Gentle creature chaos
A sanctuary full of odd little mouths to feed, a courier trying very hard to stay precise, and two people discovering that care has a way of ruining clean exits.
Some strays just need someone willing to stay.
Robin Thorne has never met a stray they could not take in. Not the elderly goat nobody else wanted, not the one-eyed barn cat, not any of the twelve mouths already stretching a feed budget that never quite balances.
Then a cargo error dumps a crate of unidentified off-world creatures at Thistledown, and The Burrow gets five more problems: no manifest, no owner, and no one coming to claim them.
Kit Marchetti has seven years of flawless courier work and one mistake sitting in that crate. Precise, rule-bound, and determined to fix this quietly before anyone notices, Kit expects to be gone in three days.
Three days become three weeks of shared chores, overnight vigils, and a thaw neither of them saw coming. But the shipment's true origin is uglier than a clerical error, and the fix Kit almost reaches for could cost them the one thing this whole mess was never supposed to include: each other.
animal caretakingcourier mistakeforced proximityfound strays
Book 5
Strays and Other Miscalculations stands alone, but it follows The Last Legible Page in the Thistledown release order.