Cadet Bear (Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (Bear Patrol Book 3) Read online

  Cadet Bear

  Bear Patrol

  Scarlett Grove

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  About the Author

  Also by Scarlett Grove

  Copyright © 2016 by Scarlett Grove

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Join Scarlett Grove’s Newsletter For New Release Notifications.

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  1

  Rosa Reyes pulled off the highway into the parking lot of Fate Mountain Diner. She’d been driving all day and was ready to take a break from the road.

  Slamming the door shut behind her, she got out of the car and made her way into the entrance of the diner. She could smell the aroma of hamburgers on the grill and bacon frying. She took a deep breath and let it out, ready to relax for the first time in days.

  “Just one today?” the waitress asked as she approached. The pretty blonde woman wore a nametag that said Lily.

  “Just me today,” said Rosa.

  “Right this way.” Lily picked up a menu and led Rosa down the aisle of the diner. Rosa slid into the booth as Lily set the menu down.

  “Thanks,” Rosa said, giving Lily a wary smile.

  “I'll let you take a look at the menu and be back with you in a moment,” Lily said, turning away from Rosa's table.

  Rosa looked at the menu, trying to decide what to have for dinner. Lily returned several moments later with an order pad in her hand.

  “I'll have the Fate Mountain Burger with fries and a coke,” Rosa said, handing Lily back the menu.

  “Coming right up.”

  As Rosa watched Lily walk toward the kitchen with her order, she pulled out her phone and began to do some research on Fate Mountain. She'd been following the trail of the kidnappings for two weeks, ever since her sister had been taken in Los Angeles. The trail had led her to Fate Mountain. She knew that she was closing in on them. It was just a matter of time.

  Her sister Maria was only fifteen years old and had disappeared on the way home from school two weeks ago. Rosa had been Maria’s guardian ever since their parents had died on a trip to Mexico five years ago. Now save for each other, both girls were alone in the world.

  When Rosa had gone to the police about Maria's disappearance, no one would listen to her. They put out the missing person APB but that was as far as the investigation had gone. A missing Hispanic girl from East Los Angeles was clearly not their top priority. So Rosa had taken it into her own hands to investigate the matter.

  After talking with several other families of girls who’d gone missing around the same time, Rosa had come to the conclusion that her sister had been kidnapped by some kind of human trafficking ring.

  Rosa had followed the kidnappings all the way up the coast to Portland. Then the reports had stopped three days ago. Rosa had spent those three days in Portland waiting for the next clue, but it never came.

  While getting ready to leave her hotel room that afternoon, Rosa’s intuition made her believe that Maria had been moved east into the Oregon Mountains. It was her gut instinct, but it was all that she had to go on. She’d left Portland and traveled straight to Fate Mountain Village. Since she was the only one that was going to help her sister, she was determined to bring Maria home no matter what.

  Lily arrived several minutes later with a plate filled with french fries and a delicious looking burger. Rosa plucked a french fry from her plate and shoved it into her mouth, savoring the flavor from her first food of the day.

  Rosa continued eating her burger while staring out the window onto the main street of Fate Mountain Village. The pink sunset colors glowed over the quaint street in the small town. It was a charming place, the kind of town where you’d want to raise a family. It was so unlike where she had grown up.

  She noticed a discarded newspaper on the table next to her and stood up, claiming it for herself. She brought the paper over to her own table and sat back down, opening up the front page. As she was reading through the articles, she noticed an advertisement for an online dating service.

  She raised an eyebrow, reading the advertisement. It was for a locally ran website called Mate.com and catered to male shifters and human females. She’d heard of the website before.

  It was hard not to know all the latest shifter news and gossip since shifters had become so intriguing to the human population. Twenty-five years ago, the Great Shifter Council had decided to reveal the existence of shifters to humans.

  After their reveal, shifters had experienced a violent backlash from humans. But then shifters fought in the Great War alongside humans, and the government had passed the Shifter Equality Act. Since then, things had started to change for the better.

  You couldn't go a day without seeing a news reports or women's magazine article talking about the hot shifter heroes who had helped bring an end to the war. Her curiosity was peaked, but Rosa continued reading the rest of the newspaper, trying to put the shifter dating website out of her mind.

  She didn't have time for dating right now. She was on a mission to find her little sister and that was all she could afford to think about.

  Lily came back to her table with the bill and cleared Rosa’s plate.

  “How was everything?” Lily asked.

  “The hamburger was delicious. What’s in your barbecue sauce?” Rose asked.

  “It’s Fate Mountain’s Secret Sauce. My mate, Shane Keenan, is the diner’s head chef as well as the mastermind behind the secret sauce.”

  “He’s your mate?” Rosa asked.

  “Shane is a bear shifter. And since we’re mated now, that means I’m also a bear shifter.”

  “You used to be a human and now you’re a shifter?” Rosa asked, intrigued.

  “That's right,” Lily said.

  “How do you like being a shifter?”

  “It's been amazing. It’s brought me and my mate so much closer.”

  Rosa pulled out a credit card and handed it to Lily. She had taken a two-week vacation from her job as an administrative assistant and would soon be running low on funds if she wasn't careful.

  She still needed to pay for another hotel room tonight or sleep in her car. And she definitely didn't want to do that again. Last time she had slept in her car, she’d had to park on the side of the road and sleep in the back seat. She’d woken up the next morning with a splitting headache, a kink in her neck and freezing.

  Something told her that the kidnappers were close though. She would need all of her strength when she finally found and confronted them. She didn't really have much of a plan aside from tracking them down. She didn't even know for sure if they were anywhere near here. She could be on a wild goose chase for all she knew. But having some hope was better than nothing, and Rosa was determined to do anything it took to find her sister.

  Lily returned with her credit card and handed it to Rosa.

  “So what brings you to town?” Lily
asked.

  “I'm looking for my sister,” Rosa said, not wanting to get into it.

  “Your sister? What does she look like? I may have seen her around.”

  “She looks a lot like me except she’s only fifteen and her hair is longer and darker.”

  “I don't remember seeing any teenage girls like that recently,” Lily said tapping her lip. “Was she with an adult?”

  “I'm sure she was. But I doubt she came in here.”

  Rosa slid out of the booth and started for the door.

  “Let me know if I can help you with anything,” Lily said.

  “Thanks,” Rosa replied, even though she knew there was nothing that Lily could do.

  Rosa walked out the front door of the diner and got into her car. She gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white and she rested her forehead against the wheel. It was difficult not to feel hopeless in the face of such horrible odds. She took a deep breath, sat up straight, and let it out again. She had to stay cool. Maria was counting on her.

  Rosa turned on her car and pulled out of the parking lot. She drove down the road until she came to the first hotel she could find. She booked her room, and then went upstairs with her small bag.

  Inside her hotel room, she sat on the queen-size bed and stared at the black screen of the television. Loneliness rained down on her shoulders, making her burden even heavier. She groaned and pulled her phone from her purse.

  Rosa was tired of TV but she needed something to keep her mind off her heavy burden—even if just for a few minutes. She navigated to Mate.com and downloaded the app. Moments later, she was filling out the Mate.com questionnaire.

  The questions were strange, but Rosa answered them all and hit return. Within seconds, she had matches. Apparently a hundred percent match meant that you had found your fated mate.

  Everyone knew that fated mates were an important part of shifter culture. She scrolled through the faces on the screen and found the one hundred percent match at the top. Partly out of curiosity and partly because of shear boredom, she clicked on his picture. It brought up a full-screen view of a deliciously attractive young man in a police uniform.

  His masculine face and broad shoulders made her reconsider whether or not she should take this seriously. He had shining green eyes and a kind smile that made her believe he was a good man.

  She read his profile and learned that he had just graduated from the Bright Institute for Shifters and had taken a positon with the Fate Mountain Police Department. That meant he lived here in town. Her heart felt like it would burst and anxiety coursed through her veins.

  Rosa groaned and turned off her screen. She didn't have time for this right now. She had to find her sister and nothing else mattered. It couldn’t. She stood and rubbed her face, deciding to take a shower. Grabbing some things from her bag, she decided she would delete her profile and information from Mate.com as soon as she was done.

  She trudged into the bathroom and turned on the shower, peeling off her clothes. She sighed in contentment as she stepped under the warm stream and washed off the dust and dirt that had accumulated from traveling. She was so wound up that she doubted she would sleep tonight.

  Finishing up her shower, she stepped out and wrapped herself in a big fluffy towel. She took a look at herself through the steam fogging up the mirror. There were bags under her big brown eyes and her golden brown skin was paler than usual. She pursed her lips and turned away from the mirror. Her appearance didn't matter right now. Nothing mattered until she found Maria.

  After she got dressed, she picked up her phone and flicked across the screen. To her complete surprise, there was a new message from Mate.com.

  2

  Heath Reynolds took a sip of his coffee as he stopped at a red light on the highway that ran through Fate Mountain Village. He’d been on the police force for over a year, but the Bear Patrol still called him Cadet Bear. It was an affectionate title he’d come to appreciate. It meant the guys accepted him as part of their crew, even though he hadn’t served in the same regiment with them in the Great War.

  The light turned green and Heath continued down the street. Things had been quiet in Fate Mountain since the Bear Patrol had taken down the crystal meth labs in the mountains. The humans who’d been using the drugs were getting the treatment they needed. Now, there wasn’t a lot of action. A fact Heath didn’t mind. It meant that he and the Bear Patrol were doing their job.

  He was proud to be a part of the Bear Patrol. He had wanted to be a police officer since before he’d been drafted into the war. Now, he was living his dream. Heath was a man who wanted nothing more than to serve and protect his community. It gave him a strong sense of purpose and added meaning to his life.

  As he came to the edge of town, he took a right turn into a residential neighborhood and slowly drove under the dim street lamps along the road. There wasn’t anything going on out here either, so he turned around in the cul-de-sac and headed back across the highway.

  He patrolled around the apartment buildings near the road and then pulled into the parking lot of the diner. It was time for some fresh coffee and a chat with whoever was on shift tonight.

  Heath went into the diner and sat at the bar, facing the window into the kitchen. Neither Shane nor Lily Keenan were working this late.

  Shane Keenan was on the Rescue Bear Crew—the Fate Mountain Search and Rescue Team. The Keenans were both bear shifters like Heath, and they were all part of the larger Fate Mountain Bear Clan. The Bear Patrol worked closely with the Rescue Bears, in fact they were all like one big happy family.

  Heath thought about the last time the whole gang had gotten together for a barbecue at Fate Mountain Lodge. It was right after Detective Gauge had found his mate Lola at the drug camp. He had saved her from her evil stepbrother and brought her home. Through a twist of fate, Gauge had found his mate through Mate.com right before he infiltrated the drug camp.

  Heath had been a member of Mate.com for over a year, ever since he’d come to town to be a student at the Bright Institute for Shifters. He had studied hard to finish his high school degree.

  Because Heath had had to drop out of school to take care of his dying mother, he hadn’t been able to get his diploma before the war. When the shifters had been drafted into the war, the government hadn’t cared that Heath didn’t have his high school diploma. He’d been shipped off to war anyway.

  Luckily for him, Corey Bright and his wife, Willow, had started the Bright Institute for Shifters for people like him. The Fate Mountain Police Department had accepted him onto the force right after graduation and his preliminary law enforcement training.

  In all of that time, he still hadn’t found a mate. Since graduating from the Institute and joining the force, he had used his shifter military bonus to buy himself a house and a car. He had everything that he needed to start a family. The only thing that was missing unfortunately, was the right woman. She just hadn’t come along yet.

  Thinking about Mate.com, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and began to navigate through the screens. That’s when Maggie, the night waitress, walked out from the kitchen and around the bar to stand in front of him.

  “I didn’t hear you come in, Heath,” Maggie said. “I’m sorry I took so long. What can I get for you?”

  “I’ll start with some coffee and a piece of apple pie.”

  She turned, pulling the coffee pot out of the machine, and poured the coffee into his porcelain cup. Heath took a sip of his coffee and continued navigating through his phone. Not seeing any matches, he set the phone back down on the counter. Maggie handed him his piece of apple pie and squirted whipped cream on top.

  “Still haven’t found your fated mate, huh?” Maggie asked.

  “Not yet.”

  He had come into the diner almost every night since starting this shift and had come to know Maggie pretty well. She was a pretty, curvy, brunette human woman who was married to a human mechanic at Fate Mountain Auto. Maggie knew ab
out his search for a mate and was always rooting for him.

  “Just keep believing, hon. She’ll turn up eventually. Right when you least expect it.”

  He cut into his apple pie with the side of his fork and shoved a bite in his mouth. He loved his job and crew, but without his mate he felt like something was missing from his life. He took another long swig of coffee and Maggie filled it up again on her way down the bar.

  When he was done with his pie, and was pushing away from the bar, he heard his phone buzz on the counter. He picked it up, thinking it was a text message from Commander Morris, his police chief, or from one of the other guys on the Bear Patrol. To his surprise, it was a message from Mate.com.

  “Congratulations! We found your fated mate.”

  “Maggie! I found her.”

  “Really?” Maggie said excitedly.

  She walked over to where Heath was sitting and leaned across the counter to look at his phone as he clicked on his mate’s profile. Her name was Rosa Reyes. She had big brown eyes and flowing brown hair that waved around her narrow shoulders. She had a beautiful, curvaceous body that sang to him through the screen of his phone. She was absolutely stunning. He quickly read her profile and found out that she was an administrative assistant from Los Angeles.

  “Well? Who is she?” Maggie asked.

  “Her name is Rosa. And she’s from Los Angeles.”

  He’s shoulders slumped. His mate was in LA. He loved his crew and he couldn’t imagine leaving them now. Rosa was all the way down in Southern California while he was in Northern Oregon. He turned the screen of his phone and showed Rosa’s profile picture to Maggie.

  “She’s really pretty,” Maggie said sincerely. “You’re lucky.”

  “How are we supposed to be together when we’re so far apart?” he mused.

  “I don’t know, hon. All I know is that with fated mates, these things usually work themselves out. Especially here on Fate Mountain. As a matter of fact, Lily told me that she met a strange girl who looked a lot like your Rosa, earlier today. She was looking for her sister.”