Fate Mountain - Complete

by Scarlett Grove

  “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.

  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.

  Chapter 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.

  “Poppy, 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.

  Poppy fixed her shirt and hurried off into the dark parking lot. She ran to her sedan and flung open the front door. After jumping in the driver’s seat, she sped out of the parking lot and drove home. This was really bad. Maybe she should go to the police. What would she say? Her boss said something threatening and grabbed her arm? They’d tell her to file a lawsuit.

  What was going on? What did oruzhiye mean? As far as she knew, Sound Imports/Exports dealt in textiles and lumber. She pulled into her private parking space in the underground lot in her building and hurried up the elevator to her floor. When she got into her apartment, she leaned against the front door, catching her breath.

  Holy Shit! Did that just happen?

  Her parrot Malcolm squawked from the living room. She hurried inside to Malcolm’s cage and opened it up. Poppy put her hand next to the parrot’s perch, and the yellow bird hopped onto her wrist. She brought him out of the cage and kissed him. Malcolm kissed her back and squawked.

  “Beautiful,” Malcolm cawed.

  “Ah, Malcolm, you say the sweetest things,” Poppy said, sitting back into her easy chair. The yellow conure parrot hopped up on the back of the chair and started to play with Poppy’s braids. Poppy pulled her phone out of her pocket and clicked onto the Mate.com app that had downloaded while she w
as still at work.

  If her life was going to explode, at least she could get matched with a hunky shifter mate. It could happen, right? Curvy Poppy Robins with the braided hair and wide hips could find a man who could melt butter with his smile.

  She licked her lips as the matches screen loaded. It was just a distraction before she could figure out what to do about her job. What she needed right now was a dose of man candy. She just wanted a quick peek and then she’d start a pros and cons list about what to do at work. The screen of matches loaded on her phone with the match percentage above each man’s profile picture.

  Damn, these guys are fine.

  A hundred percent match was supposed to be a fated mate match. That’s what these guys all wanted. Nothing but a hundred percent. She’d read it in an article in the Seattle Weekly. Relationships with shifters was the new hot topic in the Love Buzz column. The girls who landed fated mates were nothing if not satisfied. What Poppy wouldn’t give to have a little bit of that.

  She’d been feeling like something was missing in her life for a long time. Maybe it was because she was nerdy and kept to herself, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want someone. She wanted a family. Kids. A hunk of man like one of these shifters would be a serious bonus.

  From what she knew, these men loved fiercely, with a raw animal passion that could not be rivaled. Goosebumps rose on her flesh just thinking about it. Fated mates were forever. There was no question of whether or not you belonged together. You were a perfect match. What the shifter and his mate did about it was their own business.

  Things didn’t always turn out perfectly at first, from what she’d learned, but when fated mates finally found their way to each other, it was pure bliss in the end. She sighed and flicked down her screen, looking for that one hundred percent match. She didn’t think she’d find one until it suddenly appeared on her screen.

  Holy moly and a pumpkin pie.

  Poppy felt faint just looking at his tiny profile picture.

  This man was her fated mate? For real? Did she just win some kind of lottery? She clicked on the picture. He was even cuter up close. Black hair, blue eyes, and a generous smile that warmed her heart.