Page 21 of Claimed

“This village is beautiful … it seems wealthy. I’m not sure how you support yourselves so well.”

She winces like she’s spoken out of turn.

“We do what we want or need to do. Some have mainstream jobs. Some do things for the village or run their own business. We have farmers and tradespeople that work locally. A few have out of town jobs like trucking, fishing, oil field, and some commute to the nearest town for office or retail jobs. Most of us are comfortable. But as a pack, we make sure anyone struggling won’t ever go without.”

“They pay a nice tribute to you, I’m sure.”

“Tribute?”

“The tribute people in your pack pay the um… alphas. I wondered if you all shared their tributes or if they have to pay the seven of you all individually.”

“No. None of that,” I tell her. “Nobody pays a tribute.”

She frowns. “What do you do to support yourself? How … I mean… this house is beautiful. I… sorry, it’s none of my business.” She looks contrite.

“Of course it’s your business. Pack members don’t pay a tribute to us. Ever. That said, if the pack or the village needs something, our people gladly step up with money or with labor.”

“Oh.”

She doesn’t look convinced.

“Me and another council co-alpha Jason Creed, Jase, we own some real estate together. We have a couple small apartment buildings and triplexes in Drowsy Hollow and some student housing for the university an hour away as well as just bought a strip mall in town with apartments on top. Earn decent rental income. I jump on bigger jobs for Savage Construction doing electrician work mostly; went to school for that. The council makes money from a few things like consulting for other packs. We’ve got skillsets that come in handy.”

“Oh.”

“Sometimes it earns for us; other times we do it just to help when a pack doesn’t have the means.”

“That’s… wow,” she says, biting her lip and twining her fingers nervously. Her heartbeat picks up speed.

“Joel’s a whiz with technology and investments. He grows our money for us, though I could probably live off the rental income alone at this point and be comfortable enough. But I like keeping busy. I’ll provide you with a comfortable life, Stacy. And our kids.”

She rapidly blinks like she’s having difficulty processing this.

“If you have something you like to do, you can do it.”

Her eyes widen. “You allow females to work, like… outside the pack? If I wanted to keep my job at the diner?”

“Why wouldn’t we? I mean, each couple decides how they want to handle their family. You don’t wanna work and prefer to stay home and raise our kids, you can do that. You wanna work, it’s your choice. We’ll be a team, talk about big decisions for our family before we make those decisions. Our village has a school and a daycare for the little ones since some of the women work outside the village. You like diner work, Roxy’s might want yourhelp right here in the village. But you don’t need a job unless you want one.”

She blinks again with more surprise.

“We’ll figure all that out. But anyway, we all have our thing on the council. Riley and Mase handle Rye’s construction company. Mase is an architect, and he’s really helped put Savage Construction on the map beyond this local area. Joel runs everyone’s investments like I said. He also has some e-commerce sites. Big into tech. Linc does bounty hunting and private investigations and hops onto jobs as a carpenter with Savage Construction sometimes. Jase does carpentry, too. Sometimes Linc gets bigger or complex investigations jobs and pulls one or more of us in to help him, too.”

“What about Tyson?” she asks and does this like she already knows.

“Ty just joined the pack. Long story there. He’s still figuring things out. I’ll tell you all you wanna know, but we won’t fit everything in tonight.”

“And he’ll recover from… today, you said?”

“You didn’t hit anything vital, but he did lose a lot of blood.”

She clutches her throat, going a little green.

“He hit his head when the shot took him down so knocked him unconscious. When he woke he shifted, and spit the bullet out. He’s fine.”

“I coated the bullet in a tincture I made with the herbs I put on the pies,” she admits. “I didn’t know if it’d work to disable him from shifting. That’s what it’s supposed to do.”

“It didn’t,” I say. “All alphas are strong and resilient, but council alphas have extra mojo. Lorenzo had a rough time but he’s all good now. Don’t know if it would’ve hit him as hard if this hadbeen five years ago. Gus and Cade felt it, but it didn’t last too long. They’re fine. As for Tyson, Ty’s the strongest of the pack. Should shit the rest of us to say it, but it doesn’t.” I shrug. “He’s supposed to be what he is to us. If we were a lone alpha pack, it’d be him at the top. We thought we lost him, but fate brought him back. Anyone from the Savage genetic line has exceptional strength.”

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