Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a shifter family laughing and eating their meal together. She knew those customers. They came into the diner every Sunday afternoon as a family. They always seemed so happy.
She poured the elderly man’s cup of coffee, passing the family on the way back to the bar. The little girl, with braids hanging around her shoulders, smiled up at Lily with her toothless grin and bright eyes. Lily smiled back, wishing her own life were as cozy as that shifter family’s was.
She didn’t envy them their happiness, but she knew her life could never be that way—with the mother and father and children all together like that. It would never be.
She greeted new guests at the front door and showed them to a booth by the window, handing them their menus. She wove back around the bar and stopped for a moment to take a drink of water.
Her mind drifted to her son. Her sweet little boy Theo had never known his father. Lily hadn’t seen or heard from him in years. He didn’t even know that Theo existed, and Lily intended to keep it that way.
She and Theo had moved so many times over the last five years of his life. Going from one place to the next, working whatever job she could find. All while trying to keep the biggest secret of her life.
It had started to take its toll. Lily sometimes joked to herself that she was one bad day away from a nervous breakdown. But the truth was, Lily was far too strong to break. And she needed to be. With a son like Theo, she could never let her guard down.
After refilling a table’s drinks, she took the new customers’ order and brought it back to the cook. As she was turning away from the kitchen, she stopped short in front of her boss. Mr. Buckman had owned the diner in town for a long time.
“Excuse me,” Lily said, skirting around her boss.
He loved to lecture her every time she was a second late or took a single phone call. She was a mom, she had responsibilities. Not that Mr. Buckman cared about her personal life. Far from it. Just because Lily had gaps in her resume and was living in a one-bedroom apartment near the highway, he thought he could treat her like garbage.
Unfortunately for Lily, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. She’d come to Fate Mountain because she knew it was a good place to raise her son. It had been hard to find a job or a place to live. Determination had always been one of her greatest character traits, and she’d found everything she needed to take care of her kid since she arrived.
“I need you to work a double tonight, Lily,” Mr. Buckman said, crossing his arms over his round chest.
He smelled of cheese and his greasy black hair was slicked back with some kind of sticky oil. Lily winced, not wanting to get too close to him. His breath smelled worse than his shirt.
“I can’t,” she said, skirting around him and escaping out from behind the bar. “I have to pick my kid up from his after-school program at six.”
“Megan is sick. You need to cover for her.”
“Ask Shannon. I know she needs more hours,” Lily begged.
There was no way she could find a babysitter this late in the day.
“I’m not paying Shannon overtime,” he bellowed.
Lily went through the swinging door into the kitchen and hurried to the time clock to punch out. Her shift was over and her customers were all taken care of. Mr. Buckman couldn’t force her to work when she couldn’t do it.
She knew he’d hold it against her, though. Lily grabbed her coat and purse and threw her apron in the cleaning bin before taking off out the back door. She heard Mr. Buckman shout behind her, and she turned to see him standing in the door.
“I’ll remember this, Lily,” he said, pointing at her.
She unlocked her car door and slid behind the wheel. Great. He was pissed at her again. What the hell was she supposed to do, let her kid wander around on the street by himself? She growled as she turned the key and the motor rumbled to life. Driving out into the street, she made her way to Fate Mountain Elementary where Theo went to school.
She hurried up the steps to the after-school program and went inside. Theo was playing with blocks with a group of boys and girls on the floor in the corner. Lily smiled and said hello to the teacher. Her son sprang up from his play and shot across the room to his mother, enfolding Lily in an embrace.
“Mommy!” he said, hugging her waist.
Lily leaned down to him and patted his head, hugging him up into her arms. She missed him. Even at five years old, he was still her baby boy. She took his hand and led him to his cubby to get his things.
Out at the car, she buckled Theo into his car seat. He had the same ruddy blond hair as his dad. Those same blue eyes. She kissed Theo’s forehead and asked him about his day.
“We wrote a letter to our parents,” Theo said.
Theo was learning his letters and how to write better every day in his kindergarten class. Lily loved that. But a letter to his “parents” she didn’t love so much.
“Your parents?” she croaked.
“I wrote a letter to my daddy,” Theo said.
Theo’s father was a sore subject for them both. He’d been asking her for over a year who his father was. He wanted to meet him. She’d always told him his father had gone away.
“What did you write?” Lily asked.
“It says, ‘Dear Daddy, please come home,’” Theo said.
Lily’s heart ached at his words. She wanted more than anything to make her son happy. But he couldn’t know about his father. That man had run out on her too many times, and she never wanted to see him again. She wouldn’t give him the chance to run out on Theo too.
Lily had to do it all on her own, like she always had, without his help. That didn’t mean she wasn’t lonely for companionship. It had been so long since she’d had a date, she didn’t even remember what it was like.
When she arrived back at her apartment complex, she helped Theo out of his booster seat and down onto the pavement. Her little man was her life and her joy. She’d wanted to be a mom as long as she could remember. She just hadn’t expected it to happen like this.
She took Theo’s hand and they walked to the stairs. Theo hopped up the stairs two at a time, and Lily had to tell him to stop, running up behind him. She scooped her child into her arms. He was big for his age, for a human, and was a heavy little guy. With her precious cargo, she made it to the second floor of her building and walked along the balcony to her door.
She set Theo down, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. He hurried inside and flipped on their little TV, changing the channel to cartoons on their internet device. One of the few luxuries Lily actually had was internet. It was impossible to live without it in this day and age.
She turned the thermostat up to push out the chill in the apartment and went to the tiny kitchen off the living room to look in the refrigerator. There was a half empty package of hot dogs and head of romaine lettuce. Aside from that, she had half a bottle of mustard and two eggs. Lily knew she needed to go to the grocery store, but couldn’t afford anything until after her paycheck.
She grabbed the lettuce and hotdogs and chopped up a salad and fried the hotdogs in a pan. When she had a reasonable meal, she put it on plates and called Theo to the tiny two-person table she had shoved up against the wall in the living room. They sat down to their dinner and ate their meager meal. Theo didn’t really seem to mind, but he gobbled up his hotdogs and most of his salad before skipping off back to the television.
“Is almost bath time, buddy,” Lily said, ruffling his hair with her fingers. “Fifteen more minutes.”
“Okay, Mommy,” Theo said, smiling up at Lily.
She loved her son so much sometimes it made her heart hurt. She wanted to give him so much more than she was able to. Most of the time, she felt like she was totally screwing up. She went to the kitchen and began cleaning up after the meal. Scraping mustard off a plate and into the garbage can, Lily thought about her options.
Theo’s dad was a lost cause. Lily knew that much. But did t
hat mean that she had to be alone for the rest of her life? Theo was getting to an age where he could really use a male role model. For Lily, the loneliness was becoming too difficult to bear. She needed someone to share her life with.
She had heard about a new shifter dating website that a lot the local shifter males were signing up for. Local girls were getting a hundred percent discount if they used a code printed in the local paper.
When she was done with the dishes, she went to the living room and directed Theo into the bathroom for his bath. As she sat watching him play with his rubber ducky, she pulled her cheap smartphone out of her pocket and tried to navigate to the dating app.
Her Wi-Fi and cheap phone were taking so long to load, she gave up and helped Theo get ready for bed. After she pulled his red striped pajamas down over his head and stuck him into bed, Lily turned on his nightlight and walked to the door.
“Good night, Buddy, I love you,” Lily said, turning out the light.
“I love you too, Mommy,” Theo said in a sleepy voice.
Lily closed the door behind her and went to the living room, where her futon served as her bed. Being a single mom and a waitress didn’t afford her a two-bedroom apartment. Lily slept in the living room. It wasn’t an ideal setup, but it was all they really needed.
She took the ancient laptop off the coffee table and pulled it up on her lap. The thing felt overheated almost instantly, but it had better internet access. She clicked over to the website, Mate.com, and clicked on the sign-up button.
Was it crazy to sign up for a shifter/human dating website? She had been involved with a shifter before. He had even told her that she was his fated mate the one time they made love. That hadn’t seemed to matter. He’d left her anyway.
Her son had been shifting since he was two and a half years old. At first, it had been one of those exciting baby milestones that Lily could only share with herself. Theo’s pediatrician didn’t even know that her baby was a shifter. All they knew was that he was big for his age, healthy, and smart as a whip. It wasn’t until he started preschool that the shifting had become a problem.
Theo had a hard time controlling his shift when he got excited playing with his friends. The first time he shifted at school, he’d almost given his preschool teacher a heart attack. That was the first daycare he’d been kicked out of. Ever since, Lily had tried to coach Theo on holding his bear in, but he’d had an accident more than once.
She was still at a loss every day as to how to raise a shifter child. She had to remind him daily not to show his incredible physical skills on the playground. She needed help. She’d come to Fate Mountain to be involved in the shifter community. Maybe if she dated a male shifter, he could help her with her son’s issues. Maybe he could help her not be so alone.
Biting her lip, Lily started the questionnaire that would match her up with the most appropriate shifters. Apparently, this site was supposed to be able to predict a shifter’s fated mate with an incredibly high accuracy. Lily wanted to find love, but she didn’t believe she would be any date’s fated mate. There was no way Theo’s father was coming back into her life.
3
Shane woke up on the floor of his cabin, not quite remembering how he had gotten there. Drew’s beer could definitely sneak up on a bear. Even with his shifter healing ability, Shane’s head still pounded like a mother fucker. He slid up into a sitting position and leaned his back against the couch. He hadn’t worn his chain to bed last night. It wasn’t good for him to be this close to humans without sleeping in it.
Light streamed through the windows and illuminated dust motes twirling in the air. Shane sat there and stared at them for a moment, blinking away last night’s overindulgence.
Shane hadn’t touched alcohol the entire time he’d lived in a cave in the woods. Stumbling to his feet, he trudged into the kitchen of his little cabin and made himself a pot of coffee.
He drank it black in gulp then filled the cup again, drinking that just as quickly. Feeling marginally more alive, Shane scrubbed his hand down his face and beard and walked back into the living room.
Shane grabbed his phone as he sat down. He checked it for messages from Levi or the crew. There was nothing from them.
There was a message from that infernal dating website, Mate.com. Shane flicked his finger over the notification, regretting that he had signed up in the first place.
He questioned his decision to come back to civilization every day. There was so much about life in town that disagreed with him. Shane didn’t resent Levi’s authority. But at the same time, Shane had always been his own bear. Now that he was back with his crew and working in the restaurant, Shane was being forced to be social.
He meant to cancel the message on his phone, but instead, he opened it. Cursing his lack of skill with smartphones, Shane tapped his finger on the message and it opened up. What he saw made him drop the phone. It crashed on the floor and the battery fell out. Shane cursed again, reaching for the ridiculous gadget and shoving the battery back in the compartment, not even sure he was putting it in right. He slid the cover on the back and then turned the phone on again.
Had he really seen who he’d thought he’d seen? Why the hell was Lily Mason on a dating website for human women looking for shifter males?
Apparently, not only had she signed up for Mate.com, Corey’s algorithm had matched her to Shane as a one hundred percent match—fated mates. As he read her profile, he became more enraged.
Lily worked at the diner in town. He rarely left the lodge and would never have gone into a crappy establishment like the Fate Mountain Diner. The food there was notoriously terrible.
Lily wasn’t just a single curvy lady looking for a shifter male. Lily was a single mother looking for a shifter father for her cub. What the fuck was going on here?
How did Lily have a shifter child? A five-year-old shifter child? He and Lily had made love exactly six years ago. Was this child his?
Hot rage built in his chest and bubbled up into his face. He roared angrily and threw the phone across the room. He tore through his clothes and shifted, smashing the door off the back off the cabin. He smashed into one of the pillars holding up the back porch. It snapped and fell, bringing part of the porch roof with it. Destructive rage shot through his veins. He wanted to hurt something. He wanted to taste blood.
He forced himself away from the cabin, from humans, and galloped toward the forest. His bear was rampaging out of control and Shane had to go along for the ride.
How could Lily have a shifter child? It was his?
Shane had to protect Lily at all costs. He had to stay away from her. Keep the wild beast from hurting her like he had so many other humans.
He smelled the sharp scent of pine and tore towards the smell of a spring that fed into Lake Fate. Shane barreled through the forest, growling and angry as hell. He bashed into trees and dug up small creatures, crushing their bones in his teeth.
If Shane was Lily’s child’s father, he had a cub out there in the world. Shane could never have a family. His past was a thorn he couldn’t get out.
The bear tore towards the spring, his claws sinking into the wet soil. He ran from the hum of electricity and the undercurrent of digital signals. He galloped along the hillside, roaring and marking trees with his giant claws.
Shane’s human mind was clouded by the wild instinct of his feral force. As much as the humanity within him reached for control, he couldn’t find it. The bear’s instincts were mashed up, smashed, and fractured. The drive to protect and the drive to claim his mate clashed in his heart.
The bear was a beast and the mate was a tender flower. The bear’s mind throttled Shane into darkness as it ran wild deep into the forest.
4
None of the shifter males that Lily had been matched with seemed interesting to her. There were even a few shifter males who lived in Fate Mountain. There was a wolf shifter, a cougar shifter, even a fox shifter who was interested. As cute as they all were, Lily was havin
g a hard time answering any of their messages. Maybe it had been a mistake to sign up for a shifter dating site. If she couldn’t bring herself to talk to any of these men, maybe she just wasn’t ready to date.
When she woke up the next morning, she busily prepared Theo and herself for the day. On the way out the door, she grabbed her things, throwing them all into her purse. She hurried Theo down the stairs and into the car, quickly driving down the road to school.
She stopped in front of Fate Mountain Elementary and helped Theo out of his booster seat. They walked together into the school, and she bent down to give her little guy a kiss on the cheek. He looked more like his father every day, and as much as she loved her darling son, every time she looked at him she was reminded of the man who she had once loved.
“Bye, baby,” she said to Theo before turning back out the front doors of the school.
She hurried to her car and drove to the diner where she quickly parked and sprinted inside. Theo had been giving her trouble all morning, and she’d been running five minutes late since breakfast. She ducked her head as she came through the side door of the diner, hoping that Mr. Buckman wouldn’t notice her arrival.
Unfortunately, he was standing right in front of the door to the kitchen. She needed to get past him to clock in. There was no way around it now. She was five minutes late.
She walked right up to him and said good morning in a pleasant voice before trying to step around him into the kitchen.
“You’re late again, Lily,” he sneered. “How many times have I warned you about tardiness?”
“I’ve been running late all morning. My son refused to eat his breakfast, and spilled milk all over the kitchen table. I’m really sorry. I’ll try my best to never let it happen again,” she said, not knowing what the hell else to say.
As unfair as he was being, Lily needed this job too much to rock the boat. He didn’t move out of the way and just crossed his arms in front of his barreled chest, looking at her with his narrow black eyes. That familiar stench wafted through the air.