Wild Fated Mate (Wild Mountain Mates #3)

Chapter 1

Gavin

“Uncle Gavin, pleeease?”

“No.”

“It’s for a good cause!” The little manipulators batted their big eyes at me.

“Not doing it,” I growled back and glared at my nieces.

The 3 Bears Bakery sign flapped in the cool mountain breeze, the sun barely breaking over the large fields that held the festival. It was too early for this shit.

They didn’t know what they were asking. I’d rather be in a pile of burning brush with a fire raging around me and not even my claws to dig a firebreak than get on stage for some crazy charity stunt.

“Mom was supposed to do it, but when we reminded her, Jed made that growly noise and fanged out.” Carrigan rolled her eyes. “It’s just pretend. No one thinks the handfasting event is for real.”

My sister’s new husband obviously did. I grunted. A bear shifter and a half-wolf shifter wasn’t a common pairing, but Olivia and Jed were mated, in every sense of the word.

Even without participating in every town event, I knew about the handfasting thing. I pictured my massive, rough hand tied to smooth skin, a feminine palm in mine. Mine.

Ours, my bear grumbled in agreement, sending an image of the woman we wanted as our mate to the forefront of my mind. I ignored him. My bear didn’t understand we couldn't force a true mating.

I’d screwed it up with the only woman I wanted—needed.

Convincing her to give me a second chance meant she’d have to talk to me first. I could seduce her, mark her, make her mine.

I knew she was attracted to me. I noted her desire when we met.

But if she didn’t choose it for herself, both of us would be miserable.

Mating was for life. Shifters and people might fall in and out of love, but a true mating bond, one aided by fate, was special.

A shifter’s mark tethered them together on a whole different level.

Rarely were fated mates pulled together, only to have one or more parties in the pairing abandon a goddess gifted mating bond.

Olivia and I had been the unfortunate front row witnesses to one such fucking disaster.

I would never do that to anyone else.

The tantalizing idea of a mate vanished. I turned away from my nieces’ pleading gazes, their whispers and plans reaching my ears as I pulled large loaves of crusty bread from the warming bin.

“I can hear you.”

“We know,” Carrigan said. “We don’t know why you won’t help us win.”

“Find someone else.” I put the loaves in the display basket and crossed my arms.

“That doesn’t look like the way Mom does it.”

“Then she should be here to do it herself.”

Carissa burst into giggles. “She’s busy.”

“They’re all over each other all the time at home, do they have to do it here, too?” Carrigan made a face. “Like, get a room.”

“They did,” Carissa pointed out. “Don’t go to the camper right now.”

“Ewww.”

“Ugh, I think I grossed myself out,” admitted Carissa. “But she’s happy, sooo…”

That life wasn’t meant for an asshole like me, but after everything they’d been through, Olivia and my nieces deserved their happy family.

The girls started up again. “It’s for a good cause—”

“I’ll give you the money,” I cut them off. I could donate enough to cover what the twins would make if I actually participated. A timely investment in a local business made me a wealthy man. Not that I had any need of the money. It couldn’t give me the one thing I truly wanted.

Needed.

Her. My mate. With honey-gold hair I would wrap in my fist, spread across my pillow—

“No way,” Carissa said. “It’s not the same.”

She had a thing for romance, that didn’t make her less cutthroat than her twin. Both girls were extremely competitive.

“The couple that stays tied together the longest wins the most money for the charity they represent. Roaring Rangers has never won before,” Carissa explained.

“Why can’t you just sell cookies like everyone else?”

“Because of this,” Carrigan said as she tapped on the display table with perfect, curved claws.

“It’s hard enough to control the shift in school sometimes. Can you imagine us on a camping trip?”

“Huh,” I grunted. She had a point. “Good control. Put them away.” Displays like that were dangerous.

I glanced around, but my eyes couldn’t see anything my nose wouldn’t have already told me. We were the only ones around.

Some shifter communities were more strict than others, their laws about exposure based in truth and experience of what humans did to anyone they considered “other.” Some shifters wanted it all out in the open, arguing that technology had guaranteed that it was only a matter of time before we were exposed, and our best bet was to control how that happened.

Wild Mountain had a mix of human and shifter populations, landing somewhere in the middle, but exposure to the wrong person meant death for the human witness. And sometimes for the shifter.

I didn’t give a shit when it came to myself. My nieces were another story.

The bread display set, I pulled out the boxes and bags used to wrap the loaves and assorted baked goods for sale. Everything lined up, exactly where it needed to be to accomplish every task.

Carrigan and Carissa looked at the table, at each other, then back at the display.

“If you don’t like my display, you do it,” I growled. I wasn’t tying myself to some stranger, no matter how much these two begged. I did my job, I helped my sister, I lived my life. I didn’t get involved.

They didn’t know what they were asking. I wasn’t that kind of man.

This whole stunt was rooted in some old fashioned tradition. Now it was just a way to raise money. It didn’t mean anything—and I still wasn’t doing it.

“What if we told you who you’d be tied to?” Carissa’s expression was sly.

“You’re not supposed to tell who signed up until the pairing!” Carrigan glared at her twin.

“Mr. Jenson, Danny from the feed store, Jackson—”

“He doesn’t care about the boys, dummy.”

“He would if he knew they all wanted to be paired with Miss Grant.”

The air inside my lungs superheated, my jaw cracked as my fangs descended and my bear tried to rip through my chest.

Mine! Serena Grant was ours. We would destroy anyone who looked at her, thought about touching those perfect curves, dared to—

“So, Uncle Gavin, does this mean you’ll do it?”