Chapter Five
Brodie
T hat fucking sandwich. My wolf was ecstatic about one fucking sandwich.
Holden and the guy from the company who did the cleaning job had basically decided that the barn was toast. It needed to come down before any remnants of the chemicals met a random spark or hell, a lightning struck or something and exploded the whole building.
Holden gave me the number of a local company who would gladly come in to dismantle it in a way that wouldn’t risk anyone. Apparently it wasn’t the first meth lab that had been found around here.
I could imagine taking it down with heavy machinery was out of the question, especially with the chemicals still lingering. Like they’d said, one spark might be all it needed to cause damage we couldn’t really foresee. I didn’t want anyone at risk. Not the workers, not my pack, nor the house and the woods around it.
Having needed some time alone, I went to do a grocery run. Well, that, and a bunch of other stuff. There was a Walmart SuperCenter about half an hour outside of town, so I drove there to get what I needed.
The morning call from Rian still made me both smile and feel exasperated.
The thing about being friends with someone who had been around for over a century and a half was that they didn’t view money the same way.
Rian came from absolute poverty, and by the time he’d realized he really did have as much time as he wanted, he’d begun to save and invest every penny he could. Not all of it had been successful, of course, but he had been smart about it all.
When he’d asked me if I still had the emergency credit card he’d given me, I knew what was coming.
“You use it, Brodie. For anything you need. For whatever the pack needs. There’s a reason I keep giving you a renewed one every few years. It’s not to sit pretty in your wallet.”
When I’d tried to interject, he’d told me he didn’t need to do any more investing, he donated about two million dollars every year to good causes and still made more money than that yearly.
So, there I was, with Rian’s credit card, about to go buy things that would make our lives more tolerable. I would also make Kye and Carys tell me what furniture they wanted because—shit.
I hadn’t asked them to stay yet. I wouldn’t ask, if I was honest. I doubted they wanted to. Who would? Staying in a shitty house in the middle of nowhere with a new Alpha who had pretty much no pack and could be contested by the old betas at any moment.
Not that I thought those two idiots would be in any shape to come back anytime soon, but they might. Weirder things had happened. Everyone knew addicts didn’t necessarily act logically.
I got everything but the groceries first. Blankets, comforters, pillows, sheets. I didn’t know anything about the Rossi siblings, so I couldn’t buy them anything I’d know they’d like, but I got a new coffee maker and a selection of pods for it. I got a toaster—damn that sandwich—and a waffle maker.
I went into a nesting mode, and I tried my best not to think about that at all, because it was borderline embarrassing. I wasn’t even sure why I felt embarrassed in the first place. Maybe because it was so new to me? Alphas were providers, after all. Nesting was supposed to feel natural to an Alpha. Except… I’d never been this kind of person toward anyone but my very nearest and dearest.
It was the mate bond combined with the Alpha power, probably.
I lugged all the stuff into my rental and then realized I might as well go and return the rental car and buy a new one while I was at it. Rian wouldn’t mind. In fact, he would likely celebrate the purchase.
So, my couple of hours turned into five and a half, and by the time I was back in Luxton, my wolf was restless as fuck, a bit on the edge.
The thought of Holden catching me speeding made me snort. At least he’d understand. Hopefully.
When I got home, the cleaning crew was still working on the barn. They were really serious about it, which I could appreciate. I wanted my land, my pack, safe.
The new vehicle was a truck. Not a flashy one, because I didn’t want or need one like that. It was meant for lugging building materials and groceries.
I snapped a photo of it, filled with bags, and sent it to Rian.
“You just bought me a car and all of this stuff.”
I gathered as much of the groceries I could carry in one go and went up the porch steps. Except, the door was still locked and the key was inside.
I knocked on the window next to the door, but nothing happened. I couldn’t hear anything, either.
Placing the bags by the door, I made an educated guess and walked to the family room windows. I could see a tuft of dark hair peeking out from the end of the couch and smiled.
I knocked on the window carefully, so I wouldn’t startle them too badly.
Eventually, Kye sat up, blinking and pushing his hair out of his face. He frowned, trying to figure out what had woken him up. I knocked again, then waved at him.
He startled, then rolled his eyes and climbed out of the nest, then picked up his cell phone off the coffee table.
He unlocked the door and peered out. “Sorry, we’ve been asleep for a while.” He glanced at his phone and grimaced. “Over two hours. You were gone for a while.”
I frowned. “Yeah, sorry about that. I went and bought a car and half of Walmart.”
“You did what?” He peered past me and blinked, sleep still clinging to his features. “Well okay, then.”
“If you take those to the kitchen, I’ll go grab some more stuff.” I nodded at the bags by the wall.
“Yeah, of course.”
When I went back to the truck, the head of the cleaning crew walked out of the barn and came to me.
“Hey, so I think we’re pretty much done for the day. We’re airing it out until tomorrow, hopefully getting rid of most of the residue that’s bound to be hanging around, but if you can get a demo crew in later this week, it should be as safe as it’s gonna get.” He had pulled his mask down and looked sweaty under his protective gear.
“You’re coming back tomorrow to start on the house?” They’d been around several hours today and while they could’ve gone to the house today, I understood that they didn’t want to start the job if they weren’t able to finish anything inside where we were living.
“Yeah, we’ll be here around nine in the morning and work full day. We’ll also bring a couple of Dumpsters for whatever we need to trash.”
“You rent those too, right?” When he nodded, I squinted at the house. “Can you bring two extra? I’m going to start doing reno as soon as you guys are done with your job and I feel like it’s gonna be a lot.”
“Sure. I’ll bill the two separately if you want?”
“Yeah, that works.” I wasn’t worried about the money, not with Rian in my corner, but it would still be nice to know how much of his money I had to spend for the cleanup versus renovations.
“It’s a great house,” he said, peering up at the hulking form. “Some sort of Victorian influences, definitely.”
“What gave that away? The round part?” I grinned, then got serious. “It was gorgeous once. When I was a kid. I’ll do whatever I can to renovate it.”
“If you need extra hands, I’d ask if the Kellers have anyone free. They’re—”
“I know. They were doing construction stuff when I was little. I didn’t even think they’d still be around.” Which was stupid. I hadn’t been gone that long, and families with that sort of presence in such a small town were likely to stay there.
His colleagues came out of the barn and made sure the doors were propped open. He glanced behind and nodded. “All right. That’s us. We’ll come back in the morning and I’ll have those Dumpsters delivered tomorrow as well.”
“Awesome, thank you.” We didn’t shake hands, because he still had his gear on, so I turned to grab some of the bags off the truck bed.
Carys met me at the door. “Let me take those.”
I handed them over and went to get yet another load. There were two more, and by the time we had everything on the hallway floor—well, except groceries of course—it looked as if I’d emptied a small shop.
“Uh….” Carys stared at all the bags. “So, you went shopping?”
I suddenly felt awkward and rubbed the back of my neck, not quite able to make eye contact with her or Kye who peered in from the kitchen.
“From where I’m standing, you’re acing this Alpha thing,” Kye said almost off-handedly, grabbed a pack of bottled water from the pile and went into the kitchen.
My wolf went a bit nuts at the statement. An excited whine tried to escape my lips but I bit it back, barely.
“Did you put the food away?” I called toward the kitchen.
“Yeah, that’s done. Why?”
I gestured for Carys to follow me and we went into the kitchen. Suddenly it felt mandatory to have the hard conversation I was fearing right then.
“Let’s have a chat,” I told them, then remembered the coffee machine. “Wait, I got us something.” I turned back and went to fetch the machine and the bag with the pods. “Here. Let’s figure this out, eh?”
The excitement was palpable. Figuring out how to use the machine and what pods we wanted to use and how it all came together was fun. Carys and Kye were clearly siblings, their bickering reminding me of myself and Bella once upon a time.
It took us a while to get our coffees, but eventually we sat at the table, with the Rossis looking at me expectantly from the other side of the table.
“So….” I took a sip of my espresso and tried to put my thoughts into words. Part of me was terrified that they were going to leave, and my wolf wasn’t happy about that possibility. “I’m just going to tell you what I’m about to do, okay?” At their nods, I took a deep breath. “The cleaning crew will come in tomorrow morning and we’ll figure out what needs to be done inside the house. Once they’ve done their thing, what I want to do is start fixing up the house. That’ll take all my time and I’m lucky to have the skills to do a bunch of the stuff myself.
“As for the pack… eventually I’d love for my cousins to be able to live here again if they choose to do so, but I need the rooms upstairs fixed first. I’m likely going to send them to rehab on my best friend’s money, too. They get to be in the pack if they’re sober, which they say, currently, they mostly are. But ‘mostly’ isn’t good enough for me.
“What I would like is to ask Sheriff Drumm to join the pack too, eventually, and any other suitable people we might encounter. Of course, it’s different for non-wolves, but my mom used to say that all the best packs always had humans in them, too. Vampires are rarer, but it happens sometimes.”
Before I had time to say anything more, Carys blurted out, “Rusty hated humans. He thought we were like a… a lower species?”
I grunted with disgust. “I know. He was always like that. The wolves I tend to spend my full moons with these days have plenty of humans in their pack. I think humans make a pack safer.”
Kye frowned. “How do you figure that?”
“Well, for one, on the night of the full moon, wolves are unable to shift back to human, right? Well what happens if someone needs opposable thumbs? What if there are pups in the pack? Who takes care of them while the adults are in their wolf forms?”
Carys made a thoughtful noise. “I guess I’ve never thought of that. What did they do in Rusty’s pack when you were younger?”
“Well I was seven already when we moved here so I was self-sufficient and I had Bella. She’s human, but she was family so Rusty couldn’t do much about having her in the pack.” Until later, after Mom passed away. “But my cousins were little then. Toddler age. So we took care of them when the adults weren’t able to.”
Kye shook his head. “That sounds rough. It really feels like all packs should have humans or vampires in them, like you said. But aren’t werewolves and vampires kind of….” He made a vague gesture with his hand.
“It’s mostly the oldies. The younger generations of wolves get along fine with vampires. My best friend Rian is a vampire. Best guy I’ve ever met. He’s funding everything I need for the pack, just because he has more money than sense.” I smiled fondly, hoping they knew I wasn’t serious.
Carys took a deep breath, then looked me in the eye and asked, “So what if we wanted to stay?”
Kye nodded at his sister’s words. “Neither of us has anywhere to be, no matter what our dad says when we call him in a bit. I don’t have many real-life skills if I live in a city, but I think I could help with the renovations if you show me how, and come spring, or if we’d build a greenhouse, I can do a lot with plants.”
“And I’ll cook and clean. I actually enjoy doing it. We’re capable of carrying our own weight. We’re not going to be a burden to you or the pack if you let us stay,” Carys said quickly, almost speaking over Kye.
I lifted my hand to still the frenetic energy gathering in the siblings. “Okay, first of all, of course you two can stay.” In fact, I wanted nothing more and my wolf wanted to howl with happiness over Mate staying. “I’m not worried about anything. I know we don’t know one another that well yet, but we have time.”
I explained to them where I’d been working in Seattle and how I had plenty of savings, but that I hadn’t joked about using Rian’s money.
Kye told me about his studies that I immediately saw potential in. Having someone who knew about agriculture would eventually save the pack a lot of money in produce if we could figure out how to grow on the property. I was pretty sure Rian would also be interested in the endeavor. His background made him very serious about food—even though he didn’t need to eat it himself—and sustainability was a cause he supported through various organizations.
Carys shrugged. “I don’t have any skills, but if I have better ingredients, I will totally start to do meal planning and figuring out how to save money in the long run.” Then she smiled. “And I actually do enjoy cleaning. It calms my brain a lot.”
“Okay. I think that’s set, then.” I let my eyes glow red and held my hand over the table at Carys first. “Welcome to the McRae pack, Carys Rossi.”
Her smile widened as she took my hand. “Thank you for having me, Alpha McRae.”
I felt the pack bond forming between us, and my wolf felt overjoyed.
And then it was time to face the fact that my mate would be part of my pack, too.
I took Kye’s hand. “Welcome to the McRae pack, Kynan Rossi.”
His gaze locked with mine, and he smiled, looking breathtaking. “Thank you. I won’t let you down, Alpha McRae.”
The tingles up my arm from such simple contact felt wild and a bit scary. The bond between us was more obvious to me than the one between me and Carys. There was a reason for that, but at least humans couldn’t feel the bond the same way, so I didn’t have to explain it right then.
When I pulled my hand back, I took in a deep breath, trying my best to not beam like an idiot.
“I think we need to make that call now,” Kye said quietly, the happiness fading from his expression too quickly for my liking.
“Will you sit with us for it?” Carys asked in an almost timid tone that told me exactly how little she wanted to make the call. She had been through hell, but she wasn’t a timid young woman. She had strength, and while I would be getting her therapy as soon as she’d accept it, she was remarkably well, normal.
“Of course. Let’s go sit on the couch.”
As we passed all the bags in the hall, I pointed at a few of them. “I bought all new bedding. There’s a mattress pad in the truck still. I was thinking, maybe that’d be enough for us to be able to sleep in the bed upstairs?” I quickly added, “Only if you’re comfortable, Carys. I’ll order a completely new bed tomorrow but it’ll be a while before it gets here. I also assume we’re going to lose a lot of furniture tomorrow when the crew comes by.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. “If we all can fit on that bed, I think I can sleep there.”
Kye echoed her thought, so I said, “We could fit on two couches last night. I can go wolfy if the bed is too crowded otherwise.”
“Aren’t werewolves all about pack cuddles?” she asked, then rolled her eyes. “I mean obviously Rusty never did anything like that, but you know, generally speaking. In good packs?”
“Yeah, physical touch is important to us.”
“I’m sure we can all fit. I’m a bit of an octopus when I sleep, though.” Kye blushed slightly.
Carys giggled. “I can vouch for that!”
We decided to put the bedding into the washing machine with the unscented liquid detergent I’d bought. That way nothing would smell like the store to me, or the old liquid Carys would’ve had to smell before. Kye got rid of the rest of the old bottle, while Carys tried not to show how much it meant to her.
At least I could thank my wolfy senses for that; scents were important to us, and I knew how visceral they could be in various ways.
The levity from earlier vanished as soon as we all sat on the couch. Carys was between Kye and me, the bookending feeling important for support.
Kye brought out his phone. “Okay. Here goes.” He made the call.