Finding Home (Build-A-Pack #2)

Chapter One

Rian

I listened to the sounds of the house waking up around me and smiled. For the first time in decades, I was…content.

I’d been in this tiny Pennsylvania town for a couple of weeks now, and I liked it. I would’ve preferred to have more steady options for blood donors, but it was what it was. There were people and I’d met with a human woman in her fifties who was the right kind of donor for me.

Being a vampire in the modern world was… interesting. There were apps to help with finding donors. One of them, DonorMatch, was government approved and needed users on both sides to be verified for everyone’s safety. That was the one I preferred to use, not because of safety reasons, but because it cut back the amount of people who just wanted to get off from feeding a vampire.

The other, unofficial apps were basically hookup apps, and I didn’t like it. I used them when absolutely necessary, but even then I tried to find someone who wasn’t into male presenting people but willing to feed one or someone who wasn’t outright nasty about it.

I heard a low chuckle from down the hall and grinned. My best friend, Brodie, had come to check on his childhood pack a few months ago at his sister’s request. What he’d ended up doing was saving an amazing human teenager, Carys, from his abusive as fuck Alpha uncle, Rusty.

The saving had happened in the form of snapping Rusty’s neck when he made a comment about Brodie’s sister Bella when she was younger. Yeah. I could understand the impulse to be done with that sort of monster forever.

Ending Rusty meant the Alpha power had to go somewhere, and it transferred to Brodie, because he was the one snuffing out the previous vessel, so to speak. After he’d told Rusty’s druggie betas to leave the premises, he’d started to rebuild the pack.

Because she felt safe with Brodie, Carys had decided to stay, as had her brother, Kye, who had been searching for her since she went missing two years ago. The fact that Kye had proved to be Brodie’s mate was icing on the weird cake fate had decided to bake for us. There were also Ben and Max, Brodie’s cousins and Rusty’s sons, who had been hanging around the edges of their father’s pack with nowhere to go.

Brodie, ever loving and kind, had sent them both to rehab. With my money, because I’d insisted. I was bankrolling everything for the pack, and I couldn’t have been happier.

I was nearly two hundred years old, and I’d lived at times frugally and at others not quite, over those years. I’d amassed a fortune I could never use by myself, as my investments were always churning more money into my accounts.

To make peace with it, especially given where I came from, I’d always shared my wealth. Nowadays, they called me a philanthropist, and I suppose it was an apt title. I was so many other things, too, because if you didn’t study new things, life became boring over time.

I stretched and groaned at the sensation of my spine popping. My gaze landed on the large framed print of Dún Briste Sea Stack on the wall by the door. I still couldn’t believe how thoughtful Kye had been.

All the rooms they’d renovated in this big old house were gorgeous. But the way Kye made an effort with the decorating so that everyone moving into these rooms would feel they were for them, especially? To ask Brodie where I was from and then find a print of one of the landmarks there? Yeah, my best friend had lucked out with the universe’s decision to match Kye with him.

It was bittersweet, of course, to see Brodie so damn happy. Not because I wanted him, because if I were honest, I’d never really wanted him sexually. We had a non-sexual arrangement, a kink relationship, where we helped each other out whenever I needed pain to deal, or he needed to Dom someone who could take what he dished out.

We’d tried hooking up once, when we first met, and it was… not good. We weren’t compatible that way, because—news alert—two men having sex wasn’t just about who would top and who would bottom. Not even two vers guys like us could make it work to a truly satisfying degree, and we’d decided we were best as friends with kink benefits.

While Brodie had lucked out with Kye as his mate, I had lucked out with Kye as Brodie’s mate, too. Because Kye was kinky and understood that Dominance and submission didn’t necessarily have anything do with sex. He didn’t mind Brodie giving me a hand if I needed it, because he knew we didn’t want each other on a sexual or romantic level. Brodie and I loved each other deeply, but not in a romantic sense.

I’d been deeply in love once, so I knew that sort of thing was rare. If in two hundred years I had only been able to feel true love one time, it wasn’t something common.

A knock on the door interrupted my musings.

“Rian?” Max, Brodie’s cousin, asked quietly.

“Yeah?”

He opened the door and peeked in. “I just had breakfast. I was thinking, would you come walk with me? Ben’s going to work and I feel like walking.”

The brothers were closer than close. Probably in ways not everyone would approve of. Luckily in this house nobody cared, because we all knew that happiness wasn’t easy to obtain, let alone keep.

“Of course. Give me fifteen minutes?” I said, smiling at him.

“Okay. Thanks.” He closed the door again, and I heard his steps retreat down the hall and then the stairs.

Max and Ben were forced to start trusting me before they even met me, but because Brodie told them I was trustworthy, they took the leap. I was grateful that they did, because the wolf brothers were some of my favorite people now.

They’d done a two-month program at a non-human specific treatment center in Seattle, where I’d been trying to wrap things up to follow Brodie here to Luxton. From the first hesitant texts and calls while they were agreeing to come to Seattle and then while they were on the way to me, I couldn’t help but to feel fond for the two of them.

Ben was the big brother, by about a year if I remembered correctly, but they might’ve as well been twins with how close they were. Ben took care of Max, shielded his brother where needed.

Max might’ve been more sensitive and quiet, but he opened up when treated with kindness. Neither of them had had much of that in their lives, and the last decade especially had been rough for them. They were in their late twenties and looked younger, but the drug use had sort of balanced things out. Whereas Brodie was thirty-three and looked a decade younger, his cousins were in their late twenties and looked about Brodie’s age.

Me? I had been turned when I was about twenty-three and would always look that age. Vampires aged incredibly slowly, and it never really showed in our appearance.

Our souls—if we had those—though? That was a different story.

I got dressed as I thought back on how much I’d changed over the years. Before I met Brodie nearly a decade ago, I had been feeling… tired. Of existing. I’d lost the love of my life and afterward it had all been downhill and guilt. It took time for the universe to throw Brodie across my path, but at least I felt better again.

As I made my way down the stairs, I heard Carys and Lina, Brodie’s apprentice who was helping us fix the house, giggling about something in the kitchen. The girls were dancing around each other, clearly very much interested and shy about it, and it was refreshing to see young love like that.

I cleared my throat as I walked into the kitchen. They were standing by the island, heads bent together as they looked at something on the pack’s communal tablet we kept in the kitchen for notes and such.

They pulled back and both blushed slightly.

“What are you two up to?” I teased gently, smiling.

“Brodie’s sister sent us a link for an online folder she has for their childhood photos,” Carys explained.

“Oh, now this I got to see!”

We were giggling at a chubby little Brodie when Kye got inside from wherever he’d been. “What?”

Max joined us next, having gotten tired of waiting for me. Eventually, Brodie himself came to see where his renovations helpers—mainly Lina and Kye for the day—were.

“Why do you all look guilty?” he asked, frowning at us from the kitchen doorway.

Max had been holding the iPad, and he thrust it at me. I pushed it into Lina’s hands, and she squeaked and slid it over the island to Kye.

“Well, baby,” Kye started, then let out a nervous little giggle even though we all knew Brodie wouldn’t take our hijinks negatively. “Your sister might’ve sent us something.”

Brodie groaned before holding out his hand for the iPad. “Show me.”

Kye snickered and gave it to him.

My darling best friend, our tall and tattooed Alpha, blushed.

“You were such a cute baby awoo,” Kye cooed.

We all cracked up, because he was referencing the onesie chubby baby Brodie was wearing in one of the photos with a speech bubble mimicking a wolf’s howl.

Brodie flipped through the photos, then handed the iPad to Carys.

“Okay, you’ve had your fun. I don’t know what y’all were going to do, but you and you,”—he pointed at Lina and Kye—“were supposed to help me with something and might I add that you and you,”—this time he pointed at me and Kye—“are not outside of the realm of getting spanked in a not good way so, behave.” Then he turned on his heel and left the room, muttering something about the whole house being filled with brats.

“Um, has he met us?” Max asked innocently.

We burst out laughing, but started on our days anyway, because what the Alpha says, goes.

A s Max and I walked along our long driveway, I knew he had something on his mind. I also knew he was going to talk when he was good and ready, so we strolled away from the old Victorian in silence.

Eventually, he sighed. “I don’t know what I want to do with my life,” he said in a confessional tone.

Ben had gone back to work, his boss at the garage had always been fond of him and since he’d managed to show up more often than not even while battling his addiction, he’d been welcomed back with open arms.

Max, however, had lost his job at the gas station well before Brodie landed in town.

“Well, what kinds of things interest you?” I asked in a casual, carefully neutral tone.

He snorted softly. “I’m not even sure, if I’m honest.” Then, “I don’t even have my high school diploma because of how Da—Rusty got back then.”

I reached to squeeze his arm. “So you’ll need your GED first?”

Max sighed. “Yeah. I guess that’s a starting point.”

Chuckling, I looked at him. “You’re what, twenty-eight?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re a werewolf, Max. It’s not like you’re about to run out of time.”

He rolled his eyes. “I just feel like there’s this chance to move on now and I’m not utilizing it.”

I stopped walking and stepped to stand in front of him. “Max. What would your therapist at the rehab center tell you?”

He hung his head and groaned. “I knooooow.”

“Then stop being silly.” I continued to walk. “And ask Carys what she’s going to do. You know she’s going to have similar choices ahead of her.”

When he didn’t follow me, I looked at him and saw he was standing still.

“What?” I snarked. “You didn’t realize you had peer support in the house?”

“I hate you.” He stuck out his tongue.

My phone dinged, and I got it out of my pocket. I walked as I read a message from my friend Luca.

It’s only the third day of the tour and things already feel off. Why is it like this?

“I’m sorry, I need to answer this, it’s a friend of mine.”

At Max’s nod, we continued to walk, while I chatted with Luca via text.

Because the band feels unsettled. Have they been staying out of trouble?

I knew that their once harmonious band was slowly being eroded by a drug habit two of the members had developed in the past year after nearly a decade of vowing they wouldn’t touch the stuff.

“He’s part of a pretty well known rock band and they’re having trouble,” I murmured to Max as I waited for Luca’s response.

“Huh. It feels weird to me that you’re as old as you are and know all sorts of people when I’ve not really left Luxton other than to go to rehab.”

I snorted softly. “Well, Luca is a human and only twenty-five, and I’ve known him about four years now, so he’s not one of the people I’ve known for a very long time.”

“Yeah, you just casually throw out that you know a rockstar. Like, who does that? Next you’re gonna say you knew, like, Mozart or something.”

Laughing, I shook my head fondly. Max was funny as fuck when he was relaxed around someone.

“Okay, so Mozart was a bit before my time,” I said, then sheepishly admitted, “I did meet Edvard Grieg once, though.”

Max stopped. “He’s the guy with the….” He hummed the most well-known part of In the Hall of the Mountain King.

Grinning, I nodded. “Yes. It’s from Peer Gynt .”

They’re not getting better for sure. I think I might be having anxiety. I have chest pains when I try to breathe deep every now and then so….

I grimaced.

Take care of yourself. You have months of touring left. Call me if you need me. Love you.

Love you too.

The fact that Luca didn’t ask about the pack told me exactly how stuck in his head he was about the band stuff.

“Wait, Luca? Tell me it’s not Luca Moretti?” Max’s eyes were wide as saucers.

I frowned. “Uh, it’s not Luca Moretti?”

Max groaned and hung his head, then leaned forward with his palms on his thighs. “Are you saying your friend is the singer of Kaiju, a band we listen to regularly in the house?”

There was almost always music flowing from some part of the Victorian, because we all liked to have background noise when we worked on the renovations.

“If it makes things better, I know other people we listen to, as well?”

He let out a long whine and turned to walk back toward the house. “I don’t wanna talk to you anymore.”

Smirking behind his back, I asked, “What did I say?”