Table of Contents
Copyright
Foreword
Chapter One – Artem
Chapter Two – Elina
Chapter Three – Artem
Chapter Four – Elina
Chapter Five – Artem
Chapter Six – Elina
Chapter Seven – Artem
Chapter Eight – Elina
Chapter Nine – Artem
Chapter Ten – Elina
Chapter Eleven – Artem
Chapter Twelve – Elina
Chapter Thirteen – Artem
Chapter Fourteen – Elina
Chapter Fifteen – Artem
Chapter Sixteen – Elina
Chapter Seventeen – Artem
Chapter Eighteen – Elina
Get In Touch
Also By Harmony Raines
Her Russian
Bear
Fated and Mated
(Book Three)
***
All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written consent of the author or publisher.
This is a work of fiction and is intended for mature audiences only. All characters within are eighteen years of age or older. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, actual events or places is purely coincidental.
© 2016 Harmony Raines
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Fated and Mated - Love at First Site
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Her Russian Bear
Fated and Mated - Book Three
A Russian bear on the run, Artem is not sure finding his mate is the best thing for him right now, or her. He has seen what happens when life gets in the way of the mating bond and sacrifices have to be made. However, when he sees his mate on the Fated and Mated website, he has to act. Or, more precisely, he has to hack the site and get her details because he cannot risk putting his picture on the internet.
Curvy tiger shifter, Elina, is fighting to prove her client, Jim, innocent, even if he was caught red handed burning down the local school. She is convinced he cannot be responsible, but if it wasn’t Jim, then who was it?
When Artem turns up on her doorstep unannounced, she is worried he is going to distract her from her job. And when she learns of his past, she is unsure where their futures lie. Especially when the trail for the real arsonist leads to a choice, one which may cost Artem his life. But all is never what is seems.
Chapter One – Artem
“Come on, Artem, why not put your details on Fated and Mated? I’ll help you set up a profile if you don’t know how to do it,” Mae said as she helped him clear away the glasses from the tables. They had just closed the door on another busy night at Ruble’s, the restaurant Artem co-owned with Vadik.
He smiled, a secret smile, which he hid from Mae. “I don’t need your websites.” His Russian accent had once been thick, but it got fainter every day after living here in Grizzly Hollows for a few years. Not that he minded: the less Russian he sounded, the less strangers to the small town would ask questions. Questions he needed to avoid.
“I bet you two Russian bears would soon find mates on there.” She looked at him sideways. “Well, if not your mate, I bet there are lots of girls who would sleep with you.”
“And you think that’s what we want?” he asked.
“I know you’ve worked your way through most of the women in Grizzly Hollows and the surrounding villages.”
“I have a huge appetite for sex, that is true.” There was no arrogance in his voice. “But that does not mean I would not like to settle down with my mate. I grow tired of one-night stands.”
“Which is exactly why you should join the website,” she said triumphantly.
“You do like to twist a man’s words,” he said churlishly. It was late and he was tired, the restaurant had been full, and he needed his bed. He liked it busy, and so did their bank manager; however, he had been working for three years straight, with no vacation, and barely a day off, as had Vadik, to make a real success of the business. These days he was feeling more and more as if the restaurant was his mate, the other part of himself, and that was not something he liked.
However, getting out of Grizzly Hollows presented its own dangers, dangers he would rather avoid.
“Are you scared, Artem?” she asked.
“Scared of what?” Artem replied, pausing from filling the dishwasher. Had she read his thoughts? Impossible!
“Of being intimate with someone, of letting your barriers down?” Mae asked.
Mae was a little too astute at reading his emotions. “I didn’t know I had barriers.”
“Of course you didn’t,” she said sarcastically and dried her hands, having washed up several items that could not go through the dishwasher cycle. “Look, I’m not prying, I know you have your secrets, but I’m just saying, it’s worth taking a look at the site. No one can make you join.”
“I’ll think about it,” he agreed, smiling at her, and then adding, “I know you only have my best interests at heart, Mae.”
“I think I’m turning into an evangelist where finding a mate is concerned. I want everyone to be as happy as me.” She blushed at being so open about her own feelings. Mae had only been in Grizzly Hollows for a few weeks, having come here to meet her mate, Jay, who was one of the local mountain rangers.
“I like that you care,” he said. “Now, I expect there is a certain man waiting at home for you.”
“There is. He will have the bed warmed up for me.” She kissed Artem on the cheek and whispered, “See what you are missing.”
“I do. Every time I look at you and see your radiant smile.”
Her hand instinctively went to her stomach. “Do I look radiant?”
“Yes, is there something you should tell me?”
“Maybe.”
“When there is, and you find your shifts too tiring, let me know.”
“Artem, if I am pregnant, it wouldn’t be more than a month or so, so please don’t panic.”
“I just don’t want you to overdo it.”
“I won’t. Good night, Artem, and say good night to Vadik from me too.”
“I will.”
Mae left, and he locked the door up behind her, heading to the kitchen to make sure everything was turned off and then going to the office to shut down the computer. It was then that her words came back to him, and before he knew it, he was typing in the web address of Fated and Mated. All he was going to do was look.
Profile pictures appeared on the screen, and he went to the search bar and typed in female—that got rid of quite a few profiles. There were obviously many lonely shifter men out there. He smiled. He hadn’t expected there to be so much interest in the site.
Scrolling through the first few pages, he felt a little disappointed that he hadn’t found the woman for him, which was completely ridiculous, because the chances were so slim…
“Derr`mo.” He leaned back in the seat, wiping his hand over his eyes, before leaning closer to the screen and taking a proper look.
There she was, all dark hair and stiff smile. She looked as if she was dressed for the office, not exactly the earthy, buxom beauty he had imagined he would be mated
with. Yet his heart still beat hard in his chest, his face beading with sweat as his vision blurred and then came sharply back into focus.
“Artem.”
A voice behind him made him jump, and for a moment his reflexes kicked in, and his hand balled into a fist.
“Relax, it’s only me.”
Vadik walked in to the office. “I thought we had an intruder.”
“No. I am alone,” Artem said. His voice held a dreamlike quality that Vadik instantly picked up on.
“Something wrong? Or have you been reminiscing about our homeland?”
“No. Nothing like that.” He sighed. “I have found her.”
“Found who?” Vadik asked, coming to his side.
“The woman who makes my life complete.”
Vadik walked around to stand behind Artem and whistled appreciatively. “Wow. She is one professional hardass. She looks like a lawyer or something. Does it say?”
“No, only hobbies. No profession, and no address.”
“So what are you going to do?” Vadik asked.
“Hack the website. It can’t be that hard to get past the encryption.”
“That is what I was hoping you would say. Because the thought of you uploading a profile picture onto any site makes me have palpitations.”
“Not as bad as the palpitations I’m experiencing.” He wanted to jump on the table, and perform a traditional Cossack dance, to shout from the highest rooftops that she had been found. Instead, he pulled the keyboard closer and then began to type, his fingers flying over the keys as he began to get past the first layer of security, his fatigue now gone. “This could take a while.”
“I’ll put the coffee on,” said Vadik.
“Thanks.” Artem typed a string of code and cursed; whoever had built the website had made it difficult to crack. He didn’t blame them—after all, they were trying to keep shifters safe. That reminded him, had she had one of those special symbols on her profile, the one that showed she was a shifter? He was so busy looking into her eyes, he hadn’t taken it all in.
He grinned to himself. It didn’t matter: whoever she was, wherever she was, she was his mate. As Vadik returned with two steaming hot cups of strong coffee, Artem felt his friend’s unease, but his own joy battled against the dark cloud that was Vadik.
“What do you plan to do?” Vadik asked.
“Find her.”
“And then what?” Vadik sipped his hot coffee.
“Then I go to her.”
“You can’t, Artem.”
“I have to.”
“And say what? Hello, I’m your mate; by the way, I’m on the run from very bad men who want me dead,” Vadik said.
“Do you have a better idea?”
“You will be putting us both in danger.”
“I know, Vadik. I know. But she is my mate. I have to trust her, and I have to tell her the truth.” The code in front of him unraveled, and there before his eyes were the inner workings of the site. To an untrained eye, it looked like a jumble of letters and numbers. But Artem wasn’t an untrained eye. He was a highly trained operative who had fled Russia and was now wanted. He was not sure if that was dead or alive.
But he could not let that affect the hunt for his mate, as long as he didn’t put her in danger.
“There,” he said, and the location flashed up in front of him.
“You are going to have to get on a plane,” Vadik said disapprovingly.
“Then it is a good job I have a false passport, isn’t it?” He grinned happily, despite the danger and the obvious unease of Vadik, his partner in crime.
Chapter Two – Elina
Grabbing her briefcase, she headed out of the door. She was on her way over to the prison where her client, Jim Launceston, was being held on arson charges. It was a high profile case. After all, Jim had burned the local school down and been caught red-handed. As far as anyone in the small town of Brannock was concerned, he was guilty. And she would have to agree … almost.
It was a career-changing case. If she got him off, she would be headhunted by some of the big law firms in the city. Her inner tiger swished her tail at that thought, and the sense of disapproval was immense.
I know you don’t like it, but we can’t stay in this small town forever, Elina said firmly.
Why not? her tiger asked.
You know why not. We have zero chance of finding our mate if we simply sit here in a one-horse town and do nothing.
I like this one-horse town, her tiger objected. I like the mountains. And the freedom…
I know, Elina sighed, because she did too. She liked the slow pace, the way everyone knew each other, and the sense of community. Or at least she had; this case had made people step away from her, or cross over the street as she passed by. Whispers asking how she could defend a man who would burn down their beloved school followed her everywhere she went.
Sweeping her concerns aside, she got into her car. Looking around her, she checked that everything was normal and hoped the uneasy feeling inside her was nothing more than paranoia. She knew exactly how much the people of this town wanted her to fail, and she completely understood why.
It had been a tough decision to take the case. Even her boss had tried to talk her out of it, saying it was clear-cut and she would fail. However, Elina had gone through law school firmly believing everyone was entitled to a good defense and you were innocent until proven guilty. She could not step away from her beliefs because of pressure from other people. Elina had been brought up to do the right thing; her parents backed her one hundred percent, only they weren’t here to support her, they were hundreds of miles away in Peru. A couple of years ago they had moved there with her two brothers to run a hostel in the mountains there. It was popular among backpackers, especially those of the shifter kind.
I don’t want to live in the city, her tiger told her for the hundredth time.
I know, but let’s not mess this up, we owe it to Jim to present the facts. Winning this case will give us choices. Elina didn’t like the idea of the city too much either, but she knew for them to find their mate, they had to step outside of the small town she had grown up in. Maybe Peru and all of those backpackers wasn’t such a bad idea.
Better than the city, her tiger chimed in.
Starting the car, she drove towards the office, but the thought that had been niggling in her brain would not quit. When she questioned Jim yesterday, he had told her he had received a phone call earlier in the evening asking him to meet someone at the school. He wasn’t the brightest guy in the world and had gone along; he had been looking for work, and the person on the phone had told him there was a chance of a caretaker’s job in the school grounds. Jim hadn’t even questioned why someone would ask him to meet at the school at eleven o’clock in the evening.
The phone records showed he got the call, but the number was untraceable, a throwaway mobile, although the prosecution wanted to push the theory that Jim had an accomplice, which would also help negate the defense’s claims that Jim was not bright enough, or organized enough, to set the school on fire. Even though he had been caught red-handed. His story was that he had been given instructions to start a bonfire. The bonfire had set off a chain reaction, and the fire department had not had a hope of saving the school.
She glanced down at her briefcase, remembering the fire department’s report on how well planned the fire had been. This was not the case of one person setting a match to a piece of newspaper, or even a can of gasoline. No, whoever set the fire wanted it burned down completely. Jim just did not fit the profile.
“Damn it,” she said out loud. “I need to go for a run to clear my head.”
She steered her car out of town, and along the road that meandered up the side of the mountain, through dense woodland that thinned out into rocky canyons. As she reached a secluded spot where she could leave her car, she got out. Her idea was to head over to the small belt of trees around two hundred feet away and there change into her tiger.
Elina didn’t know which would draw more attention, a woman in a business suit and high-heeled shoes walking along a mountain trail, or a tiger. Shaking her head at the absurdity of her appearance, she struck off across the uneven ground.
As she turned to head uphill, she cast a look around her and let her senses roam. As far as she knew, there was no one close, no one to see her. Feeling more confident, she struck out for a line of trees; there she would shift into her tiger, and then move quicker, keeping to the trees and hidden gullies, hidden from view.
With one last look behind her, she slipped behind a big oak tree and shifted into her tiger, striking off fast across the ground, a blur hidden amongst the trees. It felt good to feel the dirt beneath her paws, to let her claws dig into the ground and spring over fallen logs as she weaved in and out of the thickening underbrush.
Then she was back out into the crisp mountain air, in a canyon where the sun didn’t reach, and she leaped from rock to rock, knowing no ordinary human would come this way because of the difficulty of the terrain.
Her tiger soothed her nerves, and made her head clear. With heightened senses, she followed a rabbit’s trail, and then another scent hit her, a scent that was as unnatural out here as her tiger. Gasoline.
Turning, the rabbit instantly forgotten, she put her nose to the ground like a dog, and circled around until she managed to locate the source, a large blob of greasy gasoline on the side of one of the rocks. Puzzled, she moved further up the canyon, trying to remember the terrain. This was not one of her favorite haunts; instead, she preferred to go under cover of darkness through the lower forests, occasionally meeting up with other shifters, including the sheriff, Alain, who was a wolf shifter under all his brawny muscled flesh.
Shame they weren’t mates. She liked Alain a lot; he was a no-nonsense guy who kept the town free from crime with his wolf abilities, which seemed almost like a sixth sense to the non-shifter townsfolk. That was the only reason why she was uncertain Jim had an accomplice. Alain had been very thorough in his investigation, and was certain Jim was to blame.
Her Russian Bear: BBW Bear Shifter Dating Agency Romance (Fated and Mated Book 3) Page 1
