Chapter Four

Drake

An unspoken subject hung between my best friend and me. We danced around it, wanting to keep our loneliness and dwindling hope a bit private, even though we shared every other aspect of our lives.

Our serpents were desperate for our mate.

Whoever she was.

Wherever she was.

And while I believed wholeheartedly in fate, our lifestyle was giving Fate a run for her money.

We weren't going to find our mate huddled in the dark depths of our basement.

Naga and I used to talk about finding our mate all the time. We dated a bit after returning from our tour in the Middle East. We looked for her in every female face we encountered, but our serpents simply hadn't found the one meant for us. We hadn't lived as monks until the last year or so when we stopped going to bars or anywhere to meet females.

We'd given up somewhere along the line, gave in to not finding her.

It wasn't a decision really, rather, our lives started living us instead of the other way around.

I woke up early as the sun came into my room. Already, I could hear the churning and dribble of the coffee as it filled the pot. The smell of freshly brewed caffeination woke me up, partially, even before I lifted my head from the pillow.

Naga was already up and, from the sounds that followed the coffeepot, was already cooking breakfast.

He had something on his mind.

I knew my best friend.

We had both started new projects the night before, and the first week was usually a slow one. We were setting up things. Letting our programs do most of the work for us. After the first week or two, as the deadlines loomed and our clients began nagging for information, our work would become more frantic and pushed.

We moved slowly those first weeks.

"Good morning," I gruffed, my throat rough and gravelly from waking up only a half hour ago. My hair was still wet on the ends from my shower, droplets splashing onto the back of my neck.

"Morning," Naga answered, sliding a cup of coffee over to me. He took his black, like a villain, and I loved a bit of coffee with my creamer. One taste and I was in heaven.

While Naga cooked breakfast, I saw his back muscles pulled taut. His shoulders were rigid. His movements stiff and almost overly calculated.

I was right. Naga had something on his mind.

"Spit it out," I said as he placed a heaping bowl of oatmeal in front of me.

"What?" He feigned ignorance but it was short-lived. "Fine, I saw something early this morning while I was checking my personal email."

"Something bad? A fire we need to put out?"

He shook his head. "No. Nothing work related and nothing from our families. It was a spam email and, in trying to delete it, I clicked on it."

My hackles went up. "Virus?"

Naga cocked his head sideways. "Drake, no. Not a virus or anything bad."

"A week's vacation in a tropical paradise? Did you win the lottery? Spit it out already."

The lottery would be nice if I hadn't seen all those stories about how winning millions had ruined many winners' lives.

"The spam email led me to an app."

"What kind of app?" I asked, curious but only because whatever this advertisement was, already it had made some kind of impression on Naga. Not a lot of things surprised us anymore, especially in the tech realm.

"An app for shifters and humans and monsters to…to find their mate or mates, whichever the case may be." He didn't look at me while he spoke, his eyes downcast, pretending to focus on his breakfast.

"Like a dating app?" I asked.

He looked up at me, pinning me with a serious stare as his dark eyebrows bunched over his nose. "Except not dating. Mating. This is a way for shifters to find their mates. I mean, there are other relationships included, but mainly it's for mates to find each other."

"Did you download it?" I asked, wondering how far he'd taken this avenue.

"I wanted to talk to you first. But I checked it out. It's legit and they have a 99 percent success rate with matches."

"Sounds like you've already made your decision," I said, pushing away my bowl in favor of the conversation.

"I want to sign up but we know that our serpents would share a mate. It has to be a decision we both make."

"Send me the email, please."

Naga forwarded me the email from Mail-Order Matings. I clicked the link and found a website where shifters, monsters, and creatures in between had found their mates. Shifters seeking humans. Humans seeking monsters. Monsters seeking breeders. Orcs. Dragon shifters. Gargoyles. Some creatures I'd never even heard of.

Then again, most folks didn't realize that serpent shifters existed either.

I put my phone down. "Naga, do you think we will find our mate on here?" I tapped the phone with my pointer finger.

"It's worth a try. We sure as hell aren't going to find her in the basement."

I snorted. He wasn't wrong. "Then let's try it."

Naga's face lit up. He was as ready and willing to find a mate as I was and more than we were willing to admit out loud.

We spent over an hour signing up and going through the painstaking questionnaire process. By the time we were done, I was ready to get to my work to get my mind off of relationship and sexual questions.

This just might work though.