“Fine,” Cash said, pulling out of the parking space.
He was angry at his brother. But he also knew that Cal was right. The website would inform them when it found their mates. There was no use and checking all the time. But now that Cash wanted a mate, he couldn’t help himself. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to check every five minutes, even if he knew it was pointless.
Cash pulled onto the road. “How do you feel about not having found a mate yet?” he asked Cal as they drove through the last stoplight heading out of town.
“I don’t know,” Cal said in an uncharacteristic moment of thoughtfulness. “Sometimes I feel kind of sad.”
“You?” Cash asked.
“Yeah. Sometimes I feel lonely, all right?”
“I had no idea,” Cash teased.
“If you act like that, then I won’t tell you about this stuff anymore.”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I never thought I would want a mate.”
”Neither did I,” Cal said. “It kinda came up on me all of a sudden.”
“I know what you mean. I didn’t expect it. It just sort of happened.”
“I only joined Mate.com to appease Austin and Heath. But now, every time I log in and still haven’t been matched, I admit, it hurts.”
They parked in front of the new intern house and carried the groceries inside. Cal popped the cap on the six-pack he’d bought at the store, and the two of them drank their beers while they finished up the chores at the house. They put all the laundry baskets into the bathrooms, stocked the toilet paper rolls, and made all the beds. By the time they were done, Cash was feeling more like a hotel maid than a rancher. But at least the work was done. Their brother Heath wouldn’t be getting on their case for not having done their duty on the ranch.
Cash didn’t want to get on Heath’s bad side as far as work and duty were concerned. Gunner had learned that one the hard way. But now that their younger brother was taking some college courses and getting off the ranch once in a while, Heath had gotten off Cash’s back. And Gunner was showing up to work when he was supposed to.
2
River Radcliffe looked in the rearview mirror at Boo, who was sleeping peacefully on the dog bed between her suitcases and bags. She smiled, feeling the sense of love and connection she always felt for her dog.
She had hundreds of miles to go before she reached her destination in Colorado. Her grandparents hadn’t wanted her to make the journey, but River knew it was time. She needed to move on with her life. She’d been healing long enough. Now that she’d found what she really wanted, she couldn’t stay safe in her grandparents’ house anymore.
She had to find her own way in the world, no matter what Grandma and Grandpa thought about it. She loved her grandparents fiercely. They’d been there for her when she was alone in the world, and she had no idea how she would have gotten through without them. Their love and support had been everything. The fact that she had to move on didn’t mean her gratitude had ended. It only made the feeling stronger.
She watched the landscape fly by outside her window as she reflected on her life. It had been hard when she first came out of the hyena compound after the government raid. She’d been terrified. Life inside the hyena cabal was all she’d ever known.
River’s smart, beautiful mother had been one of the first women to be kidnapped. She’d been a young fox shifter from Northern California abducted while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. She’d given birth to River while captive but had died of mysterious causes when River was ten years old.
At the age of twenty-two, River had been out of the compound for four years. Transitioning into life with her mother’s parents had been hard. She hadn’t known them. She’d had no loyalty or connection to them.
She’d loved her mother fiercely and missed her every day since she’d died. Her father, the head of the hyena compound in southern Florida, was a different story. Her father had been a powerful member of the cabal. He kept her close and hadn’t forced her to mate and produce children for the organization. Not yet, anyway. So she’d suffered far less than many others—a small consolation but one she was grateful for every day.
River drove on through the day and into the night, trying to focus on the future and what she hoped the next day would bring. Ever since she’d moved in with her grandparents, she’d been in various forms of recovery. At one point, her therapist suggested she get a dog. She’d gotten Boo as a puppy, and that had been one of the greatest decisions of her life.
The border collie was whip smart and ready to be trained. They’d started with simple tricks and quickly moved on to herding geese in the backyard of her grandparents’ Idaho property. Once they’d mastered that, River was ready for a bigger challenge. She learned how to herd sheep at a neighbor’s ranch. Boo had won several competitions at the local and county levels. But the more that River learned about ranching, the more she realized that shepherding was her life. She needed to learn about more than herding sheep at county fairs—she needed to learn how to raise them.
She’d gone looking for someone who could teach her and found the internship at Wilde Ranch in Colorado. The ranch was run by a family of wolf shifters who had been practicing regenerative agriculture for over a decade, a concept that River had tons of respect for. After her time with the hyenas and their quest to take over the world for various purposes, she found it refreshing to see shifters doing good.
She was thrilled when Austin Wilde had accepted her for the internship program. Her grandparents were less than thrilled. They were shifters themselves and knew that not all shifters were bad, but it was still hard for them to let go of their granddaughter. They wanted to protect her from the evils of the world.
River had understood why they didn’t want her to leave, but she knew she had to go. She had to find her own way, even if it was scary and hard. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life hiding in Idaho because of her past. She’d had years of therapy of every kind and had found her purpose. It was time to go out and see what she was made of.
As day turned to night and the sun set over the mountains, River found a place to stay and carried her suitcase into the hotel room with Boo at her heels. She was glad to find a comfortable place that accepted dogs. Boo was a working dog but not a service animal. Even though he’d helped River through the toughest parts of her life, she’d never wanted to call her working dog an emotional support animal.
She laid her suitcase on the rack, and Boo climbed onto his bed. River filled his water bowl, set it on the floor, and fed him his evening meal. Once he was settled, she looked for somewhere that would deliver food. She finally found a local place that was still open and ordered a large supreme pizza. She’d been driving all day without stopping and was more than ready to eat. After the pizza arrived, River sat down at the table and dug into her food. She turned on the TV as Boo curled into her bed in the corner.
She was shoving a thick slice of supreme pizza into her mouth and flipping through the channels when a commercial for Mate.com came on the TV. River knew about Mate.com. Every shifter knew what that was.
The commercial promised the love of a lifetime to all who joined. Her heart thumped at the idea of finding that special someone. Her grandparents didn’t want her to join Mate.com. She understood why. She was only twenty-two, and she’d been through a lot. Adding a mate to the mix at this point in her life maybe wasn’t the best idea. But as she watched the men and women on the screen gazing into each other’s eyes, she couldn’t help but feel like she was missing out on something essential in life.