Chapter Five

I had to hold the banister to keep my balance as I made my way down the stairs to the kitchen. The bold, nutty flavor of freshly brewed coffee started the wake-up process and drew me to finish the deal.

"Morning," I grumbled, walking into the kitchen. We'd kept the cooking area minimal, opting for clean lines and a Scandinavian design for the cabinets. Edward preferred the counters to have nothing on them, so we'd had an entire pantry built next to the kitchen—almost the same square footage.

"In here," he called from the pantry where we kept the appliances others would have usually kept on the counter, including the espresso machine. "I'm assuming you need a double shot after last night."

"Last night?" I chuckled and leaned against the doorway. "How in the world do you remember last night?"

"Don't you?"

I shrugged. "Blips."

I sipped espresso while grabbing things from the fridge. Edward and I had taken some private cooking lessons on the off chance we found a mate and wanted to impress her, but now we cooked for each other, taking turns in the kitchen.

Even while traveling the world, we would always opt for a home-cooked meal instead of a restaurant—even the best ones in the world.

Okay, maybe not all of them.

I whipped the eggs with milk. It would take a good amount of fat and protein to fend off this woozy feeling, and French toast would be perfect. With the French toast on the built-in griddle on the island where Edward sat, he picked up his phone after it pinged. Nothing new.

But after putting in the passcode, he turned paler than I'd ever seen him. He said nothing. He would tell me when he was ready.

I turned the breakfast out onto two plates, divided evenly, and went back into the pantry to get the creamed honey.

My bear approved.

"Ansel," Edward said, looking up from his phone. His tone was way off.

"What?" I asked, buttering and honeying my French toast. My stomach rumbled at the aroma.

"We have a match."

"Yeah. By the fireplace in the living room." I rolled my eyes. Clearly his espresso wasn't cutting it.

"Not matches, Ansel. A match. On the app."

I took a large bite and groaned as the richness of the toppings perfected the egg-dipped bread. "What app?"

He passed me his phone. "The app we signed up for last night. The mating app."

Flashes of the night before came back to me. I'd moaned and groaned about wanting and needing a mate. We'd signed up for an app to find one.

At least, that's what I thought we did.

"What am I looking at?"

"A notification of a match. The app found us a potential mate."

I swallowed against the rock now in my throat. My heart beat so loudly that it overpowered the landscaping team and their machines working right outside. "Who is it?" I asked, handing him the phone back with a shaky grip.

"Come sit next to me. We'll click on it together. Besides, you've gone green at the gills. I'm afraid you might pass out."

I sat next to him, bringing my coffee for emotional support. "Let's see."

Edward pressed the button on his phone, and a little envelope popped up on the screen. It congratulated us with some animated fanfare, congratulating us on our first match. "Who is it?"

We clicked on the profile, and I nearly choked on my breath. The woman's shiny blonde hair fell in waves over her shoulders. Gold flecks sparkled in her blue eyes, making my chest constrict.

The female was gorgeous by all standards. My bear roared inside me.

He wanted her.

"It's her." I struggled to maintain some sense of mental stability. After all these years. All the countries and continents. The one we'd been waiting for. Had she been on this app all along? No, she was too young for that. Could someone else have been matched with her? My bear growled at that idea, and not in a happy way. "What's her name?"

"Monroe. She's a barista. Loves to read, and she has a cat. No education listed. Only her preferences. She's human."

"Human?" More than ever, shifters and humans mating had become more common. We didn't have to hide in the shadows like some species. But I'd always been told only shifters had fated mates. If she was our fated mate, did that mean we were hers and the common wisdom not wise at all?

"Yes. She's open to a polyamorous relationship. Listed shifters as a potential interest as a match. Probably how she even got on the app. It's supposed to be for shifters and other paras…or I thought so anyway." He scrubbed his hand over his face. "She's a lot younger than us."

"So?" I asked, not willing to let anything barricade us from our mate. She was of legal age, certainly. "The app wouldn't have matched us if she had expressed a preference for a certain age, right? Can we look?"

Unfamiliar with the app, we scrolled and clicked on various things in Monroe's profile until we landed on her specifics.

"Holy shit," I mumbled.

Edward cursed under his breath. "You're seeing that too? She prefers older men."

I chuckled. "Well, that's us. What else?"

We went over everything and realized that after all these years, Fate had smiled on us. In our youth, our mate hadn't even been born yet. That said a lot about our age, but it seemed Monroe didn't mind.

"What do we do now?" I asked, eager to make a connection before someone else did even though we were the only match under her profile. How could an app know about fateds?

"We can send her a message. Accept the match and see if she does the same."

I blew out a breath. I'd perched on the edge of cliffs. Climbed mountains. Looked down from bridges between ledges and saw my life flash before me. But nothing scared me more than this. Sending this woman a message, a woman that my bear was already clamoring for and having her reject us or worse, never answer one way or the other.

We'd never been ruled by fear. Now wasn't any time to start.

"Do it," I said.

Edward typed out a message and sent it off. I heard the swishing motion. "Now we wait," he said.

"Now we wait."