard from her?”

  “Quinn changed her number. She won’t answer emails and hasn’t been on social media for weeks.”

  “Have you asked Corey to track her down with his computers?”

  “I’m not going to hunt her down if she doesn’t want to be found. I’m not that kind of bear.”

  Angus felt Drew’s distress in his chest. He wanted to help his friend, but there wasn’t much he could do besides find the woman and carry her back to Drew himself. Angus didn’t think Drew or his mate would be too happy with him if he did that. That left Angus at a loss. He didn’t like feeling powerless to help someone he cared about.

  They made it to the diner and took their places along the bar where Wild Bear’s mate Lily was pouring coffee into a white mug. She smiled up at the crew and pulled her order pad out of her apron pocket.

  “Is the Wild Bear in the kitchen today?” Angus asked.

  “He his.”

  “Famous chef Shane Keenan is cooking in the Fate Mountain Diner. I never would have believed it,” Drew said, shaking his head.

  The food at the diner had been notoriously bad until Shane and Lily took over it a few months ago. The burgers at Fate Mountain Diner had quickly become legendary.

  “What can I get you?” Lily asked Angus.

  “I’ll take the Fate Mountain burger. I love Shane’s secret sauce.”

  Angus noticed a bear paw print tattoo on the back of Lily’s hand. He pointed at it as she set Angus’s water glass on the counter.

  “Is that new?” Angus asked.

  “Shane and I got these a few days ago. Baby, come show Angus your tattoo,” Lily called through the order wall into the kitchen.

  Angus could see Wild Bear through the stainless steel shelves. Shane barked for another cook to cover the grill, and he went out into the restaurant to stand beside Lily.

  “Look,” Shane said, bringing his hand up to rest beside Lily’s.

  The bear paw print tattoos marked the soft area between the thumb and forefinger on Shane and Lily’s hands. They matched exactly.

  “Juliet drew them. They represent the mark that mates us,” Lily said.

  Shane looked down at Lily and hugged her around the waist. Shane’s arms were covered with tattoos, but Angus knew that the one that matched Lily’s was the most important to Shane. Angus gazed at the happy couple. Shane whispered into Lily’s ear, and she laughed. Angus felt the ache in his heart for the kind of love they shared.

  “Got to get back to work, bro. These cooks are useless,” Shane said, running back to the kitchen. Lily smiled as she watched Shane trot away, her eyes full of adoration.

  Angus pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked his Mate.com app.

  2

  Poppy Robins clicked off QuickBooks and onto her internet browser. There was a huge ad in the Seattle Weekly about this new dating site called Mate.com. It catered to curvy human women looking to date sexy shifter men. Poppy clicked her mouse onto the search bar and typed in the web address.

  It came up on her screen, showing samples of the kind of men she could date on the site. They were exactly what the ad promised they would be. Shifter men were bigger, badder, and hotter than the men Poppy had spent her life around. She’d been hearing all about how they helped end the war on the news every day.

  Shifters had become a sensation over the last year. With the Shifter Equality Act passed, things were totally different than they used to be. Human women like Poppy could openly date them.

  Poppy gazed out at her view of Puget Sound. The dark water lapped against the docks under the dim glow of the harbor lights. She glanced down at the loading docks below her and saw her company’s manager walking into the side of the warehouse with a cop.

  That was strange.

  Poppy looked back at her computer, her heart pounding at the prospect of dating a man-god like one of the men on the homepage. She patted her damp brow with a handkerchief and pushed up her glasses, blinking at the screen.

  She could do this. It was just a dating website. Poppy had never signed up for a dating website. She just accepted that she’d live her life alone with her parrot Malcolm. The whole internet dating thing just didn’t appeal to her, and she could never bring herself to go out to those noisy nightclubs.

  Working in an imports/exports company with mostly burly Russian men who dated Russian women, Poppy didn’t get invited out a lot either. She’d been keeping the books for the Chekov family at Sound Import/Export for almost three years.

  She had always admired them for how they’d come to this country with nothing and started the company. But lately, things were getting a little strange. There had always been some small unaccounted for expenses in the books that Mr. Chekov explained away. Her job was to make sure things came out evenly. Those kinds of hiccups were normal in most businesses, but lately there had been even more unexplained anomalies. Poppy had started to suspect something was up with the company.

  She kept telling herself that she was being paranoid. She’d seen one too many mob movies on Netflix. Instead of digging in the books for evidence that wasn’t there, she would just distract herself with a fantasy about hot shifter men.

  Taking a deep breath, she clicked the sign-up button, and the questionnaire started to load. Apparently, this site could find a shifter’s fated mate. The crazy thing was, all kinds of naughty things happened to human girls who found their shifter fated mates. Poppy giggled thinking about it and twirled one of the long, twisted braids in her hair.

  She leaned forward and read the questions, squinting through her glasses.

  “If you were a vegetable, what kind would you be? Squash, celery, cucumber, corn, sugar pea, or green bean,” Poppy read aloud. “What the hell?”

  She answered the question as truthfully as possible. If she was a vegetable, she’d be corn. Right? Who knows? She continued along with the strange questions until she came to the end. Once she loaded a picture from her social media account and jotted down something into her profile, her matches started to load.

  Her heart went wild and she put her hand to her mouth. As it started to load, she heard footsteps outside her door. Embarrassed, she clicked off the site and back to QuickBooks.

  She’d left her door open and hopped from her desk to close it. Two male voices started speaking outside her door. It was Mr. Chekov and his manager son Ivor.

  “We need to be careful. The oruzhiye shipment is coming in tonight.”

  “Don’t worry about the cops,” Ivor said.

  Poppy gasped and hopped back from her door. She hurried to her desk and pretended to study the numbers in front of her as if she’d been there all along. The door opened behind her. Poppy’s body went rigid. Something really was going on with the company. She was in for it now. Poppy squeezed her eyes closed, admonishing herself for not trusting her instincts in the first place.

  She turned around and found Ivor standing inside her door. His eyes were dark and there was a scowl on his square face.

  “Po
ppy, why are you still here?” he asked in his thick Russian accent.

  “It’s tax season,” she said, blinking back her fear.

  “Right,” he said, drawing out the syllables.

  “I was almost finished.”

  She stood from her chair and picked up her purse. Reaching for her car keys, she dropped them on the floor. When she leaned down to pick them up off the floor, she hit her head on the desk. Pain shot through her skull and she stood up, holding the throbbing nob that was forming on the back of her head.

  “I want you to know how much we appreciate your work here, Poppy. You are well compensated, no?”

  She squinted at Ivor through one lens of her thick glasses. She still couldn’t open the other one because pain was shooting through her skull into that eyeball. She gripped her keys and the strap of her purse in the other hand, barely keeping them from falling to the ground again.

  “Well compensated, yes,” she said, finally able to open her eye.

  She drew her hand from her skull, threw her keys in her purse, and slung the purse over her shoulder. Where the hell was her damn jacket? She grabbed her raincoat off the back of her chair and flung it over one arm. Her purse got stuck on her arm, and she had to put the coat on over it.

  “I’ve got to get going now. Malcolm needs his birdseed,” she said, trotting toward the door.

  Ivor caught her arm and twisted her toward him. She smiled nervously at her boss, who was holding her arm in a freaking vice grip. Blinking her eyes, she narrowed her brow and bit her lip.

  “Poppy, be careful if you want to keep your job,” he said, looking down at the gaping swath of skin on her chest. Her purse has pushed her shirt open to her bra line. “I’d hate for you to lose anything important to you.”

  His eyes were dark and there was more than a little aggression in his face. She blanched and drew back. Was he threatening her?

  “Wouldn’t want to lose my job,” she croaked. “Or anything else.”

  He finally let her go, and she skittered out the door and down the hall. Her conservative pumps clicked down the stairs as she threw her curvy figure down them at full speed. When she made it to the bottom of the stairs, she put her hand to her chest and caught her breath.