When Wyatt arrived home, he noticed that the front door was left open. When he sniffed the air, his heart dropped. He could smell the scent of the men at Tim Lawson’s house.

“Candice,” he called, stepping into the house and drawing his gun. “Candice, honey, are you here?” He opened up his bear senses, but didn’t hear her. He stepped farther into the house.

The farther he ventured into the house, the stronger the scent of the killer became. There was evidence of a struggle in the living room. The coffee table had been pushed out of place, and magazines were spilled on the floor.

He opened his senses further and found traces of the footprint he’d seen at the campsite in a faint dusting of dirt across the floor. He growled inwardly and pressed the button on the walkie-talkie at his shoulder.

“Candice Gray has been kidnapped from my home,” he told Janis the dispatcher. “I suspect Tim Lawson.”

“Morris is out at Lawson’s house now. There’s no one there.”

Wyatt grumbled and let go of his walkie-talkie. He hurried out to his truck and drove quickly across town to where he’d parked the night before. He put his clothes on the front seat, shifted, and galloped through the woods.

For all the sheriff department’s advanced technology and techniques, they couldn’t beat Wyatt’s bear senses when it came to tracking someone through the woods.

When he arrived at Tim Lawson’s house, he saw Morris’s squad car parked out front. Tim’s scent was weak, as if he hadn’t been home for quite some time. Circling around the house under the cover of forest, he picked up a faint scent on a trail leading up into the woods. Perhaps Tim was hiding somewhere on his land. Wyatt followed the trail up the winding bluff.

As the son of a prominent store owner, Tim Lawson had the money to own quite a bit of land. He knew Tim from his exploits in town as a big game hunter. Wyatt had given Tim and his crew tickets more than once for hunting out of season and without licenses.

The last time he’d found him with a female black bear, he’d orphaned two cubs. Wyatt had almost arrested him that time. He growled, just thinking about it. He hated people who raped the land and animals like that. Men like Lawson were the reason he’d become a warden in the first place.

As he crested the ridge, he picked up the sharp scent of exhaust fumes. He stopped in his tracks and opened his senses. Tasting the air with his tongue, he could make out the sweetness of Candice’s scent. In the distance, he saw a small hunting cabin with a van parked outside.

Anger boiled inside him. His bear, barely under control, barreled down the hillside until he was right behind the cabin. He heard the faint sound of men speaking within. They had Candice. They meant to hurt her.

Without rational thought, without waiting to let the man in him second guess his instincts, Wyatt burst around the cabin and smashed down the door.

The two men inside were caught off guard. They both wielded weapons. One shot into the air as Wyatt batted him with his massive paw. The pistol went flying. The smell of the killers bit his nose as he roared, springing up on his hind legs.

Candice shivered and cried on a dusty old couch in the corner. His heart burst when he saw her. He fell to his feet and roared at the men. The one with the shot gun tried to aim, but Wyatt charged, and the gun fired into the ceiling.

He knocked him over and bit down on his neck, controlling himself just enough not to kill him. The first man had been knocked unconscious from a swipe to the face. Blood seeped into the roughhewn floor planks.

Wyatt turned to Candice, who was gasping through her nose and could barely breathe through the gag in her mouth. He shifted quickly, coming to stand naked and bloody before her. This was not how he wanted to introduce his bear to her.

He hurried to Candice and pulled the gag out of her mouth and untied her hands. She fell into his arms, sobbing. Wyatt held her shaking body. Worry filled his chest. Would she accept him now that she knew?

“It’s okay, baby, I’m here now,” he soothed. “Did they hurt you? Are you all right?”

“Oh, Wyatt,” she cried through shaky sobs. “Why are people so horrible?”

“Don’t worry about that now, sweetheart. As long as you are safe, that’s all that matters.”

Wyatt pulled the bigger man’s pants off and pulled them on over his nakedness. Morris arrived a few minutes later, finding a bloody, half-naked Wyatt and a terrified Candice beside two unconscious men.

“I heard the gunshot, called for backup, and came straight up here,” said Morris.

“These are the killers,” Wyatt said, pointing to the unconscious men as Sheriff Jefferies came into the room.

“What happened here?” Jefferies said. “They look like they’ve been attacked by a grizzly. And why isn’t that man wearing any pants?”

Wyatt looked them both in the face and then looked down at Candice. “Well, you see. I’m a shifter. A grizzly bear shifter. I hadn’t registered yet, but I’m coming out now. I’m proud of who I am. It helped me solve this case. I wouldn’t trade it.”

“I suspected all along,” Sheriff Jefferies said. “Most of the game wardens in Montana are bear shifters. Having a shifter on the force is an asset, not a liability.”

* * *

At home later, they sat in the relaxing bubbles of Wyatt’s big, soaker tub. He washed her back and held her close in the candlelight.

“You aren’t angry about me being a shifter?” he asked her between planting kisses on her neck.

“I wish you’d trusted me enough to tell me before. But I’m not angry. How could I be?”

“Most women wouldn’t be so understanding.”

“I’m not most women,” Candice said, turning to kiss Wyatt on the lips.

“No, you aren’t,” he said, smiling. He kissed her back and held her close to him. “There’s something else I have to tell you, Candice.”

“What is it?”

“You’re my fated mate.”

“What does that mean?” She threaded her fingers through his as bubbles dripped down their hands.

“It means that as soon as I met you, I knew you were the one for me. My one and only love.”

“Oh,” she said, breathlessly. “How could you tell?”

“Your scent, mostly. But everything about you. The fact that I can barely control myself when you’re around. And my bear made it pretty clear.”

“Does it talk to you?”

“Yes. In my mind. It gives me messages. Kind of like an intuition, but louder.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Whatever you want. You are the most important thing in my life. I’d do anything for you, Candice.”

“My vacation from work is almost over.” She looked back at him, her eyes big.

“Stay here. Marry me. You can paint to your heart’s content, and we can be together.”

“Wyatt, you want to marry me?”

“Of course I do. I want to be with you always. Start a family. Fill the house with cubs and grow old with you.”

“I don’t know what to say,” she said. Wyatt’s heart thudded. Did she not share his feelings? He’d been sure that she did.

“Say yes,” he said in a gravelly voice.

“Yes,” she said, turning around to face him. She leaned over his body and kissed him hard on the lips, wrapping her arms around his neck. Her slick breasts pressed against his chest, and he was instantly hard.