Chapter Four
Carver
Hiring Josie was dangerous. We’d gotten a call from Thea telling us that she came in with nothing. No clothes. No toiletries. Only about forty bucks to her name. She didn’t share her story, but Thea sensed the female was running from something.
Or someone.
Tonight was Josie’s first night. Aries and I hadn’t gone into the club yet, but Diesel had. He showed her the ropes and where everything was stored, and we got a text almost an hour later telling us she was already working hard.
My wolf howled for her. The first time we met.
Every second afterward, but especially the twenty-four hours since I’d seen her last. The only thing that gave me a bit of solace was Thea’s updates.
She had spent the night in one of the rooms closest to the office, one where Thea would be able to hear if something was up.
The motel manager was older but she was one tough bird.
I’d once seen her run off a group of bothersome teenagers with nothing but her finger and a few stomps.
“Are we gonna talk about this?” Aries said, sidling up to me that night as we gathered without a plan at the two-way mirror.
Diesel was near the other door, making sure people were well-behaved.
He switched which door he watched every night.
Besides, Aries and I had hovered near the laundromat all night.
Watching our mate.
“About what?” I asked, feeling one side of my mouth lift with a smile.
“Shut up. About Josie. You’re feeling what I’m feeling?”
An innate and primal desire to get her to the nearest flat surface and claim her, mark her, and make her ours? Take away all of those worry lines that had marred her beautiful face from the first moment we met her? Yes.
“Yes, but we have to be careful.” It didn’t give me any pleasure to give him that answer but it was the truth.
“Why? She’s ours.”
I nodded, scrubbing my hand down my face. “She’s absolutely ours but she’s in trouble. Or was in trouble. Maybe she’s running from another pack or a mating gone wrong, hell, maybe she’s a felon and we don’t know it.”
“Goddess damn it, Carver. She’s our fated mate, not some one-night stand to take the edge off.”
A growl ripped out of me. “You think I don’t know that?
I do, but the point I’m getting at is that clearly she’s in the process of working through something.
No one just starts over without clothes, food, money, any belongings, unless some bad shit went down.
The most important thing right now is not our mating but doing what we can to make sure she’s safe and taken care of. ”
“I’m gonna order some burgers and fries and tell her we ordered too many.”
I elbowed him in the ribs. “I have a feeling she’s going to see right through you, but go on. At least she’ll be fed. I can smell her hunger from here.”
Aries walked off with his phone in his hand and, as he entered the club, I was interrupted by the brief sound of clinking glasses and bass. Always so much bass. Sometimes I heard the club’s music in my sleep.
I pulled up the barstool Diesel usually sat on and took a seat. There was nothing in the club that needed my attention, and now that we were in the weekend hours, we had bumped up security guards and monitors all around. The weekends got crazy at Astral.
How do you tell a woman who walked in from goddess knew where that she was your mate? Maybe I should’ve led with it. Hey, I’m Carver and you’re my fated mate. Our fated mate. Nice to meet you.
Snorting, I watched as someone came into the laundromat. A man with two toddlers at his side. Josie didn’t hesitate. She walked over and helped him sort the laundry and get it into the washers. Not her job, but I got the feeling that was just who she was, stepping in to help a stranger.
I didn’t step back into the club for the rest of the night. Josie’s shift was five in the afternoon until two in the morning, the same closing time as the club. There would always be stragglers, in both businesses, but we would stay until she was safe back at the motel.
She wore clothes that didn’t fit her right, sourced from the ones Thea kept at the motel.
We got all kinds of people in there. Mostly domestic violence survivors or other abuses.
Men and women of all ages. We prepared for them, or Thea did, with a storage area full of necessities.
No one was charged unless they were truly a person who just needed a place to stay if the hotels were booked up.
But the ones on the edge of society? They stayed for free. It felt like a contribution to the greater good.
Her body was curvy in all the right places, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she moved with grace through the brightly lit laundromat. Her purple hair was pulled up in some kind of bun and secured with a clip. No makeup—she didn’t need any. A natural beauty.
A smile for everyone who walked in.
She did her tasks with ease. I got the feeling she was used to hard work.
Josie leaned over to grab some trash from the floor and I took a peek, not at her breasts but to see if there were any mating marks on her shoulders or neck. There weren’t. Still, she could already be mated.
Did they abuse her?
What made her run away?
I knew one thing for sure, once she was ours, we’d give her no reason to run from us. Only to stay.