She sighed and looked at him and then us. I didn’t miss how her eyes lingered on each of us. “I don’t really have a phone.”
“Well, we can mail you the check, then.”
Another sigh. This one longer. “I can’t…would it be okay if I came back another time and checked in? I don’t want a check sent to my house. I don’t have a bank account or a way to cash it.”
No bank account. No phone. Didn’t want a check sent to her address.
Something was up with our female, and I wanted to know what that was so we could solve it.
Dallas nodded. He knew we needed another point of contact with her. She was ours. This was our chance to get to know her. “That’s fine. We will keep the money once they sell, and you can come pick up the cash when you get a chance. Does that work?”
Her shoulders relaxed. “Yes. Thank you. That works.”
“Can we at least know your name so I can put something on the envelope with your money?”
She met Dallas’ eyes. “I’m Bonnie. Just Bonnie.”
Bonnie. Her name wrapped around my chest and secured pieces of me that had floated around for most of my life. She put them all together in an instant.
“Bonnie, thank you for coming in today. We promise to take care of your things.”
“You all own this shop?” she asked, looking at us again.
“We do,” Archer offered. “Oh, I almost forgot. Anyone who consigns something with us gets a bag of goodies in return.”
They did? Archer found a way to feed our female. I wanted to buy him all the buffets in the world for coming up with that lie so fast.
“They do? I didn’t see a sign.”
Archer nodded. “If we advertised it, everyone would bring junk in. Give me two seconds.”
My bond brother got a cloth bag and filled it up with homemade bread, jams, honey, two dozen eggs, and some of his blueberry-honey goat cheese.
What a fucking genius.
“Thank you. I’ll be back soon. Thank you.”
We watched her leave, and each of us visibly shook, trying to control our bears and the instinct to grab her and never let her go.
As soon as the door closed, I turned to them. “She’s ours, right? I’m not the only one? That omega is our fated.”
Archer nodded and so did Dallas.
“Damn right she is.”
Chapter Seven
Bonnie
I wobbled out of the store, and to my rusty bike, the bag of beautiful food in my hands. I’d never been hungrier, but I couldn’t just snarf it all down right here where they could see me. My clothes and bike and lack of makeup or even a tiny pair of earrings probably revealed the poverty I dwelled in. What girl my age in any video I’d ever seen would have climbed on an old rusty bicycle and tried to sell her poor attempts at art on consignment without even a bracelet or a cute backpack with one of those little dangly doll things?
Or any mascara. Living in the woods as I had, I’d still asked my mo—asked Marie for some more girlie things, but when she pressed to find out what I knew about them, I’d said I just wanted something pretty like the girls in a couple of magazines she’d brought home. If I hadn’t thought of that, she would have known I’d been going off the rails online. I was only supposed to use the computer for school, and I had to go through and clear history every time. But as much as I wanted to have pretty things like other girls, it hadn’t been a big deal until I walked into The Coop.
Settling the bag in the basket, I lifted the kickstand, wishing more than anything else in the world that I had looked better when I walked in there. That I’d been able to make those three alphas want me as much as I had instantly wanted them.
My wolf was snarling, clawing at me and demanding we go back inside, but I couldn’t. I’d already been embarrassed enough. And clearly because I’d been kept so sheltered, away from alphas, my wolf was excited to see them. Who could blame her? It was up to me to keep us from doing anything silly.
Like racing back in there and begging them to keep me.
