Chapter 12 #3
“Pack life sounds kind of nice, though a bit intrusive,” he observed.
She chuckled. “To tell you the truth, all the togetherness can get to me sometimes. You wouldn’t believe the busybodies who came out of the woodwork when Emma started shifting.
I actually told everybody off at a Pack meeting and was later chastised by my dad for hurting their feelings when they were only trying to be neighborly.
” She gave a long sigh. “Pack is great, but it can get on my nerves occasionally.”
“Maybe your feline daughter is rubbing off on you,” Hank mused with a grin.
“Or her feline father,” she agreed, bumping his arm gently with her shoulder.
“I wouldn’t mind rubbing off on you at all,” he said, deviltry in his dancing eyes.
She laughed outright at his innuendo. Hank was fun to be around. Emma looked away from her intense scrutiny of the pretty flowers, laughing along with her mother, though she had no idea what was so funny.
Tracy reached out and picked Emma up, swinging her around to her delighted giggles.
When she came back to where she’d started, she noticed that Hank had already opened the front door.
He came over to her and picked her up in his arms, lifting both her and Emma, still clutched tight in Tracy’s arms, and walked easily with them over the threshold.
He let Tracy’s legs drift easily down to the floor once they were inside, but he kept one arm around her back.
Tracy looked up into his eyes, and her breath caught.
His gaze was smoldering, but he immediately banked the fire.
Out of breath for no discernable reason, Tracy moved her gaze off him and looked around the house.
And quickly realized that the word house was a wholly inadequate term.
The outer facade might look like a pretty little cottage in the forest, but the door opened into something quite different.
The entry was open to the top of what Tracy now realized was a really large cave-like structure that went back into the rock of the volcanic rim.
“This is amazing,” she breathed, nearly overcome by the imaginative design of something that was more like a den than a human house, yet had all the comforts of modern life.
She could see gleaming countertops and a kitchen area in the open-concept front space.
Comfy furniture in rich earth tones and jewel colors were up front in what would have been the living room in her house.
There was a big screen TV that was probably the largest she’d ever seen, and off to one side, there was a computer setup that looked like something out of a science fiction movie.
A dining table was adjacent to the kitchen and looked out through the front windows she’d seen from outside.
The wall at the back of the public area of the house had a couple of doors, beyond which she imagined were at least one bedroom and a bathroom, but judging by the proportions of what she could see so far, it might contain a lot more than that.
“I’ve been adding on as time allows,” Hank said, coming up behind her.
She’d moved into the large open space without thinking about it.
“The private areas of the house can be locked down.” He nodded toward the doorway on the right.
“The left door is a bathroom for this part of the house. Once you go through the right door, you’re fully inside the rock wall of the mountain. ”
“Don’t you mean the caldera? This is the inside curve of the volcano, isn’t it?” She felt a little note of concern at being inside something that had blown up a million years ago.
“Dormant volcano,” he told her. “And besides, Mark would know if the volcano was going to be a problem. He’s…
sort of…connected to it, in a way. We all are, to some degree, but he’s the Big Kahuna.
He’d know if it was going to turn on us.
” Hank fell silent for a moment as she walked deeper into the living room area.
“It’s not, by the way. It nurtures us, not… the other thing.”
Tracy looked at him, and he was gesturing with his glance toward Emma, who was watching everything with wide eyes.
Tracy hugged her baby, offering reassurance in this strange place, but Emma seemed fine.
Thanks in part, she was sure, to Hank’s careful wording.
Emma was very empathic. She always picked up on the mood of those around her, and if Tracy was afraid, Emma would be too.
“So, this is the more or less public part of the house. I sometimes have friends over to watch games, though I haven’t been home much in recent years.
” He pointed toward the giant TV as he led the way toward the doorway that led to the back of the house.
“This partition is steel plate. Nothing gets through here without some serious effort,” he said with a grin as he unlocked and opened the large doorway.
Tracy could see that the door wasn’t just a wooden panel. No, this door was made of metal, and it was really thick. Likewise, the lock looked heavy duty. More like a bank vault lock than a door lock.
“You expecting a siege?” she asked, only half joking. This was some serious defensive stuff. Wolves didn’t build like this. Then again, werewolves, as a species, hadn’t been decimated, almost to extinction.
“Not expecting,” he told her, shrugging a bit self-consciously. “I just like to be prepared.”
“How far does this preparation go?” she asked, half challenging, half joking.
He smiled in response. “Come in and see.” He pushed the door open wide.
“Said the spider to the fly,” she murmured, just loud enough for him to hear, earning a short masculine chuckle in return.