The Alpha's Mail Order Mate: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (7 page)

“Yeah, but how long does it take to make a few cabins and some place to eat?” Night pointed out.

“True,” Rick agreed. “But short of telling them the truth, it’s all we’ve got at the moment.”

“Well, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to tell them we’re making a tree house if it ever comes up,” Night said with a smirk. “We just won’t tell them how big the thing actually is.”

“Yeah, I could just see their expressions if they knew the truth,” he replied. “Still, we’re going to have to tread lightly if we don’t want this whole plan to blow up in our faces.”

Night nodded. “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

*

Carl returned a few hours later and found Night and Rick deep in conversation in the large building filled with tables that the pack was using as a hall of sorts. It was where they ate dinner together as well as where they gathered for any occasion in which the use of a table or a large group in one place might be needed.

His face looked troubled as he walked in and took a seat. Night glanced in his direction with a raised brow, wordlessly asking what was on his mind.

"It doesn’t look good, sir,” he said. “The miners have definitely come to stay.”

Night sighed deeply at this. He had been hoping these men were only there to assess the value of mining or whatever reason they’d come for, and determining it was not worth their time. That would have made things much easier for him and his pack.

“Maybe we should fence our land in and claim it is an exclusive resort,” Night suggested then. “I know that I didn’t want to do it originally, but the more I think on it, the more sense it makes. We could even buy the materials outright and truck them in now that Julian has purchased the land for us. It doesn’t matter if they spot the resort, we just don’t want them to realize what’s happening when we begin to populate the trees with new members from Julian’s pack. And that won’t be for quite some time yet as far as I can tell.”

“I said before, I thought it would be a good idea,” Rick agreed. “But if we’re going legit, we need actual permits for anything we do that others can see. If you’re calling it a resort, you’re going to need to get a business license. There would be no point in doing things only halfway.”

“Yes, and then all of our clients should probably be werewolves,” said Night decisively. “There’s no way we could pull off a charade of that magnitude if humans came in, don’t you think? The last thing we need is for someone to discover the secret and bust the whole thing wide open.”

“I think the best way to hide something from a human is to dangle it right under their nose,” Carl chuckled.

Rick smirked as he said, “Well, maybe we should build a home for Night and Chastity on the ground, then. I was wondering how we were supposed to keep a toddling baby from plummeting to the ground, anyway.”

“That’s terrible, Rick!” Night admonished him, but couldn’t help but laugh at the visual. “I wonder if super-wolves are better at surviving long drops.”

“Now who is being terrible?” Rick inquired, grinning openly now. “We’d better not let Chastity hear us making such jokes or she won’t even let you near your own child.”

“You know that I would never allow any harm to come to our baby,” Night said then, the look on his face fiercely serious.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Rick said. “It’s all in good fun, boss.”

“Alpha Night?” called Amos Little as he stepped inside.

“Yes, Amos, what is it?” asked Night with a smile at the smaller man.

“The men wanted to know if you and your lady would like to come up and see the dorm,” Amos explained.

“Of course, we’d love to,” he replied. “Let me find out where she is.”

Night pulled out his fully charged cell phone and typed into it, texting Chastity about the request. She told him she’d be right there, and soon enough, she and Tess stepped through the back door. He suspected that the two women and been discussing babies because both of them planned to be mothering them this time next year, and they seemed to talk about nothing else.

“Where have you two been off to?” he asked with an indulgent smile.

“Sewing curtains for the dorm,” Chastity explained. “Apparently the old ones practically fell apart when they took them down, so we decided to make new ones. We even weaved them a couple of throw rugs out of some scrap fabric.”

“You two are really enjoying all the crafting projects, aren’t you?”

“Yes, we are,” agreed Tess.

“I didn’t have this much to do even when I was in Julian’s pack, and you know he has well over three hundred people,” Chastity said with a smile.

“I’m glad to see you are enjoying it out here,” he said. “I wasn’t sure a city girl like you would be able to adapt when I first met you. But that was before I knew just how much you were longing to stretch your legs.”

Chastity hid a secret blush. She knew that he was actually trying to say he was glad she’d become his mate, without actually saying the words, because of a previous conversation they had once had. She had said she wanted to stretch her legs, and he had told her the only person she’d ever have to share a bed with after that would be him. And that was just the way she liked it.

In response, she replied with a slightly sassy tone, “I enjoy stretching my legs very much.”

The two of them smirked, and then Night said, “Come on, let’s go have a look at the dorm. I’m sure the men would love to show it to us, after they’ve waited so long for it to get finished.”

“Yes, let’s,” Chastity agreed. “Are you coming along, Tess?”

“Oh, no, I’ve been up there more than once as it is,” she said. “You two go enjoy your moment.”

“All right, we’ll see you later then,” Chastity replied.

Night and Chastity followed Amos, Rick and Carl back to the clearing and Rick pushed the hidden button that would bring the elevator down. When it arrived, they all stepped inside. Chastity had not yet been on the elevator, so she watched the mechanism that made it possible through the glass window.

Apparently, Rick had rigged telescopic bars on all four sides and the middle of three as well that brought the box down the last fifty feet. It took quite a bit of metal to pull it off, and he never could have made something like that reach the full four hundred feet distance from the top. When the elevator reconnected to the main housing, it was pulled up sort of like an accordion, leaving nothing down where prying eyes could see.

“You sure put a lot of thought into this elevator, Rick,” Chastity mentioned as they neared the top.

“Night wanted something you couldn’t see from below,” he said. “It’s just lucky for me Carl brought all this with him when he came here, or we’d still be getting pulled up on a rope.”

“That would never have been a long-term solution, that’s for sure,” Night commented. “Remind me to thank Julian again for sending the truckload of goods. Sure, we had to build a small road into the area to get it in, but now that we own the land that would have been expected anyway. How else would they think we were going to build anything?”

“I, for one, am glad that we have our little road to the outside world,” said Chastity with a smile. “Now maybe we could get goodies more often than three times a year.”

“What did you have in mind, sweetheart?” Night wanted to know.

“Disposable diapers?” she asked hopefully.

“Out here?” Night scoffed. “Do you see a garbage man anywhere, Chastity? I think not.”

Chastity was grinning, and Night realized she was teasing him. He laughed and kissed her on the neck before everyone piled out of the elevator.

*

At the tops of the trees, Chastity discovered a wonderland. The platform that Rick had been referring to was actually a series of wooden sidewalks and bridges leading from tree to tree, spanning possibly thirty of them as it spread out over the area. Each of them had sturdy rails so people wouldn’t fall off, and she couldn’t see any path so narrow that two people could not walk side-by-side as they went.

“This is amazing,” she told Rick with an excited smile. “It almost looks more like the home elves would live in instead of werewolves.”

“I admit, I do love fantasy stories,” Rick said with a smirk. “Come, the dorm is this way. I’ve already made plans to put a dorm for females over there, far enough from this one to prevent trouble between the two, if at all possible. And right here in the middle, a place where the two can meet each other.”

“Yes, it would defeat the purpose of trying to build a population if you didn’t let them become couples,” Chastity chuckled.

“We’re probably going to need to build some sort of apartments, though, eventually,” Rick commented. “I don’t think it would be feasible to make single homes for every new couple who decides to get together.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” she agreed. “Though of course, Night and I will want a single home up here as well as the one below for show. I’m sure there will be days when we won’t be down there.”

Rick laughed. “Oh, so you need a vacation home up here?”

“Funny,” she grumbled. “Yes, and I want it to have all the amenities too, so no slacking on the job.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he chuckled.

“I thought we came up here to look in the dorm, not make vacation plans,” Night reminded them.

“You’re right,” Chastity agreed with a smirk. “Let’s go.”

Unlike the old dorm, which was just one large room with rows of bunks, this one was divided into twelve rooms that each currently contained one set of bunk beds. There was space for four sets in each room, just in case. Each room contained built-in dressers and its own bathroom so the men would no longer have to share just the one. Chastity could imagine they really liked that.

“Wow, this place is great,” Chastity said excitedly. “Much better than Julian’s dorms, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah, the men might be so comfortable in here that they won’t even want to find mates,” Night teased.

“I highly doubt that,” Rick told him. “Carl and I have been anticipating the arrival of the ladies with much interest, I’ll have you know.”

“I bet you have,” Night smirked.

“Sir, the men are waiting in the sitting room,” Amos told Night.

“Ah, the sitting room,” said Chastity in a lofty tone. “Another innovation I’m sure they heartily welcomed.”

“Yes, Alpha Chastity, it was a very welcome thing, indeed,” Amos told her with a slight bow.

As they continued down a long hall, Chastity paused outside a room that had countertops and space for a stove and refrigerator that were not yet placed. “Oh, they will even have a place to cook? You really did go all out.”

“Yes, I figured that if they could eat in here it might be helpful for morale,” Rick said. “Also, every man here will be expected to work for his stay. We put a little production area right in this building itself where we can have them help build things we could sell.

The women will probably be given sewing projects or something. Then men will be trained to build electronic devices. It’s a little pet project of mine, making things like music players and such. I’ve been trying to design a watch-sized computer, and if I get it figured out I’ll be having them made here until we can build a factory.”

“You do know that women can work on building watch-computers too, I hope?” Chastity grumbled. “Not all of us like to sew all day long like I do.”

“True,” Rick conceded. “I sometimes don’t take that sort of thing into account while I’m brainstorming. I stand corrected, Chastity.”

“Good,” she grumbled with a slight smile as they continued into the sitting room. About fifteen of the men were there. One of them was directing three of the others on how to hang the painting of a mother deer and her fawn at a watering hole over an electric heater that looked like a fireplace.

“Now there’s a good idea, not putting fireplaces in a tree house,” Night commented. “I could just imagine how well that would turn out in the long term.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Rick agreed.

“What is that box over there?” Night asked as he stepped further into the room.

“That’s an indoor generator,” Rick explained. “It charges itself just like a battery in a car would do, only drawing from the power generated by the waterwheels when it gets too low. I’m trying to figure out how to make it generate even more power than it actually needs so that it never will run low, but so far that doesn’t seem to work. It ends up overheating and burning out, and I don’t want to have to keep replacing them so I just use the inferior one.

“An indoor generator that doesn’t require fuel is in no way inferior,” Chastity told him as she rolled her eyes. “Ingenious, maybe, but hardly inferior.”

Night laughed. “I think you are starting to get on my mate’s nerves, Rick,” he told him then. “She never has had much patience for nonsense.”

“Call a spade a spade, I always say,” Chastity agreed.

“That’s something Julian likes to say,” Night observed.

“Where did you think I first heard it?” she pointed out. “I believe I’ve picked up a great many of his witticisms over the years.”

“As have I,” Night grinned. “I wonder if the old dog will ever want to come and see this place for himself. Surely, he can’t intend to just pay for it and then never even have a look what all his efforts have accomplished.”