Page 43 of Wulf’s Pack

Chapter

Twenty-Two

D ownstairs, we’re met with a flurry of activity.

The smell of wood, paint, and sheetrock fill the air along with a bit of dust. A small crew of human construction workers are scattered about doing various remodeling tasks.

I’m not crazy about having strangers in the warehouse, but Bree is there overseeing everything, and I’m assuming Matthew would only hire people he trusted implicitly.

Bree glances our way and gives us a small smile. “Good morning, sir, Luna.”

“Morning.” I tug Skylar over to the construction zone that used to be my storage space.

There are a couple of offices and a larger room that is being converted into the conference room I requested.

Several people are installing what will be a long wall of windows that will look into the room from the main gym.

It appears there’s not a whole lot left to do.

I’m surprised to see things so far along. “They’ve been busy.”

Bree lifts her brows and nods. “The Kellers don’t mess around.

They’re an efficient bunch. Not sure if they’re trying to prove their value, or if they’re just that happy to be part of a pack again, but they’re very hardworking and enthusiastic.

” She whistles toward the conference room and calls out, “Hey, Matt!”

Matthew pokes his head out of the hole in the wall where the windows have yet to be installed. When he sees Skylar and me, his face lights up. “Oh, hi, Alpha, Luna!”

He disappears from the window and reappears in the doorway a second later. He trots over to us wearing a hardhat, toolbelt, and carrying a roll of papers. “Welcome back. How’d it go in Denver?”

I’m glad to see his smile and cheery disposition. Everyone was so worried when we left. “I’d call it a success,” I say. “We’ll have a full pack meeting soon to catch everyone up.” I nod toward the conference room. “Looks like that’s going well.”

“Yeah. It was a pretty easy project, and some of the guys from my crew were in between jobs.” He glances nervously toward the construction area and wrings his hands.

“I hope it’s okay that I hired them. I’ve been working with them for years, and Carl vetted them before I brought them over.

I wanted to get your approval, but you guys were on a plane, and I wanted to get started as quickly as possible.

Carl thought it would be okay as long as they checked out. ”

I give him a reassuring smile. “It’s okay. I trust Carl with our security. If you and he both vouched for them, then I’m glad you got the jump on things. The sooner we can get everything in order, the better.”

Matthew smiles in relief. “Thank you, sir. And everything has gone well so far. We’ll be finished with the upstairs by the end of the week.”

“The upstairs?”

He nods. “Did you know you have a basement in this place?”

“Yeah. Never used it. I’ve only been down there a couple times.”

“It’s huge,” Matthew says. “Almost as much square footage as this floor.” He holds up the papers in his hand, and I can see now that it’s a set of blueprints.

“I had some ideas for using the space that I thought you might be interested in. The drawings are rough, but if you want to move forward, we’ll get some real prints drawn up.

I’ve got an architect friend who could help me draft a plan. You have time to take a look?”

Surprised, I nod. I glance at Skylar. She smiles back at me, and I can see pride shining in her eyes. She already feels a sense of ownership for our pack the same way I do. I give her a wink and say to Matthew, “Sure. Show us what you have in mind.”

Matthew beams us a bright grin and leads us to the offices beside the conference room.

One of them is open. I take a quick peek inside.

It’s a decent-size office with a window facing the main gym just like the conference room.

It’s empty, hasn’t been painted yet, and still has a bare concrete floor, but the electrical is finished and the door and window are already installed.

Matthew walks over to the other office door, which is closed.

He gives a quick knock, then steps inside.

This office is a little larger than the other one and is in the same state of readiness, but it’s not empty.

Preston and Elise have both set themselves up at small folding card tables.

Preston is typing away at a laptop, and Elise is talking on the phone while sitting in front of a laptop of her own.

There’s a small stack of metal folding chairs leaning against the wall.

Both look up when we enter and greet us with relaxed, happy smiles. Elise quickly ends her call. “Good morning, Alpha, Luna,” she greets. “Welcome back. Bree said everything went okay in Denver?”

I let go of Skylar’s hand to slip my arm around her waist and tuck her to my side. “Better than expected, thanks to Skylar.”

“It was nothing,” Skylar answers, but the way she says it, it’s obvious she knows it wasn’t really nothing.

Elise smiles, but it’s a little more subdued. “Thank you, Luna. We’re all grateful for what you did, especially with helping the new pack members. I can’t imagine…”

She doesn’t finish that sentence, but she doesn’t need to. “We did as much as we could,” Skylar says, swallowing a lump of emotions.

I hug her again, knowing she wishes she could have saved all of Samuel’s prisoners.

I don’t think she blames herself for not being able to bring the bear or the coyote back, but I know she hates that she couldn’t.

“You did more than we could have asked for. Try not to dwell on what we couldn’t control. ”

Skylar nods and tries to focus on the present. “You wanted to show us some plans?” she asks Matt, as if she needs the distraction to keep her from thinking dark thoughts.

Matt happily jumps in. He motions to Preston, who moves his laptop, making room on the small card table for Matt to unroll his drawings.

“Here’s what we’ve done so far.” The first paper is an outline of the floor plan of the main floor of the warehouse.

He points to the offices we’re standing in that are located beneath the upstairs apartment.

“This office and the one next door were already in good shape. We figured this office would be a good Alpha office, and the one next door could be for the pack secretary.”

I nod. I hadn’t thought about needing a pack office, but he’s right that I do. He’s also right about needing a pack secretary. We definitely need one of those.

Matt points to the conference room next.

“Obviously we knocked out walls between the other three offices to make the conference room, but there was a storage room behind them that was easy to knock out as well, so we were able to extend the room back another twelve feet to make it a bit bigger. It’s a good-size space now. ”

“Great. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.”

Elise laughs. “More than you know.” She waves off my curious look. “I’ll explain in a minute. In fact, you should pull up a couple of chairs. I’m going to need you to stick around for a while.”

Now I’m really curious, but I hold back my questions and grab a couple of chairs for Skylar and myself. Matt doesn’t bother to sit, but he waits for us to settle in before continuing with his plan.

“You know the office near the front of the building where you’ve got your security system set up in right now?” he asks, pointing out the space on the drawing.

“Yeah.”

“I’d like to convert that space into a welcome/reception area for when we have guests. And then there’s room over here to expand the locker rooms. Thought that might be a good idea if you’re going to keep the gym open for pack use.”

His insight is impressive. I wouldn’t have thought of that, but those locker rooms are small, not much more than a bathroom with a shower and a changing bench and a couple lockers.

When I had the place renovated, I planned for having the odd guest, but I never expected I’d be accommodating large groups.

“Good thinking. If we’ve got the room, let’s do it.

But don’t we need the office up front for a security office?

Carl’s going to need a place to set up.”

Matt shuffles the drawing of the main floor, replacing it with another floor plan. “We can leave it there if you’d like, but you’d have more room if you move it to the basement.”

I look at the new drawing and recognize it as the basement.

“It would be a bit of a project,” Matt says, “but if you want to finish out the basement, you can almost double your square footage of this building. This could be the new security office, and we could add a small vault and a holding cell. It would be back out of the way here, and we could make it secure with a reinforced door so that only authorized personnel could go in and out. Then, here, we can create a few more offices. We’ll need an accounting office, a maintenance office, and probably one or two others that I haven’t thought of.

We can also put in a couple of guest suites.

And finally, this area here could be a huge entertainment/recreation room with a kitchen and eating area.

This could be a really great pack house. ”

I blink down at the plans, feeling a little overwhelmed.

It’s an amazing setup, but looking at it really makes the fact that I’m an alpha with a pack to run hit home.

Pulling my shoulders back as if fortifying myself to not collapse under the weight falling on them, I take a deep breath and nod.

“I like it, but I’m not sure how much of it we can do right now.

We don’t exactly have the funds for it, and we’ve really got to focus on getting living accommodations set up first.”

“Well…actually…” Preston says, hesitating with a sheepish expression.