Page 2 of Wild Fated Mate
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?”
2
Serena
I couldn’t believe I’d agreed to this. A whole twenty-four hours tied to a stranger. And before I got to that part, I had to stand on stage with the other participants.
It was bad enough the way people stared at me while I was just living my life. Big, blonde, dumb. That’s what most people saw.
