Page 10 of Delivered to My Serpents

Dang, I was already being more open and vulnerable than I intended. What happened to aloof Jasmine who was not going to be involved in the least?

“And now that you’re talking with us?” Drake cocked a dark, smooth brow.

“Now, I am just trying not to make an even bigger fool of myself.” We talked for about a half hour, all the first-date stuff you might share with someone. Nothing too deep, but at the end, I asked if they would like me to visit. It sounded weird even to me.

Chapter Eight

Drake

Neither of us spoke after the call ended. Naga’s body was turned toward me, but his eyes were fixed on something beyond and on nothing. His jaw moved back and forth. Not grinding but testing the hinges.

He lifted his phone and swiped at the screen to make sure the call had ended then put it down and let out a long breath. “That was…”

“Weird?” I finished for him, still trying to figure Jasmine out.

“Sure. Let’s go with weird. So it wasn’t just me?”

I sat up straighter, taking inventory of my thoughts about what just went on before answering. “She’s beautiful and smart.” I tried to avoid a negative note, though we had already called the conversation weird.

“She is those things and more, but we knew that before we chatted with her.”

“She smiled and asked if she could come here, but the emotion was forced, hollow even.” There. I said it.

My serpent vehemently denied that his mate was anything but sincere and willing. His take on the conversation was that she wanted to come here to our home, to his den. He had already opened himself up for a bond with the female. Didn’t matter that her words seemed off. Didn’t matter that she was human.

He wanted her here with us. Now.

“We investigated her. Thoroughly. I know the last time she shopped online for lingerie and how many recipes she’s googled, Drake. There’s nothing shady about this female.”

“It’s in the way she talks. She’s overly eager. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or not, Naga.”

He nodded. “And your serpent isn’t? Eager?”

The other side of me slithered around in that part of my consciousness I couldn’t explain but was always with me. Serpent shifters transformed shortly after birth, which was why our mothers never went to human hospitals. We would surely be the subject of terrible and disgusting government research. Like lab rats but twenty times worse.

Through our work with information gathering, I had seen more vile parts of the government and its workings than I ever wished to. Horrors that kept me up at night. Shady shit that crawled along my skin during waking hours.

Things that made me want nothing to do with the people in charge, neither the puppets nor the puppeteers.

“He’s calling her mate already. Maybe we’re overanalyzing this. It’s kind of what we do.

You think we’re letting our human sides get in the way?” I asked. Sometimes, my best friend and I were so alike, and in other ways, we were night and day.

“I want her. It was like looking into the eyes of someone I’d always known, but I was left so confused.” He couldn’t have summed it up better.

“What’s our plan, then? Leave our profile up and wait for another match? Maybe our serpents are so ready for a mate that they will jump at anyone,” I asked.

“That negates everything we know about fated mates, Drake. No matter how needy our beasts are, they would never open themselves up to a bond with someone who wasn’t our mate.”

“Is there a chance Jasmine was simply nervous about potentially mating with two serpent shifters? Imagine being a human female on a mating app. You’re expecting to get matched to a wolf shifter or maybe a lion. You didn’t even know serpent shifters existed. There’s a good chance we’re reading too much into this.”

Naga shook his head. “What are you suggesting?”

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. Message her again. Feel her out. Let our serpents make the decision that clearly we can’t.” Although I was pretty sure they had already made that call. At least mine had.

Naga took three seconds to deliberate. “Let’s message her again.”

We sent her a message asking her more questions. Most, we knew the answers to, but we were comparing notes.

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