Page 13 of Delivered to My Beasts
She turned around and shook her head. Yes, I was flirting with my mate. No point in denying it. “So, I thought I was walking into a house with feral, on the edge of being rogue, beasts.”
“What? We don’t look feral? Should I foam at the mouth a little bit?” Crew was joking, of course.
“No. What? No.”
“You don’t think we can protect you?” Duke dropped the question and raised his eyebrow. A challenge.
“I never said that. I just…you three aren’t really living up to the reputation of my father.”
“I don’t even know how that started,” I said, shrugging. “We moved here, not because we were rogue or wild. We moved out of our sleuth because we’d become adults and wanted to branch out. Our parents even come here to visit sometimes. We don’t go on killing sprees or hunt other shifters—the worst we do is run in the forest as our bears.”
“Goddess, you make us sound like bores,” Crew said, making us all laugh.
“We kind of are.” Duke took the bowls Imogen offered and brought them to the table. On nights like these, we would usually just eat at the island but with Imogen, we liked to sit around the table and all be able to see and talk to her.
“Are you sure? Because my father said you all are double the size of regular bears with teeth as sharp as razors and no respect for shifter or human life. You kill and maim without discretion and the only reason our pack was safe was because my father kept you at bay.”
“Is that all?” Duke asked. “What’s so great about your father that he was able to keep you safe from us?”
“Fear,” Imogen answered. “That was his only weapon. Is the food okay? I need to learn what you three like to eat.”
Our mate had created a great spread in a small amount of time. Crispy honey-garlic beef. Steamed vegetables. Perfectly jammy eggs. Quick-pickled red onions and a sauce to pull everything together into a bowl of tasty comfort.
“It’s fantastic,” Crew replied, already tasting his. “We get something like this in the city when we go.”
“I’ve never been to the city.” Imogen shrugged.
“We will have to remedy that. We’ll make a day of it. The city and to the beach.”
Her eyes lit up. “The beach? The ocean?”
“Yes.” Duke furrowed his brow and put down his fork. “You’ve never been?”
“No. Females were rarely allowed to leave the pack lands. The only reason I was of late was to get things for the wedding.”
Our reaction to that was growling. All three of us in unison.
Maybe we were beasts after all.
“What if…would it be possible to see your bears? My wolf could use the run.”
I decided to answer for us all. “We’d absolutely love that, Imogen. And you’ll always be safe around us.”
Chapter Ten
Imogen
My wolf wanted me to suggest a run. She’d been on alert since we first saw the pictures of them on the app, but she hadn’t said much of anything. Truth was, she’d been so suppressed in recent days, months, years. When I’d thrown that “power couple” line at Mateo, he’d missed the sarcasm in it. Fortunately. When I put together what I’d heard in that bridal shop with what the beta told me that I’d dismissed and everything else, it was clear that I’d been dealing with a worse person than I’d dreamed of.
My father was not much better, willing to sell me to the only bidder, but Mateo? Was ugly. I’d thought he was awful, but the idea of him sharing me with his betas? What alpha would do that with his mate, his luna? My mind had been unable to accept that possibility, and if I had any respect for my betrothed, I would have gone straight to him then. After living the way I had, stressed, half-starved, and seeing a bleak excuse for a future that respect did not exist.
But as I stepped outside with them and took a deep breath of cold, clean night air, I could see beyond all of that. Not that anything was finalized or that I even knew what I’d be doing in the future. But with the truth out there between me and the bears, I could let go and enjoy the evening.
And I’d have had to be much less of a female not to appreciate the trio as they stripped off their clothes and prepared to take their fur. Muscles, so many muscles but not the gym rat kind. They came by this naturally, even if they did work out to stay in shape. They could have been carved from marble, and I almost told them to wait. Not shift yet. Let me just take in their purely masculine beauty.
But when they did shift, instead of three males who looked not at all alike other than their massive build, there were three bears who could have been brothers. I knew many humans thought animals looked alike, but shifters did not make that mistake. There were variations in color and texture of fur, shape of features, size of paws, or breadth of chest…just like in our two-legged form. And they were not identical, but nobody who saw them together would think they were not related in some way.
Maybe their animals were; we knew remarkably little about our beasts when they were not active within us. Did they have somewhere else to go? Another plane maybe? Another mindset that didn’t include us where they spent time with one another?
