Several years ago, he’d hauled a large aluminum tub up the mountain for that purpose. It made a good tub for the few times a year when he took a warm bath.
He’d had a warm bath a few months ago and wasn’t due for another until winter. The rest of the time he jumped in a cold stream and rinsed the dirt and grime from his hair and skin. That was enough for him. His clean living took care of the rest.
There were definitely advantages to living in the woods, away from humans. One of them was only bathing when he felt like it. The other was not having to have stupid conversations.
In the last year, Cyrus could count on one hand how many times he’d spoken to another person. Most of those times had been when he went down the mountain to work with his brother Jessie.
Jessie sold Cyrus’s wares on the internet, which helped Cyrus buy the few supplies he needed to keep going on the mountain. New knives, needles, books, flint. Sometimes he bought things like rice or seeds to plant food he could grow in the short growing season at this elevation on Fate Mountain.
Cyrus’s garden was winding down now. He’d harvested his garlic and onions. There were a few squashes still holding on as the weather turned from summer to autumn.
He’d have to go down the mountain again soon for his winter supplies. Something he never looked forward to. As he washed his dishes and put them away, he thought of the dating site he’d signed up for last year. Maybe he’d finally find someone. That perfect someone.
He’d bring her back to the mountain, and they’d live together in his cabin, fulfilling his mission as a solitary bear who’d rejected society. A lot of women wouldn’t understand why he’d done it. But his fated mate would get it. He just knew she would.
After the war, Cyrus had been done with the world. He simply didn’t want to participate anymore. The war had taken something from him that he’d never be able to get back. He’d seen things he couldn’t unsee, and no matter what the human government said about the heroics of shifters, he knew it was all a lie.
The Great Shifter Council never should have outed his kind to humans. Knowing that superhuman creatures lived among them had only created a rift that never existed before. After that, humans rejected and harassed shifters for decades.
Then the Great War happened and the humans decided that shifters, with their superior strength, senses, and agility should be used to fight a war that wasn’t even their own.
He had gone to war. He’d fought alongside humans and shifters alike. The shifters had even played an important role in bringing the war to a diplomatic end. But that hadn’t kept the shifter world from being fractured forever.
Cyrus had seen the rift between shifters happening a long time ago. Right after the war, the men who’d fought had fallen into two camps: those who believed in the war, and those who resented it.
Cyrus was uncommon in that he fell right at the center. He could see both sides too clearly, it made it impossible for him to remain in the middle of that mess a moment longer.
As soon as he’d arrived home and found his father spiraling downward into his gambling addiction, his brother Leland had left for the ranch for Texas. Buck had just kept going like nothing happened. And Jessie dealt with it all in his usual carefree fashion. Cyrus couldn’t stick around. He couldn’t save them. He could only save himself.
Now, his father had died recently and Leland was the Alpha of the Kincaid clan. He’d assumed for a long time that it would come to that. Cyrus for one was happy he’d missed all the drama of Leland coming home and taking the title of Alpha from Buck.
His oldest brother had visited him looking for answers about their dad. Cyrus had done his best to help, but he didn’t have a lot to offer. From what Cyrus understood now, the ranch was in good shape due to Leland and his mate Sylvia’s hard work.
The brothers were all doing their part to keep the Timber Bear Ranch in the family and prospering on Fate Mountain. Jessie had informed him of the recent influx of hyenas in town. Cyrus wasn’t at all surprised.
The hyena packs had been the most vocal about their distrust of the humans after the war. Cyrus couldn’t blame them, but he didn’t trust a hyena as far as he could throw one. Even as a grizzly, that wasn’t all that far.
Chapter 2
“You are just the cutest little sweetie, aren’t you? Aren’t you?” Daisy Danes cooed at her Yorkshire Terrier Fifi.
The tiny dog panted and yipped affectionately from Daisy’s pink comforter. Daisy finished putting on her pink lip gloss and sat on the bed next to Fifi.
“I don’t know what to do, Fifi,” Daisy confided. “My stepdad wants me to meet some hyena shifter. He says I’m supposed to marry this guy. But aren’t shifters supposed to have fated mates? I don’t think I’m his fated mate. I certainly don’t want to marry a man I’ve never met before.”
Fifi didn’t respond, but hopped on Daisy’s lap and bounced to her chest to try to lick her face. Daisy giggled and snuggled her little dog.
“You’re right, Fifi, everything will be all right as long as we’re together.”
She picked up her cellphone with the glittery pink case and tabbed over to her social media page, checking for status updates from her friends.
As she read her friends’ feeds, she saw an advertisement for the shifter dating website everyone was talking about: Mate.com. The picture on the ad was of the hottest guy she’d seen in a long time. The men her stepfather employed certainly weren’t built like this. Tall, broad shouldered and slim at the waist. He had a feral gleam in his eye that Daisy wanted to understand.
She clicked on the ad, feeling bored with her life and everyone in it. Talk of her marrying a hyena shifter had her agitated. She needed adventure. Romance. And the secret hidden inside that shifter’s bright eyes.
The site opened on her phone and she proceeded to sign up. She answered the strange questions and then uploaded her information to create a profile. Daisy took several long moments to choose her profile name. After long consideration, she chose the name Flower Princess and clicked enter.
The website worked on finding her matches, the loading icon whirling on her phone’s screen. Her heart raced and she took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. She hadn’t expected it to affect her so much. Daisy hadn’t been looking for love. Not really. At nineteen years old, she was just starting out in life.
She wanted to go to school to be an interior designer, even though her stepdad didn’t want her to go to college. He was all about working in the family business. But Daisy had no interest in following in her stepfather’s footsteps.
He was a bad guy. She knew he loved her somewhere deep down, but at the end of the day, she knew she was really just a pawn in his game, like everyone else in his life. Even her mother had been little more to him, before she’d died.
Daisy knew her stepfather’s business didn’t involve anything good. But that didn’t mean she had a choice to get out of it. But maybe, if she had a big, strong bear to protect her, she could. Finally, the matches loaded on her screen and she had to scroll to the bottom to find the highest percentage match. A 100% match was supposed to be a fated mate. She scrolled passed a very sexy 85% and an even hotter 96% match.
Her mouth was starting to water at the sight of these hot shifter men. Then she saw him. Her 100% match. Her mouth dropped open and she felt faint. She put her hand on Fifi for support. Her match’s profile name was Mountain Bear.
He had a wild mass of hair swirling around his shoulders and a long dark beard. The look in his eyes was beyond primal. She wasn’t even sure if she was looking at man or beast. Her breath caught in her throat.
“Looking for a mate to go buck wild with.”
Her heart raced and sweat trickled down her brow. She fanned herself, looking him up and down. In the picture, he was wearing all raw leather, his chest exposed under a vest.
She stood up and started pacing her room, her body on fire. How was she supposed to get along with this guy? He could eat her in one bite. She??
?d never even been camping; how could she take him to the club with her friends? How could they possibly be fated mates?
Fated mates was a thing for shifters, not humans. Unless of course the human was matched with a shifter. Then, the human felt just as fated. Sometimes, human ladies got ahead of themselves with the primal passion they experienced with their mates. Daisy had heard the stories.
Ever since the end of the war when she was a young teen, human girls had been all about the shifters. Daisy hadn’t thought about it that much. Not that she wasn’t interested in boys. She just knew her stepdad would kill anyone she got involved with.
Like, literally kill. Daisy sighed. Mountain Bear looked like he could take on just about any of her stepdad’s thugs. If only. There was a sharp knock at her door and her stepfather entered without waiting to be invited.
“Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” she asked, closing the Mate.com app on her phone.
“To meet your new husband,” her stepfather said.
He was a big man in all ways. Her stepdad was over six feet tall and had a round beer belly he tried to conceal under tailored black suits. It only made him more imposing.
“I told you, Rubio, I don’t want to get married. Especially to a shifter I’ve never even met.”
“It doesn’t matter if you’ve never met. You will be his mate. That’s their thing.”
“I’m not his fated mate,” she blurted out.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“I just do,” she said, rolling her eyes and trying to play dumb.
She didn’t want him to know about Mountain Bear. Her true mate. She sighed, just thinking about his feral eyes and hot body. A thrill went down her spine. Mountain Bear was her secret.
“I don’t have time for any sass from you, Daisy. It’s time for you to be useful for once.”
“I’ve been trying to go to college for two years. You know I want to be an interior designer. If you just let me go to school or get a job, I’d be out of your hair in no time.”
“You are much more useful to me in binding ourselves to the Updike clan, than with whatever minuscule income you’d ever be capable of earning as an interior designer.”
“Thanks Rubio,” she said, crossing her arms and tossing her long blonde curls over her shoulder.
She pursed her lips and stared at him. He’d never exactly forced her to do anything before. And she had to admit to herself, it was a lot easier to stay home and do what her stepdad wanted than to go out and get a crappy job at a fast food restaurant to pay for a room in someone’s boarding house.
“Your time has come, Daisy,” he said authoritatively. She could tell he was trying to play the wise parent, but he was falling very short. “Now get your things packed. We’re doing the trade off in a few hours.”
“Trade off?”
“You are valuable, Daisy. Today you can prove it to me. Don’t you want to be of value to your family?”
“Yeah, sure. Can’t wait…”
She wanted him to leave her room so she could figure out a way to escape. Her stepdad had let her do pretty much whatever she wanted, except get a higher education or date, for most of her life. If that meant shopping and clubbing with friends, he left her alone. This was the first time he’d tried to make her do something she didn’t want to.
And she definitely didn’t want to do it. If she knew anything about her stepdad, it was that he got what he wanted, and he didn’t mess around. If she defied him, her fate would not look good. That much was certain. Exactly what he’d be willing to do to his own stepdaughter was another question.
“Pack. You have fifteen minutes,” he said before leaving the room.
“This is bad, Fifi,” she said, picking up her Yorkie. “I don’t know what to do.”
Fifi licked her face and wiggled in her arms. Daisy put her down and walked to the window, looking outside. She was on the second floor of her stepfather’s suburban mansion. There was a big maple tree outside with long thick branches. One branch was not too far from the window.
Daisy Danes contemplated jumping out of her window and scaling down the maple tree into the front yard to make her heroic escape. She then looked down at her shoes.
The three-inch Louboutins would have to go. Then there was the question of whether or not she could even make it to the branch, which she doubted. As much as she hated the idea of marrying a stranger, she liked the idea of falling to her death even less.
Her door swung open behind her and she turned with a gasp. Her stepfather stood in her doorway, gripping the knob.
“You’re going to have to change into something more practical for the weather on the mountain,” he said, looking her up and down.
Daisy looked at her pink Prada suit and then back at her stepdad.
“What’s wrong with my outfit?”
“Nothing, for brunch in the city.”
“But I like this outfit,” she said, looking at herself and posing in the mirror.
“Suit yourself, just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Fine,” she grumbled, putting Fifi down. “I’ll change.”
“Good,” her stepfather said, closing the door.
She groaned and trudged to her closet. What to wear to a mountain? She flipped through her clothing, not happy with anything she found. Finally, she chose a pair of dark-wash blue jeans, a thick cashmere sweater and knee high boots.
She looked at herself again and decided it was an okay look to meet her future not-husband in. There was no way in hell she’d marry this hyena shifter her stepdad was intent on giving her to. But she didn’t know what else she could do at this point besides go through the motions with her stepdad.
You can’t force someone to take vows, can you? This was the twenty-first century in a free country. They couldn’t get away with it. She’d never let them. In the meantime, she decided to pack her things.
“I’m not sure what’s going to happen to us, Fifi,” she said to her dog as she put her into the pink carrier that looked like a designer handbag.
“Are you ready yet?” her stepfather said, stepping into her room again.
“Yes. I guess. I only had time to pack one bag. What about the rest of my things?”
“I’ll have it all delivered. The trade-off is happening today, no matter what. Get yourself together. We’re leaving.”
Daisy followed her stepdad out of her bedroom and down the whitewashed walls of their home. They walked down the ornate staircase and through the front foyer to the door. The Escalade was waiting in the driveway, and the driver took her bag as soon as she approached. She held tight to Fifi’s bag as she climbed into the SUV. Fear flooded her chest and sank into her stomach. She gulped as her stepdad’s driver started the car.
“Where are we going?” she asked, clutching Fifi’s bag to her chest.
“The airport,” her stepfather said. “You’re taking a ride.”
Chapter 3
The driver weaved through traffic and made it to the airport as the sun rose to its midday height. When they stopped, Daisy couldn’t get out of the car. Her body had locked up from fear. Her stepdad gripped her arm and pulled her from the Escalade. A helicopter sat in the distance, the blades slicing through the air.
“Rubio, do I really have to do this?” she pleaded.
“I’m in the middle of a negotiation with the hyena packs. You are not going to mess this up for me, Daisy.”
“But this isn’t fair.”
“Let’s go,” he said tugging her along.
She had an iron grip on Fifi’s dog carrier as her stepdad pulled her over the tarmac to the waiting helicopter. He pushed her inside, getting in after her. The driver got in with her bag and her stepdad gave an instruction to the pilot.
It was all so loud she couldn’t hear what was happening. She had no idea what her stepdad meant about the trade-off he kept talking about. There was no way she was going to marry this hyena guy her stepdad wanted to sell he
r off to. They could put her on a helicopter, but they couldn’t make her say ‘I do.’ Daisy slumped in her seat and crossed her arms. Fifi whined in her bag, and Daisy tried to comfort her.
“We’re going to be okay, Fifi,” Daisy whispered.
The helicopter lifted from the ground, and Daisy watched the ground falling below them. Soon they were sailing over the buildings of her city and flying toward Fate Mountain. She could see the peaks in the distance. Her heart sank.
“Where are we going exactly?” she asked her stepdad.
He and the driver sat across from her, not taking notice of her until now.
“The trade-off point is on the top of Fate Mountain.”
“What are you trading me for?” she asked.
“A ton of crystal, if you must know. This will seal a pact between us and the hyenas. You’d best behave yourself.”
She glared at him and rolled her eyes. She couldn’t believe this was happening. Yesterday she’d been unpacking her last shopping haul and now she was on this helicopter, flying to a mountain to be shoved into an arranged marriage.
Nothing in her life had prepared her for this day. She knew her stepdad was a bad guy, but she’d never expected him to turn on her like this. It hurt more than she wanted to admit to herself. At least she had Fifi.
The helicopter flew over the farmland between the city and Fate Mountain, growing closer to their destination with each passing second. Daisy gulped, seeing the mountain approaching in the distance.
“Dad, can’t we talk this through?” she asked, trying to appeal to his sense of loyalty to her as a parent.
“I’m afraid not, Daisy. Now be a good girl and keep your mouth shut.”
She bared her teeth and looked back out the window. All she could do was sit and wait and hope that her future fiancé was more reasonable than her stepdad. He couldn’t possibly want to marry her against her will.
The helicopter started up the rise toward the peak of Fate Mountain. Daisy’s heart thumped in her chest and jumped to her throat when she saw the other helicopter parked on a landing just below the snow line.