Levi walked out from under the tent canopy of Alpha Station and turned back to look at his data analyst and computer technician Corey. Snow covered the ground and lined the branches of the evergreen trees. At this altitude, the world was still enveloped in white and would be for the next several months.
"You know that polar bear can’t resist any opportunity to perform one of his stunts,” Corey said, his eyes focused on his computer screen.
Levi and his crew had been together since their days in the military. He knew he could count on his men no matter what.
“Tell me more about this dating app you developed,” Levi said, scratching his chin and changing the subject from Zach’s misbehavior.
“It’s only been live a few months and there are already thousands of women registered,” Corey said, still focused on his data analysis. “Delta Crew is headed west down the slope toward the ravine. There’s a frozen creek that runs north to south at the bottom. The natural tendency would be to follow the slope along the creek bed.”
“Alpha Station to Ski Bear. Follow the ravine south along the creek bed,” Levi said.
“Copy that, Chief Bear,” Zach said through the walkie-talkie.
“Tell me more about these women,” Levi said to Corey, walking back under the Alpha Station’s protective canopy.
“I don’t read their profiles or anything. I just know there are tens of thousands of registered female users. Almost exclusively human.”
Levi thought about this for a moment. He, like many male shifters, was without a mate. Since there were more male shifters than female shifters by a ratio of five to one, finding a mate within his own kind was rare.
“And these human women really want to mate with shifters?”
“It’s a dating app. The mating part is up to each individual couple,” Corey said, finally meeting Levi’s gaze.
“These human women are willing to date shifters?”
“Apparently. I was able to identify a gap in the market and have provided a service that was clearly lacking.”
Levi leaned over Corey’s shoulder, and Corey pointed at the creek bed on the map. He explained that his probability analysis suggested the crew would find the missing skier where the creek dropped off in a frozen waterfall.
Levi agreed with Corey’s assessment. The human tendency would be to go along the path of least resistance. The skier would have then been stopped by the cliff at the waterfall.
Levi couldn’t help thinking about all of those human women who wanted to date shifters. A few short years ago, he never would have believed this would happen.
When Levi was still a child, the Great Shifter Council had decided to go public with the existence of shifters. They had believed then that it would give shifters greater freedom in the world. They hadn’t anticipated the violent human backlash that followed.
Like many young men of his generation, when it was time to prove himself loyal to his country, he’d joined the military six years ago. Levi and his search and rescue crew of bears had all served as Navy SEALs together.
After the human’s war, the crew had all come to Fate Mountain to join the shifter community that prospered there. Things had changed a lot since Levi was a child. Shifters had won the legal right to equality, and the majority of humans had become much more tolerant. It was hard to forget those early days, though. There had been so much violence and death in his community.
He thought about the prospect of dating and mating human woman now that things had settled down. Since so many male shifters had been drafted into the military, the new thing in human media was to idealize them. They’d been rebranded as superhot, hunky heroes.
It was a strange turn of events that most of the male shifters he knew weren’t ready to accept yet. Levi certainly wasn’t ready to accept it, no matter how much he wanted to find someone to love.
Levi had settled on Fate Mountain and used his family’s inheritance to buy Fate Mountain Lodge. Even with all his success and the change in attitude toward shifters, Levi still felt unsure about dating human women.
There weren’t a lot of single, young women on Fate Mountain. It was a rural community, and the age range tended to be towards the upper end of the spectrum. Lately, Levi felt compelled to find a mate and start a family. It was only natural for a shifter his age to want to find a woman.
In the old days, many shifter males mated with human women. Back then, it was easier for shifters to find their fated mates. Now the world was so distracted. With the upheaval of shifters coming out to the public, it had become really hard for men like Levi to find his one true mate.
Corey’s new dating app promised to fill that void in the community. Levi pulled out his cell phone and flicked on the screen. He had reception up here from Corey’s hotspot Wi-Fi and was able to connect to the Internet.
“How do I download this thing?” Levi said, navigating through his phone. As a business owner, he had to be somewhat literate with technology, but it still wasn’t his favorite thing.
“Just go to Mate.com, and it will start to download directly to your phone.”
“Alpha Station,” Zach’s voice came through the walkie-talkie. “Ski Bear has eyes on the target.”
Zach gave his coordinates, and Levi instructed Angus and Drew to intersect with Zach at the target location. He listened for their updates, momentarily forgetting about the dating app downloading onto his phone.
“Big Bear to Alpha Station, we’ve intersected with Ski Bear on the target. Target appears wounded and hypothermic.”
“Apply first aid and load the target onto the rescue sled,” Levi said through the walkie-talkie.
“They’ll need to head east up the slope and then move south down around the mountain, bypassing the frozen waterfall,” Corey said.
Levi relayed Corey’s message to Delta Crew and listened for updates as his crew pulled the wounded skier out of the ravine and back up the mountain. Once they made it to the northern summit, they walked along the ridge. Just as Delta Crew arrived at Alpha Station, an ambulance pulled up behind Levi’s truck.
The crew helped the EMTs load the skier into the back of the ambulance and drove away. Levi snatched his phone from the folding table where he’d left it beside Corey’s computers and slipped it into his pocket. He would have to complete the Mate.com questionnaire later.
His rescue crew packed up and loaded Alpha Station in the back of Levi’s pickup truck. Corey and Zach rode in Levi’s crew cab while Drew and Angus drove back down the mountain in Angus’s truck.
“Are we celebrating at the lodge or at the brewery?” Drew asked over the walkie-talkie on the seat of Levi’s truck.
Drew was known as Brew Bear because his day job was running a microbrewery in Fate Mountain Village. His craft beer was known throughout Oregon and the Pacific Northwest for its original flavor, zesty freshness, and obscenely high alcohol content. Levi always kept it on tap at the lodge.
Levi knew that if they celebrated at the brewery, they would all end up with a hangover in the morning. Instead, he invited all the rescue bears to the lodge for a free meal and a reasonable amount of beer.
“We celebrated at the lodge last time,” Drew objected.
“I have too much to do tomorrow to get drunk on your brew,” Levi said.
“He is the chief,” Angus said.
When soft-spoken Big Bear said something, everybody listened.
The two trucks arrived at the lodge at sunset as soft snowflakes danced in the fading mountain sunlight. Down by the lake, most of the snow had already melted. As the flakes dropped to the ground, they disappeared in the damp soil. Purple crocuses poked their heads up through the rich green grass around the front of the lodge.
Once inside, the crew took their usual table in the main dining room for their celebratory feast. A waiter brought all five men plates of big, juicy steaks and pints of Drew’s Fate Mountain lager. While they were eating and celebrating the successful rescue of yet another standard human on Fa
te Mountain, Levi took a peek at his phone.
Corey’s app made him answer a shit ton of questions before it would let him see any of the women. Levi narrowed his eyes at the crazy questions, trying to make heads or tails of how they could match him to his mate.
While Drew tried to beat Angus at an arm wrestling match, which everyone knew was futile, Levi finished the questionnaire. He added a photo Zach had taken of him a few weeks ago and filled in a few paragraphs for a profile. He pressed a button, and a second later, he was live on Mate.com. His chest fluttered with anxiety, and he immediately wanted to erase the profile. Corey leaned over to look at what had Levi distracted for so long, and Levi snatched the phone away.
“Did you create a profile?” Corey asked.
“None of your business,” Levi snapped.
“It’s not like you have to find a mate. I don’t want one.”
“Then why did you develop a shifter dating app?” Levi asked, astonished.
“I told you, I saw a gap in the marketplace and capitalized on it. I’m a data analyst. That’s what I do. It doesn’t mean I have to use my own invention.”
“Corey invented a dating app?” Drew said, stroking his beard.
“It’s for male shifters to meet human women,” Levi informed him.
“Curvy human women?” Zach asked, glee in his eyes.
“Curvy women,” Angus said, almost at a growl.
“You can all sign up if you want. I’ll even waive the monthly fee,” Corey said.
“How generous,” Zach said.
“We can’t all make a living showing off for tourists,” Corey said to Zach.
“Hey, I show off for locals too,” Corey corrected his geeky bear friend.
Levi was irritated. He hadn’t wanted to bring it up to the whole crew. But now the cat was out of the bag, and they knew he was looking for love. Maybe Corey’s new dating app would help them all find their own fated mates.
After saying goodbye to his crew and settling up for the night, Levi went to his private suite on the top floor of the lodge. It was more like a three-bedroom luxury apartment than a hotel room. It had all the amenities of home, and he was quite happy there. Except for one thing. He didn’t have a mate.
He sat on the plush leather couch in front of the picture window that looked over the lake. With the last snow of the season falling in twisting flurries under the moonlight, Levi pulled his phone from his pocket and checked his Mate.com app.
Part of the sign-up process included answering whole lot of questions about himself. Apparently Corey’s algorithms could match a shifter with his perfect mate with an accuracy of ninety-nine point nine percent. How he did it, Levi had no idea. He wasn’t a computer geek like Corey.
The system had matched Levi with half a dozen women who were in the upper ninety percent range of compatibility. But none of them were a hundred percent match. None of them were his fated mate.
If Corey’s app couldn’t match them, then maybe his fated mate just wasn’t out there. Or maybe she just wasn’t on Corey’s dating site. Levi growled and put the phone down on the coffee table, resolving that he would be alone forever.
He picked up the remote control and clicked on his big screen television to catch up on the sports scores. There were several high profile athletes who had come out as shifters. Many sports leagues were in the process of forming shifter only teams because shifters dominated humans so easily it was pretty much unfair.
As he was watching a cougar shifter confound an entire team of human basketball players, Levi heard his phone ping. Assuming it must be one of his crew, Levi picked up the phone and flicked his thumb across the screen.
Instead of seeing a text from one of the guys, he saw a notification from the Mate.com app. On his screen was a picture of a pretty, curvy brown-haired girl with hazel eyes and honey colored skin. Levi’s heart instantly melted.
Her name was Juliet.
Chapter 2
Juliet Hernandez sat at her desk at work and clicked away from her Photoshop project and onto the Internet. She’d been hearing all kinds of buzz about a new dating site that catered to curvy girls who liked shifter men. With all the press shifters were getting lately, Juliet had to admit she was curious. It was a whole new world, really. When Juliet was a child, it was common for entire neighborhoods to reject their shifter neighbors. Now, after the war, shifter men were celebrated heroes. It seemed as if dating a shifter was the new status symbol.
Juliet didn’t care about status, but she was lonely. She’d heard that shifter man, as hunky and handsome as they were, preferred a certain type of girl that human men tended to ignore. Shifter men liked curvy, voluptuous women like Juliet.
She hadn’t dated in a long time and she’d started to think all men were bad news. Her last boyfriend was the worst. He had never missed an opportunity to make Juliet feel bad about herself for any reason. It wasn’t like he was some kind of prize, but he reminded her every day that she was lucky to have him.
Juliet had stayed with him for two long years, despite his verbal and emotional attacks she suffered. Why? She was playing it safe. She’d tried to wait it out until things got better rather than risk breaking up and moving out.
In spite of her fear and misgivings, Juliet clicked the sign-up button on the homepage of Mate.com. The best thing about this website was that it had an app that went along with it, making it easier for her to stay updated with her possible matches during her busy day as a graphic designer.
She was about to start answering the questionnaire when her boss walked by her desk. Her heart sank and her stomach clenched up. She quickly clicked back to her work project.
“What are you doing?” her boss asked.
“Nothing,” she said, embarrassed.
If he were just her boss, she wouldn’t have been so nervous. But he wasn’t just her boss, he was the scumbag boyfriend who’d treated her like garbage for two years.
“I don’t want to see you slacking off at work,” he said, giving her an irritated look.
“I’m not,” she said.
Ernest Burns, her ex-boyfriend and present manager, never missed an opportunity to correct her at work. The abuse that had once only happened behind closed doors now happened on a regular basis at work. Because finding a stable graphic design job was so difficult, she played it safe and refused to quit. The one time she had made brief mention of her problem with Ernest to his boss, the man basically blew her off and told her to suck it up. There were hundreds of other designers in town who would gladly take her job in a heartbeat. She was lucky to be employed and should be grateful.
So Juliet sucked it up and carried on. The man who had been her jerk ass boyfriend became her boss, and she had to live with it. If she wanted to keep paying her rent, then the only thing she could do was go into work every day, plaster a fake smile to her face, and design stupid advertisements for the stupid paper. It wasn’t that Juliet hated her job. She used to like it, a lot. But that was before Ernest transferred to her department and became her direct supervisor. For the last year, she hadn’t had a date and at the same time had to take directions from the man who had once told her she was too big to wear sexy lingerie.
Juliet didn’t even think of herself as overweight. She was curvy, healthy, and she liked it that way. Men like Ernest had no idea what they were talking about. It had taken her a lot of therapeutic girl talk to come to that point with herself. She was beautiful whether Ernest liked her curves or not.
All of her friends were curvy, and they were all perfectly happy too. Ernest belonged to a group of men who only liked women who were fake. Fake boobs. Fake smiles. Fake bodies manipulated by aggressive diets and unnatural amounts of exercise. But Juliet was real and natural and honest. She liked a nice red lipstick as much as the next girl, but she wasn’t going to turn herself inside out for any man.
She finished up her ad designs for the day and clocked out at five. Her phone pinged with a text from her friend Quinn.
&n
bsp; Meet us at the pub in fifteen minutes.
After a day like today, Juliet could use some girl time with her friends. When Quinn said “us,” Juliet knew she meant the whole gang. She pulled on her raincoat and headed out into the misty evening of downtown Portland, Oregon. She trotted down the sidewalk to the local pub where she and her friends had been hanging out since college. Juliet swung open the heavy door and was greeted with the scent of bacon and craft beer. She took a deep breath, inhaled the flavors, and smiled.
Quinn waved from the table in the corner. Her sassy black friend’s bright brown eyes glinted in the dim light of the pub as Juliet made her way toward the group. Everyone was smiling, and it seemed like there was something going on. Juliet pulled off her coat and sat down just as Quinn poured her a pint of beer.
“What’s going on?”
Her red-headed friend Charlotte began to squeal uncontrollably as if she was trying to hold back the news of her life. That’s when Juliet spotted the giant rock on Charlotte’s finger.
“You did not get engaged,” Juliet said, reaching across the table to grab Charlotte’s hand. She examined the massive square diamond. “Holy shit, look at this thing.” She sat back down in her chair with good-humored disbelief.
“I know,” squealed Charlotte. “Harry proposed last night. I’ve been trying to keep it in all day, but now that everyone’s off work, I wanted to announce it to the whole gang at once.”
“When’s the wedding?” Juliet asked.
Charlotte and her boyfriend—fiancé—Harry had been dating for the past two years. Everyone knew that Harry was going to propose at any minute. Juliet felt ecstatic for Charlotte, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but feel a little jealous. How could she be jealous? Charlotte had been her friend since college and she deserved to have her happily ever after as much as anybody. More than anybody. Charlotte was an awesome girl and Juliet wanted nothing but the best for her. In the time that Charlotte and Harry had been together, Juliet had been in a shitty relationship with Ernest. Then she became single with her shitty ex-boyfriend as her shitty boss. It made it hard to be one hundred percent supportive. Juliet hated feeling that way.