Page 7

Evren

Sitting there at that bus station, I didn’t know what would happen in the next few hours. I was probably fifty miles from the packlands, in a city I’d never visited before, and I hoped that was enough mileage to be safe for the time being. The message I’d sent had not yet been acknowledged, so I didn’t even have that to fall back on.

But if they did reply, and I took a bus in the wrong direction, where would that leave me? I checked the app again, but there were no new matches and no acknowledgement of my acceptance of the match from the mystery pack. With time to kill, I looked over their profile and their photos. They were very good looking, and my wolf sat up and took notice as well. I’d had a lot of potential matches previously and agreed with my wolf that they were not the ones of us, but at this point I’d accept almost anyone if it gave me somewhere to go.

I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch the day before, so I begrudgingly deposited a few dollar bills in a vending machine and bought a sweet roll that must have been in there since the building was constructed sometimes in the last century. If I hadn’t been so hungry, I wouldn’t have eaten it, but what choice did I have? If I didn’t hear from the pack I’d accepted, my little stash of money was going to have to last a very long time.

Was it possible that I maybe could find a job? Doing…something. Maybe working in a restaurant washing dishes?

While I didn’t get to our local small town often, when I did go, I generally spent my time in the thrift store, but sometimes my parents had treated me at the diner and I always liked it there. It would be nice to spend my days in a place where people came to enjoy such good food. I couldn’t cook, pretty much at all, although I’d always wanted to get better at baking but I’d washed a lot of dishes in my day. Or maybe they needed someone to clean? Or —

My phone buzzed, and I reached into my pocket then hesitated, suddenly afraid. The sound was the same for any kind of notification, so it could be the app, but also a text from someone in the pack. I so didn’t want to see that.

But logic insisted that if I didn’t look at the phone, I might be missing the answer to prayer. The Goddess didn’t like cowards, and neither did Fate, or so I’d been told. So I closed my hand around the device and drew a deep breath then pulled it out. I had no texts or recent phone calls, making me glad I’d been brave.

But the app was just as scary. A message didn’t mean that they had accepted me. A suggested match could be turned down, as evinced by the number of possible matches I had rejected. If they had done the same, I was in deep trouble. Summoning the last of my courage, I opened the app to find that I had received not one, not two, but three acceptances, one from each member of the pack.

They wanted me to contact them directly, and I wasted no time doing so. The messaging system offered by the app gave the potential partners some privacy, but once they had accepted a potential mate, they could exchange phone numbers or other information as they felt comfortable

I sent a note.

Hi, I received your acceptances of a potential mating, and I’m not sure whether I should address this to one or all of you.

This is Lark, but we are all here. It’s nice to meet you.

It’s nice to meet you all, too. I felt a real connection from your profile.

Thank you. You are the first female we’ve replied to at all.

Me, too. I mean, not female, but males. You sound very nice and I wonder if you’d like to meet?

This is Rain. You really must feel a connection if you want to meet right away. Are you close to us?

I don’t know. I didn’t see your location in your profile.

I told them where I lived, and they shared their area. It was nowhere close. But I persisted. I am away from home right now, traveling anyway, but I can hop on a bus and come for a trial run. We can get to know each other and see if it’s as good a match as it looks in the app.

I kept seeing the three dots as someone started to write and erased it. Oh, Goddess, I overstepped and they thought I was a crazy female hunting down any random males. The fact that it was too close to true, barring the crazy part, was beside the point. If I got there and we didn’t like one another, I’d have to find another solution.

No male wanted to be someone’s solution. Or, at least, I assumed they didn’t. I mean, it wasn’t something I’d want to be. All my life, being terrified of who I might be matched with, and now I had the opportunity to decide for myself, and what was I doing?

Jumping on some nice guys who were looking for their omega mate.

Was that even fair to them?

Making my problems their problems? No. It wasn’t fair in the slightest, and I was about to tell them I’d changed my mind when another reply came in.

Why a bus? This is Lark again.

Because the town where I am currently does not have an airport or bus depot. Besides, what’s wrong with bus travel?

I don’t know. It just sounds uncomfortable.

Give us your arrival time. This is Rain. And we’ll meet you at the depot.

We exchanged phone numbers so we could text along the way, and I shut down the app and broke out in a cold sweat. This was happening. And then I realized they’d said they were all there but only two were actively messaging me. What was that about?

Chapter Eight