What happens when the bear's fated mate is a forbidden human who wanders into his woods during the full moon festivities while the shifters of Fortune Falls hunt and play? Karter is the oldest son of the Barrington clan still living in Fortune Falls, which makes him the de facto Alpha of the mixed-species pack roaming the north-west territory of Montana. With two older brothers who left home to deploy with the military, he's left to care for an ailing father, an unmated sister who has never shifted, and three hell-raising triplets who have aged him beyond his years. No wonder he's such a grumpy bear! Add in money problems as well as the local wolf pack testing him for Alpha rights, and he doesn't have time to think, much less find his mate. But when he scents a pretty human in his home—his bear goes wild. What's a shifter supposed to do when the Fates have paired him with a woman the pack deems forbidden? Fortune Falls is a small town of telepathic shifters intent on keeping the encroaching human population out of their territory to protect their secrets. But the Fates have other plans, presenting them forbidden humans as their mates and disrupting the harmony of their close-knit community