Backup Bear's Fated Mate

By K. R. Max

Myra - I’ve been on my own for a long time. No friends. No family. It’s safer that way, not just for me but for everyone around me. All I want is a few days in the woods, away from the city, to calm this tearing need I feel for nature, for space. But then I see him, the most dangerous man I’ve ever met, and for the first time in my life, I want more.

Soga - As second to the alpha, the Haven Bear clan is my life. I’m loyal, hardworking, my clan responsibilities my sole purpose. It’s always been enough, until now. Until her. But how can I get her to admit the heat, the pull between us, when I can’t even get her to admit what she really is?

I know she’d rather I just walk away, leave her be, but I can’t. And beyond the knowledge that she’s important to me, that she may now be the most important thing to me, is another instinct whispering... that we’re not alone in these woods...

K. R. Max brings you dominant alpha males, sweet, strong women, and lots of very hot and dirty shenanigans. No cheating or cliffhangers and a guaranteed happy ever after, all in a short, intense read which is sure to raise your body temperature. If this sounds like your happy place, scroll up now and click that button! Then lock the door and grab a glass of wine (or ice water)! It's about to get hot in here!

All Haven Bear Shifters books are standalones and can be read in any order, but you may get more out of each story if you read them in the order of publication, due to previous characters sometimes being mentioned in later books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SkyTint
• Release date: Jan 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005557836

Book preview

Backup Bear’s Fated Mate

(Haven Bear Shifters #4)

by

K. R. Max

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

http://krmaxromance.com

Cover design by KR Max.

Author's Note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Backup Bear’s Fated Mate

Myra

The street outside my apartment building feels dark and cold and soulless. I take a deep breath, let it out. Sometimes it helps me relax, calms the wild feeling inside me, sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, like today, I know what I have to do.

I sigh. It’s only been a couple of weeks since I last left the city to go camping, but it already feels like forever. The gaps are getting smaller and I don’t know why. That wild feeling is getting worse. I’m jumpy and on edge, constantly needing to move, to run, to feel the air, smell green things.

I’m a freelancer, picking up transcription work online. I’m good and I’m fast, which means I can make good money. The upside is that I can work anywhere, as long as I have internet.

The downside is that campsites in the middle of the forest don’t have internet. Another downside is that when I’m out there, I’m not interested in working anyway. I figured out a while back that taking the break doesn’t work if I make myself sit in my tent, hammering away at a keyboard while wearing headphones. If I go out to the woods, I have to be in the woods.

The worst downside is that there’s no paid vacation time for freelancers. The more time I take off to recharge my open air loving batteries, the less I earn, and the trips away are really starting to impact on my earnings.

There’s nothing for it, though. Instead of turning left and heading for the park, which was my plan when I came out here, I turn right and head for the grocery store. My credit card lives in my pocket. My metabolism is insanely fast and another lesson I learned early on was that a hangry me is positively dangerous.

The buildings loom over me, hard and threatening, like the men who hang around in groups on the sidewalk, and I bite back a snarl. Another downside: when I reach the point of really needing to get away, my temper hangs by a thread. The slightest provocation is enough to set me off, and in an area where most people carry guns, it’s not a good survival tactic.

That said, as I stride along the sidewalk, no one meets my eye, and the group of gangbangers in front of the next building parts like the Red Sea to let me pass. It’s embarrassing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad not to get hassled, and I’m pretty sure I’m why most people are a lot safer on this street than any other, especially women. All it took was one time, one time when the wild feeling inside of me was rising and twisting and feeling increasingly desperate. I’d only just moved here. No one knew me. I had no friends. I knew I needed my own space, but I hadn’t known how much, not then.

It took thirty seconds, from start to finish. One guy stepping up to me, trying to show his friends what a big man he was, thinking that because I’m short and on the larger side, I’d be easy to push around.

Thirty seconds.

Took a hell of a lot longer than that to get the blood stains out of my clothes.

No one’s bothered me since, not in the two years I’ve been here. The downside, and there’s always a downside, is that everyone’s scared of me. Not just the gangbangers, but the girls who work the street, the kids who play here, the parents walking their children home from school. No one looks me in the eye. No one talks to me.

I’ve never felt so alone.

Space is one thing, but I’ve got no one.

The grocery store is small, but has everything I need. I throw stuff into a cart. Meat, vegetables, healthy snacks. I need to eat right to stave off the anger, the desperation. Junk food doesn’t keep me going nearly as long as proper food, so I always cook proper meals, even when I’m out in the woods. It’s not hard. I have a cute little portable two burner gas stove and a couple little pots that do the job, and damn well.

My skin prickles just as an amazing smell hits my nostrils. I look up, look around. Where is that coming from, and what the hell is it? It’s not like I want to eat it, but I’ve never smelled anything like it. Wood smoke, and fresh earth, and woodland air after a rainstorm. I scan the inside of the store, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary here. And then I look further away, to the sidewalk outside, and through the open doorway, I see him.

Here’s the thing: I’ve never reacted to a guy. Just never been interested. They always seem weak to me, insipid. Even the ones all the other girls were fawning over in high school never appealed to me, and the so-called bad boys just made me want to laugh. I’ve never encountered a man I was even mildly attracted to, let alone wanted to get up close and personal with.

Which is why I’m astonished to feel liquid heat sliding inside me, pooling in my belly, and lower. Wet warmth gathers between my thighs, and my nipples harden to aching points.

He’s not polished, this guy. But he sure as hell ain’t weak, either. He’s tall, a lot taller than me, and built like a rhino, but a rhino that works out a lot. His face is straight lines and sharp angles, and his body is hard slabs of muscle under a worn t-shirt and jeans. His eyes glitter with intent and a smile curves his lips.

He’s looking right at me.

Something roars to life inside me, something I’ve felt before, many times, but never like this. The wild feeling, I call it, an animal that lives inside me