Page 18 of Savagely Mated (Shared Mates #1)

D arcy

It’s been a long but satisfying day. Turns out I like being a delivery rider. It keeps me moving, and it’s always interesting. Plus, I get to fight for my life every now and then, which means my academy training gets to pay off.

I’ve delivered twelve packages, which is a heap.

Clint said the first three hundred deliveries pay off the bike.

At this rate, I’ll own it in less than a month.

That’s not even that bad. After that, I’ll start getting paid.

Might even be able to afford my own place. I can forage for sustenance until then.

“Darcy?”

“Yeah?”

“Good job today,” Clint says. “Take this.”

I expect it to be a token for the gross vending machines, but when I look at the slip of plastic he’s given me, it’s a coupon for a nearby chain restaurant.

“Wow, really?”

“Best newbie in months,” he says. “You’re a natural. Get some food and we’ll see what else comes up. Deliveries run through the night, and you get double pay after dark.”

“So I could pay the bike off even earlier?”

“Or upgrade,” he says. “There’s a lot of options for a talented rider.”

I’m absolutely beaming. There’s no way for Clint to know this, because we’ve shared absolutely nothing personal with one another, and we have absolutely no intention of doing so, but this is the first praise I’ve had in what feels like forever.

I’ve gotten so used to people telling me I’m doing things wrong, behaving badly, being a problem that I actually forgot someone could say something nice to me and mean it.

I’m good at my new job, and that fills me with a sense of pride I didn’t know I needed so badly.

“Get some food, kid,” he says. “There’s not enough of you.”

“Alright. I’ll be back,” I say, waving the coupon at him. “Thanks for this.”

The restaurant he’s given me a free meal at is called Duckie’s.

Duckie’s has a mascot of, you guessed it, a duck.

They mostly serve chicken. I don’t know what the math is on that, and I don’t care.

I find myself eating fried chicken with a side of fries and I am about as happy as I have ever been.

I kick my feet under the table and do a little shimmy as I reach for my soda.

I’m an independent woman. And it was much easier than I imagined it would be.

I don’t need any man. I don’t need anything. I don’t need any kind of institution to tell me who I am and what I’m for. I can actually work that out for myself. Feels good. Feels absolutely magic.

I finish up my meal and head back to the office.

I suppose I should check out the dorm, but I don’t really want to go back into any shared spaces.

I want to get my own apartment. Or a room somewhere.

That will have to wait some weeks, probably.

A few people have given me tips on delivery, though.

Maybe, if I do enough deliveries, there’ll be enough to rent a place just on tips alone.

I come back to the office with a chocolate sundae in a plastic cup, which I slide across to Clint. I get the feeling he’s the sort of guy who appreciates random acts of dessert.

His look of unexpected surprise and sunshine smile proves me right.

“Thanks,” he says. “That’s real nice of you. Keep this up and I might learn your name.”

I laugh, though I know he’s not actually joking. I don’t think Clint can risk getting too attached to most riders.

“Delivery just came in,” Clint says. “Rest of these layabouts won’t work after midnight at the moment, but it’s marked urgent. They’ve paid the rush fee. You’ll get that bike much sooner if you pick up jobs like this. Check your wrist.”

I turn my arm over to look at the interface that links in with the D2G computer. The address comes up on it, along with a line map guiding me as to the best way to reach it.

The delivery is going to one of the richest areas in Eclipse City, not all that far from the palace. It’s a big house that looks out over the river. Places like that are worth millions. They usually have private couriers.

“Is this legit?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because…” I stop myself from finishing the sentence as it formed itself in my brain. Because there’s no way anybody with money would want some ratty-looking courier driving up on a garish yellow bike and yelling about their delivery being ready.

“Just do it,” he says. “We don’t ask questions. We take the ticket and the delivery box and we take the box to the place on the ticket. Don’t start overthinking this.”

“Alright.” I turn to walk away. “Clint?”

“Yeah?”

“When do you go off shift?”

“I don’t,” he says.

“When do you sleep?”

“Whenever I want,” he says. “I sleep in the chair. I stop breathing if I lie down in bed.”

I nod. “That’s kind of beautiful. Always on the job, not needing anything but…”

“That delivery is going to be late, and your main rating is going to drop,” he says.

“My main rating?”

“Clients can rate. That’s what you see on your app. The system also rates by quickness of pick up, delivery efficiency, and some other metrics that are unique to Delivery 2 Go.”

“Really? What’s my rating right now?”

“Thirty-two point four,” he says.

“Is that good?”

“It’s now thirty-one point two,” he says. “You want to stand around asking more questions, or do you want to raise that rating?”

I scoot out the door pretty damn quick. The idea of a rating system is pretty good incentive to a brain like mine. I like immediate feedback, and the system does it.

I check my arm band as I get on my bike. There’s a little number there that’s starting to go down pretty quick. If it goes all the way to zero, I lose rating. If I deliver before the timer runs out, I get a bonus.

I kick the bike into life and I hurtle across the city, thinking of absolutely nothing besides getting this delivery where it’s supposed to go.

The house I’m delivering to turns out to be more of an estate. There are big gates that open for me as I approach, and a long driveway that goes up a sweeping curve and has fancy bushes and lights lining the way.

The house itself is massive. I knock on the door, because this package is signature required. The delivery won’t actually count until someone puts their name down for it. That sucks, because time is running out.

The door opens painfully slowly. I find myself looking at the lanky figure of an old-fashioned butler in a suit.

That’s wild, for him to be dressed so formally so late at night.

I’m quite curious as to what’s in the package, but it has already been impressed on me that you never, ever try to find out what is in the box.

“Come in,” the butler says.

“I’m supposed to leave the package with the signer and go.”

He nods, understanding. “Cook has an overflow of cupcakes,” he says. “And Master will sign for the package.”

My stomach is growling again. I must be growing. Or maybe working really does work up an appetite.

“Alright,” I say. “Just as long as I get that signature.”

I let the butler lead me into the house, which I feel very out of place in. This is how really rich people live. The academy is fancy, but it is bare bones in the interior, except for a few places. This place is what I’d call fully and excessively furnished.

“The kitchen is this way,” the butler directs me.

I follow him, intermittently checking my app. I really need a signature. We’ve been walking around this house for almost a minute already. I’m losing all the time I made up for by not stopping for red lights.

“Hello, Darcy.”

My name is drawled by a very sexy blond man lounging in a rustic kitchen with a flagstone floor, copper pans aplenty, and the sort of cooker that is made of cast iron.

“You!”

“Me,” Kirin says, smirking.

“You live here? I thought you all lived in the woods?”

“This is my parents’ house. Well, it’s mine now, I suppose. Since they are no longer with us.”

So he’s hot, and he’s rich, and he runs with a crowd of criminals.

“You lured me here. This is against Delivery 2 Go TOS,” I tell him. “You risk having your account blacklisted.”

“I don’t think we’re worried about that.”

I jump as Einar’s voice comes from behind me. He walks in the door and smacks my ass with the flat of his hand. I wish I was on my bike; he’d get a hell of a shock. Instead, I have the indignity of being smacked. At least the leathers are pretty protective.

Almost on cue, Rafe walks in the other kitchen door. There are so many ways into this kitchen, one behind me, one on the other side, and then there’s some French doors out to what I have to assume is some kind of palatial something.

I find it immediately interesting that they’ve decided to lure me here, rather than one of the many stately dining rooms I bet this house has. I wonder if that’s a reflection of their status, or mine, or if Kirin just prefers the kitchen.

“Fuck it,” I say. “Sign here.”

I toss the logbook over to Kirin, who actually does me the honor of making his mark on it. I take a deep breath and relax. Okay. Good.

I’m thinking about a bunch of things that objectively don’t matter. What does matter is that I’ve been very neatly caught, and that even though the delivery being made has ensured my rank doesn’t go down, I’m now missing out on potentially taking other jobs.

“What the hell do you guys want?”

Einar walks around me and looks down on me, immediately having the sort of towering effect that makes me go quiet.

“Sit down,” he says, pointing to an empty chair. “While you still can.”

I sit down. That threat sounds dire, and the tone he issues it in sounds even more dire.

Einar stands over me in a way that so many instructors from the academy have in their time. I hate it, because I have to tilt my head up and back to look at him in a way that makes my neck hurt.

“You’ve behaved in a way that…”