They moved to a room that had several kids studying and found a corner where they could talk quietly without disturbing the others. It didn’t take long to see that Jason had a good grasp of what he was doing and just needed to be shown a couple of tweaks to be fully on the right path.
“Looks like you have a pretty good teacher,” he commented.
“Yeah, we like her. I could have talked to her about this on Monday, but I wanted to get more done.”
“Glad to help.”
“Hey, so, I heard you’re dating the National President.”
He raised his eyebrow at the boy, who flushed.
“I just, you know, some of my friends, especially the girls, were saying how there’s no point in dating someone who’s not your mate. And I, you know, think that’s bullshit. I mean, I like this girl at school and if we like hanging out together, why not? Right?”
“Right.”
Jason blinked at him, then grinned. “Right. Cool. Thanks, man.”
Most of the kids had left for their own homes by the time Hillary and Zach arrived, but he noted how they both spent some time with those that were still around, before moving on to the adults. The pack house was where a lot of the single wolves lived before setting up their own houses, so they were mostly young adults, though he spoke to a couple of random older wolves. He questioned one who told him she’d had her own house for years, but had received a good offer to sell it, so she was staying at the pack house until she found something she felt like moving into.
It was a bit of wolf society he found interesting and he talked to Hillary about it as they shared a beer before dinner.
“It’s great, right? The pack contributes some money, especially for food, since everyone is welcome to come and eat. We pay someone a salary to be in charge, make sure there’s always someone to cook, that sort of thing. And everyone in the pack always knows they can come here and someone will be around to talk, or run with, or eat with. Sometimes you just want to sit on the couch and watch TV but have someone else be in the room with you.”
He nodded and she cocked her head at him. “You aren’t nearly as hermity as you were made out to be,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, well. I was. I just don’t seem to be anymore.”
“I’m glad. We all need people.”
“Don’t you ever want private time, though?”
“Sure. Zach and I haven’t been together long, but I know that if I asked, say, Molly and Travis, since they’re firsts, to cover us for a weekend or whatever, they totally would. That’s why the hierarchy is so important. The whole pack knows they have several people to go to if they need something, it doesn’t all just fall on our shoulders.”
“Have I mentioned how glad I am that you’re happy?” he asked, slinging an arm around her shoulders as they followed the call in for dinner. There were enough of them, but not too many, that they were all eating at the massive table he’d been told she’d built for Zach as a birthday present. He took a seat next to her and started filling his plate.
“You have. And I must say that you seem better than when you first got here.”
“How did I seem when I first got here?”
“Tense. Unsure. Prepared to be angry.”
He couldn’t exactly find fault with that, so he just shrugged as they began to eat. She laughed and jostled his shoulder with hers and turned her attention to her own plate. Aaron and Tracy showed up with Alexis, who squirmed her way onto the seat between Hillary and him.
CHAPTER TEN
Adam and Zach decided to go play pool while Hillary worked. There was a decent crowd for a Sunday evening and Adam was teasing Zach about planning his honeymoon. He was teamed up with Claire, a friend of Hillary’s he’d talked to about Alexis, and Zach was with Jonas, a bartender who was there to get in a game or two before his shift started.
“Come on, you can tell us. Europe? Or somewhere tropical?”
“Yeah, I can tell you, and Hillary will find out in, what? Twenty minutes? Fifteen? I don’t trust a single one of you to be on my side instead of hers.”
Claire laughed. “You always were a smart guy.”
Jonas missed a somewhat difficult shot and handed his stick to Zach. Adam lined up his shot and nailed it, but the bounce back on the cue ball was terrible and he had pretty much no hope for his next move. Luckily, it didn’t leave much for Zach, either, who scratched. Claire gave Adam a high-five.
“But can we trust him to do right by our girl, that’s the question,” he said. “He doesn’t have any experience being a mate and—” He stopped mid-sentence, frozen in a flood of sensation. Warmth and heat both, need and desire, happiness and joy, fear and sadness, all at once. He knew it as Myra, but that was all he knew.
“You better stop teasing him,” Claire laughed. “Hillary’s going to punch you.”
