Chapter Eight
“Maybe I should go talk to him,” Nory said, watching Nate out the window as he chopped wood with a violence she didn’t understand. “Maybe if he knew me better, he wouldn’t hate this so much.”
“I don’t think it’s you,” Liam said from where he stood beside her, watching his Packmate slam an ax into another log on the chopping block. “I’ll talk to him. We’ll figure out something more permanent tomorrow. I can take the day off work, and we can go look at apartments for you.”
“Chh, I still have to figure out where I can get another four hundred dollars. I don’t have enough in my savings to break the lease.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Nory,” he rumbled, looking over at her. “I’ve got you.” And with that, he made his way out of the house and strode across the clearing toward Nate.
I’ve got you. Never in her life had she heard those words from a man. Those words didn’t happen for girls like her.
“They’ll be out there for a while,” a soft voice said from behind her.
When Nory turned around, Delta was standing there beside the stone fireplace. She looked like she felt awkward and rested her hand on the stones, then dropped it to her lap and fidgeted. “Sometimes their talks last an hour.”
“They’re friends?” she asked.
“None of this Pack are friends.” Delta looked at the kitchen and back at Nory. “Do you want something to eat? I can make macaroni and cheese for us. I mean, if you’re hungry.”
“Don’t you need meat?” she asked. “I Googled it, and the internet says werewolves live on a mostly-protein diet.”
Delta shrugged up her shoulders. “I don’t know how to cook very much. I was raised by a single dad. There’s macaroni, or I can add stuff to macaroni. I can put tuna in there.” Her voice faded to almost nothing at the end.
“You are such a relief,” Nory said, absorbing her energy.
Delta frowned slightly and then smiled. “Really?”
Nory nodded. “I’m an introvert. Loudness gets to me sometimes. You’re just…easy.”
Delta huffed a laugh and dropped her gaze, but Nory had seen it. There was a blush of pleasure in her cheeks.
“I can cook us something,” Nory offered. “We can take it to the boys when their talk winds down. A full belly will put them both in a better mood.”
“Oh, that’s way too much trouble, and you’ve clearly had a long day. You don’t have to do that.”
“Honestly? Cooking is my happy place.”
“Oh.” Delta moved toward the kitchen and took a seat on one of the two stools that sat under a ledge on the small island. “Do you mind if I watch?”
“I prefer it. Do you mind if I go through the fridge and pantry?”
Delta shook her head. “We have lots of ingredients, but I have no clue what to do with any of it. I’m kind of new to all of this.”
“To being a werewolf?” Nory asked as she studied the groceries in the fridge. There was an enormous tub of chicken breast that was nearly defrosted.
“No, to being in this Pack. I just moved here a few weeks ago, right after Liam Challenged for the Pack.”
“Girl, you might have to explain all of that. I understood none of it.”
“I came here from an established, steady Pack, to absolute mayhem. Liam fought the last Alpha for the Pack.”
Nory stood up straight and twisted around. “Wait. That would make Liam…”
“He’s the Alpha of the Coeur d’Alene Lake Pack.”
Well, Delta could’ve knocked her over with a feather right now. “So, he like…runs this ship?”
“Yep.”
“He’s the leader?”
“Mmm hmm. My mate is his Second.”
Oooh. That made sense.
“Well, he is Second for now,” Delta conceded. “Nate has been moody with Liam lately. He will get moved to the bottom of the Pack if he doesn’t stop.”
“What’s up with them?” Nory asked, pulling ingredients from the pantry. They had a few bags of potatoes, and the chicken, and an entire unopened box of saltine crackers, and she knew exactly what kind of comfort food everyone needed tonight.
Delta watched her like a hawk, and Nory got this instinct that she might be taking notes, so she grabbed the notepad and pen that she found on the counter and started writing out the ingredients for cracker crumb chicken and homestyle mashed potatoes, just in case Delta wanted to cook it later.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong here, but it’s chaos when the boys are together. You know when you go to a bar, and you see a group of men, and you think to yourself ‘I would not want to mess with them’ because you assume they would all have each other’s backs?”
Nory was trimming up the chicken breasts on a cutting board and nodded.
“Well, they’re not like that. If someone messed with one of them, the others would turn on the Packmate getting picked at and join in. They all live separate lives, but they have this long history together. They should’ve leaned on each other and bonded, but I can feel it.”
“Feel what?”
“There is no bond.” She shrugged. “Closest we get is Liam and Nathan. They don’t talk about anything but Pack matters though.
I asked Nate about Liam, and he honestly didn’t know much about him.
That’s crazy to me. The Pack I was in talked about everything.
If you mess with one of them, the entire Pack will burn you alive.
Oh my gosh,” she said, her eyes going wide.
“I am talking so much. I’m sorry. It’s quiet here, and I have all of these thoughts, but you are a woman and it’s so nice to have someone to bounce thoughts off of. ”
“Keep talking then. I don’t mind at all.” Nory had an idea. “Here,” she said, pushing the box of saltine crackers toward her with her elbow, so she didn’t get chicken on it. “Can you unpackage all of those and crunch them up into that bowl?”
“Oh. Just, with my hands?”
Nory smiled and nodded.
Delta went to the sink and washed her hands and started talking again. “What’s up with the stalking stuff?”
Nory explained some and described how it all made her feel. She told her about Jackson pretending to be Liam on the phone. While she did, she instructed Delta on what seasonings to pull from the cabinet, and to melt a stick of butter in the microwave as she started washing potatoes.
There were huge pot and pan sets still with the tags on them, and Delta explained that Nate had bought them when she moved here, and that they hadn’t known each other very well when she’d agreed to the pairing.
She admitted she still didn’t know him well, but that they were trying.
That part was so interesting to Nory. It sounded kind of like the Arrangement stuff Liam had mentioned.
“Did he think you were going to cook a lot?” she asked as she peeled the stickers off the biggest pot so she could wash it for the potatoes.
“Oh, I don’t think he expected me to cook for him, but more like he was preparing to bring a female here and wanted me to have everything that felt familiar.
He stocked the kitchen, but he’s never asked me for anything.
I’ve made him macaroni a few times, and he seems incredibly grateful, but I don’t know.
I thought about ordering a couple of cookbooks and experimenting on his long workdays.
I’m still looking for a job. It’s hard for werewolves to get a company to take a chance on them. I get bored here.”
“I would too, especially if I didn’t know anyone.”
“And the guys aren’t really in a rush to get to know me either. Unless there are Pack meetings, everyone stays separate and scattered all over the territory. It’s so strange to me.”
She’d said that sentiment twice now, that it didn’t feel normal. These werewolves sounded messy.
Nory said, “When I was six, my mom let me help cook for the family Christmas party for the first time. All the ladies in my family cooked together, and I remember I used to watch them in awe, because they all just knew what to do. They knew what the others needed. I would see my aunt hand my mom a knife before she’d even asked about it, or my grandma turn and let one of my cousins try a bite of something, and they would immediately know if it was too light on a certain seasoning.
All my younger cousins would be outside playing football, and tag, but I wanted to be right in the kitchen feeling all the happy vibes from the teamwork.
Six was the first time I got to cook with the adults, and six was the age I discovered how comforting a kitchen could be.
Cooking is a love language, I think. You can take care of your people with a good meal.
You can change a mood.” She lifted her gaze to Delta, to see if she was catching on to what she was saying.
“You can bring people together with food.”
Delta had sat down again, but at that, she stood and said, “I don’t know about seasoning anything, but I can use a knife and a cutting board, if you show me how you need the potatoes done.”
“Learn to make mashed potatoes one time, and you’ll have that up your sleeve for the rest of your life. Even if you don’t know how to cook a single thing, you can still start building your arsenal. Potatoes are easy, they just take some time.”
“How long?
“About an hour. Maybe a little less,” she explained as she showed Delta how to peel a potato.
While she did that, Nory seasoned and buttered the chicken breasts, and coated them in the crunched-up saltines, and got them into the double oven.
It wasn’t until she and Delta had the potatoes boiling away on the stove that Liam and Nate returned. They froze in the doorway. “Smells really good,” Liam said. He’d come in here looking exhausted, but his eyes were brighter now as he made his way into the kitchen.
They were making a little appetizer tray of lunch meats, crackers, and grapes. Nory was cutting tiny cubes of cheddar from a block of cheese as Liam came up behind her and checked the pot of potatoes. “What are you two up to?” he asked.
“Nory is teaching me to cook potatoes,” Delta said so softly, Nory nearly missed it. She glanced up at Nate, who had frozen in the middle of the living room. “I like it.” Delta’s smile was so pretty when it reached her eyes like this.