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.

"Tell us more about your work," I said. I didn't know much about romance novels, and even less about how the covers were produced.

Instead of messaging us back, she initiated another video chat.

When she popped up on the screen, we saw the real and raw Jasmine. Stripped of makeup. In silky button-up pajamas. Hair up in a whacky bun. Black-rimmed glasses on her head.

"Hey, guys. I sent you both a link to my website where my custom covers and my pre-mades are listed."

We had seen the site, of course, but this time, I really looked. The website had been around for years. Anything less would've been a bit of a red flag. If she was pretending to be our mate in order to get close to us for nefarious reasons, then the site would be younger. It wasn't. We even took a look at her PayPal transactions going back to the first week her website launched.

Her book covers, spanning from two people kissing to thorns and roses on the front, weren't cheap either. Her income didn't come close to ours, but she made a good living.

"See anything you like?" she asked. "Are you two considering writing a serpent shifter romance?"

Naga snorted. "Of course not. I've never even read a romance."

Her beautiful full lips made an O. "Well, that's a shame. It's like a vacation in word form."

"Reading is a vacation to you?" I asked.

"For me? Yes. All of my friends are mated. I haven't been as lucky in that department. I pretend it's okay, but really it's not. Was that too much information?"

Quite the contrary. It might've been the most genuine thing she'd said so far.

"What about your parents? Are you close to them?"

She cocked her head and looked at the ceiling. No matter our qualms, she was adorable like this. No pretenses. No makeup. Sitting in an older lavender velvet chair with the side of her bed barely in view. "I love them. I do. But they are constantly on me about getting married and finding a real job. I see them when the calendar tells me to, you know? How about you two?"

"We rarely talk to our parents. They don't know how to deal with us after… They say we changed during our overseas service."

She nodded. "Sometimes people don't know how to deal with me either. As though I'm someone to be handled. Christmases are awkward to say the least."

That made me laugh. "Good thing we don't celebrate Christmas."

After that, we got into a discussion where we talked about how material and bullshit holidays had become. She disagreed, insisting that if it weren't for the pressure to find her other half, holidays were awesome. Other than Thanksgiving, we hadn't celebrated any in years.

"Okay, okay, but no Christmas tree? Come on," she said, laughing.

"No," Naga said.

"Well," she said, slapping her thigh. "I'll have to bring mine. It's pink, so get ready." A pause hung between us. "Shit. Sorry. That was presumptuous. Implying I'd be there for the holidays."

Something about that big word coming from her sweet mouth nailed me to the floor. "Why don't you?" Naga asked her.

"Why don't I what?"

Naga looked at me, and I gave a short nod. We'd known one another for so long, words weren't always needed. "We've decided we want you to come here, Jasmine," he said. "We want to get to know you better and for you to get to know us. I think ninety days is the app standard, but whatever you can do would be great."

She nodded, rose red blooming on her cheeks. "I can manage that. My work goes with me. But there's one problem."

"What's that?" I asked.

"I don't do planes."