Justice
Chapter Six
My bear tracked her every step and breath as though she were prey.
She wasn’t prey. She was ours. Mine.
I soaked up all the information I could. Took long drags of scent through my nose. She smelled like…not a lot. A hint of spring blossoms, maybe jasmine. An omega who didn’t scent powerfully was on suppressants. Maybe scent blockers as well. No, definitely scent blockers.
Dallas cleared his throat and his gaze darted to mine and then Archer’s. We all knew what was going on here. They had to. Even with the lack of scent, there was no denying the pull of her.
And my bear? He thrashed inside me, trying to get out. Trying to get me to throw her over my shoulder and take her back to our homestead, beast that he was.
“What do you have here?” Dallas asked as she barely managed to heft the box onto the counter.
Her arms were skinny. Not thin. Skinny. The rest of her was as well.
She was out of breath. I moved to the window slowly, as not to spook her, and saw a mangled, barely useful bike outside.
She must’ve ridden that in with that box somehow balanced in the basket.
“They are miniatures that I collect, um, used to collect.”
Dallas looked inside the box and took a few of the figurines out. They weren’t worth a ton as far as I knew, but I didn’t really spend my time researching collectibles. He would take pictures of them and compare prices online to give her an expectation of what she could get.
Thousands of questions raced through my mind, beginning with the most obvious.
Why was she selling something she once collected?
There were common sense answers. She’d outgrown the collection.
She completed it and didn’t want them anymore.
Maybe she collected them for resale value, but why bring them to our shop to sell when they could easily be sold online?
Did she need the money?
Honestly, given her slight body, that made sense. Maybe she needed the money for food or housing.
My bear picked up no alpha scent on her.
Her flip-flops were as thick as a piece of paper and that was being generous. The dress she wore was suited more for an older woman than a twenty-year-old, which I assumed was her age.
Something was wrong, and I wanted nothing more than to shake the problems from her and pick them all up, fixing them one by one.
“You’re sure you want to get rid of them?” He took some pictures and cocked his head. “Some of these are quite valuable. You’d get more money at an online auction.”
Fool of a bear. If she sold them here, we’d get her information and a way to see her again. Archer cleared his throat, trying to knock some sense into Dallas, and thankfully he caught on.
“I’d like to consign them here if you think they will sell.”
Oh, they would sell. I’d pay three times what they were worth on pure principle. That way, she would have some money in her pocket and get whatever she needed. And I would have something of hers in our home.
Would she find out we had bought them? One day, I hoped.
“They definitely will. I have a form for you to fill out so we can get in touch with you when they do.”
Dallas had a tablet and while he explained to her how to fill it out, she got squirmy.
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.”