Page 11 of Same One
She denied his call.
He texted.You have three minutes to brush your hair and I’m calling back.Send.
You are a monster.
He grinned.
Hurry.Send.
Don’t rush a woman!
His grin grew bigger and he climbed up his porch stairs and sat on his patio chair for the first time. It was comfortable.
He had built a concrete pad and nestled half of his home into the tree line, so his bedroom windows looked out into the trees.His wolf was happy with this placement. It was late summer, and soon, the leaves would be changing colors and raining onto the forest floor. This would be his sanctuary.
Tabian gave her a couple of extra minutes and then connected the call. Tru answered but immediately set her phone against the bathroom mirror and continued applying make-up.
A smile confiscated his face as he studied her surroundings. The bathroom was small but had white wainscoting on the bottom half of the walls, and gray above. On her shower hung a gray floral shower curtain. The counters were perfectly clean.
“It is my day off,” she explained as she stared at herself in the mirror and applied mascara. “I had big plans to be in pajamas all day with no make-up and my hair in a messy bun.”
“Sounds perfect. You could’ve just left it at that.”
She glanced at him on the phone and then back to her mascara application. “My mother drilled it into me that you look presentable when you leave the house.”
“You aren’t leaving the house though.”
She gestured to him on the phone. “Your place is leaving the house. Just digitally.” She leaned forward and studied the corners. “Where are you? In the woods?”
He chuckled and hit the button to flip the camera around. He jogged down the porch stairs and turned around, slowly panning to the woods and his home. “This was the exciting thing I wanted to show you. My house was just delivered, and the deck builders just left. Tonight I’m staying in it for the first time. It’s moving day.”
Her pretty lips parted, and she looked shocked. “Wait, that’s your home?”
He laughed. “You sound surprised.”
“No, no. Do you just live out in the woods alone?”
“What? Of course not. I live with my Pack.” He zoomed in on a few of the other houses that he could see from here—Liam andNory, Vic and Lyric…Bridger’s freaking mansion of a modular home was behind his home.
“I can’t see Nate’s house from here,” he said. “That’s where I’ve been renting a room until this thing was through the building process. It took a few months.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Back up. You have a Pack?” she asked, picking up the phone.
“Uuuh, yeah.”
“But you were kicked out of Coeur d’Alene Lake Pack, right?”
“Aaah, you’ve been doing some internet digging. Yeah, you won’t find the story there. The Elders wouldn’t want that. Wewerekicked off the government land, and we will have to be listed as Rogues because the Elders are assholes, but my Alpha and his mate decided to keep our Pack together outside of Elder and government law. We are on human land, and we are each financing our homes through human means. No one will be able to take our homes again.”Or we will kill them,the wolf said confidently inside of him. Tru didn’t need to hear the wolf’s thoughts though, so he kept that little gem to himself to avoid her running and screaming for the hills.
“Oh. I have been under a different impression. I thought you were a Rogue.”
“I’m a member of the Rogue Pack. And technically we’ve been listed as Rogues, but that wasn’t our choice. We’ve been a Pack for a while, and we’ve been growing lately. There is a Coeur d’Alene Pack still and we’ve had some war times with them, but I think it’s died off. They stay clear of us now.” He hadn’t meant for his tone to darken, but the memories of all that had happened over the last year sometimes still flashed across his mind when he mentioned that Pack. “Tell me about you, now that I’ve blabbed all about my personal life.”
“Ummm, there isn’t much to tell. My life is pretty boring compared to yours.”
He sat heavily onto a porch chair and said, “Bore me.”
She was walking down what looked like a hallway now and sank into a worn-looking charcoal gray couch. There were pictures behind her of pressed flowers. From what he could see, her home was cute, and tidy. “Let’s see. I’m originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico. My parents divorced when I was eight, and my mom remarried right away and had children with my stepdad, and they moved out of state when I was twelve, so my dad raised me alone after that. He had a small farm with horses, so I grew up riding all over creation.” Her voice had taken on a dreamy tone. “My friends all rode too, and we would spend all our money on chasing rodeos to watch some of them compete.”
