I'll be happy to make you a sandwich. Otherwise, let my son give you his tour and get you settled in. I have a welcome dinner to prepare. One question, do you prefer pork or chicken in your enchiladas?"
I was tempted to say beef to mess with her, but she looked so damned serious I couldn't find the heart to do it. "Essie, I will happily eat any form of enchilada you set in front of me. But if I have a choice? I'd have to go with pork."
"Bueno." With a nod to Raul, she motioned for Pedro to follow as she headed toward the big house without so much as another word.
Staring after her, my mind went blank for a few seconds before I turned to her son. "What just happened?"
Raul cracked up. "You met Mamá. She's a force of nature. Don't try to fight it. You can't escape her anyway. She runs the Alpha manor, and the three of us live there with you. I have a separate apartment, of course, but we're all on site."
"Good to know, but not unexpected. Most pack Alphas have live-in staff, right? At least, the bosses with big places like this one, from what I've seen. What's up with your dad, though? He didn't say a word." I hadn't realized until this very moment.
"Dad doesn't talk much, you'll find. He manages the vineyard. When he does speak, though, you'll want to listen. He saves his breath for the important things." Leading me over to the golf cart, Raul got back behind the steering wheel and fired it up. "I'm mostly going to give you the scenic route today so you can get the lay of the land. I don't expect you to memorize everything, so don't stress yourself. It'll come with time, especially if you’ve never lived or worked around the winery before."
The engine was quiet, so we could easily converse as he motored around the property. Thankfully, he drove at a much slower pace, showing me the different outbuildings and whatnot. Everyone we passed waved with a friendly smile, but nobody stopped working. And through it all, Raul chattered away about everything from grape varietals to oak barrels and how many finished cases they averaged per acre.
Between Raul acting like I was the new hire being welcomed to my new job at the winery rather than showing the packlands to his new Alpha and the non-reaction of the pack members themselves, I understood better what he'd meant about the nature of this pack. And damned, but if that didn't go a long way toward making me feel needed here. If I learned one thing during a childhood spent in the shifter foster system, shuffled to a new pack every six months, it was how the best packs operated.
Tehachapi might have had wealth, but they lacked the most essential ingredient for a healthy pack—the sense of community. After the tour, my eyes were already open, but when Raul led me into the winery's main office where the Gamma Council met me in a conference room, the missing ingredient really slapped me in the face. The authority and confidence of running a thriving pack were completely lacking. These guys weren't warriors who oversaw a Delta force; they were bureaucrats.
After twenty minutes of pie charts, spreadsheets, and other corporate bullshit, one of them shoved a contract at me. I’d had enough. I rested my hand on the thick stack of papers, half wondering which of these guys was most likely to have a roll of antacid tablets in their pocket. Fuck me, my stomach was churning after sitting through even this brief business meeting. Carefully setting the contract aside, I kept a polite smile as I looked around the table.
"Gentlemen, if I may be so rude as to interrupt your presentation? You'll have to pardon my confusion, but I assumed you were the Gamma Council, yet this feels like a board meeting."
Shrugging, John, a blond dude in his mid-thirties, loosened his tie. "You're not wrong, Alpha. The four of us all hold executive positions. The winery is our primary job in the business of running this pack. There aren't many personal issues. Our members keep to themselves and solve their own problems."
The man next to him, a slick Italian guy named Tony with a prominent New York accent, nodded in agreement. "What he said. Yo, we don't worry about what they do in their own homes. We care about whether or not they do