* * * * *
After work, Heather got in her car and followed Knox back to his home in Sugar Creek County.
Now she realized that he didn’t just live with his family – he lived with his pack. There was a big main house at the end of a long dirt road, and a scattering of other houses near the main house, and a small dairy farm, which was the family business.
The main house was a two-story Colonial-era house built in the early Classical revival style. There was a main entryway with four two-story-high columns under a triangular gable. A porch wrapped around the house, and there was a porch on the second floor as well, also supported by round white columns. Magnolia trees with fat white blossoms perfumed the air, and orange and yellow and pink bougainvillea twined up trellises near the house. There was a lush undergrowth of flowering bushes around the house, which was set among towering oak trees.
He took her into the huge kitchen, which had two gas stoves and a wood stove and three refrigerators and a walk-in freezer. The pack was gathered around waiting for her, most of them looking eager and excited. He began introducing her to pack members.
She’d already met Clarence, who apparently was not just his deputy but his Beta. There was his Aunt Janet, his Uncle Wilfred, and their teenaged daughter Lark; they ran the dairy farm. There were about a dozen other people there whose names Heather struggled to remember. Then there was a woman named Sasha whose name Heather would definitely remember, because she glared at her with more hatred than Heather had ever seen in a person’s eyes before.
Sasha stood with a dour-looking older couple and a tall, sullen-looking young man. She was slender, and had bleached blonde hair and eyebrows plucked to thin, perfect arches. Knox introduced the young man as Peter, Sasha’s brother. Nathanial and Louise, the older couple, were her parents.
“May I speak to you alone?” Sasha said to Knox, raising her voice to be heard as pack members crowded around Heather and offered her trays of appetizers.
“No, you may speak to me right here,” Knox said. “Anything you want to say to me, you can say to Heather as well.”
“Fine. She’s human. She’s not your mate. And you brought her back here,” she said to Knox, eyes sparking with hurt and fury.
An ex, then.
Peter nodded. “She’s right,” he said indignantly.
“Yes, your Alpha made the decision to bring her here. Do you have a problem with that?”
“You’re risking the lives of our entire pack,” Sasha said, her tone turned wheedling.
“She’s right,” Nathanial chimed in grimly. “And I own part interest in the dairy, so I have a say in who’s allowed on our property. This doesn’t just affect you, it affects all of us – every man, woman and child who lives here.”
“Do you think that I would ever put my own personal interests ahead of the pack’s?” Knox snapped. “I know this woman. She would never reveal our secrets, and she would never threaten us.”
“It’s true,” Heather said, speaking up quickly. The last thing she wanted was to cause tension in his pack. “I would never do anything to hurt Knox or anyone in his family. I found out about shifters yesterday, and I certainly had the opportunity to say something, and I never did. And I never will.”
“Nobody asked you, skin,” Sasha said, her eyes glowing a terrifying gold. “You’re not one of us, so—”
Knox spun to face her and let out a howl of fury. She let out a gasp of fear and cowered behind her brother, who flashed Knox a quick glare of anger before bowing his head with reluctance.
“Shut the hell up while you still have vocal cords in your throat,” Knox snarled. “You’re all evicted from the main house. You’ll move in to the Turner Cottage at the back of the property, and you are banned from pack gatherings and this house for the next month. If I ever hear you speak to Heather with disrespect again, you can find a new pack.”
“I own property here…” Nathaniel repeated faintly.
“And we can buy out your interest if necessary. Go pack. Now.”
Tears ran down Sasha’s cheeks as they stormed out of the kitchen.
Knox glanced at the assembled pack members, who were watching the scene with dismay.
“All right, party’s over,” he growled. “Me and my mayyy— Uh, me and Heather are going to go get her settled in. Because she’s not going anywhere.”
Chapter Seven
Heather’s room was connected to Knox’s bedroom by a doorway. It was decorated in a rustic style with a cherry wood sleigh bed and matching chest of drawers, and paintings of country scenes in early American primitive style on the wall.