The only thing that was missing for him now was a mate. He had been longing for someone to fill the empty void in his heart for a long time. It seemed that the longer he waited, the more hopeless he felt.
So many of the shifters he knew on Fate Mountain had already been matched up with their fated mates on Corey Bright’s dating site Mate.com. Rollo had been signed up since the very first beta site went live. All those women and all those shifters who had been matched up already, and he still hadn’t found the one. She had to be out there somewhere, Rollo kept telling himself. It was the only way for him to not completely lose all hope.
The news show went to commercial and Rollo picked his phone up from the coffee table in front of him, thinking about his case. Rollo wanted to know how someone could break into in an 18th-century secret compartment that had securely held valuables for the last three hundred years. There had to be some kind of trick to it.
He searched the internet, trying to come up with information. But he came up empty-handed. Since Damien already had too much work on his plate, he couldn’t pass off the research to his Tech Bear. If Rollo couldn’t find the information on the internet, the next best thing would be to ask an expert.
There was one furniture expert on Fate Mountain, and that was Angus Grant. Rollo knew Angus well because they had worked together on Search and Rescue missions in the past. Rollo and his crew had even helped Angus find his mate when she had been kidnapped and taken into the forest. If anyone on Fate Mountain could give him any further information on how to break into a secret compartment in a Louis the Fifteenth chest, it would be Angus.
He considered texting Angus, but decided it was too late at night. He would just have to call him in the morning from the station. Rollo turned off his phone and was setting it on the end table when he heard it ping. Thinking he’d just received a text from his crew, he picked up the phone and turn on the screen.
What he saw there startled him so much he almost dropped the phone on the dark wood floor below his feet. Fumbling with the device, he looked at the screen again. He’d received a message from Mate.com.
“Congratulations! We’ve found your fated mate.”
His heart started to pound and his limbs felt numb. Rollo was a man who was used to being in control of himself and leading other men. He was not accustomed to becoming so overwhelmed or disoriented by anything, be it enemy fire or drunk and disorderly citizens. But getting a text that his fated mate had been located completely threw him off. He had been waiting so long that the news hit him hard, and he had trouble breathing for several moments.
When he pulled himself together, he flicked on the screen and followed the app to his mate’s profile. Her name was Zoe Bright.
Zoe Bright? It couldn’t be Corey Bright’s sister. Could it?
Rollo read further. Zoe Bright was a female jaguar shifter. Her mother was a grizzly and her father was a jaguar. She had one brother, a grizzly shifter named Corey Bright. The inventor of Mate.com.
He knew it. Zoe was Corey’s brother. He had known, through the multiple channels of gossip, that Corey Bright’s sister had come to participate in the first class of the Bright Institute for Shifters. He hadn’t thought anything of it. And why would he? She was just the kid sister of one of his colleagues.
Looking at her picture, Rollo realized that Zoe was anything but a kid. She had flashing green eyes and a mane of long black hair that hung down around her shoulders and accentuated her voluptuous curves. Her pouty, full lips were tinted red and she wore a form-fitting jaguar print dress that brought out the golden undertones in her tanned skin.
His bear reared up on its back legs inside his mind. Roaring at the top of its lungs. Rollo couldn’t remember the last time his bear had exhibited so strong a reaction to anything, even Rollo’s own physical danger. He squeezed his eyes closed, trying to block out the intrusive noises his grizzly was making.
When he opened his eyes again, the picture of Zoe in that jaguar print dress was imprinted on his eyeballs. He saw her even when he blinked. Not only was his bear huffing and puffing, Rollo’s own human body was beginning to react to the sight of his mate.
It wasn’t like Rollo hadn’t seen the beautiful women before or had them in his bed. But the sight of Zoe in that skintight dress, with her wide hips and round breasts made him strain against his dark jeans.
He continued to read her profile. She had come to Fate Mountain to study carpentry at the Bright Institute for Shifters. Before that, she had traveled extensively. She’d been to over sixty-five countries in the last seven years and she was only twenty-five years old. The spark in her eyes told Rollo that Zoe was a force to be reckoned with, and everything in him wanted to reckon with it.
With shaking fingers, he pressed the “message now” button on her profile and the texting app came up on his screen.