Page 42 of Reclaiming Home

“The sunroom is in a shitty condition.” I walked to the back porch steps but didn’t climb them. “I fell through the floor theother night. I also have no idea what the porch here is like, so I’m not gonna risk it.” I grinned a little.

She backed up a little from the house to get a better overall picture. “Yeah, you definitely need to do something to the sunroom before winter. Maybe even get new glass instead of just redoing those tarps.”

“The floor is already rotten, but I see your point. I think Brodie said that he’ll at least insulate the door between the sunroom and family room so the heat stays in during the winter.”

We chatted about the house and she had some solid thoughts for a—“How old are you?” I asked. “I mean you said you were an apprentice.”

“Oh, I’m twenty. I was in an accident in high school, so studying was a pain for a couple of years. I graduated last year and started apprenticing with Pop.” She was clearly proud of herself as she should be.

“My sister is nineteen, she lives here as well.”

Lina’s expression betrayed her. She realized I knew where her thoughts had gone and winced. “Yeah, so there was this rumor in town….”

I shrugged. “There are always gonna be rumors. What I know is that she’s the strongest person I know, and that Rusty Douglas is no more. This is the McRae pack now and things are a whole lot different.”

“Well, it would be a dream come true to be able to renovate a house like this,” she said wistfully. Then a song I recognized as Guns N’ Roses sounded from her pocket, and she grimaced. “That’ll be Pop.”

“Good luck.” I grinned.

“Yeah, hi. No, no I didn’t go to the McRae house.” She widened her eyes at me. “No, I’m just driving around—” She stopped, horror filling her gaze. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be right back home. Sure. Okay!” She ended the call, clearly pissed off. “So apparently Popdidn’t want my brothers and I to use the trucks for leisure drives without permission, so he put trackers in them.”

We looked at each other, then the absurdity kind of caught up with us and we started to laugh.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I’m a legal adult. Have been for a couple of years. I’m definitely not the hellraiser of the family, that’s my brothers. Besides, they don’t even work for Pop!”

Privately, I thought that maybe her accident, whatever it had been like, had made her dad overprotective. Or maybe her brothers were prone to mischief and taking the company truck, who knew. Either way, I gestured forward, and we walked the rest of the way around the house and stopped by the barn again.

“I’ll see you on Monday,” she said brightly, then glanced at the kitchen window. “Your sister is very pretty.”

I chuckled, and she seemed to catch what she’d said and blushed.

“I mean—”

“No, you’re right. Sheispretty. We have good genes.” I batted my lashes at her.

Giggling, she shook her head and started toward the truck. “See ya!”

“Bye!”

I watched her do a three point turn and drive off, then went inside.

“So, that was Lina Keller from Keller Construction. She’s the apprentice,” I clarified.

“I liked her hair,” Carys said from where she was standing by the stove, mixing something in a big pot, as if she hadn’t just been in the window.Curious.

Icontinued to read and got to a chapter titled “The Mate.”

Frowning, I tried to recall anything I might’ve known already. I vaguely remembered hearing about mates and how rare they were before, but that was about it.

“Mates, whether you believe them to be something brought on by absolute natural chemistry between two individuals or something fated, are a rare occurrence that only happens with born werewolves.

The mate can be another werewolf, a vampire, or a human, but the mate can’t feel the mate bond in the same way a werewolf is able to. There have been a handful of recorded cases of two werewolves being each other’s mates, but normally the bond is one-sided in the way that only one can truly sense it.

That is not to say that a mate bond isn’t real; it is a very real phenomenon that has been both thought of as something sacred and at times, vilified in the greater community. Some people see it as sacred for its rarity and the perfect compatibility of such a union, while others think it strips people from the ability to choose for themselves.

In some ways, that does happen to the werewolf. It is known, after all, that a werewolf who has found their mate will not be as compatible with another person, and often that knowledge is enough to make a wolf that has lost or been rejected by their mate give up on romantic relationships for the rest of their life. There are also many reported cases of such wolves having taken their own life rather than live without their mate.

In a werewolf pack, a mate, especially a mate to the Alpha, is always a welcome thing. It has been said that a wolfpack with a mate in it has been blessed. Some old beliefs state that a werewolf pack with an Alpha with a human mate is the most blessed one.”

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