Page 53 of Wolfsbane

His brow furrowed. “Well, we’ve been building. We’re almost finished with the big house. That’ll house most of the pack while we work on more homes for those who want to live on their own. But⁠—”

“Great! Let’s go build. I can totally hammer a nail, probably. I definitely watched Bob the Builder, so I’m sure I have some kind of latent knowledge in here just waiting to come out.”

The way Viktor’s eyes tightened wasn’t quite comfortable, but I didn’t let my smile waver. I wasn’t going to interrupt his life or hold his pack back. I wanted to help.

Eventually, he sighed. “Okay, we can . . . go see if there’s work we can do.”

CHAPTER 29

Viktor

When I first arrived from Russia a few years earlier, Aleks had immediately recognized that I was not in a good place to be around many people. His answer had been to put me with Cash, and whether he’d realized it or not, he’d wanted me to protect the man he loved.

As it turned out, that was easy. Cash was soothing to be around, quiet and calm and kind.

Things had changed over the intervening years, and I was better able to deal with noise and people, but Cash had remained my closest friend in this new pack.

But with Daire at my side? Well, I needed to keep my distance from him.

Making them uncomfortable just because I enjoyed being around both of them wasn’t an option. Especially in this situation, my comfort was not the priority.

Not that I tended to prioritize my own comfort. What an odd concept.

So I took Daire around the side of the clearing, as far from where Cash was working as possible. Fortunately for us, the current project was enormous, so there was plenty of room. In fact, Jojo had a small workshop set up on the far side of the house, where she was working on some furniture. The current project was a dining room set that was even bigger than the one in Mama’s house, complete with no less than a dozen chairs.

I thought maybe the kitchen could serve as the meeting place Aleks had been talking about, but maybe not. After all, if the big house was supposed to be a safe place, we couldn’t have people the pack didn’t trust in there. Maybe there was such a thing as a ward for intentions, to warn if people who intended harm tried to cross.

The process had seemed pretty open, so it should be almost infinitely alterable to suit the needs of the magic user. From the way Daire had been teaching me, frankly, magic seemed to be so much less hidebound than I’d believed from previous experience.

Or maybe it was about the practitioner more than the magic itself.

Jojo looked up as we practically slunk out of the woods near the work site. Well, I slunk. Daire just followed me, looking around with a smile and his wide, curious eyes drinking everything in. She grinned and waved us over. It was so strange to me sometimes, how the pack had accepted me even as my surly, nonvocal self. Surely, that meant most of them would react well to Daire.

She didn’t immediately seem to have a problem with him, even though her brother had also been one of the people Grant had been sending off to the coven over his years in charge. In fact, she looked him over like she did men she might find attractive.

I was not jealous at all.

Good thing I didn’t have my own wolf in me to growl at her and put the lie to that, so I could fake it well enough.

“Hey, you two. Aleks said you were warding the pack territory. That’s so cool. Does it mean the witches won’t be able to come in anymore?”

Daire let his head fall to one side and squinted, but eventually shook it. “Not exactly. It means they can’t just pop up without us knowing, even if they’re on foot. They have to intentionally cross or break the wards to come in, which means we’ll know well ahead of time and they won’t catch us by surprise.” He paused and bit his lip, clearly nervous. “Is that . . . is that okay? I mean, there are wards that can stop people from crossing at all, but usually they’ll stop people from being able to leave, too. I could look into⁠—”

“That’s cool,” Jojo said, leaning on the sturdy slab of maple that was the top of the table. Then she frowned down at the wood, pulling her palm away and inspecting it carefully. “Fucking splinters. I guess I should get back to sanding.”

“We can do that,” I offered, then motioned to the pile of clearly shaped pieces of wood that were waiting. “You can work on the chairs. This is simple.”

She brightened at that. “Seriously? Hell yeah. I’d do anything to get out of hours of sanding. I’ll even make lunch.”

I lifted a brow at her, pursing my lips, and she laughed.

“Okay fine, I’ll make Larry make you lunch, because we all know I can’t even make a sandwich without screwing it up.”

I snorted but took up a sander with the right grit and tossed it to Daire, then picked up one of my own. We didn’t have those fancy electric sanders, at least in part because we didn’t have electricity all over the place to be using tons of power tools. Plus we were werewolves. We had more ability to do hard labor and recover easily than humans.

“You can’t even cut bread straight,” her brother, Larry, pointed out from where he was already working on a chair. “But I’d be happy to make everyone lunch. Gives me half an hour of rest from the back-breaking labor thing.”

She scoffed. “Like you’ve ever broken your back for anything. You’re just hammering nails anyway.”