Chapter 1

Shea finished wiping down the table in the Wild Animal Diner and breathed a sigh of relief. She was exhausted. It was only eleven o’clock at night, but it seemed over the last few weeks that her energy was draining more and more. All she wanted to do was go home, take a shower, and crawl into bed. But she knew it would still be a while before that was possible. She took the rag back to the cleaning area and left it with the other laundry that the manager and owner, Mike, would deal with. She went and retrieved her purse from the back room and waited for Joe, the cook, to join her.

Joe was a nice guy. He always made sure that when she left there was someone to walk her to her car or down the street to her house.

“You ready?” Joe asked as he walked toward the back door where Shea was standing.

“Yes. Thanks,” Shea replied, and Joe nodded his head. The badger shifter was a quiet man but kind. He was about five foot eight with black hair with white on the sides. He was stocky and somewhat muscular, and Shea thought that he was quite handsome. He had nice, light brown eyes, and he never raised his voice. She liked that about him. He didn’t intimidate her like many of the shifters in Wild.

Tonight Shea had walked to work, but by the chill in the air she knew that she would soon have to start driving again. Wild, Montana was a nice place to live, but she had to admit that it got downright cold sometimes. It was only September, but the first snow would most likely fall by the second week in October, and the cold would be right there, ready to take over the beautiful green that surrounded Wild.

They walked in silence until they reached the white picket gate to her home. Before going through the gate and into the house, Shea turned to Joe.

“Thank you for walking me,” Shea said in a quiet, kind voice.

“You are always welcome,” Joe said and met her eyes. He hesitated to say whatever he was thinking, so Shea prodded him on.

“Is there something else, Joe?” She waited for his response. He hesitated a moment longer, until saying what was on his mind.

“Yes. Shea, you know that if you ever need any help, I’m here for you, right?” His words didn’t surprise her. That was just the kind of man Joe was. She knew that he was aware of her situation, and that he was being nice, but she didn’t want to take advantage of the man, either. She smiled kindly at him.

“Thank you very much, Joe. I am very lucky to have you in my life.” She turned and walked through the gate and back into her life. She wouldn’t change anything, but there were times when it was very hard to know what to do.

The fact that Shea knew her mate would be coming for her soon didn’t calm her. Whenever she thought of him, her heartbeat quickened, and she got uncomfortably turned on. She also felt the fear of her past come up and try to strangle her, but she kept it at bay. It wasn’t as if it was her mate’s fault that he was so big, but she wasn’t sure she could handle him.

Shea said goodbye to her neighbor, Mrs. Carmichael, who had been watching over the most precious thing in her world and went upstairs. The house was not huge, but it suited her needs for now. She knew that in the next few years, she would either have to build on, which there was plenty of room for, or move into a larger place. The house had dark hardwood floors and charming molding that endeared it to Shea’s heart.

As she reached the top of the stairs, she turned left and stopped at the door at the end of the hall. She had perfected being quiet over the past three years with Hudson in the house, so she didn’t make a sound as she opened the door.

Shea smiled when she saw him sprawled out on his bed with his head hanging off one side and his feet the other. No matter how many times a night Shea put him back on the bed, he ended up sideways again. She still went over and put him on the bed properly, but didn’t bother to cover him up. He would throw the covers off in an instant, and his body needed the colder temperature. Shea wasn’t sure how his body was going to change in the next few months, and even over the next few years, but she thought that he was going to like and maybe need the cold more as his bear grew.

Shea thought of the fact that the mate she discovered three months before was a polar bear, and wondered what the future held. She was afraid of the size of her mate, but she wasn’t sure that she could deny him when he came back. She was going to need help with Hudson, especially because his bear was getting bigger and bigger, and Hudson didn’t seem to be able to control his shift as much.

Shea left Hudson’s door open and walked to the other end of the short hallway and past the stairs to her room. She immediately went into the bathroom and started the shower. As she showered, she let her thoughts drift back to the past.

Shea had been terrified when she had shown up at a hospital in the middle of Wyoming to see her sister. Her sister had been lying in a hospital bed, broken, bruised, and near death, when Shea had arrived. Anna had always been the most wonderful sister to her, and it pained her still to think of the brutal way she had died. Anna had pulled Shea to her and whispered her most precious secret in her ear. She had a son. He had been born a month before and was being hidden by a very nice older woman in rural Colorado.

Shea hadn’t known what to say until Anna had explained the rest. That shifters existed, and that Hudson’s father was one. Anna had thought she had met the man of her dreams when she had found Darius. It had turned out that the polar bear shifter had a big temper and was very possessive. When Anna had started to fear for her safety, she fled with her son still in her stomach.

Once Hudson had been born, Darius had been getting closer and closer to finding them, so Anna had led him away from their son. Anna was in a motel in Wyoming when Darius found her. He tortured her for the information on his son’s whereabouts, but Anna told him nothing. When she was so close to death that Darius couldn’t smell the lie on her, she told him that she had taken the child to Canada.

Darius left Anna for dead, and the hospital called Shea. Her sister begged her to take care of Hudson and told her where to go. Anna had told her that Wild, Montana was a shifter town where she would have help raising a shifter and would be protected. Shea had stayed next to Anna for the next hour after that, until her body gave out from all the trauma.

Shea had made her way to Colorado and picked up her nephew and gone straight to Wild. When she had arrived, she found a job at the diner and the house, and she settled in. Hudson had been so cute as a baby, with spikey white hair, and, instead of arctic blue eyes, he had her and her sister’s bright green eyes. When he shifted, his eyes turned a paler green, and he was the cutest ball of fur. The first time he shifted it had scared her. But she soon realized he was much tougher in bear form than human and that he still listened, so she didn’t worry that he might run off into the woods.

Shea put on pajamas and crawled into bed for a good night’s sleep. Her world was about Hudson, and now she had to consider what to do about the mate that had shown up and the energy-draining gift he had given her. She never saw the man that had followed her progress home or how he sat in the woods behind her house watching for most of the night.