Page 6 of Delivered to My Beasts (Mail-Order Matings #22)

Crew

We didn’t have a lot to do. Jax had all but flown into the house after we got the message from Imogen and told us all to get to work.

But Duke was three steps ahead of him, on the way upstairs, to the mate suite.

It was called that by the Realtor when we bought the house, and we’d liked the moniker.

Duke was already in the process of cleaning the room and adjoining bathroom before Jax could freak out. Again. He’d gotten up and walked out of the room when Imogen didn’t answer us immediately. I could practically see the steam coming out of his ears.

He wasn’t angry but frustrated.

Our home was always clean. Not because we were super clean people but because we had a chore chart on the wall that kept us in check. I thought it was a little childish when Duke first insisted on it, but it had become routine and kept the peace in our home.

Peace was a priority for us.

Still, we cleaned the house again, some places twice over. Our parents coming over wasn’t a cause for any upheaval, but our mate coming to stay with us for a week? That was a reason to clean twice.

It was my turn to cook dinner, so I chose to make spatchcock chicken along with roasted vegetables and a fresh salad. I had no idea what Imogen preferred, but wolves liked chicken, right?

I’d checked our dinner for the hundredth time when my shifter senses picked up the crunching of tires against the gravel.

I peeked out the back windows to see the sun barely settling in for the day.

Hardly anyone came up our driveway. Even our packages were routed to a pickup center in town, one of those lockers.

So there could only be one person coming up our driveway.

Our mate.

“She’s here.” Duke barreled through the back door. He was planting trees outside our home, singlehandedly reforesting the entire state on his own. Even our backyard during his time off.

“I heard.”

Jax came in next, from the side door, nearest his shop. “Do we play it cool and stay here and wait for her to knock, or do we go outside and greet her? Fuck! I don’t know what to do.”

I chuckled at his verbalizing what I—and no doubt Duke—was thinking.

“Just be yourselves,” I said. “Let’s go out there and greet the wolf. Make her feel at home.”

We walked out together and watched as a beat-up compact car barely made it up the steep driveway. If I had known this was the car she was driving up to our home, I would’ve offered to pick her up in town. The clutch ratcheted and groaned like it was on its last leg.

Finally, the car stopped right in line with ours, like it fit there all along. I held my breath. My heart stilled in my chest as her door opened and she rose to stand.

Duke, as tough as he came off, gasped first. He bounced down the stairs like an excited boy and nearly sprinted to her side. “Imogen. I’m Duke. Let me help you with your bag.”

“Nice to meet you, Duke.” She extended her hand and gave him a smile and a bolt of jealousy shot through me. He touched her. And she smiled at him.

My bear roared his upset, but it easily died down. Jealousy had no place in this relationship or in our home. It couldn’t if we were to have a happy home.

“Thank you. They’re all in the back.”

Jax and I stayed on the porch. I didn’t want to overwhelm her. We were a lot of brawn and height, and she was a slip of a thing. Thin even for her stature and so petite, I thought I might lose her in a crowd. Maybe if she turned sideways.

Imogen went to the back of the car and opened the hatchback. Inside were three large bags.

“She said she was staying for a week, right?” Jax murmured, low enough for me to hear but no one else.

“Yeah.”

She’d brought luggage enough for a month at least.

As I watched Duke pull the bags out and signal for us to help him, an owl screeched loudly above us. He was the owl that hung out around our house and he always made his presence known around dusk.

Imogen let out a small screech and ducked.

The owl was at least a hundred feet above us, but the way she reacted, it was swooping down to retrieve her with its claws.

Her face reddened, but her eyes signaled me that something was going on.

Shifters, wolves in particular, had to be used to the sounds of the forest and other animals.

An owl didn’t scare a toddler shifter and yet, this grown woman was visibly shaken.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “It was just Oscar. He’s our resident owl. He means no harm.”

She let out a laugh. “I’m fine. Just startled me. I’m Imogen.”

“I’m Crew, and up there is Jax. You probably already know that from our photos.”

She nodded. “Yes. This is the house in the pictures as well. It’s beautiful.”

I turned, attempting to see the house from her eyes. Our home was beautiful by any standards but with her standing out front, that blonde hair blowing gently in the wind, somehow it was even more lovely now. “Thank you. Come on in. Are you hungry?”

Of course she was hungry. I didn’t know what kind of pack she came from but clearly, it wasn’t one who believed in good meals.

There were other things I noticed as well.

Her shoes were ill-fitting, slipping up and down her ankles as she walked.

Her fists balled at her sides while we made our way into the house.

She nearly tripped over the rug beelining to the back windows.

“Do you like the view?” Jax elbowed me in the ribs. He noticed as well. I didn’t have much experience with wolves, even less being around female wolves, but she smelled of fear. Not immediate fear. Terror that had seeped into her bones after trauma of a long period of time of living in a nightmare.

But she also smelled of coffee and caramel. Two of my favorite scents in the world.

“I do. I wasn’t sure what I expected but this wasn’t it. There is so much land to run.”

“Do you want to see your room?” I asked, leaving out the part where we referred to it as the mating suite.

Imogen came here because we were matched and we thought she was our mate, almost knew it for sure from her scent now, but there were other issues taking center stage.

Her jumpiness. Her hunger, which I could also sense through my bear.

“That would be great. Thank you. The food smells incredible.”

I nodded. “We can eat first, if you like.”

“Oh.” She looked torn and gave another glance out the big windows. “I’d like to eat first, please. It’s been a long day.”

The way she said day, she might as well have said life. There was more to our mate than her answers to the questions on the app and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.

“Then let’s eat,” Duke said. “I hope you like chicken.”

She smiled at him again. Damn it, Duke! “I’m a wolf. Of course I love chicken.”