The Madow Pupcare building looked nothing like the short, square-shaped building I had worked at before. There was no ugly, brown brick with only two windows per side, letting in the barest hint of sun. There was no wrought-iron gate surrounding a small, plastic-filled play area. The building in front of me actually looked inviting.
It was located in the center of the grassy park that was behind the Welcome Center, and you could only get to it by walking or riding a bike; there was no access by car. Instead of brick or aluminum siding, the outside walls of the building were made of tempered glass on all sides. A graveled path led to a door in one corner of the building which was the only place that an outsider could see through the glass.
We stepped inside and the air was thick with the scent of oak and babies and fur. I inhaled it into my chest, and my excitement grew at the opportunity to do something I enjoyed once again. A woman stood at the desk near the entrance with her regard on the computer screen in front of her.
“Hey, Alicia. Good morning.”
When Lenny walked over to the woman and touched her arm I wondered if she was another member of Lenny’s pack.
“Hey, Lenny.” A corner of her mouth lifted in what was probably supposed to be a smile but looked more like a grimace. Her eyes slid over to me and what little smile she mustered all but disappeared. “You must be Janine.”
I nodded. “I am. Good morning.”
She lifted a sheaf of papers into the air. “Your information just came over. I haven’t had a chance to look them over yet, but if you already know what you want to do here, we can get started.”
That same sense of uneven footing I’d felt at breakfast when Cynthia asked for my order came over. I had no idea what this facility even offered, so there was no way I could already know what I wanted to do here. I was frustrated that people kept expecting me to know things as if I hadn’t arrived less than forty-eight hours ago.
I didn’t even realize that Alicia had shrunk back from me until Lenny grabbed my hand and squeezed. I blinked out of my reverie and looked at her.
“Hey, it’s all good. I’ll give you a tour of the pupcare while Alicia goes over your paperwork, and when we’re all finished, we can meet up and make a decision. Is that cool?”
“Sounds good to me.” I looked at Alicia to see if that was fine with her, only to see her eyes narrowed at me suspiciously. What was her problem?
“Alicia?” Lenny prompted. “Is that fine?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. It won’t take me long. The papers just came through, and I hadn’t had a chance to look at them is all.”
Lenny smiled. “I understand. It’s all good, right?” She looked at both of us.
“Yep,” Alicia chirped.
“Yep,” I echoed.
“Cool. “Let’s go, Janine.”
I followed her out of the front entrance and through a set of doors where the volume immediately increased. We entered a large, open area filled with children of a variety of ages, ranging from two to six, splayed across the wooden floors. One wall was floor-to-ceiling tinted glass, allowing for a clear view of the foliage on the other side of the building. Some of the older children were concentrating on drawing on sheets of white paper while the younger ones were playing with toys or each other. Two women were moving around the room and engaging with the children.
We moved from in front of the door and stood with our backs to the wall. Lenny leaned over and spoke directly into my ear. “This is the multi-purpose room. The children spend the majority of their time here. They receive their lessons in here, do arts and crafts, eat, and nap all in this room.”
She waved at one of the women who then came over to us with a smile on her face.
“Hey, Lenny. What brings you over to our chaotic world this early in the morning?” She nodded at me. “Good morning, hun. How are you? I’m Fancy.”
Her welcome was a lot warmer than what I’d received on the other side of the wall, and I couldn’t help but smile at her. She looked to be about my age with a wide, genuine smile and open, honest, brown eyes. Her light brown hair was styled in a braided bob.
“Nice to meet you, Fancy.”
“This is Janine. She’s going to be joining the pupcare staff. I’m giving her a tour of the facility and explaining everything that goes on here so she can have an idea of where she’d like to work.”
Fancy laughed. “Ooh, girl, yes! Welcome to the Madow Pupcare family! Let me go ahead and tell you that we need help with our babies.”
Lenny and I laughed.
“Girl, I’m serious. We have about eight people on staff here, and almost everyone rotates but only two strictly deal with the babies. We could absolutely use another one.”
“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Great. Lenny here is a great tour guide, but if you have any additional questions, come find me and I’ll get you straight.”
“Definitely.” I really liked Fancy. She was going to be fun to work with.
“Thanks, Fancy! We’re going to move on.”
“Alright. See you later, Janine.”
“See you.”
We sidestepped a group of pre-schoolers to exit through another door where we came to a wide hallway.
“The children aren’t separated by age?”
Lenny glanced back at me briefly before leading me through another door. “No. Excluding the youngest babies who spend the majority of their day napping, all pups are kept together.”
“Oh.” That was completely different from the daycare back home.
Lenny showed me the bathrooms, the kitchen, and the baby room, where one of the women there echoed Fancy’s sentiments on facility need. Just as we were headed outside, Lenny’s brother, Langston—the Alpha—showed up. He greeted us but said little else, insisting that we pretend he wasn’t there. That was an impossible task, being that my wolf was on high alert the moment she caught wind of his scent, even before he made an appearance. Lenny simply shrugged and continued on with the tour. One of the first things I noticed when we stepped outside was the lack of play equipment.
“Why isn’t there a playground for the children?”
“Oh, there is. It’s this way.” Lenny started down a path that bisected a crop of trees.
We came to a clearing that housed the swings, jungle gym, and monkey bars I would expect to see at an elementary school, not a daycare. Even more surprising was the wooden play set that included rope bridges, a child-sized, multi-car train, and a conveyor belt bridge. It was a child’s paradise.
“Wow!”
“Amazing, right?”
“Without a doubt. And this is just for the pupcare?”
“Oh, no. This is for all children in Madow. That’s why it’s here and not right outside of the pupcare.”
I nodded, running my hands across the top of the train, amazed at how smooth the wood felt. Memories of splinters at the age of six flitted across my mind. That was a long time ago. This was a new age.
“What do you think?”
I stiffened as Langston’s question caressed my eardrums. This half of my tour had been a lesson in restraint as I forced myself not to turn around every few minutes and stare at him with my tongue hanging out of my mouth. I was grateful that he stayed a few feet behind us, allowing Lenny to finish my tour without his input, but it didn’t make too much of a difference as I was still hyperaware of his presence, even without him speaking. How did he expect me to pretend he wasn’t there when he flexed that warm-blanket-on-a-cold-night he called a voice?
Forcing myself to breathe easy, I thought about his question and his question alone, putting his distracting form out of my mind for a moment. I had seen a lot in the past hour and a half. What did I think?
“I think I’m going to enjoy working here.”
♥♥♥♥
If Alicia’s increasingly—and confusingly—hostile attitude toward me didn’t reinforce the fact that I was an outsider to this community, Langston’s frequent visits to the pupcare surely brought the idea home. It was easy to ignore Alicia since she was more of a secretary than an educator and often stayed in the lobby unless she was relieving me for my lunch break, but Langston was another story altogether. He would arrive around seven or eight in the morning, which was about an hour or two after I did, and he would then hover outside of the baby room for a while before leaving the same way he came—quietly.
After the third visit in one week, I’d had enough of being watched and called him into the room. My back was to the door, but I knew he was there, had sensed him the moment he entered the hallway. He came easily, as if he’d been waiting for me to speak to him the whole time, and was at my side in seconds. Silently, I handed him a cloth diaper and motioned to the wriggling baby on the changing table.
“Might as well make yourself useful.”
He chuckled, but to my surprise, he grabbed the diaper and gently pushed me to the side. I watched as he deftly gripped the baby’s ankles with one hand and lifted his bottom in the air. It looked like he knew what he was doing, so I walked away to grab another stinky baby from the playpen. When I turned back, my mouth dropped open at the freshly changed baby chilling in Langston’s arms.
That was fast.
“Uh huh. You can go ahead and lift that jaw off the floor.” He smoothly switched the wet baby for the dry one out of my arms and turned back to the table, changing even the poopy diaper without looking to me for help. We worked together in silence until all five babies had fresh diapers and the laundry sack was full.
“I have to ask,” I admitted after I returned the last baby to the playpen and dropped down into the nearby rocking chair.
He grinned at me and suddenly, my breasts felt heavy with a desire that caught me off guard. I had to peel my gaze from his and focus on the babies on the other side of the room to gather my errant emotions.
“You want to know how I learned to change diapers.”
He looked so smug that I enjoyed bursting his bubble. I frowned slightly, shaking my head emphatically.
“What? No. I want you to tell me about The Summit.”
The grin fell from his face, and his eyes narrowed. I could feel the tension in the room, and I quickly glanced at him before checking to make sure the babies were okay. I didn’t need him flexing his power in here and scaring my charges.
“How do you even know about that?” The suspicion in his voice didn’t even faze me.
“Uh, I’ve been here for two weeks and have heard several people mention that it’s supposed to happen soon. I’ve asked Lenny about it, but every time I bring it up, she gets upset and changes the subject.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I had planned to ask Fancy later but since you were here, I figure I could just ask you. I’d assumed you would know, being the alpha and all.”
“Been around many alphas, have you?”
I shrugged at that. “Not really. I’ve met a few here and there when traveling, and there was Brix, but he doesn’t really count.” As soon as I said that, the hairs on my arms stood and my wolf shrank into a ball. I looked at Langston curiously. I don’t know if he knew it or not, but he was really putting some crazy shit into the air.
“Who is that? Is that your boyfriend?” Even though is voice was gritty with barely controlled anger, I laughed at the thought.
“Who, Brix? Absolutely not.”
He studied me but I stared at him unblinkingly. There was no lie in my words. Brix had never been anything but a friend in my eyes, and that was a direct result of our upbringing. Romantic entanglements weren’t an afforded luxury under the watchful eye of the Elders. That was one of the many reasons why I couldn’t allow myself to become his mate.
“So… are you going to tell me about The Summit, or am I really going to have to ask Fancy?”
He blew out a breath and leaned back against the wall. “The Summit is what we call the quarterly meeting of all the alphas in Madow. That’s when they discuss productivity and profit of their industry, as well as the health of their pack. It’s how they keep their finger on the pulse of the community.”
I observed how he stared blankly at the opposite wall as he recited the information mechanically. It was like he was detached from the whole thing, which didn’t make any sense.
“Why do you say ‘they’?”
“Huh?” He looked at me, blinking in confusion.
“You keep saying ‘they’ as if you aren’t a part of that group. You’re an Alpha as well. Shouldn’t you be saying ‘we’ do x, y, and z at the meetings?”
He blinked owlishly. “You’re right.”
I nodded.
“We haven’t had the last two Summits.”
When he didn’t add to his declaration, I cocked my head to the side. “Why is that?”
Tugging on his beard, he sighed. “It was my father’s job to call it, and he died not too long ago so…” He trailed off, but I got the gist of what he was trying to say.
“Ah,” I said as if everything now made sense. “He didn’t teach you how to do it before he died.”
Pushing off the wall, he took a step toward me. “Wait, what? No, that’s—”
“I get it. How can you be expected to do carry on this tradition when he didn’t even show you—”
“Stop! Stop. That’s not it. He just—”
“Oh! You’re scared!”
“No! Cut it out, man. My father taught me everything I needed to know because he wanted me to be a better alpha than he was. I’m not scared of shit. I know what I’m supposed to do, and I know how to do it with my eyes closed.”
His chest was heaving with emotion, and I glanced over at the playpen to see five sets of eyes trained on us through the holes of the gate. Langston might not have yelled, but his power was felt even by the infants in the corner of the room. I walked across the room and stepped over the gate, sitting a couple of feet away from the babies. They immediately swarmed me, some climbing into my lap while others used me for leverage to come to a standing position. I knew they needed to feel my calm demeanor to understand that everything was okay. I stared down at the beautiful brown babies that surrounded me. Working in the pupcare brought me immense peace. I cuddled a baby to my chest, nuzzling her neck and causing a joyous squeal to burst from her toothless mouth.
“The measure of a father is by how well he equips his children to survive his death. What do you think the other alphas are thinking about your father’s legacy right now?”
Langston scoffed. “Why should I care what anyone thinks?”
“You may not care what they think about you, but it’s not your legacy—your memory—that is up for consideration. You are doing your father a great disservice by giving the illusion that he didn’t handle his duties as the Alpha of Alphas.”
He didn’t respond but I felt his onyx orbs laser in on me for a full minute before he left the room. I blew out a breath as his domineering presence left with him and looked down at the sweet girl in my arms.
“I guess he doesn’t like to hear the truth.”