Rane’s Mate(35)
“What’s this about you meeting a man and not telling us, me? Of all things.” She groaned, as her mother continued. “Tell me you’re not moving in with him? Your brothers said nothing. Really, all I got was ‘yes, Mum, she is seeing someone. Yes, it is serious. I don’t know why she didn’t tell you, Mum.’ So what do you have to say for yourself, young lady?”
Kirby sighed. She had never lied to her mother…well, the odd little blaming things she did on her brothers didn’t count, so really, she never had lied, and she wasn’t about to start now. She knew if she said even one thing that didn’t sound right they would be down here ASAP, so instead she said, “Mum, I really can’t explain everything over the phone. Please be patient, I’ll tell you everything on Saturday.”
Kirby rattled off Rane’s address and phone number to make sure they were the same ones her mother had. She told her mum that she would speak to her tomorrow and assured her that everything was fine. An hour and a half later her mother hung up, very reluctantly.
Kirby turned to find Rane with eight boxes packed and stacked. “I haven’t packed anything breakable, because I know how you women are about that.”
Raising her eyebrow at the last comment, she added, “You women, really.”
He put his hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry. My sister Ava can help you with the rest. I spoke to her while you were on the phone.”
“Yeah sure, Ava seems really nice.”
Rane looked miserable. He looked like an animal locked in a cage.
“Bored, aren’t you?” she asked.
He grimaced and walked toward her. “There is other stuff that I would rather be doing, and this place is so tiny I’m starting to get claustrophobic.”
She dodged his hands. “Don’t start that or we’ll never get back to your house.”
He grunted and picked up four boxes like they didn’t weigh a thing and walked out of the door. “Make sure I got everything.”
* * * *
They arrived back at Rane’s, unpacked, and were sitting on the lounge, cuddling and talking.
“How on earth are you going to have this house ready by Saturday?” Kirby asked. “The upstairs is just a shell with a roof.”
Rane shrugged. “I’ll have all the wolves pitching in. One of the best things about being in a pack is that there are always multiple people who have skills that you need. Most of us don’t start in the enforcers full time until we’re in our late forties, but some decide to do it earlier, it’s their choice. We don’t need as much sleep as humans. About four or five hours is all we need, unless we’re hurt, and then we need more. Because of this most of us work and do enforcers as well. The mated werewolves are always given first choice of what jobs they want to do.”
Kirby frowned. “That really doesn’t sound fair, that means the unmated do more work than the mated males.”
Rane shook his head as he continued. “Remember that we live a lot longer than humans and need a lot less sleep, so we rack up quite a bit of time. Most are not as lucky as me—they don’t find their mates until a lot later in life. We also have a pack fund which helps everyone. When we pass onto the next life we leave a quarter of our money to the pack, and the rest gets divided between the family. Now, we are a new pack—we only started about thirty years ago—so it will take us some time to build up to where we want to be.”
She nodded against his chest. “I suppose, but why so many different jobs?”
“We age so slowly that if we stay in the same job too long people start to notice, so we try to break up our long life. For example, Tray was a carpenter for twenty-three years. He even had his own company, but because he’d been doing it so long and never aged, he had to give it a rest and let someone else take over for a while. Tray is currently, and will probably be for the next couple of years, a full time enforcer. Then he will either go back to being a carpenter or start a new profession. Now that Tray has Sara, he could cut back and do part time, just work in the mines. He could probably have a rest from enforcer altogether, since he is newly mated.” Rane stopped talking, looked at Kirby, and asked, “Would you like me to retire from the military and become a part time enforcer or take a rest from it all for a while?”
Kirby frowned at him, surprised he would ask. “What do you want to do?”
“I want you to be happy. I don’t want you to be worrying about me, not liking what I do.”
“I am proud of what you do to save our world.” She kissed his nose and both cheeks before giving him a light kiss on the lips. “I also think it helps having brothers who are in the military.”