Raven knew her mother had been here when she disappeared. After hacking into the police database, she knew for sure what her gut had told her was true. There was mention of her mother deep in a file of old police reports from twenty years ago.
Raven was determined to get to the bottom of it. She didn’t know why her mother was on Fate Mountain or what had happened to her, but she at least had a starting point.
With her coffee cup in hand, she wandered back into her small studio apartment. It wasn’t that Raven was exactly poor. Growing up in foster care hadn’t really helped her into adulthood, but she’d managed to learn coding early on, and with her ingenuity, she’d become one of the best programmers in Portland by the time she was nineteen.
Having completely skipped over college, she became a freelancer almost right away. The freelance hacking and Internet security systems administration and analysis paid well, even when you didn’t like coming into the office to meet people in person. Most techies and coders had quirky personalities, and that meant that Raven fit in just fine.
She sat down in front of her computer. The screen had gone dark, and she could see her reflection looking back at her. Her light-cocoa skin was gray on the computer screen, and her tightly braided locks looked as if they could use a touchup. She’d applied the thick lines of black makeup around her eyes that helped protect her from the world when she did manage to leave the house.
She jiggled her mouse and read over the information she’d been able to hack from the Fate Mountain Police Department databases. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to get into the random-probability generator invented by Fate Mountain’s own Corey Bright of the Bright Institute for Shifters.
That was what she really needed. It was software that allowed you to input information and access a random-probability of the outcome. She knew so little about her mother. There were few records of the woman who had given birth to Raven all those years ago. But ever since her mom had left, Raven had been on a mission to find her. Her very last memory of the woman she called Mom was her smiling face and her big, brown, tear-filled eyes as she’d hugged Raven good-bye one last time.
“I will always come back for you,” her mom had said.
Raven had believed her then, and she still believed her now. No matter what anyone said, no matter what anyone told her—the social workers or her foster parents or the asshole boyfriends she’d dated later in life—Raven would never believe that her mother had just left her.
That was one of the greatest foundations of her entire personality. Everyone wanted to make Raven believe that she had been abandoned. That her quest to find her mom was paranoia, but Raven knew deep in her heart that her mom loved her, and that her final promise to her five-year-old daughter had been true.
Raven believed her mom intended to come back. So if she hadn’t come back, there was a reason. Raven was going to find out what it was. Unfortunately, for Raven, her very best friend online in Dragon Lands, Tech Bear Paladin, the guy she’d played video games with for the last seven years, was suddenly asking her to join an online dating website for shifters and human women!
What was she supposed to do now? Tell her friend to go screw himself? Usually, her elf rogue would do just that. But she had to admit to herself that she was incredibly curious about who Tech Bear Paladin was in real life. Maybe, just maybe, they were meant to be with each other.
Raven knew she had feelings for Tech Bear Paladin, and she couldn’t deny them. Most people knew that online-gaming relationships were not real and led to nothing but heartache when people met in real life, but they had known each other for such a long time. They had been through the opening of the Gates of Salazan. They’d beaten the dungeon of Mordon. They’d crossed the fiery bridges of Beelzar.
Of all the people in the world that Raven knew online, and off, Tech Bear Paladin was someone she knew she could always depend on. It wasn’t just because his avatar was a smoking-hot paladin with shining gold-plate armor and the sword of Enot and the shield of Evermore. There was something else.
There was something about their banter and the way they related to each other. She’d heard his voice over chat many times during raids, and he had also heard hers. He knew she was a woman. He knew what she sounded like, and she knew what he sounded like as well. His voice was deep and raspy and sent a shiver up her spine every time she heard him call for the archers to pull the next round of mobs.
She read over the lines of information she’d found that could be about her mother. It was a short mention of a woman who’d gone missing twenty years ago that matched her mother’s description. Her mom really had been on Fate Mountain, and now she had something to go on.
She’d come to live here a few months ago, going off nothing but her gut feeling. Now she knew her gut had been correct. As excited as she should be about finding a clue about her mother’s disappearance, all she could do was think about Tech Bear Paladin.
She imagined his avatar wrapping his arms around her avatar, his handsome human face leaning in to claim her full elven lips in a passionate kiss. Raven growled and pushed herself away from her desk.
He wanted her to join Mate.com, but how could she do that now? She was so close to finding out what happened to her mother. How could she let someone in when she was in the middle of such a mess?
She had no idea who she was. In the search for her mother, she was trying to come to terms with her past. She didn’t have time to get involved with her friend from Dragon Lands.
She stood, pulled on her fluffy black coat with the fur trim, grabbed her messenger bag with her laptop, and hurried out the front door. Raven lived in a small apartment near the highway that ran through Fate Mountain Village.
She’d been living here three months but still barely knew anyone. She hadn’t come to Fate Mountain to make friends. She’d come to Fate Mountain to find her mother. The fact was that Raven spent most of her time holed up in her tiny apartment. Today, she couldn’t just stay at home. She was too full of anxiety and questions about her mom to stay at home.
She hurried down the street, deciding not to drive but instead to walk the three blocks to Fate Mountain Diner for lunch. She stepped inside and was immediately greeted with the smell of bacon and homemade fries. She nodded at Lily, her favorite waitress, and took a seat at the bar facing the kitchen.
Raven turned her porcelain cup over. Lily walked behind the bar and filled her cup with coffee.
“How are things, hon?” asked Lily, a pretty blond woman in her midthirties.
Since Raven had moved to Fate Mountain and kept mostly to herself, Lily was one of the few people that she talked to. Although she had a feeling that Lily wasn’t exactly a person so much as a shifter, since she was married to the greatest chef on Fate Mountain, Shane Keenan. Raven was pretty sure that Lily had been changed at some point. She did have a bear-paw tattoo on her hand, and every once in a while, Raven saw the primal light of a bear shining through Lily’s blue eyes.
“I’m in a mood today,” Raven said, pulling her laptop out of her messenger bag and putting it on the bar in front of her.
Lily brought a pitcher of cream over to Raven and set it next to her as Raven clicked on her laptop and brought up her latest work project.
“What’s the matter?” Lily asked.
“Boy trouble,” Raven said.
“Boy trouble?” Lily asked, shocked. “I’ve never heard you say anything about boys before.”
“I know. That’s why it’s trouble.”
Lily placed a menu beside Raven’s laptop and leaned in toward her, ready to hear some gossip.
“So who is this boy?” Lily asked.
“I don’t really know him in person,” Raven said. “I’ve only ever met him online in the video game we both play. But we’ve been playing together for seven years, so it’s kind of like we do know each other. The truth is, he’s kind of one of my best friends. But now he wants me to join Mate-dot-com.”
“Mate-dot-com?” Lily as
ked. “He’s a shifter?”
“He must be. Otherwise, why would he ask me to join Mate-dot-com? It’s only for male shifters and human women.”
“There are some shifter females on Mate-dot-com. That’s how Zoe and Rollo met.”
“Who are Zoe and Rollo?” Raven asked.
“Rollo is the chief of police, and Zoe is his wife.”
“Oh,” Raven said, bristling at the words “chief of police.”
That was all she needed, to get mixed up with the police department when she was trying to hack into their servers.
“What can I get you for lunch?” Lily asked, probably noticing that Raven was becoming more and more uncomfortable as the conversation went on.
“I’ll have the usual, a Fate Mountain burger and fries with a huckleberry milkshake.”
“Coming right up,” Lily said.
Lily took her order and slid it through the window to the cook on the other side. Her husband, the world-famous chef, Shane Keenan, was not in the diner today. Raven knew from talking to Lily that Shane also worked at the lodge as the supervising chef in the five-star restaurant there.
Shane and Lily owned the diner, but Shane still managed the kitchen over at the lodge. He cooked his upscale food there and saved the gourmet diner fare for the people of town. Raven had to admit, Fate Mountain Diner had some of the best diner food she’d ever eaten in her entire life. And she happened to be partial to burgers and fries.
She continued working on her freelance project, but her curiosity wouldn’t leave her alone. After Lily had brought her lunch and set it beside her computer, Raven took a few bites of her burger, licked her fingers, and then clicked over to Mate.com.
With an exasperated sigh, she began filling out the profile. The entire time, she just kept telling herself how ridiculous it was for her to sign up for an online dating website when she was in the middle of hacking into the police department computers to find her missing mother. But she couldn’t help it.
The sound of Tech Bear Paladin’s voice called out to her over space and time, and she couldn’t stop. If she was matched with Tech Bear Paladin, she wasn’t quite sure what she would do, but the prospect of knowing who he was, and seeing what he looked like in real life, was too enticing to ignore. After she had finally completed answering the crazy questions, uploaded a photo, and vaguely filled out her profile, she hit Enter.
Sitting back in her chair, she sucked huckleberry milkshake through a straw and waited for the program to load. Mate.com had been invented by Corey Bright, a local who was part of the Rescue Bears crew. He was also the billionaire philanthropist behind the Bright Institute for Shifters, which had done quite a bit for the shifters and humans of Fate Mountain. Raven had read several newspaper articles about how it had made a positive impact on the town.
The humans of Fate Mountain were having a hard time adjusting to all of the new shifters who had come to settle there after the Great War. From what she’d read, there was a bit of a culture shock happening. But when the Brights opened the institute to humans, the human population of Fate Mountain had become more welcoming to their new shifter neighbors.
Raven also knew that there were still problems in the relationships between shifters and humans on Fate Mountain. It didn’t take a genius to see it.
She personally had never had anything against shifters. She’d grown up in a time after the Great Shifter Council had announced the existence of shifters to the world. She had been a foster kid, going from home to home, and never feeling as if she were part of anything, so in a lot of ways, she related to the struggles of the shifters.
Her mate matches came up on the screen almost immediately, and she absentmindedly scrolled through the pictures of super-attractive shapeshifter males. Until she came to the bottom, where there was a big one hundred percent match in big yellow letters staring at her from the screen.
Raven’s eyes almost bugged out of her head when she saw that username and the picture on the profile of her one hundred percent match. The guy’s name was Tech Bear, and he was absolutely freaking gorgeous. He had shaggy dark hair, blue eyes behind his dark-framed glasses, and a super-sweet smile that made her weak in the knees. Her heart melted. It had to be Tech Bear Paladin. There was no way it could be a coincidence. He really was her fated mate.
Raven’s heart started slamming in her chest. With shaky fingers, she clicked on the profile and began reading about the man who was supposed to be perfect for her. She got through one line of the profile before she slammed her laptop computer shut. She unplugged her cable from the outlet under the bar and started shoving everything back into her messenger bag.
“What’s wrong?” Lily said. “Wasn’t your Fate Mountain burger good today?”
“It’s fine,” Raven said hurriedly. “I just got some bad news. I have to leave.”
Raven threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table and headed for the door.
“What about your change?” Lily called behind her.
Raven shoved her way out the front door of Fate Mountain Diner, the cold air of the mountain nipping at her cheeks as she strode down the sidewalk toward her building. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening.
Her fated mate. Her best friend. Her Tech Bear Paladin worked for the Fate Mountain Police Department.
Chapter 3
Damien felt his phone ping in his back pocket as he made his way out of the police station to his car. He lifted the phone and flicked his thumb over the screen to wake it up. What he saw there almost made him choke on the hot dog he was eating. He started to cough and fumbled around before he was able to get his mind straight again.
She had done it. Raven had really done it. She’d signed up for Mate.com, and now they’d been matched! His heart pounded in his chest as he read the notification text from Mate.com.
“Congratulations! We found your fated mate.”
Damien’s shaking fingers clicked on the link, opening up her profile. He knew it had to be her. She’d used the same profile name as in-game, but that wasn’t what was most shocking.
What really got him was how absolutely gorgeous this girl was. She seemed to be in her early twenties, with long black hair worn in tight black braids that ran down her back. Her eyes were lined with black makeup, giving her an overall gothic look that went along with her all-black outfit and sarcastic smile.
His heart was beating so fast, it was making all of the blood run away from his fingertips, leaving them numb as he tried to navigate to her profile. He read it over slowly when he finally got the page open. She was a computer programmer, working as a freelancer out of her home.
That was the hottest thing Damien had read in a long time. Not only was she gorgeous and clearly feisty, but she was also a techie like him. All these years playing Dragon Lands with Raven, he’d never known she worked in the same industry as he did.
Fate really did have a way of bringing the right people together. And it wasn’t just the website either. They’d been friends for seven years. They’d shared so much with each other, but Raven had never told him that she worked as a programmer. He didn’t even know where she lived. But when he read her location on her profile, he dropped his hot dog in the garbage can as he passed.
He sat down on a bench outside of the police department in the cold, crisp autumn air. His breath puffed out in front of him as he read the words over and over again. Location: Fate Mountain.
She lived in Fate Mountain, just like him. That meant they could meet at any time! Why hadn’t he met her yet? Fate Mountain Village was a small town, and he hadn’t seen any girls like her around. He couldn’t resist the temptation to text her. She was his best friend and his fated mate—he needed to meet her, now… yesterday.
Almost all of the other guys on the Bear Patrol had found their own happily ever after. He was one of the only ones left without his mate.
And there she was, his beautiful, brilliant Raven. He clicked on the message now button and brought up the text pad. br />
“You little rogue. You live on Fate Mountain. I need to see you. Now. How about dinner tonight?”
He pressed Send. As soon as he did, he regretted it. He’d been very demanding, and knowing Raven, that might or might not go over very well with her. But she was his fated mate, so in the end, he knew that it would.
He knew Raven. He knew what she was like. He knew she would respond. She had to. They were meant to be together, and now that he knew that the rogue elf whom he’d been playing video games with for the last seven years really was the woman of his dreams, he was sure that things would work out for them. He was just going to be himself, and that was that. No second-guessing. No questioning himself.
He sat there on the frosty bench, waiting for her reply. And waiting. And waiting.
After fifteen minutes and no response, he heaved a heavy sigh, puffing a billow of hot air into the cold afternoon. He stood from the bench and started toward his car, feeling dejected. Maybe he should have been a little gentler? Maybe he should have been a little more forward?
He never quite knew with that elf rogue. Raven was a tricky one, just like her avatar. That was what he loved about her so much. Every time he talked to her, he got a tingle in his boxers that he never got with any other person he played video games with. The sound of her voice over voice chat always made him think of long warm nights under the full moon, kissing deeply and wetly and passionately.
He’d imagined it more than a few times. Wondering what she looked like. Wondering where she lived. He had never imagined she was as unbelievably hot as she was in real life. Her elf avatar was tall and slim, but in real life, Raven was petite and curvy, with a goth attitude and heavy eye makeup.
Jesus, he loved that kind of woman. He trudged to his car, feeling like an idiot. Had he missed his chance to be with the woman of his dreams? He couldn’t think that way. Maybe she was just busy. He got into his car and turned the key in the ignition.