Cleaningthe kitchen took much longer than cleaning the living room had, but I found a Bluetooth speaker on the counter, and hooked my phone up to it. With music playing loudly, I jammed out while I cleaned, and actually found myself enjoying it. It had been years since I did dishes, and there was something therapeutic about it.

Wolf-Archie looked hungry, so I fed him a few questionably-aged casseroles that I found in the fridge. I didn’t give him anything that was clearly expired, of course, but everything was pretty questionable since there weren’t dates on any of it.

He gobbled down everything I put in front of him, which definitely made my job easier since I wasn’t going to eat the possibly-old stuff anyway. Werewolves had to be tougher than humans when it came to sicknesses, considering how awful his shifting had been. Thinking about the sound of those bones breaking was enough to make me shudder.

“Is it weird to tell a wolf he’s a good boy?” I checked, scratching Wolf-Archie’s head as I scrubbed down the sides of the sink, my hips and head still moving with the beat of the music I had playing.

He nodded his head, but licked the inside of my wrist as if letting me know he wasn’t offended that I’d asked.

“Not a dog. Got it.” I leaned my face down, and he lifted his up. His cheek rubbed up against mine, and my lips curved up in a smile. “You do like to cuddle though.”

He licked my neck in agreement, and my smile grew.

There was a knock at the front door, which about scared the actual shit out of me. I jumped away from the wolf, swearing and dropping the sponge in the empty sink.

“Del?” Tea called out.

Dammit.

Biting back a sigh, I glanced at the clock as I headed for the door. It had been a few hours; plenty of time for them to eat, stop at my dorm to grab my stuff, and then come back.

I tugged the door open just as the lock on it turned, and my stomach clenched when I found myself face-to-face with Jesse, who was holding a key to Archie’s house.

“How many people have keys to this place?” I asked, as a greeting.

“All of us have keys to each other’s houses,” Jesse explained, gesturing to the homes on either side of Archie’s.

Yeah, that was going to have to change. I could be pretty cool with the werewolf shit, but I drew the line at giving other people open access to my living space. I needed my privacy to feel secure.

“We’ve got your stuff,” Tea exclaimed, slipping past Jesse with two massive duffel bags over her shoulders. All of my breakable equipment was in the hard suitcases, so I knew it would be fine.

“Just leave it at the bottom of the stairs. I haven’t figured out where I’m going to put everything,” I told everyone quickly, not wanting them to go upstairs. While I didn’t care whether or not there was a mess, I didn’t want them walking all over the space I’d probably be living in.

That would be my space.

I guess maybe I was already as territorial as the werewolf they said I was going to have to become.

Whether or not that was a good thing, I didn’t know.

All five guys and both girls carried my shit in, leaving it at the bottom of the stairs as I directed. Elliot made a path in-between all the stuff so I could get through. I stood off to the side awkwardly, my hands still soapy and wet from doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen.

“It looks so much better in here,” Teagan remarked. “If you ever want a job cleaning my place, just let me know.” She winked, telling me she wasn’t serious.

I snorted. “Right. That’s exactly what I want to do with my music degree.”

“As if Tea would ever hand money to someone to do something she could do herself,” Jesse teased. “My girl’s way too cheap for that.”

She grinned. “You know me too well.”

“Hell yeah, I do.” He swatted her on the ass, and I ignored the rising discomfort in my chest.

“Alright, let’s give Del some space. Everyone out,” Elliot announced, waving them all back toward the front door. “We’ll stop by in the morning to see if there’s anything we can help with. I’ll take care of finding a sub for Archie at work and making sure his family’s aware of what’s going on.”

I shot Elliot a grateful grin before he shut the door.

The lock turned behind them, and I grimaced.

That, on the other hand, did not feel safe.

I picked my sponge back up, weighing the pros and cons of pushing the couch over to the door and locking it that way. Even if I did, the guys could just get in through the garage.

Theoretically, they were supposed to be decent people, but I didn’t know them. I didn’t even really know Teagan and Ebony. And if there was one thing life had taught me, it was to expect the unexpected from people you were supposed to be able to trust.

I glanced down at the wolf up against my legs. “If your buddies try to come in tonight, will you eat them for me?”

He looked at me with a very serious expression, and nodded twice.

Strangely enough, I believed him.

“Then I guess I’ll survive. Tomorrow, I’ll go buy new locks.”

The wolf shook his head and gestured to my phone, where it rested on the counter.

“What is that going to do as far as the keys go?” I checked.

He gestured to the phone, and then to the door.

“Call the door?”

He scowled, pointing to the phone with his nose before padding over to the door and poking the lock with his nose. Then, he walked over to one side of the house and poked that with his nose, then crossed to the opposite side of the wall and poked that one too.

Walking back to my phone, he emphatically gestured to it with his nose again.

“You want me to call your buddies?” I guessed. “And… key them?” I bit my lip, mind turning. “Oh. You want me to call and ask for their keys.”

He nodded his head, face relaxing when he realized I’d figured out what he was trying to say.

“Wouldn’t that be rude, though? I don’t want to offend them.”

He rolled his eyes. I’d never considered what it might look like when a wolf rolled its eyes, but it made me snort.

“I’ll figure it out tomorrow,” I told him, scratching his head. “Let me finish up in here, and then we’ll tackle the upstairs.”

He licked my arm, and I went back to scrubbing the sink. My music was still playing pretty loudly, which I hoped wouldn’t bother the other guys, but I left it on. The next time I wanted to listen, I’d put on headphones. This time, while everything was packed up, I’d listen out loud.

I finished scrubbing the sink and stove, then dropped the sponge in the sink and rinsed my hands before tackling the microwave. I’d looked around already to determine just how dirty the countertops were, but I’d quickly realized that the papers were the only mess on the counters and table. They were all in stacks, too, though the stacks were pretty damn messy. They seemed to be worksheets and essays and shit from the history classes he taught, and only about a tenth of them looked graded. Which meant dude-Archie had a hell of a lot of grading to do.

After drying my hands, I went from stack of papers to stack of papers, straightening them. After digging through the drawers, I found a box of paperclips, and used those to keep my neat stacks of papers together.

When everything was straightened and paperclipped, I piled all of the paper stacks on one end of the countertop, rotating between setting them short-wise and long-wise so they’d be easy to pull apart.

With all the papers cleaned up, the kitchen looked pretty damn spotless. I was proud of that, too.

I grabbed my sponge again and wiped the counters and table down though, just to make sure everything was really clean.

When that was done, I looked back at the living room.

The stacked furniture boxes, and toilet paper, and other toiletries… yep, wow, there was a lot.

“Clean, then organize,” I mumbled to myself, scratching Archie’s head absentmindedly. “Let’s check out the upstairs.”

The wolf licked my arm—shocker—and we headed up the stairs together. I was damned glad Elliot had made a path through all of my shit, because I definitely would’ve managed to fall on my ass if I tried to climb over everything. Since I couldn’t leave any of my stuff at my parents’ house—they had sold their house and donated every penny they had to some weird charity that revolved around pecan trees—everything I owned was currently on the floor in Archie’s house.

That was fine, though. At least it wasn’t in my car. I’d been worried about trying to shove everything in there as well as live with it all that way. Now, there was no need to worry.

At least not about my living situation.

The werewolf thing was something else entirely.

As long as I could keep thinking of Archie as the massive dog who had a slight obsession with licking me, I could wrap my head around the wolf thing. As soon as I had to talk to hottie-Archie, we were going to have problems.

But hey, I could pretend for now.

Wolf-Archie and I headed up the stairs. They were covered in dark carpet that was soft beneath my toes, and like the rest of the house, luckily, it didn’t smell bad. I was starting to think that hottie-Archie wasn’t actually a dirty dude. He just had a slight hoarding problem when it came to boxed furniture and bathroom shit.

Maybe he was worried about not having anything to wipe his ass with during a pandemic? Hard to say.

Though, the tampons were something else entirely. Considering no one had mentioned a girlfriend or any other woman he might have been living with, I didn’t have an explanation for those.

The upstairs was pretty simple: one bathroom and two bedrooms. I peeked in the bathroom first, and found it surprisingly clean. There was an air freshener that smelled like clean laundry plugged into the wall, and the counters were bare.

When I checked the bathroom cupboards, I found them full of… you guessed it, toilet paper. There was also another unopened box of tampons, as well as a bunch of differently-scented soaps, shampoos, and shower gels. One of them was pink and smelled like flowers, but since I wasn’t questioning hottie-Archie’s odd hoarding tendencies, I didn’t bother asking the wolf about it.

The top cupboard held a few unopened makeup items, including mascara, eyeliner, and lip gloss. I rarely put more than a smidge of mascara on, so I shot a raised-eyebrow at the wolf.

“Is your human hoarding, or questioning something?”

He snorted, and licked my arm multiple times before licking my thigh.

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” I told him, closing the cupboard and checking the toilet and shower. They both looked cleaner than any I’d seen in my own house growing up, which was refreshing.

“Maybe he was working on getting the place cleaned up,” I mused, stepping across the hall and to the first bedroom. When I walked inside, the smell of hottie-Archie hit me hard, and I stopped in my tracks.

My eyes closed as I inhaled.

Holy hell, yum.

I kind of wanted to eat this guy.

Was that weird?

Yeah, that was weird.

I should definitely not mention my desire to eat him to the man when he took over for the wolf.

Despite the glorious smell, the bedroom was pretty much empty. There was a mattress in one corner with tangled sheets and blankets on it, and absolutely nothing else in the room. Not a stray sock or a pair of the boxer-briefs I now knew hottie-Archie liked to wear. No dresser, no desk, no… well, anything else.

“I guess this explains the furniture,” I remarked to the wolf. “Guess your human was redecorating.”

He nodded his head, and I scratched his ears.

There was a door to a walk-in closet standing open too, and I saw that it was also completely empty.

Yeah, he was definitely redecorating. I didn’t know why he’d needed to move all of his clothes to the living room to do so, but figured everyone moved shit differently. Maybe he’d been going through everything to decide what to keep or donate?

Stepping out of the bedroom, I crossed the hall and slipped into the second room. My forehead wrinkled when I found another mattress in there. It was bare, without a single sheet or blanket in sight, and nothing else was in the room either. But there was definitely a second mattress.

So who was he planning to live with?

I glanced at wolf-Archie. “Your human is kind of an enigma at this point.”

He snorted, shaking his head. His nose poked me in the thigh, and then he trotted over to the mattress and poked it.

“You think the bed’s for me?” I checked.

He nodded his head.

“I guess that’s not entirely impossible to believe,” I mused. “Maybe he knew he was going to meet his mate soon and didn’t want to share a bed with her.”

The wolf scowled, but nodded again.

“You don’t approve of human-Archie not wanting me to share a bed with him?” I asked the wolf.

He nodded violently.

“You really don’t approve of human-Archie not wanting me to share a bed with him.”

He nodded again, even more violently.

“Wow. Okay, then. I guess it’s good to know that your human’s not going to try to jump me or hump me or anything.”

The wolf’s scowl deepened.

“It’s fine, buddy. I’d be shitty in a relationship anyway. I’m sure your human and I will be much better off as friends.” I rubbed his head in apology. Though his expression was still grumpy, he did seem to appreciate the head scratches.

“Let’s go deal with my stuff, Archie’s clothes, and then the furniture,” I decided.

The wolf licked my leg, and we were off.